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?”
“An older man,” Bertha said. “A man who seems to—”
“Oh, I’ll bet it was the blind man!”
Bertha seemed somewhat chagrined that Josephine Dell had guessed the identity of her client so easily. “How did you know?”
“I didn’t, except that you seemed so confident I’d never think who it was that I realized it must be someone rather unusual. You know, I think a lot of him. I was thinking about him only today, wondering how I could let him know that I was getting along all right.” She laughed and went on, “You just can’t write a letter addressed to the blind man who sells neckties in front of a bank building, can you?”
“Hardly,” Bertha said.
“Will you tell him how very, very much I appreciate his interest?”
Bertha nodded.
“Tell him that it means a lot to me. I’ll probably see him myself tomorrow morning or the day after if there aren’t any further complications. I think he’s just a dear.”
“He seems very fond of you,” Bertha said. “Rather an unusual type — very observant.”
“Well, you tell him for me that I’m all right, and that I sent my love. Will you do that?”
“I certainly will.”
Bertha rose from her chair, then hesitated for a moment. “I might be able to do something about — well, about compensation for you, but I’d have to spend some money finding out who ran into you. I wouldn’t want to do it unless you felt there was no other way.”
“You mean you could find out who ran into me?”
“I think I might. It would cost some money.”
“How much?”
“I don’t know. Probably a percentage of what you’d get. I’d say offhand it would cost half of what you’d get. I wouldn’t want you to do it if there were any other way.”
“And you could handle the whole thing for me?”
“If there was a settlement, yes. If it went to court, that, of course, would be different.”
“Oh, I know it won’t go to court. This young man was so nice and so considerate. I feel confident that he’s insured, and if he had any idea I was laid up — but then, it isn’t anything serious. I’ve only lost three or four days from work, and my job was finished anyway.”
“You were working for a man who died?”
“Yes. Harlow Milbers.”
“Your office must have been close to the place where the blind man hangs out.”
“About two blocks from the bank — in that goofy old-time studio building around the corner. Mr. Milbers had a little studio up there.”
“What did he do?”
“Research work in connection with a private hobby of his. He had a theory that all military campaigns follow certain lines, that defence is of no value against aggression until aggression has expanded itself past a certain point, that no country can ever achieve anything permanent through aggression because once you start aggression there’s no place to stop. No matter how much force you have or how much initial impetus, you eventually arrive at a point where you’re vulnerable. The more powerful you are at the start, the farther your conquests take you, and the more extended your fronts are — but then you’re not interested in all that.”
“It’s an interesting theory,” Bertha said.
“He was going to write a book on it, and he dictated a lot of notes to me. It was a nice job.”
Bertha said, “Well, if you decide you want to do something about that automobile accident, let me know. I presume you can get five hundred or a thousand. There’s nerve shock, you know, and—”
“Oh, I wouldn’t want a thing for the nerve shock, just for the loss of time and my doctor’s bills.”
“Well, of course,” Bertha explained, “when you start collecting from an insurance company, there are certain expenses involved, and people usually try to get all they can, so that enough will be left after they pay expenses. But think it over, dearie. You have my card, and you can always get in touch with me.”
“You’re very kind, Mrs. Cool. Saturday and Sunday didn’t count, so I’ve only lost three days, so far. I get thirty a week, so the three days would amount to fifteen dollars, and the doctor charged ten. I’d want to collect twenty-five dollars from the insurance company.”
Bertha paused, her hand on the knob of the door. She said, “Don’t be a dope—” when knuckles sounded on the outside, a somewhat timid venturesome knock.
Josephine Dell said, “Open it, please.”
Bertha Cool opened the door.
A mild-mannered little man of fifty-seven or — eight, with a sandy moustache, slightly stooped shoulders, and blue eyes smiled at her. “You’re Miss Dell, aren’t you? I’m Christopher Milbers. I got through the outer door because I rang the wrong apartment. I’m sorry. I should have gone back out after I realized my mistake. I wanted to talk with you about my cousin. It was so sudden—”
“Not me,” Bertha said, standing to one side so that the man could see past her into the room. “This is Miss Dell. I was just calling on her.”
“Oh,” the man said apologetically.
“Come on in,” Josephine Dell called. “I won’t get up if you don’t mind, Mr. Milbers. I’ve been in an automobile accident. Nothing serious, but the doctor told me not to get up and down any more than necessary. I really feel that I know you. I’ve written quite a few letters to you at your cousin’s dictation.”
Milbers entered the room, beamed at Josephine Dell, and said solicitously, “You’ve been in an accident?”
She gave him her hand. “Just a minor accident. Do sit down.”
Bertha said, “Well, I’ll be going,” and started across the threshold.
“Just a moment, Mrs. Cool,” Josephine Dell said. “I think I’d like to talk with you some more about getting a settlement. Could you wait just a few moments?”
Bertha said, “I’ve really told you all I have to say. Only don’t be silly about the damages. If you want to go ahead with a really worth-while claim, get in touch with me. My telephone number’s on my card.”
“All right. Thank you, I will.”