Bertha Cool locked the desk, dropped the key in her purse, got to her feet, and said, “Don’t bother about taking me home, Donald. I’ll go in a cab.”
She walked across the office with us with that peculiar, effortless walk of hers which seemed as smooth as the progress of a yacht on a calm sea. Bertha never waddled. She didn’t make a hard job of walking. She moved with short steps, never hurrying herself, but keeping up a steady pace regardless of whether it was hot or cold, up’ hill or down.
When we were in a restaurant, Marian said, “I think she’s wonderful, Donald. She seems so competent, so self-reliant.”
“She is,” I said.
“She looks hard, though.”
“You don’t know how hard,” I said. “And now, let’s talk about you.”
“What about me?”
“Why did you leave Oakview?”
“To see Evaline Harris, of course.”
“Did you tell your uncle that?”
“No. I told him I wanted to take a part of my vacation.”
“I thought he’d gone fishing.”
“He came back.”
“When did he come back?”
She puckered her forehead and said, “Let me see. It was — it was right after you left.”
“How long afterwards?”
“Just a couple of hours.”
“And you started for the city as soon as he got back?”
“Yes.”
I said, “All right. Now, where do you fit into the picture?”
“What do you mean?”
“You know what I mean. You said that if I wanted to pool information with you, you’d put in with me, that if I didn’t you were going on your own.”
She said, “You know all about that.”
“All about what?”
“About how I felt. I want to get out of that newspaper. I want to get out of Oakview. I knew that you were a detective—”
“How did you know?”
“I’m not blind,” she said. “You had to be a detective. You were working for someone. You were trying to get information, and you weren’t simply trying to look up a bad credit or collect a bill — not after twenty-one years.”
“All right, go ahead.”
“Well, I knew you were a detective, and I knew Mrs. Lintig was mixed up in something big. There’s been too much interest in her, and I figured you got that black eye because of trying to find out about her. So I figured if she was that important, it would be a good chance for me, being on the ground, to get in on the ground floor, use my acquaintanceship in Oakview to find out what it was everyone was after, and find out who you were working for, go to your boss with the information, and see if I couldn’t get a job.”
“What kind of a job?” I asked curiously.
“Being a detective. They have woman detectives, don’t they?”
I said, “You were going to ask Bertha Cool to give you a job as a detective?”
“Yes. Of course I didn’t know anything about Bertha Cool at the time. I didn’t know who your boss was. I thought probably it was one of the big agencies or something like that.”
“What do you know about being a detective?”
“I’ve had to do reporting up there in Oakview, and even if it is a little paper in a one-horse country town, you have to have a nose for news to get by. I’m ambitious and — well, they can’t rule you off the track for trying.”
I said, “Forget it. Go back to Oakview and marry Charlie. By the way, how is Charlie?”
“All right,” she said, avoiding my eyes.
“What did he think of you leaving Oakview and coming to the city to get a job being a detective?”
“He didn’t know anything about it.”
I kept watching her, and she, feeling my eyes on hers, kept looking at the tablecloth. I said, “I hope you’re telling me the truth.”
She raised her eyes then in a quick flash, and said, “Oh, but I am.” Then she lowered her eyes again.
A waiter took our orders, and brought food. Marian didn’t say anything until after she’d finished her soup, then she pushed the plate away, and said, “Donald, do you suppose she’d give me a job?”
“Who?”
“Why, Mrs. Cool, of course.”
“She has a secretary,” I said.
“I mean as a detective.”
“Don’t be silly, Marian. You couldn’t be a detective.”
“Why not?”
“You don’t know enough about the world. You have ideals. You — it’s silly to even think of it. Bertha Cool takes all sorts of cases, divorce cases particularly.”
“I know the facts of life,” Marian Dunton said indignantly.
I said, “No, you don’t. You just think you do. What’s more, you’d feel like a heel. You’d have shadowing jobs. You’d be snooping around, peeking through keyholes, digging down into the muddy dregs of life — things you shouldn’t know anything about.”
“You talk like a poet, Donald,” she said, and tilted her head slightly on one side as she looked at me. “There’s something poetic about you, too,” she went on. “You have that sensitive mouth, big, dark eyes.”
I said, “Oh, nuts.”
The waiter brought our salads.
I kept looking at her, and she kept avoiding my eyes. I waited for her to talk, and she didn’t feel like talking. After a while she looked up at me and said, “Donald, do you know that man who was coming from Evaline Harris’s apartment?”
Her eyes held mine then, steady and searching.
I said, “That’s what comes of being coached by the police.”
“What do you mean?”
“When you told me about it the first time, you didn’t say that he was coming from that apartment. You said he was coming down the corridor.”
“Well, he came out of an apartment.”
“But you didn’t know that it was Evaline Harris’s apartment.”
“It must have been.”
“Do you think so?”
“Yes.”
“Do you know that it was her apartment?”
“Well — well, not exactly, but it must have been, Donald.”
I said, “Tomorrow, after things have quieted down, we’ll go up to that apartment house. You come out of the elevator. I’ll stand in the doorway of apartment 309 and step out into the corridor just as you leave the elevator. Then we’ll try it with the other two doorways.”
She squinted her eyes thoughtfully and said, “Yes, it might work. Perhaps Mr. Ellis would like to have me do that for him.”
“Who’s Ellis?”
“Larchmont Ellis, the deputy district attorney.”
“No. He won’t want you to do that for him until after he’s talked with you a couple of times more. By that time, you’ll be positive the man was coming out of 309. Then he’ll put on the demonstration to clinch it in your mind.”
She said, “He wouldn’t do anything like that. He wants to be fair. He’s a very nice young man.”
I said, “Yeah, I know.”
The waiter brought on our meat course, and after he had left, she said, “Donald, I’ve got to get a room.”
“Did the district attorney tell you where you were to stay?”
“No. He said to report at ten o’clock in the morning.”
I said, “Look here. I want to keep in touch with you. I don’t want to have you hunting me up or running to the agency office, and I don’t want to be going to your hotel. Let’s go to my rooming-house. I’ll tell the landlady you’re related to me, and ask her to give you a room. I think she has a vacancy. In that way, I can see you once in a while without arousing suspicion.”
“Donald, I think that would be swell.”
“It’s not like a hotel,” I said. “It’s just a rooming-house, and—”
“I know,” she said.
I said, “We’ll go up right after dinner. I have some work to do, and I’ll get you settled first.”
“But I thought you didn’t have to work. I thought Mrs. Cool said—”