Chapter I

The sign on the door said Cool & Lam, Confidential Investigations. But the blind man couldn’t see the sign. The elevator starter had given him the room number, and the tapping cane, starting with the first door at the corner of the corridor, had patiently counted the doors until the frail, bony silhouette was etched in black against the frosted glass of the entrance office.

Elsie Brand looked up from her typewriting, saw the thin, old man, the heavy, dark glasses, the striped cane, and the tray with the neckties, the lead pencils, and the tin cup. Her fingers ceased pounding the keyboard.

The blind man spoke before she had a chance to say anything. “Mrs. Cool.”

“Busy.”

“I’ll wait.”

“It won’t do any good.”

For a moment, the man seemed puzzled; then a wan smile tugged at the hollowed cheeks. “It’s about business,” he said, and after a half-second, added, “I have money.”

Elsie Brand said, “That’s different.” She reached for the telephone, thought better of it, kicked her chair back from the typewriter desk, swivelled around, said, “Wait a minute,” and crossed the office to open the door marked B. Cool, Private.

Bertha Cool, somewhere in the fifties, a hundred and sixty-five pounds of cold realism, sat in the big swivel chair at the desk and regarded Elsie Brand with grey-eyed skepticism.

“Well, what is it?”

“A blind man.”

“Young or old?”

“Old. A street vendor with a tray of neckties, a tin cup, and—”

“Throw him out.”

“He wants to see you — on business.”

“Any money?”

“He says he has.”

“What sort of business?”

“He didn’t say.”

Bertha’s eyes glittered at Elsie Brand. “Show him in. What the hell are you standing there for? If he’s got business and he has money, what more do we want?”

Elsie said, “I just wanted to make certain,” and opened the door. “Come in,” she said to the blind man.

The cane tapped its way across the office, entered Bertha’s inner sanctum. Once inside the room, the man paused inquiringly, holding his head cocked slightly on one side, listening intently.

His keen ears caught the sound of some slight motion Bertha made. He turned toward her as though he could see her, bowed, and said, “Good morning, Mrs. Cool.”

“Sit down,” Bertha said. “Elsie get that chair out for him. That’s fine. That’s all, Elsie. Sit down, Mr. What’s your name?”

“Kosling. Rodney Kosling.”

“All right, sit down. I’m Bertha Cool.”

“Yes, I know. Where is the young man who works with you, Mrs. Cool? Donald Lam, I believe his name is.”

Bertha’s face became grimly savage. “Damn him!” she sputtered.

“Where is he?”

“In the Navy.”

“Oh.”

“He enlisted,” Bertha said. “I had things fixed so he was deferred — took a war contract just to have something that would beat the draft. Worked things slick as a whistle; got him classified as an indispensable worker in an essential industry — and then, the damn little runt goes and enlists in the Navy.”

“I miss him,” Kosling said simply.

Bertha frowned at him. “You miss him? I didn’t know that you knew him.”

He smiled slightly. “I think I know every one of the regulars.”

“What do you mean?”

“My station is down half a block in front of the bank building on the corner.”

“That’s right. Come to think of it, I’ve seen you there.”

“I know almost everyone that passes.”

“Oh,” Bertha said, “I see,” and laughed.

“No, no,” he corrected her hastily. “It isn’t that. I really am blind. It’s the steps I can tell.”

“You mean you can recognize the steps of different people out of a whole crowd?”

“Of course,” Kosling said simply. “People walk as distinctively as they do anything else. The length of steps, the rapidity of the steps, the little dragging of the heels, the— Oh, there are a dozen things. And then, of course, I occasionally hear their voices. Voices help a lot. You and Mr. Lam, for instance, were nearly always talking as you walked past. That is, you were. You were asking him questions about the cases he was working on when you’d go to work in the morning, and at night you’d be urging him to speed things up and get results for the clients. He rarely said much.”

“He didn’t need to,” Bertha grunted. “Brainiest little cuss I ever got hold of — but erratic. Going out and joining the Navy shows the crazy streak in him. All settled down with a deferred rating, making good money, just recently taken into the business as a full partner — and he goes and joins the Navy.”

“He felt his country needed him.”

Bertha said grimly, “And I feel that I need him.”

“I always liked him,” the blind man said. “He was thoughtful and considerate. Guess he was pretty well up against it when he started with you, wasn’t he?”

“He was so hungry,” Bertha said, “his belt buckle was cutting its initials in his backbone. I took him in, gave him a chance to earn a decent living; then he worked his way into the partnership, and then — and then he goes away and leaves me flat.”

Kosling’s voice was reminiscent. “Even when he was pretty well down on his luck, he’d always have a pleasant word for me. Then when he began to get a little money, he started dropping coins — but he never dropped coins when you were with him. When he dropped money, he wouldn’t speak to me.” The blind man smiled reminiscently, and then went on, “As though I didn’t know who he was. I knew his step as well as I knew his voice, but he thought it would embarrass me less if I didn’t know who was making the donation — as though a beggar had any pride left. When a man starts begging, he takes money from anyone who will give it to him.”

Bertha Cool straightened up behind the desk. “All right,” she said crisply. “Speaking of money, what do you want?”

“I want you to find a girl.”

“Who is she?”

“I don’t know her name.”

“What does she look like? Oh, I’m sorry.”

“It’s all right,” the blind man said. “Here’s all I know about her. She works within a radius of three blocks from here. It’s a well-paid job. She’s about twenty-five or twenty-six. She’s slender, weighs about a hundred and six or a hundred and seven pounds, and is about five feet four inches tall.”

“How do you know all that?” Bertha asked.

“My ears tell me.”

“Your ears don’t tell you where she works,” Bertha said.

“Oh yes, they do.”

“I’ll bite,” Bertha said. “What’s the gag?”

“No gag. I always know what time it is on the hour. There’s a clock that chimes the hours.”

“What’s that got to do with it?”

“She’d walk past me anywhere from five minutes of nine to about three minutes of nine. When she walked by about three minutes of nine, she’d be walking fast. At five minutes of nine, she’d be walking more slowly. The jobs that start at nine o’clock are the better class of jobs. Most stenographic jobs in the district start at eight-thirty. I can tell about how old she is from her voice; how tall she is from the length of her steps; and what she weighs from the sound of her feet on the sidewalk. You’d be surprised at what your ears will tell you when you really learn to rely on them.”

Bertha Cool thought that over for a moment, then said, “Yes, I guess so.”

“When you go blind,” Kosling explained, “you either feel that you’re shut away from the world, can’t take part in life, and lose interest in it; or you keep an interest in life, and decide you’re going to get along with what you have, and make the best of it. You’ve probably noticed that people know a lot about the things they’re interested in.”

Bertha Cool detoured the opportunity to discuss philosophy and brought the subject back to dollars and cents. “Why do you want me to find this girl? Why can’t you find her yourself?”

“She was hurt in an automobile accident at the street intersection. It was about a quarter to six in the evening, last Friday. She’d been working late at the office, I think, and was hurrying as she walked past me. Perhaps she had a date and was in a hurry to get home and get her clothes changed. I don’t think she’d taken over two steps off the curb when I heard the scream of tyres, a thud, and then the girl cried out in pain. I heard people running. A man’s voice asked her if she was hurt, and she laughed and said no; but she was badly scared and shaken up. He insisted that she go to a hospital for a check-up. She refused. Finally she said she’d let him give her a lift. When she was getting in the car, she said her head hurt and that perhaps it would be well to be examined by a doctor. She didn’t come back Saturday, and she wasn’t back Monday. This is Tuesday, and she isn’t back today. I want you to find her.”

“What’s your interest in her?” Bertha asked.

The blind man’s smile was benign. “You may put it down as a charitable impulse,” he said. “I make my living out of charity, and — well, perhaps this girl needs help.”

Bertha stared coldly at him. “I don’t make my living out of charity. It’s going to cost you ten dollars a day and a minimum of twenty-five dollars. If we don’t have any results when the twenty-five dollars is used up, you can decide whether you want to go ahead at ten dollars a day or not. The twenty-five dollars is payable in advance.”

The blind man opened his shirt, unbuckled his belt. “What is this?” Bertha asked. “A strip tease?”

“A money belt,” he explained.

Bertha watched him while he pushed a thumb and finger down into the well-filled pockets of a bulging money belt. He brought out a thick package of folded bills, took one from the outside, and handed it to Bertha. “Just give me the change,” he said. “Never mind the receipt.”

It was a one-hundred-dollar bill.

“Have you,” Bertha asked, “got anything smaller?”

The blind man answered her with a single monosyllable. “No.”

Bertha Cool opened her purse, took out a key, unlocked a drawer in her desk, pulled out a steel cash box, slipped a key from a cord around her neck, opened the cash box, and took out seven ten-dollar bills and a five.

“How and where do you want your reports?” she asked.

“I want them made orally,” he said, “since I can’t read. Just stop by the bank building and report progress. Lean over and speak in a low voice. Be careful no one’s listening. You can pretend you’re looking at a necktie.”

“Okay,” Bertha said.

The blind man got up, picked up his cane, and, with the tip, explored his way to the door. Abruptly he stopped, turned, and said, “I’ve partially retired. If the weather isn’t nice, I won’t be working.”

Chapter II

Bertha Cool glared down at Elsie Brand, taking her indignation out on the stenographer.

“Can you beat that?” she demanded. “The guy pulls open his shirt, unbuttons his pants, and has a money belt wrapped around him that looks like a spare tyre. He opens one of the pockets, pulls out a bunch of bills, and peels off one. It’s a century. I ask him has he got anything smaller, and he says no.”

Elsie Brand seemed to see nothing peculiar about that.

“A guy,” Bertha Cool said, “who sits down on the sidewalk, doesn’t have to pay any rent, has no taxes, no employees, and doesn’t have to make out a lot of social security reports. He has a money belt strapped around him that has a fortune in it. I have to change that hundred, and it takes damn near every cent in my cash box. And then,” and Bertha Cool’s voice rose to a high pitch of emotion, “and then, mind you, he turns around at the door and says that he won’t be working unless the weather is good. I’ve never been able to stay in bed on those cold, rainy mornings — or when there’s a damp, slimy fog. I get out and slosh my way up to the office, splashing around through puddles, getting my ankles soaking wet, and—”

“Yes,” Elsie Brand said, “I do the same thing. Only I have to get here an hour earlier than you do, Mrs. Cool, and if I had to change a hundred-dollar bill, I’d—”

“All right, all right,” Bertha Cool interrupted quickly, sensing that the conversation had turned on dangerous ground, and that Elsie Brand might be going to mention quite casually the high wages that were being paid government stenographers. “Never mind that end of it. Skip it. I just stopped by to tell you that I’m going to be out for a while. I’m going to find a girl who was hurt in an automobile accident.”

“Going to handle it yourself?” Elsie Brand asked.

Bertha Cool all but snorted. “Why should I pay an operative,” she asked, “to go out on a simple little thing like that? The girl was hurt when an automobile ran into her at the corner, last Friday night at a quarter to six. The man who ran into her took her to a hospital. All I’ve got to do is to drift down to the traffic department, get a report on the accident, take a streetcar out to the hospital, ask the girl how she’s feeling, and then report to this blind man.”

“And why does he want the information?” Elsie asked.

“Yes,” Bertha Cool said sarcastically, “why does he? He just wants to know where the little dear is, so he can send her flowers, because she brought sweetness and light into his life. He liked to hear her feet tripping along the sidewalk, and he misses her now she’s gone, so he pays me twenty-five bucks to find the little darling. Phooey!”

“You don’t believe it?” Elsie Brand asked.

“No,” Bertha said shortly. “I don’t believe it. I’m not the type. You might believe that it’s all being done for sweet charity. Bertha Cool doesn’t believe fairy stories. Bertha Cool believes twenty-five bucks. She’s going to earn it in just about an hour and a half. So if anyone comes in and wants anything, find out what it is and make an appointment for right after lunch — if it looks as though there’s any money in it. If it’s someone soliciting contributions for anything — and I don’t give a damn what it is — I’m out of town.”

Bertha strode across the office, slamming the door viciously behind her, noting with satisfaction that the keyboard of Elsie Brand’s typewriter exploded into noise almost before the door was closed.

At the traffic department, however, Bertha got her first jolt. There was no report whatever of an accident at that street intersection on the date and hour named.

“That’s a hell of a note,” Bertha complained to the man in charge of the records. “Here’s a man smacks into a girl, and you don’t know a thing about it.”

“Many times motorists fail to make reports,” the officer explained patiently. “We can’t make ’em. The law requires they must do so. Whenever there’s an officer within reasonable distance, he notes the licence number, and we check to see that the report is made out and filed by the motorist.”

“And you mean to say that at an intersection like this there wasn’t a traffic officer within earshot?”

“At that intersection,” the man explained, “the traffic officer goes off duty at five-forty, and walks two blocks over to the main boulevard to help handle traffic there. We’re shorthanded, and we have to do the best we can.”

“You listen to me,” Bertha Cool demanded. “I’m a taxpayer. I’m entitled to this information. I want it.”

“We’d like very much to help you get it.”

“Well, how am I going to find out about it?”

“You might call the hospitals and ask them if a patient was received for an examination sometime between six and seven o’clock last Friday night. I take it, you can describe the patient?”

“Generally.”

“You know her name?”

“No.”

The traffic officer shook his head. “Well, you might try it.”

Bertha tried it, sweating in the confines of a telephone booth, reluctantly dropping coins into a pay telephone. After having expended thirty-five cents, her patience was worn thin. She had explained and re-explained, only to be told, “Just a moment,” and connected with some other department to whom she had to explain all over again.

At the end of her list she was out thirty-five cents and had no information, which hardly improved her irascible disposition.

Chapter III

Traffic rumbled past the busy intersection at the corner. Pedestrians returning from lunch streamed across the street in intermittent rivulets of moving humanity. The bells on the automatic block signals clanged with monotonous regularity at fixed intervals. Occasional streetcars grinding past to the accompaniment of clanging gongs added to the noise of automobile traffic, the clashing of gears, the sound of engines as they were intermittently speeded up or braked to a stop.

The day was warm and sunny, and the smell of exhaust gases clung to the concrete canyon of the streets in a sticky vapour.

Kosling sat in a little patch of shade in front of the bank building, his legs doubled under him, his stock of neckties displayed in a tray suspended by a strap from his shoulders. Over on the left on a smaller tray were the lead pencils. At occasional intervals a coin jangled into the tin cup. Less frequently someone stopped to look at the assortment of ties.

Kosling knew his merchandise by a sense of touch and a keen memory for its position on the tray. “Now this tie is very nice for a young man, madam,” he would proclaim, touching a vivid bit of red silk, splashed with white and crossed with black stripes. “Over here is something very nice in a deep blue, and here’s a checkered effect which would make a splendid gift. Here’s something that goes very nicely with a sport outfit, and—”

He broke off as his ears heard the pound of Bertha Cool’s determined feet on the sidewalk.

“Yes, ma’am, I think you’ll be satisfied with that one. Yes, ma’am, fifty cents is all. Just drop it in the cup, please. Thank you.”

Because the man couldn’t see he didn’t look up as Bertha bent over the tray. “Well?” he asked.

Bertha bent down. “No progress,” she said, “as yet.”

The blind man sat patiently waiting for more, saying nothing.

Bertha hesitated a moment before deciding on an explanation. “I’ve checked the traffic records and called the hospitals. There hasn’t been a thing, I’ve got to have more information to go on.”

Kosling answered in the quiet, flat monotone of one who has nothing to gain by impressing his personality upon his listeners. “I’d done all that before I came to you.”

“You had!” Bertha exclaimed. “Why in hell didn’t you say so?”

“You didn’t think I’d pay twenty-five dollars just to get someone to run an errand, did you?”

“You didn’t tell me you’d done that,” Bertha exclaimed indignantly.

“You didn’t tell me that you intended to do the stuff anybody could do. I thought I was hiring a detective.”

Bertha straightened, went pounding away, her face flushed, eyes glittering, feet swollen in her shoes from contact with the hot sidewalk.

Elsie Brand looked up as Bertha came in. “Any luck?”

Bertha shook her head and marched on into the inner office where she banged the door shut and sat down to think things over.

Her cogitations resulted in an advertisement to be placed in the personal columns of the daily papers.

Persons who saw accident at corner of Crestlake and Broadway last Friday at about quarter to six please communicate with B. Cool, Drexel Building. No annoyance, no trouble, no subpoena. Simply want to get information. Reward of five dollars paid for licence number of automobile which struck young woman.

Bertha settled back in the swivel chair, looked the copy over, consulted the classified rates, and started crossing words out with her pencil.

As finally completed, the ad read:

Witnesses accident Crestlake Broadway Friday communicate B. Cool, Drexel Building, Three-dollar reward licence number.

Bertha studied that ad for a moment, then, with her pencil, crossed out the words three-dollar and wrote two-dollar in its place.

“Two dollars is quite enough,” she said to herself. “And be sides, no one would have remembered the licence number unless he’d written it down; and if he wrote it down, he is the kind who would like to be a witness. Two dollars is quite enough for him.”

Chapter IV

It was Wednesday afternoon when Elsie Brand opened the door of Bertha Cool’s private office. “A gentleman outside; won’t give his name.”

“What’s he want?”

“Says you put an ad in the paper.”

“About what?”

“Automobile accident.”

“So what?” Bertha asked.

“He wants to collect two dollars.”

Bertha Cool’s eyes glittered. “Show him in.”

The man whom Elsie Brand escorted into Bertha Cool’s private office seemed to be trying to get through life by expending the least possible effort. He had a semi-pretzel posture as though neck, shoulders, hips, and legs all seemed afraid they would support more than their fair share of the weight, and even the cigarette which he held in his mouth drooped nonchalantly, bobbing up and down when he talked.

“Hello,” he said. “This the place that wanted information about the automobile accident?”

Bertha Cool beamed at him. “That’s right,” she said. “Won’t you sit down? Have that chair — no, not that one, it’s not so comfortable. Take this one over by the window. That’s it; it’s cooler there. What’s your name?”

The man grinned at her.

He was somewhere in the middle thirties, around five-foot-nine, slightly underweight; with an indolent motion, a sallow complexion, and eyes that were bright with impudence. “Don’t think for a minute,” he said, “that anybody’s going to slap a subpoena on me and say, ‘Now you’re a witness, and what are you going to do about it?’ There’s a lot of talk that has to take place before that happens.”

“What kind of talk?” Bertha asked, carefully fitting a cigarette into her long, carved ivory holder.

“The kind of talk that starts in with a discussion of what’s in it for me,” the man said.

Bertha smiled affably. “Well, now, perhaps I can fix things so there’ll be a good deal in it for you — if you saw what I am hoping you saw.”

“Make no mistake, sister. I saw it all. You know how it is; some people don’t want to be witnesses, and you can’t blame them. Somebody slaps them with a subpoena. They go up to court five times, and learn that the lawyers have continued the case. The sixth time there’s another trial going on, and they wait two days before their case comes up. Then a lot of lawyers throw questions at ’em and make monkeys of ’em. When the case is finished, the lawyer sticks his mitt out and tells ’em he’s much obliged, and coughs up a cheque for ten or fifteen bucks witness fees. The guy’s testimony gave him the break that resulted in a verdict of fifteen grand, but the lawyer soaks the client fifty per cent of it. It’s the witness that’s the sucker. My mother didn’t have any foolish children.”

“I can see she didn’t,” Bertha beamed at him. “You’re just exactly the type of man I like to deal with.”

“That’s swell. Go ahead and deal.”

Bertha said, “I’m particularly interested in finding out something about the identity of—”

“Wait a minute,” the man interrupted. “Don’t begin in the middle. Let’s go back to the beginning.”

“But I am beginning at the beginning.”

“Oh no, you’re not. Take it easy now, sister. The first thing that little Willie wants to know is what’s in it for him.”

“I’m trying to explain it to little Willie,” Bertha said, and smiled coyly.

“Then get your cheque book open, and we’ll have the proper background.”

Bertha said, “Perhaps you didn’t read the ad right.”

“Perhaps you didn’t write it right.”

Bertha said, with a burst of sudden inspiration, “Look here, I’m not representing either of the parties to the accident.”

Her visitor seemed crestfallen. “You’re not?”

“No.”

“Then what’s your angle?”

“I just want to find out where the girl is who was hurt.”

He grinned at her, and his grin was a leer filled with cynical understanding.

“Oh no,” Bertha said, “it isn’t like that. I don’t care anything at all about what happens after I find her. I’m not going to steer her to any lawyer. I don’t care whether she sues him for damages or whether she doesn’t, whether she recovers or whether she doesn’t. I just want to know where I can find her.”

“Why?”

“On another matter,” Bertha said.

“Oh, yeah?”

“That’s the truth.”

“Then I guess you’re not the party I want to talk with.”

“Have you,” Bertha said, “got the licence number of the car that hit her?”

“I told you I had everything. Listen, lady, when a piece of luck drops into my lap, I’m all ready with the little old pencil and the notebook. See? I’ve got it all down; how it happened, the licence number of the automobile — the whole works.” He pulled a notebook from his pocket, opened it, and showed Bertha a page scribbled with notes. “This ain’t the first accident I’ve seen,” he said, and then added ruefully, “I’ll say it ain’t! The first accident I stuck my neck out and told what happened. The insurance company paid the lawyer ten grand. I didn’t go to court. The lawyer thanked me, shook hands with me, told me I was a fine citizen. Get it? I was a fine citizen. The lawyer got the ten grand. He split with the client. I got a handshake. Well, handshakes don’t mean that much to me. After that, I got wise. I carry my little notebook, and I don’t testify anything until after we’ve had a little get-together talk. But don’t worry about my not having the information. Whenever I see anything, I have all the dope on it. That little notebook comes in handy. Get me?”

“I get you,” Bertha said, “but you’re at the wrong place. You’re talking to the wrong person.”

“How come?”

Bertha said, “A man wants me to locate this woman. He doesn’t even know her name. He was becoming attached to her, and then she was smashed out of his life.”

The man took the cigarette from his mouth, flicked the ashes off on to Bertha Cool’s carpet, threw back his head and laughed.

A slow flush of indignation began to colour Bertha’s beefy neck. “I’m glad you think it’s funny,” she snapped.

“Funny? It’s a scream! Boy, oh, boy, ha ha ha! He just wants to send the little lady a valentine, and doesn’t know where to send it. Won’t you please give me the licence number of the guy that struck her?”

“Don’t you see?” Bertha asked. “The man who struck her was going to take her to a hospital. My client wants to know what hospital she went to.”

The man in the big, comfortable, overstuffed chair by the window where it was cool writhed with laughter. He doubled up, slapped his leg, became red in the face. “Ha ha ha! Lady, you slay me! You’re a card. I mean you really are a card!”

He took a handkerchief from his pocket, wiped his perspiring forehead and his eyes. “Boy, oh, boy, that’s spreading it on. What I mean, it’s spreading it on with a trowel. Tell me, lady, do you find many of them that fall for that sort of stuff? I’m just interested, because when people get that easy, there’s always a chance for someone to make a little something out of it.”

Bertha pushed back her chair. “All right,” she said angrily. “Now listen to me, you little smart pipsqueak. You’re brainy, aren’t you? You’re mamma’s smart little boy. You were the bright one of the family. You’re the clever guy. All the rest of them are suckers. What’s it you got? Look at you. With a twenty-five-dollar, ready-made suit, a dollar necktie, a shirt that’s got holes in it where the edges of the collar rub against it, a pair of shoes that are run-down at the heels. Smart, eh? Wise guy! You’re half smart, just smart enough to stand in your own light and kick because there’s always a shadow tailing you. All right, Mr. Smartypants, now let me tell you something.”

Bertha was on her feet now, leaning across the desk.

“Since you’re so God-damn smart, my client is a blind man, a blind beggar who sits down on the corner and sells pencils and neckties. He’s got to the age where he’s sentimental, and this little wren stopped and passed the time of day with him, gave him a pat on the back and cheered him up. He’s worried about her because she didn’t come to work Monday, and she didn’t come to work Tuesday. He asked me to try and locate her for him; and because he’s just a sweet old codger, Bertha falls for his song and takes on the job at about the quarter the price I’d charge a regular client.

“I was going to try and give you a break. If you’d given me the information I wanted, I was going to steer things around so that if a lawyer picked it up, you could cash in. Now, you’re so damned smart, you just go ahead and find your own lawyer.”

The man in the chair had ceased laughing. He wasn’t even smiling. He looked at Bertha Cool with a puzzled, half-dazed expression in which there was some anger, some surprise.

“Go on,” Bertha said. “Get the hell out of here before I throw you out.”

She started marching around the desk.

“Now, wait a minute, lady. I—”

“Out!” Bertha shouted.

The man jumped up out of the chair as though he had been sitting on a cushion of pins. “Now, wait a minute, lady. Maybe you and me can really do business.”

“Not by a damn sight,” Bertha said, “I’m not going to soil my hands playing around with a cheap, two-bit, penny-ante, race-track tout. You’re so damn smart, go find yourself the lawyer that wants your information.”

“Well, perhaps—”

Bertha Cool came down on him like an avalanche. Her capable right hand caught a handful of slack cloth in the back of his coat, twisted it into a knot. Her arm shot out straight, and her sturdy legs started marching.

Elsie Brand looked up in surprise as they tore through the outer office.

The outer door slammed with a concussion that jarred the frosted glass. Bertha Cool glared at the door for a second or two, then turned to Elsie Brand’s desk. “All right, Elsie, after him. We’ll teach the chiseler!”

“I don’t get you,” Elsie said.

Bertha grabbed the back of the stenographic chair, sent it spinning and skidding halfway across the floor before Elsie Brand could get up.

“Follow him! Find out who he is and where he goes. If he has a car, get the licence number. On your way! Hurry!”

Elsie Brand started for the door.

“Wait until he gets in the elevator,” Bertha cautioned. “Don’t ride down in the same elevator with him. Pick him up on the street.”

Elsie Brand hurried through the door.

Bertha Cool pushed the typewriter chair back in front of Elsie’s stenographic desk, marched back into her own office, picked up the half-burned cigarette in the holder, fitted it to her lips, and dropped into the big swivel chair.

She was puffing slightly from her exertion.

“That little bastard,” she muttered to herself. “Joining the Navy! God, how I miss him! He’d have handled that without any fuss.”

Chapter V

Elsie Brand was back within thirty minutes. “Get him?” Bertha Cool asked.

Elsie Brand shook her head. A frown of annoyance crossed Bertha Cool’s forehead. “Why not?”

“Because,” Elsie Brand said, “I’m not Donald Lam. I’m not a detective; I’m a stenographer. What’s more, I think he was wise to me all the way.”

“What did he do?”

“Walked down to the corner, stopped in front of the blind man who’s our client, and dropped silver dollars into the cup — five of them.”

“Bowed his head every time a dollar hit the tin cup, and said, ‘Thank you, brother.’ He said it five times, very seriously and with considerable dignity.”

“And then?” Bertha asked.

“Then he crossed the street, started walking very fast. I stretched my legs, trying to keep up with him. He kept going until he caught a signal just as it was changing. Then he scooted across the street. I tried to follow him. The cop pushed me back, gave me a bawling out. A streetcar came along, and my man was gone.”

Bertha Cool said, “You should have gone after the street-car and—”

“Wait a minute,” Elsie Brand interrupted. “A taxi-cab was standing halfway down the block. I made frantic signals, and the driver came up. I climbed aboard and had the cab driver pass the streetcar three times. Every time we went past, I studied the passengers. I couldn’t see our man on the streetcar, so then I had the cab driver take me ahead of the street-car for two blocks and stop. I paid him off and caught the streetcar as it came along. Our man wasn’t aboard.”

Bertha said, with deep feeling. “Fry me for an oyster.”

Chapter VI

It was exactly nine minutes before five o’clock when Elsie Brand opened the door of. Bertha Cool’s private office. She was quite evidently trying to keep excitement from her demeanour until after the door had been closed behind her. Then she said breathlessly, “He’s back.”

“Who’s back?”

“That witness who saw the accident.”

Bertha Cool gave that thoughtful consideration for several seconds before she said, “He wants to give in. He’s a dirty, damn blackmailer. I shouldn’t even give him the satisfaction of seeing him.”

Elsie Brand waited, saying nothing.

“All right,” Bertha said, “send him in.”

The man was smiling and affable as he entered the office. “Rather crude,” he said, “that shadowing job you tried on me. No hard feelings, eh, Mrs. Cool?”

Bertha didn’t say anything.

“I’ve been thinking things over,” the man went on. “Perhaps you were telling the truth. I’m going to make you a deal. The girl doesn’t know who hit her. I guess I’m about the only one who does. Now, that information isn’t doing me any good locked up in my notebook so I’m going to give you the girl’s name and address. It won’t cost you a cent. Go see her. Talk with her. She’s got a swell cause of action. Twenty-five per cent is what I want.”

“Twenty-five per cent of what?” Bertha asked.

“Of what she gets from the man who was driving the car. He’s probably insured. There’ll be a settlement.”

“I don’t have anything to do with that,” Bertha said. “I told you that before.”

“I know. You told me that. No argument about that. Forewarned is forearmed. But I’m telling you that if she wants to find out who hit her, it’s going to cost her a fat slice of her settlement. I’ll have a lawyer draw up an agreement all shipshape. Is it a deal?”

Bertha Cool clamped her lips together, shook her head with dogged obstinacy.

Her visitor laughed. “Don’t kid me. Of course, it’s a deal. You may not be interested in the lawsuit now, but you will be after you think it over. Well, you can always get me by putting an ad in the personal column.”

“What’s your name?”

“Opportunity — Mr. John Q. Opportunity.”

Bertha Cool said, “I tell you—”

“Yes, yes, I know,” he interrupted smoothly. “The girl you want is Josephine Dell. She lives in the Bluebonnet Apartments on South Figueroa Street. She didn’t go to a hospital at all.”

“Why not?” Bertha asked. “The man was going to take her to a hospital.”

“That’s right,” her visitor said. “He was going to. He wanted to see that she was examined by a doctor so that he’d know she wasn’t hurt, but for some reason she didn’t. The accident was Friday night. Saturday morning she woke up feeling stiff and sore. She telephoned the place where she worked and was told to stay home that day. Sunday she stayed in bed. She could get a few hundred for a settlement — but she doesn’t know who hit her.”

The man got up, lit a cigarette, took a deep drag. His droop-lidded eyes regarded Bertha Cool speculatively. “Now,” he said, “you see where I come in.”

Bertha Cool glanced toward the door, started to say something, then checked herself.

Her visitor smiled. “Going to make the old crack about where I go out, I suppose, and caught yourself in time. After all, Mrs. Cool, you can’t very well get along without me. Well, I’ll be rambling along. No charge for that information. It’s what you might call a free sample of my wares. When you want to get the information that will make real money, let me know. Good afternoon.” He sauntered on out of the office.

Bertha was ready for the street within ten seconds of the time the door had closed on her departing visitor.

Elsie Brand was closing up her typewriter desk as Bertha Cool came out of the other office. She glanced at her employer curiously, seemed on the point of asking whether Bertha had acquired the desired information, then apparently changed her mind. Bertha Cool volunteered no information.

The Bluebonnet Apartments was a typical Southern California apartment building containing for the most part, single apartments renting from twenty-seven-fifty to forty dollars a month. The sides were covered with brick. The front had a white stucco finish with little ornamental roofs projecting a few feet over doorways and windows. These roofs were covered with conventional red tile. The building was fifty feet wide and three stories in height. There was no lobby, and a list of names and buttons on the outside of the front door flanked the mailboxes.

Bertha Cool ran her eve down the list of names, catching that of Josephine Dell about midway in the column. Bertha’s competent, pudgy forefinger speared the button. She picked the earpiece from the hook, listened.

A young woman’s voice said, “Who is it, please?”

“A woman who wants to see you about your accident.”

The voice said, “All right,” and a few seconds later, the electric release on the door catch buzzed a signal for Bertha to enter.

It was a walk-up, and Bertha climbed the stairs with the slow-deliberation of one who is determined to conserve wind and energy, leaning slightly forward as she negotiated the steps, getting her legs upward, giving to her climb a peculiar jerky motion. She arrived at the apartment, however, without being out of breath and her knuckles pounded authoritatively on the door.

The young woman who opened the door was about twenty-five. She had red hair, an upturned nose, laughing eyes, and a mouth which seemed naturally inclined toward smiles.

“Hello.”

“Hello,” Bertha said. “You’re Josephine Dell?”

“Yes.”

“May I come in?”

“Come right ahead.”

Josephine Dell was dressed in a lounging robe, pyjamas, and slippers. The interior of the modest apartment indicated she had been confined to her room for some time. There was a litter of newspapers and magazines. The ash tray was well filled, and there was an odour of stale cigarette smoke dinging to the apartment.

“Sit down,” the young woman said. “Tomorrow I get my release.”

“You’ve been laid up?” Bertha asked.

“Under observation,” Josephine Dell said, and laughed. “Misfortunes never come singly.”

Bertha Cool adjusted herself comfortably in the chair. “There’s been something else besides your automobile accident?” she asked.

“Of course. Didn’t you know?”

“No.”

“I’m out of a job.”

“You mean you were discharged because you couldn’t get to work?”

“Good heavens, no! It was when Mr. Milbers passed away that my troubles started. I presumed you knew about that. But suppose you tell me who you are and what you want before we start talking.”

Bertha said, “I’m not from any insurance company. I can’t offer you a cent.”

Josephine Dell’s face showed disappointment. “I was hoping that you represented some insurance company.”

“I thought perhaps you were.”

“You see, when the man hit me, I didn’t think I was hurt at all. It gave me a pretty good shaking-up of course, but, good heavens, I was always trained to take things in my stride; and just as soon as I could catch my breath, I kept saying to myself, ‘Now, don’t be a crybaby. After all, there are no bones broken. You just got knocked over.’ ”

Bertha nodded sympathetically.

“And this young man was so nice. He was out of his automobile in a flash. He had his arm around me and was putting me into the car almost before I knew it. He kept insisting that I must go to a hospital at least for a check-up. I laughed at the idea, and then it occured to me perhaps he was doing it for his own protection, so I told him all right, I’d go. Well, after we got started, we began to chat, and I think I convinced him that I wasn’t hurt at all, and there wasn’t going to be any claim for damages. I told him I wasn’t going to even claim a dime. So he consented to take me home.”

Bertha’s nod was the sympathetic gesture which keeps confidences pouring out.

“Then after I thought I was all right, I began to develop peculiar symptoms. I called a doctor and found out it’s not at all unusual in cases of concussion for a person apparently to be all right for a day or so and then have very serious symptoms develop. The doctor seems to think I’m lucky to be here at all.”

Again Bertha nodded.

“And,” Josephine Dell went on, with a little laugh, “I didn’t even take the man’s licence number. I didn’t get his name and haven’t the faintest idea of who he is. Not that I want to stick him, but if he’s insured, I certainly could use a few dollars right now.”

“Yes,” Bertha said, “I can appreciate that. Well, if you want to find out who he is, there’s a possibility that—”

“Yes?” Josephine Dell asked as Bertha caught herself. “Nothing,” Bertha said.

“Suppose you tell me just what is your connection with the case?”

Bertha Cool handed her a card. “I’m the head of a detective agency,” she said.

“A detective!” Josephine Dell exclaimed in surprise.

“Yes.”

Josephine Dell laughed. “I always thought detectives were sinister people. You seem very human.”

“I am.”

“Why on earth are you interested in me?”

“Because someone hired me to find you.”

“Why?”

Bertha smiled and said, “You’d never guess, not in a hundred years. This is a man who is interested in you. He knew that you were hurt and wanted to find out how you were getting along.”

“But why on earth didn’t he ring up—”

“He didn’t know where to reach you.”

“You mean he didn’t know where I was working?”

“That’s right.”

“Who is it?”