Free Puzzle of the Happy Hooligan by Stuart Palmer Page B

prints. One was a flashlight picture of a police raid on the Swing Club, an emporium devoted to the sale of drinks after two-o’clock curfew, with a number of somewhat startled customers crowding out of the doorway. “DEREK LAVAL, LOCAL PLAYBOY, FLEES RAIDED HOT SPOT” was the caption. The picture was not too good, for the flashlight cast a glaring and unnatural light on the men in the doorway, and the one man who faced the camera, presumably Mr Laval, was holding his arm up in front of his eyes. He reminded Miss Withers of somebody she had met in the last day or two, but who it could be she had no idea.
    The other picture was captioned “JIMMY GRANT SCORES WINNING GOAL FOR RIVIERA IN SPITE OF HEROIC RIDINC OFF BY DEREK LAVAL.” It showed two men on two galloping horses, both waving whippy polo mallets at a round ball which seemed to float in the air. The face of the farther man, who was trying to block the player with his pony, was turned so that the schoolteacher could see only that he wore dark glasses.
    Miss Withers bought both pictures and carried them off with her. It was an odd, backhanded way to track down a murderer. But she felt that she was hot on the trail of the straw man, the little man who wasn’t there….
    The taxicab carried her back toward Hollywood, winding its way through the mazes of Los Angeles streets, past the big open-front markets with their jeweled displays of shining fruits and vegetables, past the little junky mission-type bungalows, the boxes in stucco with near-Spanish lines and brilliant coloring, past new white apartment houses with formal gardens and oval swimming pools, past cocktail bars and churches with neon lights….
    Vast smooth boulevards that narrowed suddenly into little bottlenecked streets with car tracks, red lights and green lights and semaphores and amber lights …
    And then Miss Withers chanced to see an apartment sign—“The Pelham.” That had been one of the places on the list Gertrude gave her. On an impulse she had the driver pull up on the corner of Cowbell Canyon Drive. It was late in the afternoon, but haply not too late to see about arranging for a place to live.
    The Pelham had no vacancies.
    Down the street she saw the sign of Laguna Plaza. That was another on the list, she remembered. So she strolled along. The Laguna Plaza had only two apartments available, both with three bedrooms and with a lease desired.
    So she went on along the pleasant drive with its towering palm trees which looked to the Manhattan schoolteacher as if they had been set out this morning and would be hauled away at any moment.
    The apartments that she saw were all either unfurnished or else the halls smelled of cooking cabbage or else the living rooms had blind fireplaces and large imitation oil paintings of an evil-looking Spanish gentleman in a red ruff. All but the one on the corner—a pleasant-looking three-story building in a modified ranch-house style with a long balcony set with brightly colored pots stretching across the front.
    Beneath the balcony was an archway, and one went through into a little garden with irregular walks, a fountain and an alcove for mailboxes. Miss Withers was looking for the bell marked “Manager” but even as her finger poised over the button she froze.
    A sportsman would have said that the schoolteacher was pointing, and indeed her position was rather similar to that adopted by a bird dog.
    Which was as it should be, for the second name at the top of the column was “Derek Laval.”
    When she left ten minutes later she was equipped with a receipt for a month’s rent on a small “double” in the rear, a pleasant little two rooms and bath whose rent was only half again as much as she had intended to pay. The furniture and decorations resembled a slightly shopworn department-store window display, but it would do. She would have taken an apartment here if it had been furnished with camp stools and a hammock.
    She also was equipped with a key and