“Slipped a fast one over on you?”
Georgia Rushe’s eyes blazed. “He was the victim of a shrewd, scheming, designing, hypocritical, sniveling, mealymouthed individual, if you can flatter a negative personality like that by calling her an individual.”
“She gave him the rush act?” Bertha asked.
“Very much so.”
“How did it happen?”
“It all began one night when Mr. Crail was driving his automobile back from work. He doesn’t see too well at night, and it had been raining and the streets were slippery. Even so, I don’t think it was entirely his fault, although he tries to make out that it was. There was a coupé immediately ahead of him, and a signal changed and the coupé came to a sudden stop. The brake light wasn’t working. Of course, Irma swore that she put out her hand to signal a stop, but she’d swear to anything that would feather her own nest.”
“Irma is the girl?”
“Yes.”
“What happened?”
“Mr. Crail bumped the back of her car — not particularly hard so far as the actual damage to the automobile was concerned. Fifty dollars would have covered both cars.”
“Personal injuries?” Bertha asked.
“Some sort of a spinal injury. Ellery jumped out of his car and ran up to the car ahead. He started apologizing as though it had been all his fault, just as soon as he saw the car was operated by a woman. And Irma Begley looked up at Ellery’s big strong face, and into his sympathetic eyes and determined she was going to marry him — and she didn’t lose any time.”
“The sympathy racket?” Bertha asked.
“Apparently, a little bit of everything. Ellery’s wife had died and he was lonely. He’d grown to depend on me a lot more than he realized, and then I’d gone away. Afterwards, I found in the files a wire he had sent, asking me if I could possibly cut my vacation short and return. For some reason the wire was never delivered. If it had been, it might have changed my whole life. As it was, he thought I simply hadn’t answered.”
I looked at my watch.
Miss Rushe hurried on. “Well, Irma Begley was very nice about it, but she thought that Mr. Crail would prefer to have the car repaired himself so that he’d be certain he wasn’t being victimized, and Ellery thought that was very very fair and considerate, so naturally with true magnanimity he had the whole damn car overhauled. Everything a mechanic could find wrong with it was fixed. Then he returned it to Irma, and by that time Irma was beginning to have headaches so she went to see a doctor, and the doctor took X-rays, and then it appeared that her spine had been injured. And she was so brave and so sweet and so self-effacing about the whole business!”
“Well, of course, Irma let Ellery see that she wasn’t in any position to support herself without work, and so Ellery insisted on footing the bills, and — of course no one knows just how it happened, but I returned from a month’s vacation to find my boss on his honeymoon!”
“How long ago?”
“Six months.”
“What happened then?”
“Well, at first the boss seemed sort of dazed with the suddenness of it all. He was particularly embarrassed when he was with me. He felt that he owed me some sort of an explanation as to how it happened and yet he was too much of a gentleman to say even a word about it.”
“What did you do?” Bertha asked.
“I was too angry and hurt to make things easy for him. I told him I was going to quit as soon as he could get someone else to take my place. Well, he couldn’t get anyone to take my place, and then he asked me to please stay with him and — and, well, I did.”
“When did you determine you were going to be a home wrecker?”
“To tell you the truth, Mrs. Cool, I don’t know. At first I was completely crushed. I felt that the bottom had dropped out of everything. I didn’t realize how much I was in love with Ellery until after... well, after things seemed irrevocably broken.”
“I know,” Bertha said. “I’m trying to find out the facts.”
“Well, after all, Mrs. Cool, I don’t know as it’s important, because that doesn’t enter into it except incidentally. I wanted to get that over with first because I didn’t want you to find out about it afterward and start getting upstage on me.”
“But you’ve made up your mind you’re going after Mr. Crail?”
“I’ve made up my mind that I’m not going to put any obstacle in the way of his going after me.”
“And he’s showing some indications?”
“He’s dazed and he’s hurt. He’s wandering around in a fog.”
“And beginning to gravitate toward you for guidance?”
Georgia Rushe met Bertha Cool’s eyes. “Let’s be frank about it, Mrs. Cool. I think he’s realized that he’s made a terrific mistake — and I think he realized it very shortly after I came back.”
“But he’s too loyal to do anything about it?”
“Yes.”
“Yet you think he may do something?”
“He may.”
“And if he does, you’re going to make it easy for him?”
Georgia Rushe said determinedly, “That little scheming trollop stole him from me. She deliberately played her cards so she had him all tied up before I got back. I’m going to steal him back.”
Bertha said, “All right, we have the background. Go ahead and tell us what’s on your mind.”
“Do you know anything about the Stanberry Building?”
Bertha shook her head, then said, “Wait a minute. It’s out on Seventh Street, isn’t it?”
Georgia Rushe nodded. “A four story building — stores on the lower floor, offices on the second floor, the Rimley Rendezvous on the third floor and apartments for Mr. Rimley and some of his executives on the fourth floor.”
“What about the Stanberry Building?”
“She wants Ellery to buy it for her.”
“Why the Stanberry Building?” I asked.
“I don’t know, but I think it has something to do with the night club.”
“What is there about the night club that makes the building such a marvelous investment?”
“I don’t know. Pittman Rimley has four or five places scattered around town. I think he’s the only one who’s been able to make a success out of combining a lunch trade, swinging into an afternoon pickup business, and then operating as a night club. He rotates his floor shows and seems to do a very good business.”
“What do you mean a pick-up business?” Bertha asked.
“Afternoons,” she said. “Women gravitate into these Rendezvous joints for a cocktail and there’s dance music and pick-ups.”
“Crail has money?” I asked.
She said evasively, “I think the Venetian blind business has been very profitable.”
“He has money?”
“Yes — quite a bit.”
“And just what do you want us to do?”
She said, “I want you to find out what’s back of it all. She’s rotten to the core, and I want you to find out what’s going on.”
Bertha Cool said, “All that’s going to cost you money.”
“How much?”
“Two hundred dollars for a starter.”
Georgia Rushe was coldly businesslike. “To just what does that two hundred dollars entitle me, Mrs. Cool?”
Bertha hesitated.
I said, “It entitles you to ten days work.”
“Less expenses,” Bertha snapped, hastily.
“What can you find out in that time?” Georgia Rushe asked.
Bertha said crisply, “We’re detectives, not clairvoyants. How the hell should I know?”
That seemed to be the right answer. Georgia Rushe opened her purse. “No one must know that I’m back of this,” she said.
Bertha Cool nodded. Her greedy little eyes fastened on the purse.
Georgia Rushe took out a checkbook.