Bertha said, “You’re a hell of a partner, disappearing like that without letting anyone know where you are! Hale has telephoned from New Orleans. He’s sore. He says he thinks you’ve given him a double-cross, says he isn’t going to pay any bonus or anything else. He’s going to hold us responsible for breach of contract.”
“Have a cigarette. Bertha?”
She took a deep breath, started to say something, then changed her mind; and her lips clamped together in a hard, thin line.
I lit a cigarette.
Bertha said, “That’s the trouble with making you a partner, you little runt. I pick you up off the streets when you are so hungry your belt buckle is carving its initials in your backbone. I stake you to a meal and give you a job, and within a couple of years you’ve muscled your way into the partnership. Now you’re running the business with a high hand. I suppose next thing I know, I’ll be working for you.”
I said, “You may as well sit down. It sounds as though you’re going to be here for a while.”
She made no move to sit down. I walked over, stretched myself out on the bed once more, moved up an ash tray. Apparently Bertha had no slightest idea that Roberta Fenn was in the next room.
“You’re damn right I’m going to be here for a while,” Bertha said. “I’m going to stay right with you from now on — until we get this thing cleaned up. If I have to, I’ll handcuff you to me. Now you put through a call to Mr. Hale in New Orleans and tell him where you are, tell him you came on here for a conference, that you didn’t have time to notify him because it was too important, that you just got in. Try and square yourself and the agency the best way you can.”
I continued to smoke without making any move toward the telephone.
“Did you hear me?”
“Yes.”
“Are you going to do it?”
“No.”
Bertha walked over to the telephone, jerked the receiver up, said to the operator, “Mr. Lam wants to talk with Emory G. Hale in New Orleans. You’ll find him at the Monteleone Hotel. It’s a person-to-person call. He’ll talk with no one else... What’s that?... Yes, I’m — yes, I know. It’s Mr. Lam’s room. He wants to talk... Yes, of course he’s here.”
She held the phone so tight I could see the skin stretched white across her knuckles. She said, “Very well,” and turned to me.
I said, “What is it?”
“They want you to okay the call.”
I made no move toward the telephone.
She shoved the instrument at me. “Okay that call”
I continued to smoke.
“You mean you aren’t going to?”
“That’s right.”
She slammed the receiver back into its cradle so hard that I looked for the instrument to fly to pieces. “Of all the damned exasperating bastards! Of all the ill-mannered, impudent—” Her voice rose almost to a scream, then choked in her throat.
“May as well sit down. Bertha.”
She stood looking down at me for a moment, then said abruptly, “Now listen, lover, don’t be like that. Bertha gets excited, but it’s because she’s been worried about you. Bertha thought something had happened and someone had put a bullet in you.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Sorry! You never even bothered to send me a wire. You — now listen, lover, Bertha doesn’t like to get like this. You’ve got me terribly nervous.”
“Sit down and you’ll get over being so nervous.”
She walked over to the chair and sat down.
“Help yourself to a cigarette,” I said. “It will steady your nerves.”
“Why did you leave New Orleans?” she asked after a minute or two.
“I thought we should have a conference.”
“What about?”
“I’ll tell you when you’ve quieted down.”
“Tell me now, Donald.”
“No, not now.”
“Why?”
“You’re too excited.”
“I’m not excited.”
“Wait until I can see that you’re really enjoying your cigarette, and then we’ll talk.”
She settled back in the chair and went through the motions of relaxing. But her eyes were still hard and angry.
I waited until she had puffed her way to the end of the cigarette.
“Going to tell me now?”
“Have another cigarette.”
She sat there, glowering at me. “I suppose it all gets back to the fact that money doesn’t man a damn thing to you. You’ve never had the responsibilities of running a business. Just because we’ve been lucky with the first few partnership cases doesn’t mean that—”
“Haven’t we been all over that before?” I interrupted.
She started to get up out of the chair, then, halfway up, dropped back again.
She didn’t say anything, and neither did I. We sat there in silence for nearly fifteen minutes. Finally Bertha took another cigarette. She started it off with a deep drag.
“All right, lover,” she said, “let’s talk.”
“What did you find out about that old murder case?” I asked.
“Donald, why did you want to know about that?”
I said, “I think it has something to do with what happened in New Orleans.”
“Well, I haven’t been able to get anything on it yet. I’ve got some people working on it. I should know by tomorrow afternoon.”
“How about newspaper clippings?”
“I told Elsie Brand to go down to the library and copy stuff from the files of the newspapers. Donald, you’ve simply got to get busy and find that girl.”
“Which one?”
“Roberta Fenn.”
“I found her once.”
“Well, find her twice,” Bertha said with a flash of temper.
“I’m worried about Hale.”
“What about him?”
“He’s carrying water on both shoulders.”
“Now you listen to me, Donald Lam. We aren’t conducting a society to purify the motives of our clients. We’re running a detective agency. We’re trying to make money out of it. If a client comes to me and says he wants to find someone, and puts up the money, it’s the money that really does the talking.”
“So I gathered.”
“And that’s business.”
“Perhaps.”
“Oh, I know it isn’t your way. You go around charging windmills. You think that just because we’re running a detective agency, we’re supposed to be knights of the Round Table. You find damsels in distress and fall for them, and they fall for you, and—”
“But I’m still worried about Hale.”
“So am I. I’m afraid he’s not going to pay us our bonus.”
“Didn’t you put the agreement in writing?”
“Well — well, there’s a chance he might squirm out of it on a technicality — just a technicality, you understand. What worries you about him?”
I said, “Let’s look at it this way. Hale came from New York. He hired us in Los Angeles to find a girl in New Orleans. It was absurdly easy to find her.”
“But Hale didn’t know that,” she said.
“The hell he didn’t. Hale knew exactly where she was living. He could have put his finger on her at any moment. He’d been out with her just before he came to see us.”
“That may not mean anything.”
I said, “All right, we’ll pass that and go on to something else.”
She said, “Nix on that stuff, Donald. That’s what Hale said he wouldn’t stand for.”
“Why did he say that?”
“I don’t know. Probably because he didn’t want to be bothered by having us waste our time and his money on a lot of foolishness.”
I said, “We found Roberta. You were to go and see her the next morning. Hale was supposed to be in New York. He wasn’t in New York. He was in New Orleans.”