“I know how you feel,” Bertha assured her, “and I only want a minute.”
She looked around for a vacant chair. Josephine Dell saw the look, laughed nervously, said, “Pardon me,” and hurried over to lift some folded clothes from a chair by the window.
Bertha said, “I’m going to get right to the point. How would you like to receive five hundred dollars in cash?”
“I’d like it.”
“I could get it for you.”
“How?”
“All you need to do is to sign a release, and—”
“Oh, that.”
“Well, what about it?” Bertha asked.
She laughed and said, “You’re the second one.”
“Meaning you’ve already signed up?”
“No.”
“Who was the first?”
“A witness who saw it. He hunted me up to tell me that it really wasn’t my fault, and I could collect from the insurance company. He said he’d make a contract with me by which he’d finance the whole thing entirely at his own cost and expense, give me fifty per cent of whatever he received, and guarantee that my share would be at least five hundred dollars. I thought that was a very generous contract, don’t you?”
Bertha Cool remained silent.
“But,” Josephine Dell went on, “I couldn’t do it. I simply couldn’t. I told him I’d been thinking it over and had come to the conclusion that it was as much my fault as it was the man’s who was driving the automobile — perhaps more. He tried to tell me that that didn’t need to enter into it at all, that the insurance company wanted to get its files closed, and all I had to do was to co-operate and take in the money just like that,” and Josephine Dell gave her fingers a quick little snap.
“You wouldn’t do it?”
“I just laughed at him. I told him that it was out of the question, that I’d feel as though I’d stolen the money. That man who ran into me was really very nice — and I have been out only ten dollars for a doctor’s bill.”
“Did you get the name of the man who was driving the car?” Bertha asked.
“No, I didn’t. I didn’t even take his licence number. I was so rattled and shaken up at first, and then I—”
The buzzer sounded.
Josephine Dell sighed with exasperation. “I suppose,” she said, controlling herself with difficulty, “that’ll be someone else looking for Myrna Jackson.”
“Your room-mate?” Bertha Cool asked, “I’d really like to meet her.”
“So would lots of people.”
“Where is she?”
“Heaven knows. It wasn’t a very satisfactory arrangement. She was a friend of Mr. Milbers, and he suggested we both might cut expenses by sharing this apartment. I wasn’t very keen about it, but you know how it is when the boss makes a suggestion.
“Well, we tried it. She’s impossible! I left a note for her yesterday saying the rent was up tomorrow, that’s Monday. I told her I was going to be packing up tonight, and when she rang me up today what do you think she said?”
“What?” Bertha asked as the doorbell sounded again.
“Told me that she came up here this afternoon and had already moved out. She only moved in a short time ago, so she didn’t have much stuff, but there’s a five-dollar checking-out charge for cleaning the apartment, and she just didn’t say a word about paying her share of that. I didn’t think about it at the time.”
Josephine Dell went over to the door telephone and said, “Who is it, please?” and then wearily, “No, this is her roommate. I don’t know where she is. She left this afternoon — moved out. That’s right, and I’m moving out myself. No, I can’t see you. I can’t talk with you. I’m packing. I’m undressed, and I’ve got to catch a midnight plane — I don’t care how important it is or who you are. She isn’t here. I don’t know where she is, and I’ve done nothing all evening long but answer the doorbell for people who wanted to see her.”
Josephine Dell slammed down the receiver and came back to stand in the middle of the room, looking things over with a somewhat hopeless air.
“I can’t help wondering about that girl and her relationship with Mr. Milbers,” she said. “Oh, it’s all right as far as that end of it’s concerned, but I have an idea she was snooping on me all the time she was here.
“Two weeks ago my diary disappeared. Then it showed up again, right in its accustomed place, but under some scarfs. As though I’d be sap enough to think I’d overlooked it there! She was the only one who could have taken it. I can imagine a girl of a certain type being interested in reading it on the sly; but why did she take it, and where did she take it?”
“Did you ask her about it?” Bertha inquired.
“No. I decided the damage had been done. I couldn’t actually prove anything, so I decided to keep quiet and move into another apartment — a very small, cramped single. I’m fed up on this double business.
“Well,” she said, changing the subject abruptly, “there’s only one thing to do, and that’s to get this stuff packed somehow or other. I’m sick and tired to death of trying to sort out every blessed thing I want to take. Here it goes.”
She picked up bundles of folded garments and crammed them indiscriminately into the trunk and the cardboard carton. “Can I help?” Bertha Cool asked.
“No,” Josephine Dell said, and then added as an afterthought, “Thank you.” Her voice and manner indicated that Bertha could be of the biggest assistance by getting out and staying out.
“What are you going to do about that will?” Bertha Cool asked. “About giving your testimony on it?”
“Oh, I’ll be available when they need me,” she said. “They say I may have to go down to the tropics. This is different from a week-end trip. I’m supposed to live out of a suitcase. I can’t take a trunk because a lot of my travel will be on a plane. It sounded marvellous when I—”
Bertha Cool, looking Josephine Dell over thoughtfully, interrupted. “There’s one thing you can do for me.”
“What?”
She said, “I want to know something about Harlow Milbers — about how he died.”
“It was very sudden, although he’d been feeling rather poorly for three or four days.”
“Can you tell me something more about his exact symptoms?”
“Why, yes, of course. It started about an hour after he came to the office. He had a terrific headache, and then all of a sudden he became nauseated. I suggested he should lie down on the couch for a while, to see if that wouldn’t make him feel better. I thought he went to sleep for a few minutes; then he had another spell of nausea, and that wakened him. He kept complaining of a terrific burning thirst in his mouth and throat, and I told him we should call a doctor. He said he’d go home and have the doctor come there. Then I called Dr. Clarge and told him Mr. Milbers was very ill and was taking a cab home, asking him to please go there at once to meet the cab when it arrived.”
“Did you ride out with Mr. Milbers?”
“Yes.”
“What happened?”
“He was sick in the cab on the way out. His stomach and intestines were terribly tender. When we got to the house, we had to help him. The cab driver was grinning. He thought the poor man had been staging a celebration.”
“What did you do?”
“I helped him into the house. Mrs. Cranning came out, and she helped, too. Dr. Clarge wasn’t there when we arrived, but he got there within a minute or two — before we had Mr. Milbers in bed.”
“Then what?”
“The doctor stayed about half an hour and left him some medicine. He gave him a hypodermic, and Mr. Milbers felt somewhat better, although he still complained of the burning thirst and said his stomach was very sore and sensitive. He thought he was getting better, and he felt very drowsy.”