A Fair: Cut Thin to Win

“Where we can’t be questioned by the Colorado police?” I asked.

“I didn’t say that,” he said, hastily. “You said that.”

“Thanks a lot,” I told him.

“You should start on that vacation immediately.”

“I never was one to dilly-dally with a vacation,” I said, “but I can’t just leave all my business.”

“We didn’t expect you to,” he said. “Your secretary can handle matters which come up while you’re in Acapulco. Take her along. Be sure to take her.”

I hung up the telephone.

Elsie had been monitoring the conversation on the other phone. Her eyes were wide. “Fifty — thousand — dollars,” she said. “Good heavens, what will Bertha say when she hears about all these developments?”

I said, “I know exactly what she’ll say. She’ll say, ‘Fry me for an oyster. I never could understand this goddam sex stuff. Here we get this client out of a jam with his wife, and then he goes and gets all tangled up again. Sex doesn’t make sense.’

“That’s what Bertha will say, but right now you start looking up planes to Mexico City and Acapulco. We’ll go to Tijuana and embark from there.”

“Donald, do I... that is, am I really supposed—”

“You heard what the lawyer said,” I told her.

“It will take me a while to pack and— Oh, Donald, I feel terribly self-conscious!”

“No packing,” I said. “We go down to the parking lot, get in the car and head for Tijuana, just like that.

“We’ll let Essex break the news to Bertha after we’re safely out of the country. This is business. We have to see a client.”