“Yes, yes,” she said. “I understand it. You’re so nice! I knew I could depend on you.”
“Nix on it,” I said. “Get busy. On your way. Don’t try to call me here. Call me at the agency. Don’t call me while you’re under surveillance or from the police station. If it comes to a showdown, you can tell them that you know me and intended to look me up later. You didn’t give your name to Elsie Brand, did you?”
“Who’s Elsie Brand?”
“The office girl in the agency.”
“No, I just told her I was a friend of yours.”
I pushed her out into the corridor, patted her shoulder, and said, “Good luck, kid. On your way.”
I waited until I heard her go down the stairs and slam the outer door. I was a little afraid the landlady might try to question her.
After the front door slammed, I walked out to the telephone booth in the corridor and called the agency office. Elsie Brand answered.
“Bertha gone home yet?” I asked.
“No, she’s just leaving.”
“Tell her to wait. Tell her I’m coming up. It’s important.”
“All right. Did some girl get in touch with you?”
“A girl?”
“Yes. She said she was an old friend of yours. She didn’t give her name. She sounded on the up and up, and I told her where you lived.”
“All right. Thanks, Elsie. Tell Bertha I’ll be right up.”
I hung up the telephone, went back to my room, and dressed. I got the motor started on the agency car and no fought the afternoon traffic getting up to the office. It was ten minutes to six when I walked in.
Elsie Brand had gone home. Bertha Cool was waiting. She said, “For Pete’s sake, Donald, don’t sleep all day, and then make me stay in the office all evening. What is it you want?”
“Heard anything from Smith?” I asked.
Her face beamed. “Yes, lover,” she said. “He was in. He left me a very substantial deposit.”
“How long ago?” I asked.
“Not over half an hour ago. He seemed very, very nice. But he certainly is nervous.”
“Exactly what did he want?” I asked.
“He didn’t say anything about the political situation,” she said, “but I could read between the lines. He said that he wanted us to keep on trying to find Mrs. Lintig, that he was in some other difficulties and was going to need our services, that he wanted to be certain we’d be on the job. You made a fine impression on him, Donald. He said particularly he wanted you to work on his case. He thinks you’re very smart.”
“How much did he leave?” I asked.
Bertha said cautiously, “It was a nice little sum, Donald.”
“How much?”
“What the hell?” she said with sudden belligerency. “I’m running this agency.”
“How much?” I asked.
She met my eyes and clamped her chin shut. I said, “Kick through, Bertha. There s more to this than you realize. He wants me to work on his case. You’ll be in a fix if you and I part company now.”
“We’re not going to part company, lover.”
“That’s what you think.”
She thought things over for a while, and then said, “A thousand dollars.”
“I thought so. Now, I want you to come with me.”
“Where?”
“We’re going to call on Evaline Harris,” I said.
“Oh, that jane.”
“Uh-huh.”
“You could do more with her alone, Donald,”
“I don’t think so. I think this is the time when it needs your fine Italian hand.”
“Sometimes my hand gets pretty rough,” she said.
“Okay, come on.”
She said, “Donald, what’s got into you? What’s all the rush about? Why are you so nervous?”
“I’ve been thinking,” I said.
“Well,” she admitted grudgingly, “that’s one thing you can do.” She got up, crossed over to the closet which held the washstand, and started powdering her face and putting on lipstick. I paced the floor impatiently, looking at my watch from time to time. “Did Dr. Alftmont say when he’d arrived in town or when he was going back?” I asked.
“He asked us particularly not to refer to him as Dr. Alftmont, Donald. He said in our office conversation and in memos we must refer to him as Mr. Smith.”
“All right. Did he say when he’d come in or when he was going back?”
“No.”
“Was he wearing a double-breasted, grey suit?”
“Yes.”
“Did he say what he’d come to town for?”
“He said he’d been thinking over your visit this morning and had decided to come down and apologize to me for his letter discharging us and leave some more money.”
I said, “All right. All right. Let’s go.”
“Donald, why are you in such a hurry?”
“I think Evaline Harris can tell us something.”
“Well, you’ve had all afternoon. Why get in such a stew now?”
“I was too tired to think clearly. I’ve just figured the thing out.”
“All right, lover. Let’s go.”
“And I want some expense money.”
“What? Again?”
“Yes.”
“My God, Donald, I can’t—”
I said, “Listen, this is going to be a big case, one of the biggest you’ve ever handled. That thousand dollars is just a drop in the bucket.”
“Well, I wish I shared your optimism.”
“You don’t have to, just so I share your take.”
“You’re working for me, you know, Donald. I’m the agency. You aren’t a partner.”
“I know,” I said.
“You haven’t filed a complete expense account on that other yet.”
“I will.”
She sighed, crossed over to the cash drawer, took out twenty dollars, and handed it to me. I stood with the twenty dollars in my extended hand waiting, and, after a while, she handed me another twenty. I kept waiting, and she sighed, handed me ten more, slammed the drawer shut, and locked it. “You’re getting exalted ideas about your value,” she said.
I pushed the money down in my pocket, said, “Come on,” and tried to rush Bertha down to the agency car.
Trying to hurry Bertha Cool was just that much wasted effort. By the time we got to the agency car, I’d used up enough nervous energy to have gone to Evaline Harris’s place and back, and I hadn’t made a fraction of a second’s difference in Bertha Cool’s schedule. She did everything at a certain rate of speed, like a truck that has a governor on the motor.
I slid in behind the wheel, feeling used up. Bertha pulled the body way over on its springs as she hoisted her bulk into the car and settled back against the dilapidated cushions.
I rattled the motor into noise, eased out the clutch, and slid out of the parking lot. Bertha Cool said, “It’s still a pretty good car, isn’t it, lover?”
I didn’t say anything.
It was the slack hour in the business district, and I made time to Evaline Harris’s apartment house. A whole flock of machines were parked out in front of the place. The machines had the red spotlights of police cars. I pretended not to notice them. Bertha Cool did. She looked at me a couple of times, but didn’t say anything.
I led the way to the apartment house and said, “I think it’ll be a good plan to ring the manager. In that way we can work a stall and go up to the apartment unannounced.”
I rang the manager’s bell. Nothing happened. I rang it a couple more times.
A press car came rolling up and double-parked. A photographer with a Speed Graphic and synchronized flash bulb jumped out and ran up the steps. A slender man with the hard-boiled look of a metropolitan reporter came behind him. They tried the door. It was locked. The reporter looked at me and said, “You live here?”