Beware the Curves

who the devil is our client, John Dittmar Ansel?” she asked.
    “For your information,” I said, “John Dittmar Ansel is the man who was taken to Karl Carver Endicott’s house in Drude Nickerson’s taxicab on the fateful murder date.”
    Bertha thought that over a long time. “Can they prove it?”
    “Of course they can prove it. Otherwise, they wouldn’t have gone to all this trouble to get him to come out into the open and furnish them with proof of motivation.”
    “Fry me for an oyster!” Bertha said, as I walked out and left her sitting there, snapping her fingers in an ecstasy of exasperation.

CHAPTER 8 …

    I WOKE UP about one-thirty and had trouble getting back to sleep. A whole series of events were chasing around in my mind trying to fit themselves into a pattern.
    Three or four times I would doze off, only to waken With a start as all of the various ideas started chasing each other around like puppies at play. Finally about two-thirty I slipped into fitful sleep. It was broken by dreams and finally shattered by the ringing of the telephone bell.
    I groped for the receiver.
    Bertha Cool was on the line. I knew by the tone of her voice that we’d struck pay dirt.
    “Donald,” she said in her most cooing voice, but mouthing the words as though each one had been a dollar rung up in the cash register, “Bertha hates to bother you at night, but could you get dressed and hurry to the office?”
    “What’s the matter?” I asked.
    “I can’t explain, Donald, but we have a client who is in very great trouble. We-”
    I said, “Listen, Bertha, are you dealing with the man who was arrested, with the woman who was with him, or with some lawyer?”
    “The second,” she said.
    “I’ll be right up. Where are you now?”
    “I’m at the office, Donald. It’s the strangest, the weirdest story you ever heard in your life.”
    “Mrs. Endicott there with you?”
    “Yes,” Bertha said shortly.
    “I’ll be up.”
    I tumbled out of bed, into a shower, hit the high spots with an electric razor, jumped into clothes and drove through deserted streets to the office building.
    The night janitor was accustomed to the crazy goings- on of a detective agency. He grumbled a bit about people who tried to run offices on a twenty-four-hour basis, but took me up.
    I latchkeyed the door and went on in to Bertha’s private office.
    Bertha was being very maternal to a sad-eyed woman around thirty, who was sitting perfectly still in the chair, but who had been twisting her gloves until they looked like a piece of rope.
    Bertha beamed. “This is Mrs. Endicott, Donald.”
    “How do you do, Mrs. Endicott,” I said.
    She gave me a cold hand and a warm smile.
    “Donald,” Bertha said, “this is the damnedest story you ever heard in your life. This is absolutely out of this world. This is— Well, I want Mrs. Endicott to tell you in her own words.”
    Mrs. Endicott was a brunette. She had big dark eyes, high cheekbones, smooth complexion, and, aside from a general air of funereal sadness about her, might have been a professional poker player. She’d learned somewhere to keep her emotions under complete control. Her face was as expressionless as the marble slab of a gravestone.
    “Do you mind, dear?” Bertha asked.
    “Not at all,” Mrs. Endicott said in a low but strong voice. “After all, that’s why we got Mr. Lam up out of bed, and he can’t very well work on a case unless he knows the facts.”
    “If you can just give him the highlights,” Bertha said, ‘I can fill him in later on.”
    “Very well,” Mrs. Endicott said and twisted her gloves so tight it seemed the stitching would start ripping.
    “This goes back almost seven years,” she said.
    I nodded as she paused.
    “Just the high spots,” Bertha said, in a voice that was dripping with synthetic sympathy.
    “John Ansel and I were in love. We were going to get married. John was working for Karl Carver Endicott.
    “Karl sent John Ansel to Brazil. After John got to Brazil, Karl sent him on an expedition up the Amazon. It was a suicide trip. Karl claimed he was looking for oil prospects. There were two men in the party. He offered each of them a twenty-thousand-dollar bonus to make the trip if they completed the mission successfully.
    “They were, of course, under no obligations to go, but John wanted that money very badly because that would have enabled us to get married and he could have started a business of his own. That trip was