I sat in the outer office, waiting. I could hear the low hum of voices coming from Bertha Cool’s private office. Bertha never liked to have me listen in while financial arrangements were being made. She paid me a monthly guarantee, which she kept as low as possible, and sold my services for as much as she could get.
After about twenty minutes she called me in. I knew from the expression on her face the financial arrangements had gone to suit her.
Ashbury was sitting in the client’s chair, touching it at only two points — the base of his neck and his hip pockets. That posture caved his chest in and pushed his neck forward. Looking at him, I knew where his watermelon stomach came from.
Bertha oozed sweetness and good will. “Sit down, Donald.”
I sat.
Bertha’s jeweled hand glittered as she scooped a check off the top of the desk and dropped it into the cash drawer before I could even get a glimpse of the figures. “Shall I tell him,” she asked Ashbury, “or will you?”
Ashbury had a fresh cigar in his mouth. His head was bent forward so that he had to look at me over the tops of his glasses. Ashes from the old cigar had dribbled over his vest. The new one was just getting started. “You tell him,” he said.
“Henry Ashbury,” Bertha Cool said with the precision of one compressing facts into a concise statement, “married within the last year. Carlotta Ashbury is his second wife. Mr. Ashbury has a daughter by his first wife. Her name is Alta. On the death of Ashbury’s first wife, half of her property was left to our client, Mr. Ashbury,” and Bertha indicated him with a nod of the head, like a schoolteacher pointing out a figure on a blackboard, “and one half to their daughter, Alta.”
She looked at Ashbury. “I believe,” she said, “you didn’t give me even the approximate amount.”
Ashbury rolled his eyes over the top of the glasses from me to her. “I didn’t,” he said without taking the cigar from his mouth, and the motion dribbled more ashes down on his necktie.
Bertha covered up that one with fast conversation. “The present Mrs. Ashbury had also been married before — to a man named Tindle. She has a son by that marriage. His name is Robert. Just to give you the whole picture, Donald, Robert was inclined to take life a little too easy, following his mother’s second marriage. Is that right, Mr. Ashbury?”
“Right.”
“Mr. Ashbury made him go to work,” Bertha went on, “and he has shown a remarkable aptitude. Because of his winning personality and—”
“He hasn’t any personality,” Ashbury interrupted. “He didn’t have any experience. Some of his mother’s friends took him in on a corporation because of his connection with me. The boys hope to stick me one of these days. They never will.”
“Perhaps you’d better tell Donald about that,” Bertha said.
Ashbury took the cigar from his mouth.
“Couple of chaps,” he said, “Parker Stold and Bernard Carter, control a corporation, the Foreclosed Farms Underwriters Company. My wife has known Carter for some time — before her marriage to me. They gave Bob a job. At the end of ninety days, they made him sales manager. Two months later, the directors made him president. Figure it out for yourself. I’m the one they’re after.”
“Foreclosed Farms?” I asked.
“That’s the name of the concern.”
“What does it handle?”
“Mines and mining.”
I looked at him, and he looked at me. Bertha asked the question. “What in the world would a Foreclosed Farm Underwriters Company have to do with mines and mining?”
Ashbury slumped lower in his seat. “How the hell should I know? I can’t imagine anything which causes me less concern. I don’t want to know Bob’s business, and I don’t want him to know mine. If I ask him any questions, he’ll start trying to sell me stock.”
I took out my notebook, jotted down the names Ashbury had mentioned, and added a note to look up Foreclosed Farms Underwriters Company.
Ashbury didn’t look at all like he had up at the gymnasium. He rolled his eyes over his glasses to look at me again, and reminded me of a chained mastiff. His eyes seemed to say that if he could get a couple more feet of chain, he’d snap my leg off.
“What do you want me to do?” I asked.
“Among other things, you’re going to be my trainer.”
“Your what?”
“Trainer.”
Bertha Cool flexed her big arms. “Build him up, Donald. You know — sparring work, jujitsu lessons, wrestling, boxing, road work.”
I stared at her. I’d be useless in a gymnasium as a Republican in a post office. I couldn’t chin myself with a block and tackle.
“Mr. Ashbury wants you to be in the house with him,” Bertha went on to explain. “No one must suspect you’re a detective. The family have known for a long time that he’s intending to do something about getting in shape. He wanted to arrange with Hashita to come to the house and give him lessons. And he’d been thinking about hiring a good detective. As soon as he saw your work in the gymnasium, he realized that if he could plant you as his trainer, that would solve his problem.”
“What,” I asked Ashbury, “do you want detected?”
“I want to find out what my daughter’s doing with her money. Find out who’s getting chunks of her dough — and why.”
“Is she being blackmailed?”
“I don’t know. If she is, I want you to find out about it.”
“And if she isn’t?”
“Find out what’s happening to her dough. She’s either being blackmailed, is gambling, or Bob has inveigled her into financing him. Any of them are dangerous to her and distasteful to me. Not only have I her welfare to consider, but I’m in a very delicate position myself. The first breath of financial scandal in my family would raise merry hell with me... And I’m talking too damn much. I don’t like it. Let’s get this over with.”
Bertha said, “He took a fancy to you as soon as he saw you throw that Jap around, Donald. Isn’t that right, Mr. Ashbury?”
“No.”
“Why, I thought—”
“I liked the way he acted while the Jap was throwing him around. We’re all talking too damn much. Let’s get to work.”
I asked, “Why do you think your daughter is being—”
“Two cheques in the last thirty days,” he interrupted, “each payable to ‘Cash’. Each in the sum of ten thousand dollars, and each deposited by the Atlee Amusement Corporation. That’s a gambling outfit — restaurants downstairs for a blind, gambling upstairs for profit.”
“Did she lose the money gambling in those places?” I asked.
“No. She hasn’t been in either place. I found that out.”
“When,” I asked, “do you want me to go out to the house with you?”
“Now. I don’t want any snooping. Win Alta’s friendship. Get her to confide in you — capable — dependable — athletic — aggressive.”
“She’d hardly pick on a physical culture trainer as one in whom to confide.”
“Wrong. That’s just what she would do. She isn’t a snob, and she hates snobs. Try to cultivate her, and she’ll snub you. You’re wrong... No, wait a minute. Maybe you’re right... All right, let me think... Tell you what. You aren’t a professional trainer. You’re an amateur — but a topnotch amateur. I’m figuring on backing you in a business proposition. I’m figuring on opening a string of private, exclusive gymnasiums where businessmen who are out of shape can be put in first-class condition at so much per. You’re going to manage the whole string for me, salary and bonus. You’re not a trainer. You’re a business partner who knows the game... Putting me in shape will be incidental... Leave it to me.”
“All right. That end of it’s up to you. Now I’m only supposed to find out about your daughter’s financial drain. Is that all?”
“All! Hell’s fire, that’s the biggest job you ever tackled. She’s steel spring and dynamite, that girl. If she ever finds out you’re a detective, I’m sunk and you’re fired. Get that?”
“But how about your stepson? Why did you want to tell me about his business and—”
“So you can keep out of his way, and keep Alta out of his damn business. He’s a stuffed shirt with a wilted collar. His mother thinks he’s a genius. He thinks so, too. Don’t get fooled. If he’s inveigled Alta into putting dough into his business — well, I’ll fix that. I want the facts, that’s all. I told him, and I told his mother, I’d be damned if I gave him another cent. If he’s getting it through Alta, it’s the same as though he were getting it through me. I won’t have it... And I’m talking altogether too damned much. I’m finished. When’ll you be out?”
“Within an hour,” Bertha answered for me.
Ashbury rippled his back in a contortion which enabled him to get his hands on the arms of the chair. Using his arms, he pushed himself up and to his feet. “All right, come in a taxicab. Mrs. Cool has the address. I’ll go out and pave the way... Now remember, Lam. No one’s to know you’re a detective. The minute anyone finds that out, your goose is cooked.” He spun to Bertha Cool, and said, “You remember that, too. Don’t make any false moves. Alta’s nobody’s damn fool. She’ll find out if you make a single stumble. One boob play, and you’ve kicked a hundred dollars a day out the window.”
So Bertha was getting a hundred dollars a day, plus expenses. She was paying me eight when I worked, with a monthly guarantee of seventy-five bucks.
Ashbury said, “Get there in an hour, Lam, and you can meet the family tonight — all except Alta. She’ll be out somewhere, won’t get in before two or three o’clock in the morning. We have our workout at seven-thirty, breakfast at eight-thirty. And I’m not kidding about having you show me some of that jujitsu stuff. I want to get my muscles built up. I’m too flabby.”
He wiggled his narrow shoulders inside the padded coat, and it was surprising to see, when the tips of his shoulders touched the cloth, how much the tailor had been able to do with padding.
“Donald will be there,” Bertha Cool said.
After he went out, Bertha said, “Sit down.”
I sat on the arm of the chair.
She said, “There’s a lot of expenses in connection with running this business that you don’t know a damn thing about: rent, secretarial salaries, social security, income tax, occupation tax, stationery, bookkeeping, lights.”
“Janitor service,” I suggested.
“That’s right. Janitor service.”
“So what?”
“Well, this is a pretty good job, Donald, and I’ve decided to raise your wages to ten dollars a day while you’re working on it.”
“That’ll be ten dollars,” I said.
“What will?”
“One day.”
“What do you mean?”
“That’s as long as I’ll last. How can I teach anyone physical culture?”
“Now don’t be like that, Donald. I’ve got it all worked out. We’ll make arrangements with Hashita to give you your lessons every afternoon. I told Mr. Ashbury you’d have to get off every afternoon between two and four in order to come up here and make reports. What you’ll really do is go to Hashita and get lessons in jujitsu. Then you’ll give Mr. Ashbury a rehash of those lessons. Don’t let him develop too fast.”
“He won’t,” I said. “What’s more, I won’t.”
“Oh, you’ll take to it like a duck to water, Donald.”
“How do I get back and forth? How far is it?”
“It’s too far to go on a streetcar, but because he thinks you’re coming up to the office to make reports, I’ve made him agree to pay taxi fare.”
“How much?”
“You don’t need to bother,” Bertha Cool said. “We aren’t going to spend all our profits on taxicabs. I’ll drive you out to within a block of the place tonight. You can walk the rest of the way. I’ll be waiting every day at two o’clock with my car. We may just as well have that extra profit as not.”
“It’s a foolish chance to take, just to knock down a taxi fare, but it’s your funeral,” I said, and went out to pack my suitcase.