visit personally, with the police, of course, that establishment of which you spoke, that Miss or Mrs. Bell’s, and can assure you she is not there. I wish that I could also, with honesty, tell you that she had never been there, but I am afraid that this is impossible. I have reason to believe—from other sources, not from the police—that the information given you by young Mr. Elkins is quite accurate, though I can but wonder at his motives in bringing a sorrowing mother any such additional burden of sadness as that. I do agree, however, that you both were wise in keeping the information from your husband. I feel that he has been far too harsh with the girl in the past, and any further rashness on his part would only make a bad matter worse than it is now.
Rest assured that I have not given up, that I shall continue to do everything in my power to get in touch with your daughter if she is in this part of the country at all, and that my prayers are with you both in this trying hour.
With deepest regret that I have not been able to bring any better tidings, I am, as ever,
Your obedient servant,
RICHARD SOAMES
I read it over again and folded it up slowly and stuck it in my pocket. Buford was going to be interested in seeing this. Well, I thought, he had an idea there was more here than showed on the surface.
It wasn’t too hard to piece it all together. Elkins must be that big crazy kid, the one who’d gone berserk when he found the girl down here. So as soon as he got out of jail he went back home, wherever it was, and told the girl’s mother about it, or she had got it out of him some way. And the mother, knowing what a violent hothead like her husband would do when he heard it, had made the kid promise not to tell him, or maybe the kid hadn’t because he was still sore at the old man. The mother had written Soames, knowing he was in the same town, and asked him to find the girl and talk to her, try to send her home. And then the old man had got hold of Soames’s reply and headed for here with blood in his eye. It all added up, all right. The only trouble with it was that no matter how many times you added it, you couldn’t get any total you liked.
Soames knew, then, that the girl had been here. He knew, and Waites knew, and the whole country was going to know as soon as this thing had time to explode, that a brothel operating with police connivance had been harboring a fifteen-year-old girl, that a woman was dead, or might be, and that the girl’s father was likely to be tried for murder as a result of it. The smell of bribery and police corruption was going to be so powerful the grand jury wasn’t going to be able to ignore it any longer.
Just then I heard Bernice coming down the stairs. She had the suitcase in her hand and was ready to go. I flipped the light off and we went out.
“The car’s up in the next block,” I said. “Just stand here out of the street lights while I go get it.”
I brought it down and stopped and she climbed in. No one had seen us, or paid any attention, apparently. Dropping over one block to miss the square, I headed back to town, stopping on a quiet street a block from the station. I ought to get a job driving a station wagon at a girls’ boarding school, I thought. How many times have I done this?
“So long, Bernice,” I said, and held out my hand. “Just forget everything you told me and don’t ever tell anybody else and you’ll be safe enough.”
“‘I won’t,” she said. “I don’t want to get mixed up in nothing.” She thanked me again for the money and got out. I saw her walk up the street toward the station. What a life, I thought. Cat house behind, cat house ahead. Then I snapped out of it. I was in a hell of a spot to be feeling sorry for her.
I drove around and parked in front of the courthouse and sat there for a minute, trying to think. Cars lazily circled the square, boys out riding