“How long have I got?” I asked.
He looked at his watch. “Thirty minutes.”
I walked out. He wanted to shake hands, but I managed not to see his paw.
I went down to the agency office. Bertha had rented another typewriter and desk and moved them in. The girls were getting more familiar with the work. Both of them were clacking merrily away at typewriters. I walked on across to the private office and opened the door.
Bertha Cool, reading the newspaper and holding a cigarette in a long, carved ivory holder between the fingers of her jewelled left hand, said, “God, Donald, you certainly do keep things stirred up.”
“What’s the matter now?”
“Telephone calls,” she said. “Lots of them. They won’t leave their names. People want to know when you’re coming in.”
“What did you tell them?”
“That I didn’t know.”
“Men or women?”
“Women,” she said, “young women, from the sound of their voices. God, lover, I don’t know what it is you do to them — I could understand it if you were one of these indifferent heartbreakers, but you certainly aren’t a matinee idol. And you fall for them just as hard as they do for you — not in the same way. You’re not on the make, Donald. You put women up on a pedestal and worship them. You think just because they have skirts wrapped around their waists they’re something different, noble, and exalted. Donald, you’ll never make a good detective until you learn that woman is nothing more or less than the female of the species.”
“Anything else?” I asked.
She glared at me and said, “None of your impudence, Donald. After all, you’re working for me.”
“And making a hundred bucks a day for you.”
That registered. “Sit down, lover,” she invited. “Don’t mind Bertha. Bertha’s cross this morning because she didn’t get much sleep last night.”
I sat down in the client’s chair.
The telephone rang.
Bertha said, “This is another one of those women calling for you.”
“Find out who it is,” I said. “If it’s Esther Clarde or Alta Ashbury, I’m in. If it’s anyone else, I’m out.”
“Those two women,” Bertha said, “falling for them both at the same time! That Clarde woman is just a common little strumpet, and Alta Ashbury is a rich girl who considers you a new toy. She’ll play with you until she breaks you, and then she’ll throw you on the junk heap without so much as—”
The phone had kept on ringing. I said, “You’d better answer it.”
Bertha picked up the telephone and barked savagely, “Yes. Hello.”
She was handling her own calls now that Elsie Brand wasn’t there on the switchboard, and it griped her.
Bertha listened for a moment, and I saw the expression on her face change. Her eyes got hard. She said, “How much?” and then listened again. She glanced across at me and said, “But I don’t see why — well, if you didn’t have any authority — well, when can — goddammit, don’t keep interrupting me whenever I try to say anything. Now listen, if you didn’t have any authority to complete that deal, how did you — I see. How much? I’ll ring you back sometime this afternoon and let you know — no, this afternoon — no, not by one o’clock. Later — well, by three o’clock — all right, by two, then.”
She hung up the telephone and looked at me with a puzzled expression.
“Something about the case?” I asked.
“No, another thing. A man came in here the other day and said he wanted to talk for three minutes. I agreed to give him exactly three minutes of my time. When he ran over it, I called him. He thought he’d have me so interested I wouldn’t say anything, but I certainly did give him a jolt. Donald Lam, what the hell are you smiling at?”
“Nothing,” I said, and then after a moment asked, “How much do they want to pay?”
“Who?”
“The people who sold you the stock.”
“How do you know that was the people who sold me the stock. How do you know I bought any stock? What the hell have you been doing? Snooping around in my affairs? Getting into my desk? Have you—”
“Forget it,” I said. “I read you like a book.”
“Yes, you do!”
“And so does everyone else,” I said. “That’s an old racket in the sucker game.”
“What is?”
“Telling a person you want three minutes and guaranteeing to complete what you have to say in that three minutes. You tell them everything you want to, then keep right on talking. The sucker is so anxious to show you that he can’t be bluffed, he keeps calling the time limit, and doesn’t ask the questions he otherwise would. It’s a nice high-pressure method of selling stock.”
Bertha looked at me, gulped twice, picked up the telephone, dialed a number, and said, “This is Bertha Cool. I’ve thought it over. I’ll take it — all right, have the money here — I said the money. I don’t want any goddam checks. I want cash.”
She slammed the receiver back on the hook.
“How much did they offer?” I asked.
“None of your business. What have you been doing?”
“Stalling around.”
“What the hell do you mean by stalling? You’re hired to solve a murder and—”
“Get it out of your head,” I interrupted, “that we’re hired to solve a murder. We were hired to get Alta Ashbury out of a jam.”
“Well, she’s in it worse than ever.”
“We’re still hired.”
“Well, get busy and go to work.”
“We’re getting paid by the day, aren’t we?”
“Yes.”
I lit a cigarette.
She glowered at me and said, “Sometimes, Donald, you make me so damn mad I could tear you apart. What the hell did you do to Tokamura Hashita?”
“Nothing. Why?”
“He rang me up and said there wouldn’t be any more lessons.”
I said, “I guess I hurt his feelings.”
“How?”
“I told him that that stuff of his would work all right in a gymnasium, but I knew a couple of men who said that it had been exposed two or three times as not being any good at all in the conditions which confront a man in real life. I told him they said they could draw empty guns if he didn’t know when they were going to do it and make him look like a monkey. I offered to give him fifty dollars—”
“Fifty dollars!” she interrupted with half a scream, “Whose fifty dollars?”
“Ashbury’s.”
She settled back, somewhat mollified. “What did he do?”
“He took the dough.”
“Then what happened?”
“He was right.”
“Then you’d better continue with the lessons.”
“I think Hashita figures someone slipped something over on him.”
“Donald, how did you know that the three-minute gag was a high-pressure stock-selling stunt? I’d never heard of it.”
“How much did they stick you for?”
“They didn’t stick me. I’m going to get twice what I paid—”
“Thanks,” I said.
She just sat there glaring at me. After a while, she said, “Some day I’m going to fire you.”
“You may not have to. Crumweather wants me to go into partnership.”
“Who does?”
“Crumweather, the lawyer.”
Bertha Cool leaned across the desk. “Now listen, lover, you don’t want to get back into that law business. You know what would happen. It would be the same thing all over again. You’d build up a good practice, and something you’d do would irritate those long-haired scissor-bills at the bar association, and you’d be out pounding the pavements again looking for work. You have a nice berth here, and there’s a chance to work up. You can make—”