“Go on.”
“I thought she could use her talents to better advantage. I was acquainted with some executives in San Francisco, and I got her a job, that’s all.”
“Still holding it?”
“Heavens, yes! She went right to the top.”
“What’s this Sindbad stuff?”
He laughed. “I naturally saw something of her — in a business way, you understand, and she laughed at some of the stories I told her of sales technique, and the possibilities of turning buying resistance into enthusiasm. She — she told me I talked like Sindbad, the Sailor. She—”
A businesslike knock sounded on the outer door, which promptly opened. Imogene Dearborne stood on the threshold. “Mrs. Goldring is on the telephone,” she said. “I told her you were in conference. She insists that she must speak with you.”
“Oh, my God!” Belder said.
Bertha Cool watched him with an air of detached interest. “Going to talk with her?”
Belder looked pleadingly at his secretary. “Tell her that I’ll have to call her back. Get a number where I can reach her. Tell her that I’m in conference where I’m just on the point of signing a contract — a very important contract... Do it up brown, Imogene, put it on thick.”
“Yes, Mr. Belder. She asked where Mrs. Belder was.”
Belder put his head in his hands and groaned. For a moment there was silence in the office, then Belder raised his head. “Hell, I don’t know. Tell her I haven’t been home since — Tell her to go jump in the lake, tell her to go fly a kite.”
“Yes, Mr. Belder.” She quietly closed the door.
Belder hesitated for a moment, then pushed back his chair, strode across the office, jerked open the door to the reception office. “Fix the telephone so I can listen in, Imogene.”
“Yes, Mr. Belder.”
Everett Belder leaned across Bertha Cool’s chair. His long arms snatched up the telephone. He left the door to the reception office wide open.
Bertha could hear Imogene Dearborne’s voice fairly oozing sweetness, saying, “He’s so sorry that he can’t talk with you right now, Mrs. Goldring. If you’ll leave your number, he’ll get in touch with you at the first available opportunity... No, Mrs. Goldring, not at all... No, it’s a most important conference. He’s just on the point of signing a contract with a manufacturer covering the distribution of a product in all of the territory west of the Rockies... Yes, Mrs. Goldring... Yes, I’ll take the number... Thank you, Mrs. Goldring... Oh, yes. I’m to tell him Carlotta is with you. Thank you very much, Mrs. Goldring. Good-bye... What’s that?... Why, he said he didn’t know, in case she wasn’t home. He hasn’t been there since leaving for the office... Yes, Mrs. Goldring. I’ll tell him, yes. Thank you. Good-by.”
The receiver clicked in the outer office. Belder dropped the desk telephone back into place and said, “That’s a complication.”
“Your mother-in-law?”
“Yes. I gather from what she said over the phone that she came in on the train just now. Mabel evidently knew she was coming, but said nothing to me about it. The train was late. Carlotta was there and waited. Mabel either wasn’t there or else didn’t wait. Her mother is sore — trying to find some way of blaming the whole thing on me.”
Bertha said, “Your wife considered this eleven o’clock telephone call a lot more important than meeting her mother.”
“So it seems.”
Bertha said almost meditatively, “I’m not so certain but what I’ll have to revise my opinion of your mother-in-law,” and then turned her attention once more to the file of correspondence.
“What’s this?” Bertha asked abruptly.
Belder grinned as Bertha Cool picked up some dozen letters all clipped together with a big wire clip. On the top was a typewritten memo reading: “Look as though you were on a sucker list. I.D.”
Belder laughed. “Miss Dearborne told me I was going to get into trouble on that. You know, you get a certain number of solicitations from charitable organizations. Starving foreigners, underprivileged children, all that sort of thing. A few months ago I got one that was so personal in its appeal, so touching, that I sent twenty-five dollars, and this deluge is the result.”
Bertha Cool ran through the letters.
“They seem to be from different organizations.”
“They are. But you can see Miss Dearborne’s note at the top. Evidently they exchanged addresses. If you answer solicitations by mail from the Society for the Relief of the Starving Whosis, they evidently turn your name and address, as a likely prospect, over to the Association for the Underprivileged Daughters of Pre-Revolutionary Generals, and so on down the line. Once you make a remittance you’re positively deluged.”
Once more there was a peremptory knock on the door of Belder’s office. Imogene Dearborne opened the door, said, “Mrs. Cool’s secretary is on the line. She says that it is very important that she get in touch with Mrs. Cool immediately. She wanted to know if Mrs. Cool was here.”
“What did you tell her?” Belder asked.
There was just the trace of a smile on Miss Dearborne’s lips. “The woman on the telephone said she was Mrs. Cool’s secretary. I told her that I personally didn’t know of any Mrs. Cool, but if she’d hold the phone I’d make inquiries.”
“She’s on the line now?” Belder asked.
“Yes.”
Belder glanced inquiringly at Bertha Cool.
Bertha said, “Fix it so I can listen in. Talk with her a minute. If it’s Elsie Brand, I’ll recognize her voice. Stall her along.”
Without a word, Imogene turned back to the outer office. Belder silently handed Bertha Cool the desk telephone. Bertha sat there waiting until she heard a metallic click, then Imogene Dearborne saying, “I’m afraid I didn’t get that name correctly. Did I understand you to say that you wanted a Mrs. Pool. P-o-o-l — that’s P as in private?”
Elsie Brand’s voice, sharp with impatience, said, “No, it’s Mrs. Cool. C-o-o-l. C as in confidential.”
Bertha said promptly, “Hello, Elsie. I’m on the line. What do you want?”
“Oh,” Elsie’s voice showed relief. “I’ve been trying to get you every place I could think of.”
“What’s the trouble?”
“A Mr. Nunnely called up.”
“How long ago?” Bertha asked.
“It must have been a good half-hour now.”
“What did he want?”
“He said he had to reach you at once upon a matter of the greatest importance. He said that it was about something you had taken up with him yesterday and that you’d want to have me make every effort to get in touch with you on it.”
“What did you tell him?”
“I told him I’d try to get in touch with you and have you call him.”
Bertha thought that over for a moment, then said, “All right, Elsie. I’ll call him from here. I don’t want him to know where I am. If I’m not able to get him and he should telephone again to ask if you delivered the message, tell him that I came in about ten minutes ago; that I was in very much of a hurry; that you gave me the message but that I didn’t have time to call him. Assume the attitude that I didn’t seem to think that it was so terribly damned important. Get it?”
“I understand,” Elsie said.
“Okay.”
Bertha dropped the receiver into place, said to Belder, “Nunnely’s been telephoning my office, very anxious to get in touch with me; says it’s about a proposition I made him yesterday; told my secretary to rush that message through to me.”