‘Lam,’ I said. ‘Donald Lam.’
‘Yes, yes, Mr. Lam. I’m certainly glad to meet you, and it was very nice of you to come out, very nice indeed. Now tell me, Mr. Lam, you’re working for — what was the name, Fred?’
‘Bertha Cool — the Cool Detective Agency.’
‘Oh yes. You’re working for the Cool Detective Agency.’
I nodded.
‘How long have you been with them?’
‘Not very long.’
‘Find it congenial employment?’ he asked.
‘So far.’
‘Yes, yes. I dare say it’s a nice opening for a young man, plenty of opportunities to use intelligence, ingenuity, and quick wit. I would say there was quite an opportunity to work up. I think you’ve displayed very commendable judgment, very commendable judgment, indeed, in getting into work of that kind.You look alert and intelligent.’
‘Thank you,’ I said.
His head bobbed up and down, the fat on his neck washboarding into wrinkles, and the coarse hair on the back of his neck bristled and wriggled like the hairs on a flexible brush.
‘Now when did you see Morgan Birks last?’ he bubbled.
‘I make my reports to Mrs. Cool,’ I said.
‘Yes, yes, of course. How careless of me!’
A door opened, and a big woman came in. She wasn’t fat, just big; broad-shouldered, big-hipped, and tall. She was dressed in a gown which showed the gleaming skin across her broad shoulders, the sweep of her heavy neck, the well-muscled arms.
‘Well, well, well,’ the fat man said. ‘Here’s little woman! So glad you could drop in on us, Madge. I was just asking Mr. Lam about Morgan Birks. Pet, this is Donald Lam. He’s a detective, working with the — what was that name, Fred?’
‘The Cool Detective Agency.’
‘Oh yes. Working with the Cool Detective Agency,’ the fat man said. ‘And what’s the name of the woman that runs it, Fred?’
‘Bertha Cool.’
‘Yes, yes, that’s right. Bertha Cool. Sit down, m’love, and see what you make of it. Mr. Lam, this is my wife.’
I knew I was in a jam. Sometimes a man doesn’t lose anything by being polite, no matter how the cards are stacked. I got to my feet, and bowed from the waist. ‘I am very pleased to meet you,’ I said, and tried to make my voice sound as though I meant it.
She didn’t say a word.
‘Sit down, Lam. Sit down,’ the fat man said. ‘You’ve doubtless had a hard day. You detectives have quite a bit of running around to do. Now, let’s see, Lam. Where were we — oh yes, you’d been given papers to serve on Morgan Birks, hadn’t you?’
‘I think you’d better get in touch with Mrs. Cool if you want to find out about these things.’
‘Cool — Cool? Oh yes, the woman who runs the detective agency. Well, that’s a splendid idea, Lam, but you see, we’re a bit pressed for time, and we don’t know just where the lady is. But you’re here, and doubtless you have the information.’
I didn’t say anything.
‘Well, now,’ the fat man said, ‘I hope you’re not going to be obstinate, Mr. Lam. I certainly do hope you’re not going to be obstinate.’
I remained silent. The man with the battered face moved a step closer.
‘Now just a minute, Fred,’ the chief said. ‘Don’t get impulsive. Let’s let Mr. Lam tell this in his own way. Don’t bother to interrupt him. Don’t try to hurry him. Now let’s just begin at the beginning, Mr. Lam.’
I said courteously, ‘Would you mind telling me just what you want to know, and why you want to know it?’
‘Now that’s the spirit,’ the chief said, beaming all over his face, his little protruding gray eyes looking for all the world as though they’d been crowded out by the layers of fat which had been deposited on his cheeks. ‘That’s exactly the spirit! We’ll tell you anything you want to know, and you tell us what we want to know. You see, Mr. Lam, we’re business men. We’ve been associated with Morgan Birks, and Morgan Birks has certain — well, you might call them liabilities — certain obligations to us. We don’t want him to forget those obligations. We’re anxious to see that he’s reminded of them. Now you’re employed to serve papers, and we wouldn’t interfere with that for anything on earth, would we, Fred? Would we, John? That’s right. The boys agree with me. We wouldn’t interfere with your work at all, Mr. Lam; but after your work is finished, we want to know where Mr. Birks is.’
‘Well,’ I said, ‘I see no reason why I can’t help you — if Mrs. Cool says it’s all right. Of course, she’s my boss, and I wouldn’t want to do anything without her.’
The tall man said, ‘You’d better let Fred soften him up a bit, Chief. From all we can figure, things are getting hot. It looks as though he’d expected Morgan Birks at the Perkins Hotel. The whole gang moved in there. Sandra Birks, her brother who came out from the East — and had his nose broken in an automobile accident — a bird who said at the desk his name was Holoman, who doesn’t figure in the picture anywhere that we can see, Alma Hunter, Bertha Cool, and this guy. He took Bertha Cool out of the hotel and put her in a taxicab. He was turning around to go back to the hotel when we picked him up.’
The chief said, ‘You’d better tell us, Mr. Lam, because it’s really important to us, and sometimes my boys get impulsive. No one deplores it more than I do, but you know how boys are. They just will be boys!’
‘I think Mrs. Cool would gladly co-operate with you,’ I said, ‘if you’d get in touch with her. And I think she has information that would be available to you. You understand, she’s in the business of getting information and selling it to clients.’
‘That’s right, so she is,’ the fat man said. ‘Well now, that’s a thought! It is, for a fact! I’ll have to take that up with the little woman. What do you think of it, m’love?’
The big woman didn’t change expression by the twitching of a muscle. Her hard, cold eyes looked at me as though I’d been a specimen under a microscope. ‘Soften him up,’ she said.
The big man nodded.
Fred shot out his arm with the speed of a striking snake. His fingers hooked around the knot in my necktie, twisted it until it started choking me. He pulled on the necktie, and I came up out of the chair as though I hadn’t weighed fifty pounds. ‘Stand up,’ he said. His right hand swung up from his hips so that the heel of his palm pushed the tip of my nose back into r my face and sent tears squirting out of my eyes. ‘Sit down,’ he said.
Under the impact of that hand, I went down like a sack of meal. ‘Stand up,’ he said, and his hand on my necktie brought; me up.
I tried to get my hands up to block the heel of his hand as it came for my sore nose. He speeded up the punch just a little and beat me to it. ‘Sit down,’ he said.
I felt that the whole front of my face was coming off.
‘Stand up.’
‘Sit down.’
‘Stand up.’
‘Sit down.’
‘Stand up.’
‘Sit down.’
‘Talk.’
He stepped back a pace and let go of me.
‘Talk,’ he repeated, ‘and don’t take too long about it.’ His face was expressionless. His voice held a note of impersonal boredom as though he’d been softening people until it had become a routine chore, and he felt aggrieved about being called upon to perform it after five o’clock.
‘That’s right,’ the fat man said, nodding and smiling affably. ‘You see, Fred’s right, Mr. Lam. When he says stand up, you stand up. When he says sit down, you sit down. Now then, when he says talk, you talk.’
I groped for my handkerchief. There was blood trickling from my nose down the front of my face.