Free Puzzle of the Happy Hooligan by Stuart Palmer Page A

Mame bade them good afternoon and departed. “Her husband was a prop man here years ago,” Gertrude explained. “So after he was killed in an accident Mame took to peddling ties around the studio. Only they’ve gone up in price from fifty cents to six bucks, and Mame has to high-pressure it a bit.”
    “There’s no man alive for whom I’d buy a six-dollar tie,” said the schoolteacher severely, and took her departure.
    The list of apartments was in her handbag, but Miss Hildegarde Withers let it stay there while she consulted a Los Angeles telephone directory. No, there was no Derek Laval. Possibly he had an unlisted number. She would have liked to try a city directory, but there was none in the little drugstore where she had stopped.
    Well, there still remained the newspapers. After a trip which seemed to take her in wide circles around Robin Hood’s entire estate a taxi deposited her outside the gingerbread grandeur of the Herald-Express building. There were bound copies of the paper in the lobby, and she started methodically to read back through them. But the search for the well-known needle in the haystack was simple by comparison.
    After half an hour of this she gave it up. Another and a better idea suggested itself to her. She crossed to the advertising department, pondered for a moment and then gave orders for a “Personal” to be inserted in tomorrow’s paper and run until canceled. “Derek (Dick) Laval—please communicate regarding settlement of an estate—Box …”
    That was not entirely a fabrication. Saul Stafford’s estate must be settled. “And a murderer’s hash, if possible,” she told herself.
    She started out of the newspaper office and then stopped. “How stupid of me!” she said aloud, and headed back to the elevators. The City Room was on the fourth floor, and, from her reading of newspaper stories, she realized that all she had to do was to march inside as if she had business there, find the morgue and read at her leisure everything that had been printed about the elusive Mr Laval.
    Nobody stopped her. The City Room was calm, as one might expect of an afternoon paper at this hour. She even came upon the morgue without difficulty, saw the tall filing cases, cabinets and bookshelves bulging with yellow envelopes. A peaceful old man sat in a hard chair with his feet on a table, clipping things out of the last edition.
    “May I have the file on Derek Laval?” requested Miss Withers briskly.
    He looked at her, went back to his clipping.
    “Laval, please!” she repeated. “May I have it?”
    “Sure,” he said. “But there’s a formality or two first.” She waited expectantly. “Yes,” he said. “You got to go four years to some college and major in journalism. Then you got to get a job on your hometown newspaper and forget all the nonsense they taught you in college. Then you got to get two or three jobs on big-town papers and forget some more and finally you get a job on the Herald, and I’ll be tickled pink to stop my work any time and go hunt up the stuff you want.” He indicated the door with a long, skinny finger. “Until then, nix.”
    There was nothing left for Miss Withers to do but take a dignified departure. Or was there? She found a ten-dollar bill in her handbag, waved it thoughtfully. “If I could just have a look at that envelope,” she mused. “Just a glimpse of a picture of this Laval person….”
    “Save your money,” said the keeper of the files. “Any picture that appeared in this paper you can buy a print of it down at the INS office. Those news services keep all that stuff. And dollars is their price, not ten.” He went on placidly clipping.
    Miss Withers found the INS office. They had no pictures of Derek Laval. They thought that Acme might.
    Acme didn’t. But she could try AP.
    “I’m getting warmer,” said Miss Withers. So she was.
    AP had Mr Laval down twice on their list. A young man searched through the files, finally produced two old