“I was looking at her.”
“Make up your mind,” Mysgart said.
Bertha remained doggedly silent.
Mysgart smiled triumphantly. “I think,” he announced, “that is all.”
The man who was taking down the record closed his shorthand notebook. Esther Witson smirked at Bertha and walked out. Mysgart scratched his nose with his mustache.
Swiftly the people thinned out until Bertha and I were alone once more in an office that seemed something like a prize ring after the contestants had left.
15
Bertha Cool carefully closed the door. “Damn you,” she said. “You got me into that. Why didn’t you tell me what I was going up against?”
“I tried to, but you told me that no damn lawyer could rattle you.”
Bertha just glared at me, reached for a cigarette.
I took one from my pocket and settled down into the client’s chair.
Bertha said, “How the hell can anyone remember all those little things? You can’t remember what you were doing and just how many seconds lapsed and all that sort of stuff.”
I said, “I’m interested in Esther Witson. She’d been tagging along for eight or ten blocks. Now you remember she...”
There was a timid knock at the door.
I said, “If that happens to be Mysgart, don’t loose your temper.”
Bertha looked at me helplessly. “If it’s that damn lawyer,” she said, “you... you do the talking, Lover.”
I opened the door.
Mysgart said, “May I come in?”
“Come on in,” I told him, and indicated the client’s chair.
Mysgart smiled at Bertha Cool. “I trust there are no hard feelings, Mrs. Cool.”
I answered for Bertha. “No hard feelings,” I told him. “It’s all a matter of business.”
“Thank you, Mr. Lam. I’m glad you appreciate my position. My client is a little impulsive — as so many women are.”
Bertha simply glared at him, and blew smoke out through her nostrils.
“Cigarette?” I asked Mysgart.
“Thank you.”
I passed over the humidor. He took one and lit it.
“Is Mrs. Lidfield badly injured?” I asked.
He made a little grimace and said, “You know how those things go. If she gets a settlement she’ll be running around spry as can be. If she doesn’t she’ll be in bed for a year. Glimson is a shrewd one. He specializes in this sort of stuff.”
“You’re no slouch, yourself,” I told him.
He grinned.
Bertha said, “Of all the goddam...”
I said to Bertha, “Excuse me. If you’re going to handle it, I’ll go out.”
I started for the door.
“Don’t go, Donald.”
I hesitated a moment, looked meaningly at her.
“I’ll keep quiet,” Bertha promised.
I took my hand off the knob of the door.
Mysgart said hastily, “Mrs. Cool said something about being willing to effect a settlement in the case so she wouldn’t have to be a witness.”
“She’s been a witness now,” I said.
Mysgart opened his brief case, fumbled around, brought out some papers and started looking at them very studiously. He said, “I think it might be possible to settle the case. I think that’s the reason Glimson wanted to rush ahead with these depositions. I think he wanted to get some kind of a settlement.”
“Well,” I said, “anything you want to make.”
He looked at me in surprise. “You mean that you don’t want to make any settlement now?”
“Not particularly.”
“Why, Mr. Lam! I don’t want to precipitate an argument, and I trust we can handle this in a business spirit and in a friendly way, but the evidence now shows that Mrs. Cool was quite negligent according to her own testimony. She was stopping at an illegal place, at an illegal time, in an illegal manner, and giving conflicting signals for two illegal maneuvers as well as this waving signal.”
I said, “How about your own client? If Lidfield was driving his car fast then, he must have been in the intersection before Esther Witson entered the intersection. So then it was up to her to look out for him.”
Mysgart said, “I will admit that there are some puzzling aspects to the case.”
“They aren’t puzzling Glimson any.”
Mysgart sighed. “I was hoping,” he said, “that a way would present itself by which we could get the entire matter cleared up.”
“How much does Glimson want?”
“Oh, I haven’t the faintest idea.”
I kept on smoking.
“If you folks would make some contribution,” Mysgart said, “my client might be prepared to make some contribution, and between us we might get the situation straightened up.”
I said, “Why don’t you quit beating around the bush?”
Mysgart scratched his nose with the red mustache. “The situation,” he said, “has some unfortunate aspects.”
I said, “All right. I’ll break the ice. We’ll give you five hundred dollars.”
He looked at me reproachfully. “Five hundred dollars! Is that intended to be a joke — or an insult?”
I said, “You can take it either way. If you don’t want it I’ll withdraw it.”
“No, no. No, no,” he said. “Now don’t be hasty, Mr. Lam. After all, you and I are businessmen, and we can keep our tempers. Can’t we?”
“I don’t know,” I told him.
Mysgart jumped up, shoving papers back in his brief case. “Now just keep calm,” he said. “Just keep cool, Mr. Lam. After all you and I are businessmen. We’ll see what we can do. Glimson and his client are waiting out by the elevator. I’ll talk with him.”
Mysgart went out the door.
“Why didn’t you offer him fifteen hundred bucks?” Bertha asked. “He’d have jumped at that.”
I said, “Wait and see.”
Bertha said, “The whole damn thing is screwy to me. Damn lawyers, anyway. I hate their guts. The questions that man asked me! Why, if a man jumped on you like that, you couldn’t tell what you’d had for breakfast.”
I grinned at her.
“Go on and grin like a Cheshire cat,” Bertha said. “I’d just like to see you get up there on the witness stand once and let those birds start asking you questions.”
The telephone rang.
Bertha pounced on the receiver, said, “Hello,” and then made her voice all honey and syrup. “Oh yes, Miss Rushe. No indeed, we haven’t forgotten you. Just a moment and I’ll let you talk with Donald. He’s around the office somewhere. It may take me a minute to get him. Just hold the line.”
Bertha clapped her palm over the mouthpiece of the telephone and said, “It’s Georgia Rushe and damned if I hadn’t forgotten all about her. What are we supposed to be doing for her — oh yes, that investigation of Mrs. Crail. It’s up to you to talk to her, Lover. You’re good at making things up on the spur of the moment. Thank Heavens I had sense enough to stall her along and tell her you weren’t immediately available. Start thinking and I’ll tell her that you’re busy dictating and she’ll have to wait a minute.”
“I’ll talk to her,” I said.
“Well, think up something good,” Bertha told me.
Bertha took her hand off the mouthpiece and said, “He’s dictating, Miss Rushe, but he’ll be here right away. He... Here he is now... What? What’s that?”
Bertha scowled portentously into the mouthpiece. “Say that over again,” she said. “Say it slow.”
Bertha listened for as much as thirty seconds, then said, “You’re sure that’s what you want? Well, if that’s the way you feel about it. Poor child, you’re crying! Now listen. You better talk with Donald. He’s here. He wants to talk with you.”
Bertha once more clapped her palm over the mouthpiece.