“How about Mrs. Belder’s mother?” Bertha asked.
“In a state of collapse. Mother and sister, both had been having fits all night. They’d been calling headquarters at intervals, trying to find out if Mrs. Belder had been in an automobile accident. Finally, I guess the mother-in-law got the idea Belder might have knocked her on the head and hidden the body some place in the house, so she started prowling. Declared she was going to search the house from cellar to attic. She started with the cellar... That was along about eight o’clock this morning. What she found knocked her for a loop. She thought it was Mabel’s body at first, then it turned out to be a total stranger to her. Belder made the identification of the body.”
“Didn’t Mrs. Goldring know the maid?”
“Apparently not. Mrs. Goldring lived in San Francisco. She hadn’t been down since Mabel had employed that particular maid.”
“Well,” Bertha said, “I don’t see how all this concerns me.” Sellers scraped a match on the sole of his shoe, made an attempt to get his cigar burning again.
Bertha said, “I don’t suppose it makes any difference to you, but that damn cigar makes me sick to my stomach.”
“Too bad. You haven’t had breakfast?”
“No.”
“Do you go out for breakfast?”
“Not with restaurants serving only one cup of coffee.”
“That’s swell,” Sergeant Sellers announced. “I’ll have a cup of coffee with you.” Bertha’s eyes snapped cold fire.
“Hoarding, eh?” Sergeant Sellers observed.
“Hoarding nothing,” Bertha said. “I’m using coffee I bought last September. You can’t say that’s hoarding.”
“Why not?”
“Because there wasn’t any shortage in September.”
“How did you happen to buy it, then?”
“Because I knew there would be a shortage.”
“And you don’t think that’s hoarding?”
“No. That’s simply using my brain.”
“I take it you’ve got plenty.” Sergeant Sellers said. Bertha Cool refused to commit herself.
“Okay, make it good and black, and give me a big cup.”
Bertha Cool flounced indignantly into her dressing-room, dressed hurriedly, returned to make up the wall bed and wheel it out of the way. Then she went out into the kitchenette, put on a big pot of coffee, and said to Sergeant Sellers, “I suppose you’ll insist on having an egg, too?”
“That’s right, two.”
“Damn it, I said t-o-o.”
“I know. I said t-w-o.”
“And toast?”
“Oh, certainly. I suppose you have plenty of butter?”
Bertha said nothing, busied herself at the gas stove. Her mouth set in a tight line of indignation.
Sergeant Sellers, his hat pushed back on his head, the cigar now giving forth puffs of light-coloured blue smoke, lounged easily in the doorway. “First rattle out of the box,” he said, “we’ll run over to see Belder, and we’ll all three have a little talk.”
“Why drag me in on it?” Bertha asked.
“I thought I might get further,” Sellers admitted cheerfully. “If Belder starts lying, you’ll tell him he can’t get away with it, so he’d better tell the truth.”
“Oh, I’ll tell him that, will I?” Bertha demanded sarcastically, standing poised with a frying-pan which she had been about to put on the stove held at an angle of forty-five degrees.
“That’s right,” Sellers said. “You have your intellectual blind spots, Bertha, but you aren’t exactly dumb.”
Sellers watched the colour mount in Bertha’s face, grinned at her, said affably, “Well, I guess I’ll go telephone Belder and arrange for a conference.”
He left the kitchenette. Bertha heard him in the other room dialing a number on the telephone, heard low-voiced conversation, then he was back standing in the kitchen door.
“Okay, Bertha. He’ll see us at his office; doesn’t want to meet us at the house; says his sister-in-law will horn in on the conversation if we meet there.”
Bertha said nothing.
Sellers yawned loudly and obviously, left his position in the kitchen doorway to move over to the most comfortable chair in the living-room. He settled down, opened the morning newspaper to the sporting page, and started reading.
Bertha Cool placed plates, cups and saucers, knives, forks and spoons on the little table in the breakfast nook.
“Tell me something about detectives,” she called in to Frank Sellers.
“What is it?”
“Do they take their hats off when they eat breakfast?”
“Hell, no. They’d lose caste if they did. They only take their hats off when they take a bath.”
“How do you like your egg?”
“Three minutes and fifteen seconds — and it isn’t egg, it’s eggzzz — the plural of egg — meaning two or more.”
Bertha Cool banged a plate down on the table so hard she almost broke it. “There’s one thing about giving you breakfast,” she said. “You can’t drink coffee with that stale cigar in your mouth.”
Sergeant Sellers didn’t answer. He was interested in reading an account of a prize fight which he had seen the night before, checking the reported facts against his own impressions.
“All right,” Bertha Cool said. “Come and get it.”
Sergeant Sellers, minus his hat and cigar, with his thick, wavy hair combed back with a pocket comb, entered the breakfast nook, waited for Bertha Cool to seat herself, then sat down opposite her.
“Okay, Bertha, have your coffee and then give me the lowdown. You’ve had time to make up your mind now.”
Bertha Cool poured the coffee, sipped the hot, fragrant beverage, said, “All right, here it is — all of it. I was supposed to tail Mrs. Belder. I lost her. She was going to keep a rendezvous with the person who wrote those letters. I went to Belder’s office, looked through his file of personal correspondence to see if I could find anything that tallied with what I was looking for.”
“What were you looking for?” Sergeant Sellers asked.
“An expert typist who had her own portable typewriter at home,” Bertha said.
“I don’t get you.”
“You can tell a lot about a typewritten letter by studying it. The even touch and uniform spacing show that these letters had been written by a first-rate typist. That sort of typist commands a good salary, which means she has good equipment at her office. It was written on a portable typewriter that was badly out of alignment. That meant it was a private portable machine she had at home... Quite by accident, I stumbled on the answer.”
“What’s the answer?” Sergeant Sellers asked.
“Imogene Dearborne, the slate-eyed little siren who sits up in Everett Belder’s office and looks as though she didn’t have a thought in the world except to get her duties discharged with secretarial efficiency.”
Frank Sellers cracked an egg open and judicially inspected the contents.
“Now then, how does that look to you?” Bertha asked, awaiting praise for her powers of deduction.
“Just a little bit too well done,” Sergeant Sellers said, “but what the hell, I can eat it.”
8
Who Saw What?
Sergeant Sellers pushed open the door marked “EVERETT G. BELDER, Sales Engineer,” and stood to one side for Bertha Cool to enter.
“Don’t say we aren’t polite on occasion,” he muttered.
“You slay me,” Bertha said, marching into the office.
Imogene Dearborne glanced up from her typewriter. Bertha saw that she had been crying. The girl hastily averted her eyes, said, “Go right on in. He’s expecting you.”