Sitting in the early morning sunlight, his back against the granite blocks of the bank building, the blind man seemed even more frail than he had when Bertha Cool had seen him on the occasion of her previous report.
Bertha Cool tried to fool him as she approached by changing the tempo of her steps.
He said, without looking up, “Hello, Mrs. Cool.”
She laughed. “Thought I might fool you by changing my steps.”
“You can’t change the distinguishing features,” he said. “I knew you were walking differently, but I knew who it was. Have you found out anything?”
“Yes, I’ve located her.”
“Tell me, is she all right?”
“Yes.”
“You’re certain? She wasn’t badly hurt?”
“No, she’s all right now.”
“You have the address?”
“The Bluebonnet Apartments on Figueroa. She was working for a man who died.”
“Who was he?”
“A man named Milbers. He was a writer. Had some theories on history he was trying to incorporate into a book when he died.”
“The office was near here?” the blind man asked.
“Yes. Around the corner of the next block in the old loft building.”
“I remember the place — I mean what it looks like. It was there before I went blind.”
There was silence for a moment. Kosling seemed to be searching his memory as though trying to dig up some half-forgotten fact. Abruptly, he said, “I’ll bet I know who he was.”
“Who?”
“Her boss. He must have been the old man with the cane who walked with that peculiar dragging shuffle of the right foot. I’ve often wondered about him. It’s been about a week since I last heard him going past. A man who kept very much to himself. Been going past here for over a year now, but he’s never spoken to me, never dropped anything in the cup. Yes, that must have been Milbers. You say he’s dead?”
“Yes.”
“How did he die?”
“I don’t know. The girl told me he died. I gathered it was rather sudden.”
The blind man nodded his head. “He wasn’t in good health. That dragging of the right foot kept getting worse, particularly the last month or six weeks. You told her how you happened to be looking for her?”
“Yes,” Bertha said. “You didn’t tell me not to, and I thought it was all right. She kept thinking I was representing the insurance company and was going to offer to make a settlement for the automobile accident, so I told her about how I happened to be employed. It was all right, wasn’t it?”
“It was all right. How do we stand on money?”
“All square,” Bertha said. “You’ve given me twenty-five bucks, and that’s the amount of my bill. Twenty-five dollars. I didn’t have any expenses.”
“All right, thank you. Now that you’ve got to know me, I hope you’ll stop and pass the time of day with me when you’re coming by. I miss your partner very much. You haven’t heard anything from him, have you?”
“No.”
“I’d appreciate it very much if you’d let me know when you do.”
“All right, I will. Well, good luck.”
Bertha moved on down the street to the entrance of her office building, went up in the elevator, and heard Elsie Brand clacking away on the typewriter. She opened the door of the entrance office, said, “Hello, Elsie. I just—” and stopped in the middle of the sentence.
The tall man with the droopy eyes and the pendulant cigarette was sitting slouched in an easy chair, his ankles crossed in front of him, his hands thrust down into his trousers pockets. He looked up with impudent appraisal at Bertha Cool and said, “How did you come out?”
“What do you mean?”
“You know what I mean. Did you get the job of shaking down the insurance company?”
Bertha said, “That wasn’t what I went for.”
“I know, I know. How about it? Do we make a deal or not?”
Bertha said, “I tell you I hardly mentioned it.”-
“I understand. Twenty-five per cent. Is it a deal?”
Bertha said irritably, “You don’t listen when I tell you in English. I guess I’ll have to learn Chinese and see if you understand that any better.”
“It’d be the same in any language,” he told her.
Bertha said, “I’ll take a gamble with you. I’ll pay you twenty-five dollars cash money for the information.”
He laughed at her.
“Well, that’s all there is to it,” Bertha said. “I’d be paying that out of my own pocket, because she hasn’t hired me to do anything with the insurance company. Anyway, she wouldn’t want to stick ’em on a settlement, just her doctor’s bill and compensation for the time she’s lost. She figures the total at twenty-five dollars.”
“That’s what she wants?”
“That’s right.”
“You’d educate her, of course.”
Bertha said, “I probably won’t have anything to do with it.”
“Maybe the insurance company would like to buy my notebook.”
“Perhaps it would. Why don’t you try it?”
“I may at that.”
“You probably have.”
“No. I’m strictly on the up-and-up. I wouldn’t alter my testimony for anyone. That’s why I didn’t go to this girl direct and get a cut from her. Some lawyer would smoke out what I’d done and raise the devil with me. But some private, confidential arrangement with you would be different. Then when some mouthpiece asks me if the plaintiff has offered to pay me anything, I’d just look wise and say, ‘The usual witness fees is all.’ ”
Bertha laughed cynically. “Twenty-five dollars,” she announced, “is the limit of what she’ll ask at present, and that’s my limit to you. I’ll take that much of a gamble.”
“Twenty-five percent,” he insisted.
“I tell you there isn’t anything to get a cut from — not as yet.”
“All right, perhaps things will look up later.”
“Look here,” Bertha asked, “where can I get in touch with you?”
He said, grinning, “You can’t,” and sauntered out of the office.
Bertha glowered at the door as it closed behind him. “Damn him,” she said. “I’d like to slap him right across the mouth.”
“Why don’t you?” Elsie Brand asked curiously.
“I’ve probably got to play ball with him,” Bertha said. “You mean, accept his proposition?”
“Eventually — if I can’t get a better one.”
“Why?” Elsie Brand asked curiously. “Why do you get mixed up with people of that stripe, particularly when you don’t like them?”
“Because there’s money in it,” Bertha said, and strode across the office to closet herself with the morning newspaper in her private office.
She was halfway through the sporting sheet when the telephone buzzed on her desk. Bertha picked up the receiver, and Elsie Brand said, “Have you time to give a few minutes to a Christopher Milbers? He says that he’s met you.”
“Milbers — Milbers?” Bertha repeated the name a couple of times, then said suddenly, “Oh yes, I place him now. What does he want?”
“He didn’t say.”
“Tell him to come in.”
Christopher Milbers seemed even more self-effacing in Bertha Cool’s office than he had in Josephine Dell’s apartment. “I hope I’m not disturbing you,” he said apologetically.
“What is it you wanted?” Bertha asked.
“Miss Dell told me you were a detective. I was astounded.”
“We make confidential investigations.” Bertha said.
“A detective sounds so much more romantic than an investigator — don’t you think so?”
Bertha fixed him with a cold eye. “There isn’t any romance in this business. It’s a job, and I have an overhead just like any business. What do you want?”
Milbers said, “I’d like to employ you. I don’t know what your rates are.”
“It depends on the nature of the job and the amount of money involved.” Her eyes were showing keen interest now.
“You won’t mind,” Milbers asked, “if I take the time to tell you the story from the beginning?”
“Go ahead.”
“Well, my cousin Harlow was rather eccentric.”
“I gathered as much.”
“He was very much of an individual. He wanted to live his own life in his own way. He didn’t want to be dictated to or dominated. His attitude toward his relatives was always rather — shall we say coloured — by that attitude.”
Christopher Milbers raised his hands, opened the fingers far apart, and placed the tips together, pointed upward toward his chin. He looked at Bertha Cool over the upturned fingertips as though pathetically anxious to make certain she got exactly the point he was trying to make.
“Married?” Bertha Cool asked.
“His wife died ten years ago.”
“No children?”
“No.”
“You’re the only relative?”
“Yes.”
“How about the funeral? Who had charge of that?”
“The funeral is tomorrow. I’m having it here. I didn’t get the telegram announcing his death until Monday night. I was out of town, and there was some delay in getting the telegram to me. I trust you appreciate the delicacy of the decision that was then thrust upon me — as to the funeral?”
Bertha said, “I don’t know a damn thing about funerals. What do you want to see me about?”
“Yes, yes, I’m coming to that. I’ve told you that my cousin was eccentric.”
“Yes.”
“Among other things he had no confidence whatever in the economic security of established business.”
A spasm of expression crossed Bertha Cool’s face. “Hell!” she said. “That isn’t eccentricity. That’s sense.”
Christopher Milbers pressed his hands together until the fingers arched backwards at the knuckles. “Eccentricity or sense, whatever you wish to call it, Mrs. Cool, my cousin always kept a large sum of currency in his possession — in a billfold in his pocket, to be exact. I know that for a fact. I have a letter from him so informing me. He felt that at anytime a major emergency might develop. Moreover, on Thursday he drew out an additional five thousand dollars from his account. He planned to attend an auction sale of rare books on Friday afternoon.”
“Well?”
“When I arrived here to take charge, I was given the things that were on his body at the time of death — the clothes and personal possessions, watch, card case, and — the wallet.”
“What about the wallet?” Bertha Cool asked, her eyes glittering with eagerness.
“In the wallet,” Christopher Milbers said, “there was one one-hundred-dollar bill, one twenty-dollar bill, and three one-dollar bills — nothing else.”
“Oh, oh!” Bertha observed.
“You can imagine my perturbation.”
“Did you say anything?”
“Well, a person dislikes to say anything which might be considered an accusation until he is certain of his ground.”
“So you want me to make you certain of your ground, is that it?”
“Well, not exactly that. I’m certain now.”
“Yes?”
“Yes, Miss Dell, you know.”
“What about her?”
“She knows about the money being in his possession.”
“How come?” Bertha asked.
“Miss Dell was his secretary for more than a year, and she remembers the occasion when he dictated the letter in which he said he was going to keep five thousand dollars on hand. That is, she did after I refreshed her memory.”
“Where’s the letter?” Bertha asked.
“I have it in Vermont — that is, I hope I have it there. I very seldom destroy important correspondence.”
“Correspondence from your cousin was considered important?”
“Frankly, Mrs. Cool, it was.”
“Why?”
“He was my only living relative. I felt very close to him, very much attached to him. You know how it is when the family circle narrows down to just two people.” Milbers beamed at her over his fingertips.
“And one of them is wealthy,” Bertha Cool supplemented acidly.
Milbers didn’t say anything.
“How long since you’d seen him?” Bertha asked.
“It had been some time — four or five years.”
“You didn’t keep up with him very well, considering all the facts.”
“He preferred it that way. He liked to write, but as far as personal contact was concerned — well, I thought it was better in the interests of a harmonious family relationship to let our contact be by correspondence.”
Bertha said, “That’s one of those pretty speeches that sound as smooth as silk until you stop to pick the words to pieces to see what they mean. I’d say that you didn’t get along too well.”
“In oral conversation,” Milbers admitted, choosing his words with careful precision, “we had our differences. They were predicated upon certain radical political and economic beliefs. In carrying on a correspondence, it is possible to avoid certain controversial subjects if one is tactful. In a conversation, it is not so easy.”
Bertha said, “You could save a lot of your time and a lot of mine if you’d come right out and call a spade a spade.”
Milbers’s eyes lit up with the fire of enthusiasm. “Ah, Mrs. Cool, there you go, making exactly the same error that so many people make. A spade is not a spade. That is, a spade is a very rough general classification covering gardening implements of a certain conventionalized shape but used for different purposes. There are spades and shovels. There are various types of spades and various types of shovels. Popularly, a shovel is considered a spade, and a spade considered a shovel. As a matter of fact, however—”
“Skip it,” Bertha said. “I can appreciate why your cousin felt the way he did. Go on from there.”
“You mean about the spades?”
“No, about your cousin. Where did he live? Hotel, boarding house, club, or—”
“No, Mrs. Cool. He didn’t live in any of those places. Unfortunately, he sought to maintain his own domicile.”
“Who ran it for him?”
“A housekeeper.”
Bertha’s glittering eyes commanded additional information from her visitor.
“A Mrs. Nettie Cranning. A woman who, I should say, is somewhere in the forties. She has a daughter, Eva, and a son-in-law, Paul Hanberry.”
“Paul and Eva live in the house with them?” Bertha asked.
“That’s right, Mrs. Cool. Paul was the chauffeur who drove my cousin around on the somewhat rare intervals when he went places in an automobile. Mrs. Cranning, Paul, and Eva Hanberry live there in the house. Eva, I believe, acted technically as an assistant to her mother. They all drew rather large salaries, and it was, if you ask me, a highly inefficient and expensive arrangement.”
“How old is Eva?”
“I should say around twenty-five.”
“And her husband?”
“About ten years older.”
“What do they say about the money that was supposed to have been in the wallet?”
“That’s just the point,” Milbers said. “I haven’t mentioned it to them.”
“Why not?”
“I am very much concerned that whatever I do say won’t seem to be an accusation; yet I feel it is something that should be discussed.”
“Do you, by any chance, want me to do the discussing?” Bertha asked with a sudden flash of inspiration.
“That’s right, Mrs. Cool.”
Bertha said, “I’m good at that.”
“It’s a field in which my weakness is deplorable,” Milbers admitted.
Bertha, regarding him speculatively, said, “Yes, I can imagine — if the housekeeper is of a certain type.”
“Exactly,” Milbers agreed, separating his fingertips and bringing them together again at regular intervals. “She’s precisely that type.”
“Now, there was a letter about one five thousand dollars in cash. How about the other five grand?”
“That was because my cousin wished to attend an auction of some rare books. His sickness prevented him from doing so. His bank, however, confirms the five thousand withdrawal. As I compute it, Mrs. Cool, my cousin had — must have had — ten thousand dollars in his wallet at the time of his death.”
Bertha puckered her lips, whistled a few bars, and asked suddenly, “How about you, are you well fixed?”
“What does that have to do with it?”
“It gives me the whole picture.”
Christopher Milbers, after deliberating for a moment, said cautiously, “I have a farm in Vermont. I make maple sugar and syrup, and sell by mail. I make a living, but I can’t say I do any more than that.”
“Your cousin a customer?”
“Yes, he bought his syrups from me. He liked maple sugar, but had that sent to his office rather than the house. From time to time I would send him samples of new confections I was putting out — sent him one, in fact, only last week. It’s so hard to think of him as not being still alive—”
“Large samples?”
“No. Definitely not. In selling sweets, one never sends enough to cloy the taste, only just enough to whet the sweet tooth.”
“Charge your cousin, or send him the stuff free?”
“I charged him regular list less thirty per cent. — and he always was careful to take off an additional two per cent for cash.”
Bertha held up her right hand, the first and second fingers spread wide apart in a V. “In other words,” she said, “you and your cousin were close to each other — just like this.”
Milbers smiled. “You should have known my cousin. I doubt if anything ever got close to him — not even his undershirt.”
“No? How about the housekeeper?”
A shadow crossed the man’s face. “That is one of the things that worries me. She undoubtedly wanted him to become dependent upon her. I am a little afraid of her.”
“I’m not,” Bertha said. “Let’s go.”