Bertha said, “I’m sorry to disturb you at this hour, but it’s really important.”
“Quite all right. I’m always up late Sunday nights reading. Go ahead, tell me what it is.”
Bertha said, “I want to find out something about poison.”
“What about it?”
“Is there any poison that would take effect say, an hour or two after a breakfast at which the poison was taken, to cause nausea, a burning in the throat, and a sort of collapse that would exist until the person died?”
“When did he die?”
“Around four o’clock in that afternoon.”
Doctor Rindger opened the glass door of a bookcase. “Cramps in the calves of the legs?” he asked.
“I wouldn’t know.”
“Diarrhea?”
“Probably, but I can’t tell you positively.”
“Nausea persistent until the time of death?”
“At intervals, yes.”
“Any treatment?”
“Hypodermics.”
“Tenderness over the stomach and intestines?”
“Yes. He was very sore.”
“Greyish skin? Perspiration?”
“From what was told me, I gather there might have been greyish skin.”
“Anxiety? Depression?”
“I don’t know.”
Dr. Rindger drummed with his fingertips on the desk, reached up to the shelf, and took a book entitled Forensic Medicine. He opened it, and after reading a couple of pages, closed the book and put it back. “Is this just between you and me, or am I speaking officially for publication, and would I be quoted?”
“Just between you and me,” Bertha told him. “You won’t be quoted.”
“Arsenic poisoning,” he said.
“Those are the symptoms?”
“An almost typical case. The burning thirst and nausea are very typical, also the soreness over the stomach and upper abdomen. If you want to be certain, check on the diarrhoea, the cramps in the calves of the legs, the feeling of depression, and note the nature of the vomitus. Rather a rice-water appearance in cases of arsenic poisoning.”
Bertha Cool got up, then hesitated, and said, “How much do I owe you?”
“That’s all right — in case I’m not to be quoted or called as a witness. If I am, that, of course, will be something else.”
Bertha shook hands with him and said, “I’m sorry I disturbed you this late, but it’s an emergency, and I had to know tonight.”
“That’s quite all right. I hadn’t gone to bed yet. Don’t usually go to bed before midnight, although I try to finish with my office work by eight-thirty so I have a little time to relax. How about your partner, Mrs. Cool? What’s his name?”
“Donald Lam.”
“That’s right. Very interesting chap. Seemed to have a remarkably quick mind. I was very much interested in his reasoning on that carbon monoxide poisoning case. I knew some of the parties involved there. Some of the people were quite prominent in medical circles.”
“I know,” Bertha said.
“What’s become of him?”
“He’s in the Navy.”
“That’s splendid! But I suppose you miss him.”
Bertha said grimly, “I got along all right before he came to work for me, and I guess I can get along all right now.”
“You’ll keep the partnership alive?”
“It’ll be there when he comes back,” Bertha said. “Gosh. I hope nothing happens to the little bastard!”
“Oh, he’ll be all right,” Dr. Rindger said. “Well, good night, Mrs. Cool.”
“Good night.”
Bertha Cool was grinning broadly as she climbed back into, the waiting taxicab.
“Where to now?” the cab driver asked.
“The Metro Hotel,” Bertha said, settling her chunky figure back in the deep cushions. “And in case you don’t know, I’ve finally climbed aboard.”
“Climbed aboard?” the cab driver asked.
“The gravy train,” Bertha explained, smiling triumphantly.
“Glad to hear it,” the cab driver said, “I’ve heard the old hack called lots of things, but this is the first time anyone called it the gravy train.”
“Well, I’m riding it.” Bertha said. “Took a little fumbling to get aboard, but I’m on it now.”
At the Metro Hotel, Bertha Cool went directly to the house telephones and said, “You have a Christopher Milbers stopping here?”
“Yes, ma’am. Room three nineteen.”
“Ring him, please.”
A moment later, Bertha Cool heard Christopher Milbers’s sleep-drugged voice saying, “Hello. Yes, hello. What is it?”
Bertha Cool said crisply, “I have something important for you. I’ll be up in exactly one minute.”
“Who is this talking?”
“Bertha Cool,” she said, and hung up.
Bertha Cool marched deliberately across the lobby, entered an elevator, and said, “Third floor.”
The elevator operator looked at her questioningly as though to ask her whether she was registered in the hotel, then thought better of it. Bertha, having the manner of one who knew exactly what she intended to do, strode down the hall, located the door of 319, paused, and was in the act of knocking when Christopher Milbers opened the door. “Sorry,” he said, “I’d been in bed about an hour. I’m hardly dressed for company.”
He was wearing pyjamas, a silk robe, and sandal slippers. His eyes were puffy from sleep, and the hair which customarily was trained so carefully around the bald spot now hung forgotten and neglected on the left ear and down to the neck, giving his head a peculiar lopsided appearance.
Bertha said, “I’m not much at b ting around the bush.”
“That’s a very commendable trait,” Milbers said, seating Bertha in the comfortable chair and perching himself on the bed where he made himself comfortable by putting pillows up against his back. “I don’t mind saying it’s an exceedingly commendable trait.”
“All right,” Bertha said with machine-gun-like rapidity and precision. “Let’s get down to brass tacks.”
“I see no reason why we shouldn’t.”
“Your cousin left an estate of — how much?”
“I wouldn’t know offhand, Mrs. Cool. Does it enter into the situation at all?”
“Yes.”
“I would say at least half a million, perhaps more.”
“You’re cut off with ten thousand?”
“Exactly, Mrs. Cool, and you’ll pardon me if I point out that this is not the important news which necessitated getting me up in the middle of the night. Both of us have known it for some little time.”
“I understand. I’m just laying the foundation.”
“Please consider the foundation as having been completely laid. I think it’s quite time to go ahead with the superstructure.”
Bertha said, “All right, the will’s ironclad. I don’t know how they did it. You don’t know how they did it. Personally, I don’t believe your cousin ever made any such will of his own volition. It looks very much as though he’d been cornered and forced to write the second page the way some other person, or persons, wanted it. Probably they had some blackmail stranglehold on him.”
“That hardly agrees with the testimony of Miss Dell and with that of Paul Hanberry.”
“It depends on the argument that was used,” Bertha said. “The right sort of blackmail might have accomplished wonders. This Myrna Jackson who rooms with Josephine Dell was virtually forced upon Miss Dell by your cousin. She also knows the housekeeper. The whole thing looks fishy to me. She’s apparently an attractive girl, and she’s mixed up in this whole business some way. As far as Paul is concerned, I wouldn’t trust him as far as I could throw an election promise by the tail.”
“Yes, I’m inclined to agree with you there, but please get to the point, Mrs. Cool. You said you were going to be straightforward and not indulge in any beating around the bush.”