“Sandra Birks wanted a divorce. She had to serve papers on Morgan. She couldn’t find Morgan, so she thought it might be clever to plant someone as Morgan Birks. You think Morgan Birks came to the Perkins Hotel today. We feel positive he didn’t.”

Mrs. Cool opened her purse, took out a cigarette, put it in her lips, groped around for matches, lit the cigarette, and said, “Tell him, Donald.”

“What?” I asked.

“All about serving Morgan Birks. Keep talking until I tell you to stop.”

I said, “Sandra Birks hired us. I went up to her apartment and got pictures of Morgan Birks. They were good snapshots. I checked up on them to make certain she hadn’t planted some phonies in the album.”

“Yes, I know,” Cunweather said. “You’re right on that. Those snapshots were in your pocket together with the original summons.”

I said, “Sandra’s brother, B. L. Thoms, whom she calls Bleatie, came out from Kansas City to—”

“From where?” Mrs. Cunweather interrupted.

“From Kansas City.”

The chief glanced sharply at his wife. “Go on, Lam,” he said.

“Bleatie came out to help Sandra. He knows Morgan Birks very well. I gather he’s more friendly with Morgan than he is with his own sister. He said he’d give us a lead that would let us put the finger on Morgan Birks any time he was satisfied Sandra wasn’t trying to double-cross Morgan. He didn’t seem to have a particularly high opinion of his sister’s morals or integrity.”

I could see gleaming interest in the eyes of the fat man. Mrs. Cool said casually, “That’s far enough, Donald. If we go on from there, it costs money.”

“What do you mean money?” the fat man asked.

“Something,” she said, “to pay for getting up at this hour of the morning. I’m running a detective agency. I have rent to pay, salaries to pay, a tax on my payroll, a federal income tax, an occupation tax to the city, and a state income tax on the money that’s left after the federal people get done with my income. Then I have to pay a sales tax on all the clothes I buy and—”

“Yes, yes,” he interrupted, smiling and bobbing his head with mechanical regularity, but keeping his turquoise green eyes fastened on Mrs. Cool. “I understand. I have problems of my own, Mrs. Cool.”

“Well, I’m in the business of getting information and capitalizing on it,” she said. “I have something you want. You tried to beat it out of my operative. I don’t like that.”

“We were a little abrupt, for a fact,” the chief conceded.

“It costs me money to get my information. I don’t pass it out for charity.”

“I’m very much interested in that Perkins Hotel situation,” the chief said. He said to his wife, “Do you suppose, m’love, that we could have had the double-cross?”