“About a tenth what I could practising law.”
“But there’s a future to it, lover, and you couldn’t leave Bertha. You’ve so got Bertha that she depends on you.”
I heard voices raised in excited comment in the outer office, then quick steps. The door of the private office jerked open, and Esther Clarde stood in the doorway. One of the secretaries was peering over her shoulder, tugging at her arm in a halfhearted way.
I said, “Come on in, Esther.”
Bertha Cool said, “Indeed she won’t come in. That’s a hell of a way to try to crash my office. She’ll go back and sit down and be announced and—”
“Sit right here,” I said, getting up and indicating the client’s chair.
Esther Clarde came in. Bertha Cool said, “I don’t give a damn who she is, Donald. No one’s going to—”
I closed the door in the new secretary’s face, and said, “What is it, Esther?”
She said, “That lawyer’s trying to get me to double-cross you, and I wanted you to know I won’t do it.”
“Did you tell him you would?”
She shifted her eyes for a moment, said, “Yes,” and then added by way of explanation, “I had to.”
Bertha Cool said, “Now you look here, Donald. You can’t step in and start running things. You can’t invite people in this office—”
“She wants you to go out,” I said to Esther Clarde.
Esther Clarde got up. Her eyes were swollen. I could see she’d been crying. “I just wanted you to know, Donald.”
“You called him last night?”
“Who?”
“Crumweather.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“He’s been my friend — oh, it hasn’t been an unselfish friendship, but he’s—”
Bertha Cool interrupted. “Donald, you look at me. We’re going to have this thing out right here and now. It isn’t a question of whether we’re going to talk with this girl. It’s a question of who the hell is running this office. Now you—”
I said to Esther, “She wants us to get out of here. Perhaps we’d better go,” and started for the door.
It took a moment for that to soak in, then Bertha pushed her hands down on the arms of the swivel chair and tried to lift herself out of the chair quickly. “You come back here,” she yelled at me. “I want to know what’s going on in this case. You can’t leave me batting around in the dark. What’s Crumweather trying to do? What’s the double-cross he—”
I opened the door, escorted Esther Clarde through.
“Donald, you little runt, you heard me! You come back here and—”
The closing door cut off the rest of it. I walked across the outer office with Esther, while the two secretaries stared open-mouthed. The door of Bertha Cool’s private office jerked open just as I opened the door to the corridor. She knew better than to try to catch up with us. Her big beam and avoirdupois were too much handicap. As we went out, she was still standing in the door of the office.
In the corridor I said, “Listen, Esther, there’s one thing I have to know. Don’t lie to me. Who gave you those letters?”
“I never saw the letters,” she said, “until after Jed Ringold had them, and I haven’t any idea who gave them to him.”
“Bob Tindle?” I asked.
“I suppose so, but I don’t know.”
I stood in front of the elevator shaft and pressed the button. “Did Ringold have any home other than that hotel?”
“No,”
“No other place where he lived?”
“Except with me,” she said.
The door of the agency opened. Bertha Cool came barging out. An elevator showed a red light just as an ascending elevator came to a stop. The door opened. Two men got out. One of them started toward the agency office. The other turned to check up on us. He stopped abruptly and said, “Okay, Bill. Here he is.”
The men came walking over. One of them flashed a badge. “Okay, buddy,” he said, “you’re going for a little ride.”
“Who with?” I asked.
“Me.”
“What’s the idea?”
“The D.A. wants to talk with you.”
“I don’t want to talk with anyone. I’m busy.”
The descending elevator came to a halt. The two detectives pushed us on in. Bertha Cool screamed, “Hold that elevator. I want to go down.”
She came along the corridor, walking as rapidly as she could. The operator held the cage. One of the passengers snickered.
The cage jiggled as Bertha Cool’s weight was added to that of the other passengers. The attendant slid the door shut. Bertha Cool turned around and faced the door. She casually pushed the rest of us back in the cage. She didn’t say a word to me.
We shot straight down to the ground floor. There was a long passageway past the building directories and a cigar stand near the entrance. Bertha Cool was first out. She started walking down the passageway. I stood to one side for Esther Clarde to get out. The detective on my right said, “Hold the jane there, Bill,” and pushed me out into the passageway. Three other men were standing there. They all closed in. We started walking. I said to the detective, “Wait a minute. What’s the idea?”
He didn’t say anything. A man was sitting on the shoe-shining stand, getting his shoes shined. I didn’t pay any particular attention to him until I heard his voice shrill out in an excited shout, “There he is! That’s the one!”
The whole outfit stopped. I looked up. The man who was getting his shoes shined was the night clerk at the hotel where the murder had been committed. He was pointing his finger directly at me.
The detective grinned and said, “Okay, buddy, there’s your line-up, and that’s your identification.” He turned back toward the elevator and said, “Okay, Bill, bring along the skirt.”
Lots of things happened all at once. The grinning detective said to the three men who had been walking along with me, “You boys can leave now. Remember to be available when we call on you.” The other detective brought Esther Clarde out from the elevator. Bertha Cool, without looking back, walked to the telephone booth at the end of the hallway. She squeezed herself in, but wasn’t able to get the door closed. I saw her drop a nickel and dial a number. She put her lips up close to the transmitter so people outside couldn’t hear what was being said. The hotel night clerk came hopping down off the shoe-shining stand. One shoe was shined. The other wasn’t. His pants cuffs had been doubled back. He was dancing with excitement. He kept pointing his finger at me and saying, “That’s the one. That’s the fellow. I’d recognize him anywhere.”
He saw Esther and ran toward her. “Look, Esther, there’s the guy. That’s the one. That’s—”
Esther said, “You’re crazy, Walter, that isn’t the man. He looks something like it, but it isn’t the man.”
He looked at her in astonished surprise. “Why, it is too. You can’t mistake him. He’s—”
“He has the same build,” Esther said, “and about the same complexion, but the man who came in the hotel was a little broader, a little heavier, and I think a year or two older.”
The clerk hesitated dubiously, staring at me.
The detective said, “Be your age, guy. She’s been playing around with him and is trying to protect him.”
The clerk’s face went white as a sheet. He said, “That’s not so! Esther, you know that isn’t so! Tell him it’s a lie.”
“It’s a lie,” Esther said.
“Of course it’s a lie. Esther’s running a cigar counter, and she kids them all along, but when it comes to—”
“Bunk,” the detective said. “She’s stringing you along. Why don’t you take a tumble to yourself, sucker? This is the guy that’s beating your time. How the hell do you suppose she got here? She was riding down in the elevator with him. They were headed for her apartment when we picked them up.”