Eden sighed. “Me? It begins to look as though I’d be here forever.”
“How terrible.”
“What sort of speech is that?”
“For you, I mean.”
“Oh! Well, thank you very much. I’ll hope to see you soon.”
He hung up and went into the yard. Ah Kim was loitering near the cookhouse. Together they strolled into the barn.
“We pinned our eager hopes on empty air,” said Eden. He repeated his conversation with Paula Wendell.
Chan nodded, unperturbed. “I would have made fat wager same would happen. Eddie Boston knows all about Delaney, and admits the fact to Madden. What the use we try to see Boston then? Madden has seen him first.”
Bob Eden dropped down on a battered old settee that had been exiled from the house. He put his head in his hands.
“Well, I’m discouraged,” he admitted. “We’re up against a stone wall, Charlie.”
“Many times in my life I find myself in that precise locality,” returned the detective. “What happens? I batter old head until it feels sore, and then a splendid idea assails me. I go around.”
“What do you suggest?”
“Possibilities of ranch now exhausted and drooping. We must look elsewhere. Names of three cities gallop into mind—Pasadena, Los Angeles, Hollywood.”
“All very fine—but how to get there? By gad—I think I can manage it at that. Madden was saying this morning
