Beware the Curves

smoking.
    “Well?” Ansel asked, finally.
    “That’s it,” I said, acting surprised. “That’s the information you wanted. The name of the man is Karl Carver Endicott. The residence address was Citrus Grove, not right in the city, but outside of the city at an orange grove ranch called the Whippoorwill.”
    “The Whippoorwill,” Ansel repeated vaguely.
    I smiled. “That’s right. The Whippoorwill.”
    I went on smoking. Ansel sat in the chair fidgeting. “Well,” I said to Bertha, “I’ll be on my way. I’m doing some work on that Russett case, and—”
    “But how about me?” Ansel asked.
    I turned to look at him in surprise.
    “What about you?”
    “About my case.”
    “It’s finished. It’s solved. You wanted the name of good old Karl that you met in Paris. Wanted to know who he was. I got the name for you.”
    “Well, where is he now?” he asked.
    “Good heavens!” I said, “that wasn’t what you wanted us to find out. I don’t know where he is now.”
    He moistened his lips with the tip of his tongue. “I’d like very much to find out.”
    “That may be quite a job,” I said.
    “Good heavens! Why?” Bertha blurted. “A man like that wouldn’t have moved away without leaving a forwarding address.”
    “It depends on where he went,” I told her significantly.
    Bertha caught the look in my eyes and became silent.
    “Well, of course, I’d like to know,” Ansel said. “I could... I hadn’t anticipated that you’d get just the name.”
    “That was all you asked for.”
    “Perhaps I didn’t make my wants clearly understood,” he said.
    “Perhaps you didn’t.”
    “Well,” Bertha snapped impatiently. “Why the hell do you want to fool around with private detectives after you have the man’s name and address? Go into a telephone booth. Give him a ring. Drop him a letter. Send him a telegram. Write him a card.”
    “That’s right, Ansel,” I said. “You wanted to get in touch with good old Karl whom you met in Paris. He had an idea for a story, remember?”
    He ran his hands through his hair and said, “Surely you must have found out something about him while you were getting his name.”
    “Oh, of course,” I told him, “but that was just incidental and on the side. What we were supposed to find out was the man’s name. You wanted his name. We gave you his name.”
    “I repeat,” Ansel said, “perhaps I didn’t express myself clearly.”
    “You can say that again,” I told him. “In case you’re interested in the murder, you expressed yourself very, very incompletely.”
    “I’m not interested in the murder,” he said. “I merely wanted...” His voice suddenly trailed away into dismayed silence.
    I grinned at him. “How did you know there’d been a murder, Ansel?”
    He tried to answer that question and couldn’t. His mouth went through the motions of making sound but gave it up as a bad job.
    I could hear Bertha Cool’s chair creak as she suddenly came to life behind the desk and leaned forward, scenting financial gain the way a bird dog scents a covey of quail.
    “In case you are interested in learning about the murder, Ansel,” I told him, “you made several very important mistakes. One of them is that you neglected to tell me the principal suspect was described as a tall, rather slender man with dark hair, dark eyes, and long artistic fingers. A taxi driver is supposed to be able to identify that man.
    And you made the mistake of not telling me what I was up against so I could have covered my back trail. As it was, I went out in the open without making any attempt to cover up and by this time the authorities know that the firm of Cool and Lam is interested in the Karl Endicott case. Since the police have nasty, skeptical minds, they wouldn’t believe that my interest in the case was purely for the purpose of locating quote good old Karl unquote who gave you an idea for quote a story unquote while you were in Paris. They would naturally think that we were interested in some angle of the murder, and, within a very short time, the police are going to want to know why we are interested.
    “The third mistake you made was in not giving us an address where you could be reached so that when I found out what we were up against I could have warned you and told you not to come to the office.
    “However, since all those mistakes have been made you’ll have to take your chances. Next time you employ detectives tell them what you want. In the