Suddenly his eyes hardened. “But, in the meantime, Donald, don’t forget I want those letters. I’m not a man to be easily put aside or trifled with. Much as I respect your ingenuity and intelligence,
I want those letters
.”
“How long have I got?” I asked.
He looked at his watch. “Thirty minutes.”
I walked out. He wanted to shake hands, but I managed not to see his paw.
I went down to the agency office. Bertha had rented another typewriter and desk and moved them in. The girls were getting more familiar with the work. Both of them were clacking merrily away at typewriters. I walked on across to the private office and opened the door.
Bertha Cool, reading the newspaper and holding a cigarette in a long, carved ivory holder between the fingers of her jeweled left hand, said, “God, Donald, you certainly do keep things stirred up.”
“What’s the matter now?”
“Telephone calls,” she said. “Lots of them. They won’t leave their names. People want to know when you’re coming in.”
“What did you tell them?”
“That I didn’t know.”
“Men or women?”
“Women,” she said, “young women, from the sound of their voices. God, lover, I don’t know what it is you do to them. I could understand it if you were one of these indifferent heartbreakers, but you certainly aren’t a matinee idol. And you fall for them just as hard as they do for you—not in the same way. You’re not on the make, Donald. You put women up on a pedestal and worship them. You think just because they have skirts wrapped around their waists they’re something different, noble, and exalted. Christ, Donald, you’ll never make a good detective until you learn that woman is nothing more or less than the female of the species.”
“Anything else?” I asked.
She glared at me and said, “None of your impudence, Donald. After all, you’re working for me.”
“And making a hundred bucks a day for you.”
That registered. “Sit down, lover,” she invited. “Don’t mind Bertha. Bertha’s cross this morning because she didn’t get much sleep last night.”
I sat down in the client’s chair.
The telephone rang.
Bertha said, “This is another one of those women calling for you.”
“Find out who it is,” I said. “If it’s Esther Clarde or Alta Ashbury, I’m in. If it’s anyone else, I’m out.”
“Those two women,” Bertha said, “falling for them both at the same time! That Clarde woman is just a common little strumpet, and Alta Ashbury is a rich girl who considers you a new toy. She’ll play with you until she breaks you, and then she’ll throw you on the junk heap without so much as—”
The phone had kept on ringing. I said, “You’d better answer it.”
Bertha picked up the telephone and barked savagely, “Yes. Hello.”
She was handling her own calls now that Elsie Brand wasn’t there on the switchboard, and it griped her.
Bertha listened for a moment, and I saw the expression on her face change. Her eyes got hard. She said, “How much?” and then listened again. She glanced across at me and said, “But I don’t see why ... Well, if you didn’t have any authority . . . Well, when can . . . Goddammit, don’t keep interrupting me whenever I try to say anything. Now listen, if you didn’t have any authority to complete that deal, how did you ... I see. How much? . . . I’ll ring you back sometime this afternoon and let you know. . . . No, this afternoon. ... No, not by one o’clock. Later. . ... Well, by three o’clock. . . . All right, by two, then.”
She hung up the telephone and looked at me with a puzzled expression.
“Something about the case?” I asked.
“No, another thing. A man came in here the other day and said he wanted to talk for three minutes. I agreed to give him exactly three minutes of my time. When he ran over it, I called him. He thought he’d have me so interested I wouldn’t say anything, but I certainly
did
give him a jolt— Donald Lam, what the hell are you smiling at?”
“Nothing,” I said, and then after a moment asked, “How much do they want to pay?”
“Who?”
“The people who sold you the stock.”
“How do you know that was the people who sold me the stock. How do you know I bought any stock? What the hell have you been doing? Snooping around in my affairs? Getting into my desk? Have you—”
“Forget it,” I said. “I read you like a book.”
“Yes, you do!”
“And so does everyone else,” I said. “That’s an old racket in the sucker game.”
‘What is?”
“Telling a person you want three minutes and guaranteeing to complete what you have to say in that three minutes. You tell them everything you want to, then keep right on talking. The sucker is so anxious to show you that he can’t be bluffed, he keeps calling the time limit, and doesn’t ask the questions he otherwise would. It’s a nice high-pressure method of selling stock.”
Bertha looked at me, gulped twice, picked up the telephone, dialed a number, and said, “This is Bertha Cool. I’ve thought it over. I’ll take it. . . . All right, have the money here ... I said the
money.
I don’t want any goddam checks. I want cash.”
She slammed the receiver back on the hook.
“How much did they offer?” I asked.
“None of your business. What have you been doing?”
“Stalling around.”
“What the hell do you mean by stalling? You’re hired to solve a murder and—”
“Get it out of your head,” I interrupted, “that we’re hired to solve a murder. We were hired to get Alta Ashbury out of a jam.”
“Well, she’s in it worse than ever.”
“We’re still hired.”
“Well, get busy and go to work.”
“We’re getting paid by the day, aren’t we?”
“Yes.”
I lit a cigarette.
She glowered at me and said, “Sometimes, Donald, you make me so damn mad I could tear you apart. What the hell did you do to Tokamura Hashita?”
“Nothing. Why?”
“He rang me up and said there wouldn’t be any more lessons.”
I said, “I guess I hurt his feelings.”
“How?”
“I told him that that stuff of his would work all right in a gymnasium, but I knew a couple of men who said that it had been exposed two or three times as not being any good at all in the conditions which confront a man in real life. I told him they said they could draw empty guns if he didn’t know
when
they were going to do it and make him look like a monkey. I offered to give him fifty dollars—”
“Fifty dollars!” she interrupted with a half-scream,
“Whose
fifty dollars?”
“Ashbury’s.”
She settled back, somewhat mollified. “What did he do?”
“He took the dough.”
“Then what happened?”
“He was right.”
“Then you’d better continue with the lessons.”
“I think Hashita figures someone slipped something over on him.”
“Donald, how did you know that three-minute gag was a high-pressure stock-selling stunt? I’d never heard of it.”
“How much did they stick you for?”
“They didn’t stick me. I’m going to get twice what I paid—”
“Thanks,” I said.
She just sat there glaring at me. After a while, she said, “Some day I’m going to fire you.”
“You may not have to. Crumweather wants me to go in partnership.”
“Who
does?”
“Crumweather, the lawyer.”
Bertha Cool leaned across the desk. “Now listen, lover, you don’t want to get back in that law business. You know what would happen. It would be the same thing all over again. You’d build up a good practice, and something you’d do would irritate those long-haired scissor-bills at the bar association, and you’d be out pounding the pavements again looking for work. You have a nice berth here, and there’s a chance to work up. You can make—”
“About a tenth what I could practicing law.”
“But there’s a future to it, lover, and you couldn’t leave Bertha. You’ve got Bertha so she depends on you.”
I heard voices raised in excited comment in the outer office, then quick steps. The door of the private office jerked open, and Esther Clarde stood in the doorway. One of the secretaries was peering over her shoulder, tugging at her arm in a halfhearted way.
I said, “Come on in, Esther.”
Bertha Cool said, “Indeed she
won’t
come in. That’s a hell of a way to try to crash my office. She’ll go back and sit down and be announced and—”
“Sit right here,” I said, getting up and indicating the client’s chair.
Esther Clarde came in. Bertha Cool said, “I don’t give a damn
who
she is, Donald. No one’s going to—”
I closed the door in the new secretary’s face, and said, “What is it, Esther?”
She said, “That lawyer’s trying to get me to double-cross you, and I wanted you to know I won’t do it.”
“Did you tell him you would?”
She shifted her eyes for a moment, said, “Yes,” and then added by way of explanation, “I had to.”
Bertha Cool said, “Now you look here, Donald. You can’t step in and start running things. You can’t invite people in this office—”
“She wants you to go out,” I said to Esther Clarde. Esther Clarde got up. Her eyes were swollen. I could see she’d been crying. “I just wanted you to know, Donald.”
“You called him last night?”
“Who?”
“Crumweather.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“He’s been my friend— Oh, it hasn’t been an unselfish friendship, but he’s—”
Bertha Cool interrupted. “Donald, you look at me. We’re going to have this thing out right here and now. It isn’t a question of whether we’re going to talk with this girl. It’s a question of who the hell is running this office. Now you—”
I said to Esther, “She wants us to get out of here. Perhaps we’d better go,” and started for the door.
It took a moment for that to soak in, then Bertha pushed her hands down on the arms of the swivel chair and tried to lift herself out of the chair quickly. “You come back here,” she yelled at me. “I want to know what’s going on in this case. You can’t leave me batting around in the dark. What’s Crumweather trying to do? What’s the double-cross he—”
I opened the door, escorted Esther Clarde through.
“Donald, you little runt, you heard me! You come back here an—”
The closing door cut off the rest of it. I walked across the outer office with Esther, while the two secretaries stared openmouthed. The door of Bertha Cool’s private office jerked open just as I opened the door to the corridor. She knew better than to try to catch up with us. Her big beam and avoirdupois were too much handicap. As we went out, she was still standing in the door of the office.
In the corridor, I said, “Listen, Esther, there’s one thing I have to know. Don’t lie to me. Who gave you those letters?”
“I never saw the letters,” she said, “until after Jed Ringold had them, and I haven’t any idea who gave them to him.”
“Bob Tindle?” I asked.
“I suppose so but I don’t know.”
I stood in front of the elevator shaft and pressed the button. “Did Ringold have any home other than that hotel?”
“No,”
“No other place where he lived?”
“Except with me,” she said.
The door of the agency opened. Bertha Cool came barging out. An elevator showed a red light just as an ascending elevator came to a stop. The door opened. Two men got out. One of them started toward the agency office. The other turned to check up on us. He stopped abruptly and said, “Okay, Bill. Here he is.”
The men came walking over. One of them flashed a badge. “Okay, buddy,” he said, “you’re going for a little ride.”
“Who with?” I asked.
“Me.”
“What’s the idea?”
“The D.A. wants to talk with you.”
“I don’t want to talk with anyone. I’m busy.”
The descending elevator came to a halt. The two detectives pushed us on in. Bertha Cool screamed, “Hold that elevator. I want down.”
She came along the corridor, walking as rapidly as she could. The operator held the cage. One of the passengers snickered.
The cage jiggled as Bertha Cool’s weight was added to that of the other passengers. The attendant slid the door shut. Bertha Cool turned around and faced the door. She casually pushed the rest of us back in the cage. She didn’t say a word to me.
We shot straight down to the ground floor. There was a long passageway past the building directories and a cigar stand near the street entrance. Bertha Cool was first out. She started walking down the passageway. I stood to one side for Esther Clarde to get out. The detective on my right said, “Hold the jane there, Bill,” and pushed me out into the passageway. Three other men were standing there. They all closed in. We started walking. I said to the detective, “Wait a minute. What’s the idea?”
He didn’t say anything. A man was sitting on the shoe-shining stand, getting his shoes shined. I didn’t pay any particular attention to him until I heard his voice shrill out in an excited shout. “There he is! That’s the one!” The whole outfit stopped. I looked up. The man who was getting his shoes shined was the night clerk at the hotel where the murder had been committed. He was pointing his finger directly at me.
The detective grinned and said, “Okay, buddy, there’s your line-up, and that’s your identification.” He turned back toward the elevator and said, “Okay, Bill, bring along the skirt.”
Lots of things happened all at once. The grinning detective said to the three men who had been walking along with me, “You boys can leave now. Remember to be available when we call on you.” The other detective brought Esther Clarde out from the elevator. Bertha Cool, without looking back, walked to the telephone booth at the end of the hallway. She squeezed herself in, but wasn’t able to get the door closed. I saw her drop a coin and dial a number. She put her lips up close to the transmitter so people outside couldn’t hear what was being said. The hotel night clerk came hopping down off the shoe-shining stand. One shoe was shined. The other wasn’t. His pants cuffs had been doubled back. He was dancing with excitement. He kept pointing his finger at me and saying, “That’s the one. That’s the fellow. I’d recognize him anywhere.”
He saw Esther and ran toward her. “Look, Esther, there’s the guy. That’s the one. That’s—”