Bertha Cool all but snorted. “Why should I pay an operative,” she asked, “to go out on a simple little thing like that? The girl was hurt when an automobile ran into her at the corner, last Friday night at a quarter to six. The man who ran into her took her to a hospital. All I’ve got to do is to drift down to the traffic department, get a report on the accident, take a streetcar out to the hospital, ask the girl how she’s feeling, and then report to this blind man.”
“And why does he want the information?” Elsie asked.
“Yes,” Bertha Cool said sarcastically, “why does he? He just wants to know where the little dear is, so he can send her flowers, because she brought sweetness and light into his life. He liked to hear her feet tripping along the sidewalk, and he misses her now she’s gone, so he pays me twenty-five bucks to find the little darling. Phooey!”
“You don’t believe it?” Elsie Brand asked.
“No,” Bertha said shortly. “I don’t believe it. I’m not the type. You might believe that it’s all being done for sweet charity. Bertha Cool doesn’t believe fairy stories. Bertha Cool believes twenty-five bucks. She’s going to earn it in just about an hour and a half. So if anyone comes in and wants anything, find out what it is and make an appointment for right after lunch — if it looks as though there’s any money in it. If it’s someone soliciting contributions for anything — and I don’t give a damn what it is — I’m out of town.”
Bertha strode across the office, slamming the door viciously behind her, noting with satisfaction that the keyboard of Elsie Brand’s typewriter exploded into noise almost before the door was closed.
At the traffic department, however, Bertha got her first jolt. There was no report whatever of an accident at that street intersection on the date and hour named.
“That’s a hell of a note,” Bertha complained to the man in charge of the records. “Here’s a man smacks into a girl, and you don’t know a thing about it.”
“Many times motorists fail to make reports,” the officer explained patiently. “We can’t make ’em. The law requires they must do so. Whenever there’s an officer within reasonable distance, he notes the licence number, and we check to see that the report is made out and filed by the motorist.”
“And you mean to say that at an intersection like this there wasn’t a traffic officer within earshot?”