She was silent for several seconds, then said, “I feel quite certain Bertha Cool is going to hate me from the minute she sees me.”
“She probably won’t shower any too much cordiality on you.”
We went to a hotel, registered. The clerk listened to my story about our dying mother, as I told him that I must hurry to a telephone. He pointed out the phone booth to me.
I called Bertha’s unlisted number. She didn’t answer.
I went up to my room, called Bertha once more. This time a colored maid answered.
“Mrs. Cool?” I asked.
“She ain’t here now.”
“When will she be in?”
“I can’t tell.”
“Where did she go?”
“Fishing.”
“When she comes in, tell her to call — no, tell her that Mr. Donald Lam called, and that he’ll call every hour until he gets her.”
“Yes sir. I think the fishin’ was early this morning. I think the tide was goin’ to be just right at seven-thirty. I rather ’spect her back pretty soon.”
“I’ll call every hour. Tell her that I said that. Be sure she gets that message — that I’ll call every hour.”
I climbed into the luxury of a hot bath, lay soaking for ten or fifteen minutes, then got up and turned on the cold shower. I rubbed myself into a glow, dressed, shaved, and stretched out for forty winks.
I was awakened by Roberta gently opening and closing the door of the connecting room.
“What is it?” I asked.
“Time for you to call Mrs. Cool again.”
I groaned, picked up the telephone, gave the number to the operator, and waited.
This time Bertha was home — evidently, by the sound of things, just coming into the apartment as the telephone rang. I heard the maid call her, and could hear her hurried steps thudding across the floor, then the sound of her voice rasping at me through the receiver. “For God’s sake, why don’t you stay put? What do you think this agency’s made of? Money? When you want a conference, why don’t you use the telephone? I’ve tried to educate you to that a dozen different times.”
“All through?” I asked.
“Hell, no!” she said belligerently. “I haven’t even started.”
“All right, I’ll call you back when you’re through. One doesn’t argue with a lady.”
I dropped the phone gently back on the hook, abruptly cutting off Bertha’s rage-shrilled voice.
Roberta’s eyes were big. I could see she was frightened.
“Donald, are you going to fight over me?”
“Probably.”
“Please don’t.”
“We have to fight over something.”
“What do you mean?”
“Bertha. You have to massage her with a club in order to keep her from beating your brains out. She doesn’t mean anything by it. It’s just the way she’s made. She can’t help it. When you see she’s getting her fist cocked, you beat her to the punch. That’s all. I’m going to sleep again. Don’t bother to waken me. You go ahead and get some sleep.”
“Aren’t you going to call her again?”
“After a while.”
Roberta smiled somewhat wistfully and said, “You’re a funny boy.”
“Why?” I asked, settling myself back on the bed.
“Nothing,” she said, and walked back to her room.
It took me ten or fifteen minutes to get back to sleep. I must have slept for a couple of hours. When I wakened, I rang Bertha Cool again.
“Hello, Bertha. This is Donald.”
“You damn little whippersnapper! You dirty little upstart! What the hell do you mean by pulling a stunt like that. I’ll teach you to hang up on me! Why, dammit, I’ll—”
“I’ll call you back in a couple of hours,” I said, and hung up.
Roberta came in in about an hour. “I didn’t hear you get up.”
“You were sleeping. Guess you’re pretty tired.”
“I was.”
She sat on the arm of my chair, her hand on my shoulder, looking down at the paper.
“Did you call Mrs. Cool again?”
“Yes.”
“What did she say?”
“Same thing.”
“What did you do. Donald?”
“Same thing.”
“I thought you were anxious to talk with her.”
“I am.”
She laughed. “You’ve taken planes and dashed across the country in order to have this conference, and now you’re sitting around doing nothing.”
“That’s right.”
“I don’t understand it.”
“I’m waiting for Bertha to cool off.”
“Do you think she will? Don’t you think she’ll get more angry than ever?”
“She’s so mad right now she could eat a dish of ten-penny nails without cream or sugar. She’s also curious. Curiosity persists until it’s satisfied. Rage dies down after a while. That’s the secret of dealing with Bertha. Want the funny paper?”
Her laugh was low and nervous. “Not now,” she said. “What’s this?”
She bent forward to read a paragraph in the paper I was holding. I could feel her hair brush against mine.
I held the paper steady until she had finished; then I dropped it to the floor, turned my body sideways. She slid down into my lap.
I kissed her.
For a moment her lips were against mine, a warm oval hungry for a caress; then suddenly her hazel eyes were looking steadily at me. She was holding her head back and smiling a little. “I wondered when that was coming,” she said.
“What?”
“The pass.”
I eased her gently to the floor. “It wasn’t a pass. It was a kiss.”
“Oh.”
She sat there for a moment, looking up at me, and then laughed again. “You are funny.”
“Why?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Just lots of things. Do you like me, Donald.”
“Yes.”
“Do you think I — committed a murder?”
“I don’t know.”
“You think I may have?”
“Yes.”
“Is that what’s holding you back?”
“Is something holding me back?”
“Donald, I wish you wouldn’t do this for me.”
She was sitting at my feet now, her fingers interlaced across my knee. “I think you’re a very wonderful person.”
“I’m not.”
“And you’ve certainly been wonderful to me. I don’t know whether I can ever tell you what it’s meant to me to have someone act — well, decent. You’ve given me back a lot of faith in human nature. The reason I disappeared that first time was — oh, it was mixed up in something sordid and brutal and frightful. I can’t even tell you about it. I don’t want you to know what it was, but it ruined my faith in human nature. I came to the conclusion that people, particularly men, were—” The doorknob rattled into a quick turn. Someone lunged against the door.
Roberta looked at me in startled surprise. “Police?” she whispered.
I motioned toward the connecting room.
She took two steps toward the door of her room, then glided back. I felt her hand on my cheek, under my chin, lifting my head. Before I realized what she was doing, her lips were clinging to mine.
Knuckles banged angrily on the door.
Roberta whispered, “If this should be it — that’s thanks, and good-by.”
She moved across the room like the shadow of a bird floating across a meadow. The door gently closed.
Knuckles banging again at my door, and then Bertha Cool’s angry voice, “Donald, open that door!”
I crossed the room and opened the door. “What the hell do you think you’re trying to do?”
“Sit down, Bertha. Take this chair. You’ve seen the papers, I take it? You must have done a nice job tracing my call to this hotel. Probably cost you a good tip.”