“What do you want?”
“Just to talk with you.”
“The clerk tells me that you’re a Mrs. Cool.”
“That’s right.”
“He thinks you’re a detective.”
“Even a dumbbell gets a good idea once in a while.”
“Mrs. Cool, may I ask exactly what you want?”
“Sure,” Bertha Cool said. “Close the door. Sit down, take a load off your feet. Tell me about Everett Belder.”
“I don’t care to discuss Mr. Belder.”
“Tell me about his wife.”
“I understand she was asphyxiated.”
“That’s right.”
“I never met the woman in my life.”
“She’s got a letter about you,” Bertha said.
Mrs. Cornish’s silence showed her complete lack of interest.
Bertha said, “I suppose the idea germinated in the master mind of that bright clerk downstairs, but you shouldn’t have moved out of your apartment, dearie. That puts you in a bad light. You can imagine how your picture will look in the newspapers with some stuff under it like this: Mrs. Dolly Cornish, who, police claim, surreptitiously vacated her apartment and took another under an assumed name, following news of Mrs. Belder’s death. Mrs. Cornish was quite friendly with Everett Belder before his marriage.”
Bertha dropped ashes from her cigarette in the ash-tray.
Mrs. Cornish suddenly looked as if she were going to cry. “What — what do you want to know?”
“What have you got to tell?”
“Nothing.”
“Good stuff,” Bertha agreed enthusiastically. “The newspapers will eat that up. Keep that expression of near-tears on your face, and say nothing, and they’ll put a caption under that, ‘Nothing,’ sobs woman who sent Mrs. Belder to her death.”
Dolly Cornish straightened suddenly. “What are you talking about. I didn’t send Mrs. Belder to her death.”
Bertha sucked in a deep drag from the cigarette, said nothing.
“Mrs. Belder threatened to kill me,” Dolly Cornish went on, sudden indignation wiping the self-pity from her face.
“How long before she died?”
“The same day.”
“What had you done to make her want to kill you?”
“Absolutely nothing.”
Bertha said, “Pardon me if I don’t seem interested, dearie, but we hear that so many times.”
“This time it’s the absolute truth.”
“How did you happen to meet her?”
“I didn’t meet her. She called me here at this apartment hotel — and if you’re so interested, that’s why I changed my apartment. I wanted to be under cover so if she did try to do anything violent she couldn’t find me.”
Bertha kept her eyes averted so Mrs. Cornish couldn’t see the glittering, intense interest in them. “Called you on the telephone?”
“Yes.”
“What did she say?”
“It was the weirdest, most spine-chilling conversation I ever had with any woman in my life.”
“Now, we’re getting somewhere. I might be able to help you if you’d really open up.”
“How could you help me?”
Bertha turned then to look Mrs. Cornish full in the face. “Let’s not misunderstand each other,” she said. “I can help you, if I can help myself by doing it. I’m a detective. I’ve batted around. I know most of the answers. This is what you choose to call a spine-chilling experience. To me it’s routine stuff. Now, either go ahead and talk or try to keep quiet. If you talk, I’ll talk. If you try to keep quiet, I’ll ring headquarters.”
“You haven’t left me much choice,” Mrs. Cornish said with a nervous little laugh.
“I very seldom do,” Bertha retorted.
Mrs. Cornish thought things over for a few moments. Bertha gave her plenty of time.
“All right, I’ll talk.”
Bertha merely reached forward to grind out the stub of her cigarette.
“You’re a woman, Mrs. Cool. I can talk to you and say things that one couldn’t say to a man. I have a friend who says that twice in every woman’s life comes the chance for genuine happiness, that the big majority of women throw both chances away. He’s a mining man. He says that the good mines are those that have a big deposit of medium-grade ore. He says happiness is like that. You have to get a big deposit of medium-grade attributes in a man in order to make for happiness. He says most women throw their chances away to chase after the glittering samples of high-grade ore — what they call ‘jewellery-rock’ in mining circles. My mining friend says that those veins nearly always pinch out. That life just isn’t that easy. That when you find a really rich deposit of jewellery-rock, it’s a flash in the pan.”
“What was Everett Belder?” Bertha asked. “Jewellery-rock?”
“No. Everett was one of my chances for happiness. He was a great big deposit of better-than-average ore.”
Bertha lit another cigarette.
“I wanted to see him again,” Dolly Cornish said, “and I was glad I did.”
“Decide to hang on to him this time?” Bertha asked.
Dolly Cornish shook her head. There was a wistful look in her eyes. “He’s changed.”
“In what way?”
“I told you he was a deposit of better-than-average ore. Somewhere he’d got it through his head that he was jewellery-rock. He’s been trying to be something that he isn’t, and he’s been trying for several years. It’s ruined him.”
“Perhaps you could bring him back,” Bertha said.
Dolly Cornish smiled and the smile spoke more than words.
“All right,” Bertha said, “you’ve got that off your chest. Now we’ll talk about Mrs. Belder.”
“Wednesday morning Mrs. Belder telephoned me. She didn’t give me a chance to say a word. It was as though she had her speech all carefully memorized. She said, ‘I know all about you, Mrs. Cornish. Don’t start to evade, and don’t try to lie. You think you can turn back the hands of the clock. You can’t do it. He’s mine now, and I intend to hang on to him. I assure you that I can be very dangerous, and I am afraid you’ve made it necessary for me to do something about you.’ ”
“Did you say anything?” Bertha asked as Dolly Cornish paused momentarily.
“I tried to, but I’m afraid I stuttered and stammered. She wasn’t paying any attention to me, anyway. She only waited for a moment to get her breath, then she went on with the part that absolutely terrified me. She said, ‘I’m not a woman who relies on half-way measures. There was another woman who was living in my house, pretending to be a servant, but trying to make eyes at my husband behind my back. Ask her what happens to people who think they can pull the wool over my eyes.’ ”
Dolly Cornish’s lips quivered, then became tight.
“That all of it?” Bertha asked.
“All except the laughter. It was the laughter that did it, that wild, half-hysterical, malignant laughter. You can have no idea, unless you could have heard—”
“You hang up, or did she?” Bertha interrupted.
“She did.”
“Then what?”
“I was too paralyzed to do anything for a while; then I managed to get the receiver back on the hook. I was trembling.”
“If you were as innocent as you claim,” Bertha said, “you wouldn’t have taken it so hard.”
“Get this, Mrs. Cool. I’m going to be fair with you. Everett had been one of my chances at happiness. If I’d taken him when I had the chance, I could have kept him from degenerating into a fourflusher. I knew him. I knew his strength. I knew his weakness.”
“What’s that got to do with it?” Bertha asked.
“Simply this, Mrs. Cool. I’d made up my mind that this was a world where dog eats dog, that I was going to look up Everett again.