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Belder faced Sellers angrily. “I don’t know how much of this stuff a citizen has to take from the police department.”

“Quite a bit,” Sellers told him, “particularly when wives disappear shortly after former sweethearts, who are pretty well heeled, have called on the husband. You’d be surprised, Belder, how many times wives have ‘simply disappeared’ or gone to visit relatives and haven’t returned. Well, no, I won’t say it in that way. It sounds as though I were accusing you of something. I’m not. I’m only investigating. It’s your mother-in-law who’s made the accusation.”

“There he goes again,” Bertha interrupted. “Don’t let him get your goat, Belder. Let’s get this letter opened and see what it says.”

Bertha raised some papers on Elsie’s desk, picked up the envelope which she had hastily concealed as Sellers opened the door. Sellers settled back in the chair, puffing cigar smoke contentedly, watching operations.

Bertha loosened the adhesive on the flap with steam, inserted a lead pencil near the upper part of the flap, and rolled it down under the flap.

“Rather neat,” Sellers commented. “Shows long practice.”

Bertha refused to be baited.

Belder said nervously, “I think I should be the first to read this. There may be something—”

Sellers came up out of the chair with the smooth, easy motion of an athlete. Belder jerked the letter from Bertha’s wrist.

“Naughty, naughty,” Sellers said. “Drop it.”

Belder tried to jerk away. Sellers increased his pressure on the man’s wrist, suddenly whipped around, throwing his elbow over Belder’s arm. His other hand caught the back of Belder’s hand, and pressed it down with the leverage of a locked forearm.

Belder’s fingers loosened. The letter fluttered to the floor. Sellers beat Bertha to it, his shoulders striking against Bertha as they both grabbed for the letter.

“Damn you,” Bertha said.

“Always pick up things for a lady,” Sellers observed, and returned to his chair carrying the letter, the cigar still clamped in his mouth.

“Well,” Bertha said, “go ahead and read it.”

“I’m reading it.”

“Read it out loud.”

Sellers merely grinned. He read the letter with avid interest, folded it and put it in his pocket. “Ain’t we got fun!” he observed.

Bertha said, “Damn you. You can’t bust in my office and pull high-handed stuff like that. You let me see that letter.”

Sellers said, “You have the envelope, Bertha. I’d suggest you put in another circular from the furrier and make as good a job of sealing it up again as you did on the other. Not that I give a damn. I’m simply trying to fix it so your client’s home life won’t be quite so disagreeable. Mrs. Goldring was very much interested in that trick of putting the hundred-and-fifty watt light in the cardboard cone and holding a letter against it. She’ll be laying for this envelope, waiting to pounce on it. About the first question she’ll ask Belder is whether he has it in his pocket. Well, I’ve got to be getting on.”

Sellers got up, reached across Elsie Brand’s desk, and calmly tapped ashes from the end of his cigar with his little finger.

Belder turned to Bertha Cool.

“Can’t we do something about this? Doesn’t a citizen have some right?”

Bertha didn’t say anything until the door closed. “He caught us red-handed,” Bertha said bitterly. “He had us over a barrel — and how well he knew it. Damn him.”

Belder’s voice held the dignity of cold rage. “Well, Mrs. Cool. I think that is just about the last straw. You’ve bungled everything in this case from the time you started on it. If you had used ordinary skill in shadowing my wife, we’d have known exactly where she went. I gave you a letter in strictest confidence, and you let that letter fall into the hands of the police. I come to you with a third letter which may contain most important information, and you let that get whipped out from under your nose. I had misgivings about hiring a woman detective in the first place. Sergeant Sellers wouldn’t have imposed on a man in this way.”

Bertha looked through the man, her forehead furrowed in thought. She gave no indication that she had heard a word Belder said.

Belder marched stiffly to the door and followed Sergeant Sellers out into the corridor.

Elsie Brand looked sympathetically at Bertha Cool. “Tough luck,” she said. “But after all, it wasn’t your fault.”

Bertha might not have heard her. Her eyes were slitted into level-lidded concentration. “So that’s it.”

“What?” Elsie asked.

“They think Belder murdered his wife, and Belder spent that morning at the barber shop. I remember when he came in. It was cold. A raw wind was just blowing away a heavy fog. Belder was wearing an overcoat and hadn’t been shaved. He left me in front of his house. When I arrived at his office, he was shaved, massaged, manicured, and had had his hair trimmed. So that’s why that woman wanted to know about his barber. That barber shop is his only alibi, and if there’s a hole in it — then he has no alibi.”

Bertha sailed into her private office and grabbed her hat and purse.

15

The Forgotten Overcoat

The Terminal Tonsorial Parlour was a seven-chair shop with only three men working. Bertha, entering, surveyed the filled chairs, the half-dozen men who were waiting. “Where’s the boss?” she asked.

“Out getting a bite to eat,” one of the men said.

“You mean to say he goes to dinner at this hour?” Bertha demanded.

“Lunch at this hour,” the man grinned. “He’s been trying to get away ever since two o’clock — that’s supposed to be his lunch-time. He— Here he comes now.”

Bertha turned, surveyed the man who was just opening the street door, ignored the curious glances of the waiting patrons, shoved a card in front of the bewildered barber, and said, “Where can we talk for five minutes?”

The barber wearily looked at the filled chairs. “I don’t have time to talk,” he said. “I’m so short-handed!”

“Five minutes,” Bertha insisted. “And you’ll like it better if we talk where other people can’t hear us.”

The man was too utterly tired to argue. “All right,” he surrendered. “Come on back here,” and led the way toward the back room. “You’ll have to talk with me while I’m putting on my shop coat,” he warned in a voice loud enough to reach the men who were waiting. “I’ve got a shopful of customers.”

“Okay,” Bertha said.

The back room was a small, dimly lit place which had been partitioned off from the main shop. Several coats on hangers were suspended from hooks which had been screwed into a board that ran the length of the room. An old-fashioned hat tree held three hats. The barber took his off and made it four.

“All right, what do you want?” he asked, unbuttoning his vest.

“Everett Belder,” Bertha said, “know him?”

“The sales engineer?”

“Yes.”

“Yes. I know him. Has an office in the Rockaway Building. I’ve done his work for years.”

“Think back to last Wednesday. Was Belder in here?”

“Wednesday,” the barber said, knitting his forehead. “Let’s see... Yes, that’s right. It was Wednesday. He was in here and got quite a job done — haircut, manicure, shine, massage. Don’t do much massage work any more — seems like people are too rushed and too busy, Lord knows we are. I can’t get men and—”

“How long was he here?” Bertha asked.

The barber took off his coat and vest, carefully fitted them to a wooden coat hanger and put the coat hanger back on the hook. “Must have been here an hour and a half in all,” he said, taking a white barber’s jacket from another hanger and struggling his right arm into it.