A. A. Fair
Give ’Em the Ax
1
As I got off the elevator and started down the corridor, the old familiar surroundings took me back to that first day when I’d made that same journey, looking for a job.
At that time, the sign on the door had read, B. COOL, CONFIDENTIAL INVESTIGATIONS. Now it read COOL & LAM, with the name B. COOL in one corner, and DONALD LAM down in the other. There was something reassuring about seeing my name on the door. It was as though I really had something to come back to.
I pushed open the door.
Elsie Brand was pounding the keyboard of the typewriter. She turned and looked up over her shoulder, her face automatically assuming the welcoming smile with which one reassures the nervous clients who call to see a private detective.
I saw the expression jerk off her face. Her eyes widened.
“Donald!”
“Hello, Elsie.”
“Donald! My, I’m glad to see you. Where did you come from?”
“South Seas, and various places.”
“How long are you... When do you have to go back?”
“I don’t.”
“Not ever?”
“Probably not. I’m supposed to have a check-up in six months.”
“What happened?”
“Bugs — tropical bugs. Okay if I take it easy for a while, live in a cool climate, and don’t get too excited. Bertha in there?”
I jerked my head towards the door of the office that had B. COOL, PRIVATE, lettered on the door.
Elsie nodded.
“How is she?”
“Same as ever.”
“How’s her weight?”
“Still keeping it at one hundred sixty-five, and hard as barbed wire.”
“Making any money?”
“She did for a while, and then she got in a sort of a rut. Things haven’t been coming so well lately. Guess you’d better ask her about that.”
“Have you been sitting there hammering that typewriter all the time I’ve been gone?”
She laughed. “No, of course not.”
“What do you mean?”
“Only eight hours a day.”
“Seems like pretty much of a rut to get into. I thought you’d have quit the job and gone into an airplane factory.”
“Didn’t you get my letters?”
“They didn’t say anything about staying on the job.”
“I didn’t think I had to say anything.”
“Why?”
She avoided my eyes. “I don’t know. Guess it’s my contribution to the war effort.”
“Loyalty to the job?”
“Not to the job,” she said, “so much as— Oh, I don’t know, Donald. You were out there fighting and... well, I wanted to do what I could to hold the business together.”
The inner office buzzer made noise.
Elsie picked up the receiver on the telephone, switched it over to Bertha Cool’s office, said, “Yes, Mrs. Cool.”
Bertha was so mad the receiver couldn’t contain all of her voice. I could hear the rasping, angry tones over where I was sitting. “Elsie, I’ve told you to talk with clients only long enough to find out what they want, then call me. I’ll do the talking for the outfit.”
“This isn’t a client, Mrs. Cool.”
“Who is it?”
“A... a friend.”
Bertha’s voice rose a full octave. “My God! Do I pay you to hold social soirées in the office, or do I pay you to get out a little work once in a while? For God’s sake... a friend!... A... Well, I’ll soon fix that!”
The slam of the receiver in Bertha’s office threatened to pull the telephone out by the roots. We heard the pound of two quick steps, then the door was jerked open and Bertha stood on the threshold, her glittering little eyes sharp with anger, her big jaw thrust out.
She flashed a swift look to get my bearings, then came barging down on me like a battleship trying to ram a submarine.
Halfway there, her eyes managed to get the message to her angry brain.
“Why, you little devil!” she said, stopping as though her feet had frozen to the floor.
For a moment she was glad to see me, then you could see her catch herself. She certainly wouldn’t let anyone know it. She whirled to Elsie and said, “Why the hell didn’t you tell me?”
Elsie said demurely, “I was trying to, Mrs. Cool, when you hung up. I was going to tell you that...”
“Humph! ” Bertha snorted her into silence. She turned to me. “It’s a wonder you wouldn’t send a wire.”
I used the only argument that would impress itself on Bertha’s mind. “Wires cost money.”
Even that didn’t dent her. “Well, you could have sent one of those tourist messages. You get a low rate on those. You come busting in here and...”
Bertha broke off, her eyes on the frosted glass panel of the corridor door.
The head and shoulders of a feminine figure were silhouetted against the glass, a chic slender woman, evidently young, and either because it was a mannerism or because of the way she was standing, the head was perked slightly to one side, giving it a jaunty appearance.
Bertha muttered, “Damn it! Clients always do catch me in the outer office. It’s undignified. Looks as though we weren’t busy.”
She grabbed up a bunch of papers from Elsie’s desk, struck a businesslike poise, started pawing through the papers.
But the visitor didn’t come in.
There was a long matter of seconds which seemed minutes during which the silhouette was pasted against the frosted glass, then abruptly the shadow went on down the hall.
Bertha Cool slammed the papers down on the desk. “There you are,” she said. “That’s the way things have been going lately. The damned little tramp will probably go on down the hall to the Transcontinental Detective Agency and spill her troubles there.”
I said, “Cheer up, Bertha. Perhaps she’s just nervous and is coming back.”
“Well,” Bertha snorted, “something about the place didn’t seem right to her. She was all set to come in, and then she didn’t come. It didn’t sound like a business office. Elsie, you start pounding that typewriter. Donald, you come in the private office. Remember, Elsie, if she comes in she’ll be nervous. That type won’t wait. She’ll sit down for a minute, then pretend she’s forgotten something and jump up and run out, and that’ll be the last we ever see of her. She’s wearing a little hat on one side of her head with a...”
“I got a good look at her silhouette,” Elsie said.
“All right. The minute she comes in let me know. Don’t stall around. Reach for the telephone. After all, I can’t go out in the corridor and grab ’em the way they do when a customer stops in front of a pawn shop. Indecision. Never could understand it myself. If you’re going to do a thing, why not do it? Why start and stop and back and fill and mince around? Donald, come inside. Let Elsie get to work on that typewriter.”
Elsie Brand flashed a glance at me and let me see the quiet amusement in her eyes, then she was pounding away again at the typewriter.
Bertha Cool put her big strong hand under my arm and said, “Come on, Donald, get in the office and tell me what this is all about.”
We entered Bertha Cool’s private office. Bertha strode around the desk and slammed herself down in a creaking swivel chair. I sat on the arm of a big overstuffed chair.
Bertha looked me over, said, “You’ve toughened up, Donald.”
“I’ve been toughened.”
“What do you weigh now?”
“A hundred and thirty-five.”
“You look taller.”
“I’m not taller. It’s the way they made me stand.”
There was a moment’s silence. Bertha had an ear cocked for noises in the outer office but there was no cessation in the muffled pounding of Elsie Brand’s typewriter.