Bertha Cool, marching into the office, paused for a word with Elsie Brand. “Of all the rotten breaks.”
“Do you want to tell me about it?” Elsie Brand asked, pushing her chair away from the desk.
“No,” Bertha said. “I don’t want to tell you about it. I don’t want to tell anybody about it. I’m just a sucker, that’s all. I’m mixed up in a case where it’s raining gold, and I’m caught out with a leaky teaspoon. My God, Elsie, everybody’s in the dough except Bertha Cool. How I miss that little runt! If he were only here, he’d find some way of climbing aboard the gravy train, and we’d come out of it with some dough.”
“There’s a card from him in the mail,” Elsie said. “He’s in San Francisco and will be there for three or four days.”
“You mean Donald Lam’s in San Francisco?”
“Yes.”
“I’m going to fly up to see him.”
“It wouldn’t do any good,” Elsie Brand said. “He says in his card that you can’t see him, but he can get mail.”
The angle of Bertha Cool’s jaw showed sudden irrevocable decision. “All right then,” she said. “I’m going to write to the little shrimp. Brainy little bastard! He’ll know what to do. Suppose he’ll be snooty about it. He’s got to tell me what to do. Bring your notebook, Elsie. I’m going to write Donald Lam every single thing that’s happened.”
Bertha Cool led the way into the inner office. She seated herself in the swivel chair and said to Elsie Brand, “This letter goes air mail, special delivery. Put rush on the envelope, urgent, personal, and very private.”
Elsie Brand’s pencil moved over the paper.
“We’ll start it this way,” Bertha said. ”‘Dear Donald: It was so good to hear from you, and I miss you so much. Bertha is trying to carry on the business the best she can so that you’ll have something to come back to when the war is over— Wait a minute, Elsie. I guess I won’t say that.”
Elsie Brand looked up.
“Might give him some legal hold on me,” Bertha Cool said.
“Don’t you want him back in the business?” Elsie asked.
“How the hell do I know?” Bertha said irritably. “The end of the war may be a long way off. You strike that out and write this to him: ‘Donald darling: Since you left Bertha in the lurch, you’ve got to help her get things cleaned up.’ No, that sounds too damn much as though I needed him. Strike that out, Elsie.”
Bertha Cool was thoughtfully silent for a moment.
Abruptly she said, “We’ll write it this way: ‘Dear Donald: Bertha is quite busy this afternoon, but she’s taking time out, just the same, to write you a long letter to cheer you up, because Bertha knows how it is with persons who are in the armed forces. They get lonely for letters from people who love them.’ Now, Elsie, you can make a paragraph there, and then go on: ‘There isn’t very much to tell you about except what’s going on in the business, but because you must miss having problems to which you can turn your mind, I’m going to tell you about a very interesting case that’s in the office now.’ ”
Bertha paused long enough to think that over, then smiled beaming satisfaction. “That’s the angle,” she said to Elsie Brand. “That gives me an opportunity to tell him all about it without putting myself under any obligations to him, and he’ll make some suggestions. You can bet on that.”
“Suppose he doesn’t?” Elsie Brand asked.
“Well, I’ll put right in the letter,” Bertha said, “that he should wire me any ideas he may have. Of course, I won’t use exactly those words. I’ll tell him that if he wants me to keep him posted on what’s happening in the case so he’ll have something to think about, he can send me a wire, giving me his ideas, and I’ll write him again and let him know about developments.”
Elsie Brand looked at her wrist watch, “If the letter is going to be long,” she said, “perhaps you’d better dictate it directly to the typewriter if you want it to get into the mail this evening.”
“Want it to get in the mail!” Bertha Cool exclaimed. “I’d send the damn thing by wire if it didn’t cost too much. All right, Elsie, let’s go out to your typewriter. And here’s a Photostat of the will which I’m going to include in the letter, too. I got three extra copies for the office.”