The voice on the other side of the door said, “I’ll have a look at you first.”
The bolt turned, a chain rattled, and the door swing back about three inches, leaving a crack just big enough for a pair of dark, sparkling eyes to take in Bertha Cool’s big frame. Bertha moved her hand so the diamond glittered, and Frieda Tarbing rattled the chain loose, and said, “Come on in — good heavens, I didn’t know there was a man with you! Why didn’t you say so?”
Bertha Cool sailed on into the room and said, “Oh, that’s just Donald. Don’t mind him.”
Frieda Tarbing went back to the bed, kicked off her slippers, pulled the covers up, and said, “Find a couple of chairs that haven’t clothes on them. Perhaps you’d better close the windows.”
Her hair was too dark to be brown. It wasn’t exactly black. Her eyes were alert, curious, and bubbling with life. She’d wakened from a sound sleep looking as fresh as though she’d just come back from a morning walk. It was a face that could get by anywhere. She said, “All right. What is it?”
I said, “My aunt has just rented an apartment at the Key West Apartments.”
“What’s your aunt’s name?”
“Mrs. Amelia Lintig.”
“Where do I come in?”
I said, “My aunt is a widow. She has a lot of money and very little sense. A man who intends to grab off all her cash is making a play for her. I want to put a stop to it.”
The eyes looked me over without any particular enthusiasm. She said, “I see. You’re a relative. You hope that some day auntie will kick off and leave you the dough. In the meantime, she wants to play around and use it up. You don’t like that. Is that right?”
“That,” I said, “is not right. I don’t ever want a dime of her money. I just want her to be sure what she’s getting into. If she wants to marry this fellow on her own, that’s all right by me. But apparently he’s blackmailing her. He has something on her. I don’t know what it is. Probably it’s something serious. I think he’s convinced her that she could be called as a witness against him or he could be called as a witness against her on some kind of a criminal action, but I wouldn’t be knowing about it.”
“What do you want me to do?”
“Listen in on her telephone tomorrow morning.”
“Nothing doing.”
I said, “You listen in on the switchboard when she talks with this chap. If they’re billing and cooing, that’s quite all right by me. I step out of the picture. But if he’s holding something over her head or talking about a crime, I want to know about it. There’s one hundred bucks in it for you.”
“That,” she admitted, “is different. How do I know there’s a hundred bucks in it for me?”
“Because,” I said, “you get the hundred bucks right now. It’s easier for us to take a chance on you than for you to take a chance on us.”
She said, “It would cost me my job if anyone knew about it.”
“No one,” I said, “will ever know about it.”
“What do you want me to do?”
“Just notify me when she calls this man. If it’s a mushy conversation, I step out of the picture. If it’s blackmail, I want to put the cards on the table with her and say, `Look here, Aunt Amelia, you give me the lowdown on this before you do anything rash. ’”
Frieda Tarbing laughed, extended her hand, and said, “Gimme.”
I said to Bertha Cool, “Give her a hundred.”
Bertha, looking as though she had a mouthful of vinegar, opened her handbag, counted out a hundred dollars, and handed the bills over to Frieda Tarbing.
“When you see me,” I said, “don’t let on that you know me.”
She said, “Say, listen, if you think I’m that dumb, maybe I’d better coach you a bit. This is absolutely between us. I need the hundred bucks, but I need my job, too. Don’t make any dumb plays. The day clerk has been making passes at me, didn’t get to first base, and is just looking for a chance to trip me up on something.”
I said, “It’ll be okay. I’m going in to see Aunt Amelia early in the morning. When I go out, I’ll slip you a note with a number on it. When you get the dope, call me at that number. If the conversation sounds like a mushy, romantic one, you simply say, ‘You’ve lost that bet.’ If it sounds as though there s a crime mixed up in it, say, ‘You’ve won your bet.’ ”
“Okay,” she said. “Open that window as you go out, and switch out the light. I’m going to get another forty winks before the alarm goes off. Bye-bye.”
She rolled up the bills, shoved them in the pillow-case, and straightened out on the bed.
I opened the window, then the door. Bertha Cool switched off the lights. We went out into the corridor, and Bertha Cool said, “Think of having a disposition like that at this hour in the morning. Donald, if you want to take the advice of one who has seen something of the world, go marry that girl before someone else beats you to it.”
I said, “I’ve heard of goofier ideas, at that.”
“What do we do now?” Bertha asked.
I said, “We go back to the taxi. I go out to the Key West Apartments and keep the operatives on the job to make certain nothing slips. You go back to your apartment and grab a little sleep. I don’t dare to show up around the office because they’ll nab me on that hit-and-run charge. You stay away from that office appointment with the cops. Show up at the Key West about nine or nine-thirty, and we’ll go in and have a talk with Aunt Amelia.”
“What are we going to talk about?” Bertha asked.
I said, “I think I know the words, but I don’t know the music — yet. I’ll have to think it over. Keeping a watch on that apartment house will give me a chance to think.”
We climbed in the taxi, and I told the driver to take me to the Key West, and then take Bertha to her apartment.
As we were rolling along, Bertha said, “Do you think she’s going to skip out tonight, Donald?”
“No. Not one chance in a hundred, but we can’t afford to gamble on one chance in a thousand.”
Bertha Cool said, “Are you telling me,” and settled back against the seat cushions.
The cab driver deposited me at the Key West Apartments. I said good-bye to Bertha Cool and walked over to sit with the operative who was watching the front of the apartment house.
He was a man about fifty-five with twinkling blue eyes, a face like a cherub, and a detailed knowledge of underworld graft and corruption that made the ordinary racket sound like a Sunday school picnic. He’d worked with the government for fifteen years, and I listened to him talk until daylight showed in the east. The palm trees in front of the Key West Apartments began to take colour, and a mocking-bird started pouring its song into the dawn.
I’d heard all I wanted of prostitutes, dope fiends, pimps, and gamblers. I said, “If your insides are as cold as mine, you’ll want some hot coffee.”
I could almost see him start to drool at the mention of the coffee.
I said, “You’ll find an all-night restaurant down the street three blocks, to the left two blocks. It’s a little joint, but you can get good coffee there. I’ll sit here and watch. Don’t be in a hurry. This is a slack time. If she’d been skipping, she’d have made a break earlier.”
“That’s damn white of you,” he said.
“Don’t mention it.”
He climbed out of the car and stamped his feet to get circulation in them. I settled back on the cushions and quit thinking about the case, about murders, criminals, politics, frame-ups. I watched the east get brassy, saw the sun come up and send its first rays, turning the white stucco of the apartment house into a golden glow.
After a while the mocking-birds quit singing. I saw people beginning to move around in the apartment house, windows being closed, curtains being pulled.