“Business not so good?” I asked.
“Terrible!” Bertha grunted.
“What’s the matter with it?”
“Damned if I know. Before you came along, I was making a living piddling along with a lot of picayunish cases, little shadowing jobs, divorce cases, stuff of that sort. Mostly I got my business by catering to the domestic relations work that other agencies wouldn’t handle. Then you came along. First rattle out of the box you threw me into the big time — more money, more risk, more excitement, more clients — and then you enlisted in the Navy and for a while I carried on all right. Then something happened. I haven’t had a worthwhile case in the last year.”
“What’s the matter? Don’t people come in any more?”
“They come in,” Bertha said, “but somehow I don’t impress them. They don’t do things my way, and I can’t do them your way. I’m sort of a hybrid.”
“What do you mean, you can’t do them my way?”
“Look at that chair you’re sitting on,” she said. “That’s a good example.”
“What do you mean?”
“After you became a partner you went down and spent a hundred and twenty-five dollars on that chair. Your theory was that you can’t win a client’s confidence when he’s uneasy, and that you can’t get a person to confide in you when he’s uncomfortable. You let the client sit down in the depths of that chair, and it’s as though he was sitting on top of the world in a feather bed. He settles back and relaxes, and starts talking.”
“Well, doesn’t he?”
“He seems to do it for you, but he doesn’t do it for me.”
I said, “Perhaps you don’t make the people feel comfortable.”
Bertha’s eyes glittered angrily. “Why the hell should I? We paid a hundred and twenty-five bucks for the chair to do that. If you think I’m going to squander a hundred and twenty-five dollars just in order to...”
She broke off in midsentence.
I listened, and for a moment couldn’t hear anything. Then I realized that Elsie Brand had quit typing.
A moment later the buzzer sounded on Bertha Cool’s phone.
Bertha snatched the receiver off the cradle, said cautiously, “Yes?” then in a low voice, “is that the woman who... Oh, it is?... What’s her name?... All right, send her in.”
Bertha hung up the telephone and said, “Get out of that chair. She’s coming in.”
“Who?”
“Her name’s Miss Georgia Rushe. She’s coming in. She...”
Elsie Brand opened the door and said as though granting a great concession, “Mrs. Cool will see you immediately.”
Georgia Rushe weighed about a hundred and fourteen. She wasn’t as young as I’d thought when I had sized up the shadow on the door — somewhere around thirty-one or thirty-two, and she didn’t carry her head on one side. That cocking to one side of the head that we’d seen when she stood at the corridor door must have meant that she was listening.
Bertha Cool beamed at her and said in a voice that dripped sweetness, “Won’t you be seated, Miss Rushe?”
Miss Rushe looked at me.
She had dark, emotional eyes, full lips, high cheek bones, a smooth olive skin, and very dark hair. The way she looked at me you’d have thought she was about to turn and run out of the office.
Bertha said hastily, “This is Donald Lam, my partner.”
Miss Rushe said, “Oh!”
“Come in, come in,” Bertha invited. “Sit down in that chair, Miss Rushe.”
She still hesitated.
I gave a deep yawn without making any attempt to cover it, took a notebook from my pocket, said casually, “Well, I’ll go cover that matter we were talking about — or,” I added as an afterthought, turning to Miss Rushe, “do you want me to sit in on this?”
I made my tone sound somewhat bored as though another job would be just another chore. I heard Bertha gasp and start to say something, but Georgia Rushe smiled at me, said, “I think I’d like to have you sit in on it,” and walked over and settled herself in the big chair.
Bertha’s face was beaming. “Yes, yes, Miss Rushe. What is it?”
“I want some help.”
“Well, that’s what we’re here for.”
She toyed with her purse for a minute, crossed her knees, carefully smoothed her skirt down, her eyes avoiding those of Bertha.
She had nice legs.
Bertha said enticingly, “Anything we can do...”
Georgia Rushe hastily averted her eyes.
I took a notebook from my pocket and scribbled a note to Bertha Cool. “Quit being so eager. People want results. No one wants to hire a big-boned woman detective who’s all sticky with sweetness.”
I tore the page out of my notebook and slid it across the desk to Bertha.
Georgia Rushe watched Bertha pick up the note and read it.
Bertha’s face got red. She crumpled the note, slammed it in the wastebasket, glowered at me.
“Okay, Miss Rushe,” I said casually, “what’s your trouble?”
Georgia Rushe took a deep breath and said, “I don’t want to be censured.”
“No one is going to censure you.”
“I don’t want to have to listen to any moral lectures.”
“You won’t.”
She glanced apprehensively at Bertha and said, “A woman might not be as tolerant.”
Bertha smiled all over her face, said coyly, “Oh, my dear,” then suddenly remembering my note jerked herself back into character and said abruptly, “To hell with that stuff. What’s on your mind?”
“To begin with,” Georgia Rushe said determinedly, “I’m a home wrecker.”
“So what?” Bertha asked.
“I don’t want to listen to any moral lectures when you hear what I’ve done.”
“Got enough money to pay our bills?” Bertha asked.
“Yes, of course, otherwise I wouldn’t be here.”
Bertha said grimly, “Go ahead and wreck ’em all you want, dearie. What do you want us to do? Scout out good homes for you to wreck? We can do it.”
Miss Rushe laughed nervously, then said after a moment, “I’m glad you’re taking it that way, Mrs. Cool.”
Bertha said, “Homes aren’t wrecked. They wreck themselves.”
Georgia Rushe said, “I’ve been with Mr. Crail for nearly four years now.”
“Who’s Mr. Crail?” Bertha asked.
“Ellery Crail, head of the Crail Venetian Blind Company.”
“I’ve heard of the company.”
“Since the war we’ve taken over a lot of war contracts in wood cartridge containers, and things of that sort.”
“How long’s he been married?”
“Eight months.”
I settled back and lit a cigarette.
Georgia Rushe said, “I started working in the personnel department. At that time, Ellery was married. His wife died shortly after I came to work. It left him rather dazed. I don’t know how much he loved her, but he certainly missed her when she was gone. He’s a man who would love a home, a great big, loyal, stouthearted man who is so fair and square himself that he just can’t imagine anyone being otherwise.”
She hesitated for a moment, then sighed deeply, and went on, “After a while he began to get over the first numbing shock of the grief, and... well, I saw a little something of him.”
“You mean he took you out?” Bertha asked.
“We went out to dinner once or twice, yes.”
“Theater?”
“Yes.”
“Call at your apartment?”
“No.”
“You at his?”
“No. He isn’t that sort.”
“When did his present wife meet him?”
Georgia Rushe said, “I was run down from overwork. We’d had a lot of problems to deal with. Mr. Crail thought I should take a long vacation and suggested I leave for a month. When I came back he was married.”