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.”