Bertha nervously shoved her flashlight back into her purse. “The nearest telephone,” she said, “and don’t stare at me like that.”
The cab went through the gears into rapid motion, but Bertha realized that the driver kept watching her in the rearview mirror which he had surreptitiously adjusted so that it showed her every motion. When they came to a drugstore, the cab driver didn’t let her go in alone to telephone, but followed her, standing at her elbow while she notified police headquarters and waiting with her until they heard the reassuring siren of the police car.
Sergeant Frank Sellers was in the car, and Bertha knew Frank Sellers slightly by previous meetings and largely by reputation. Sergeant Sellers didn’t care particularly for private detectives. His entire approach to a police problem was that of frank skepticism. As a colleague had once expressed it to Bertha, “He just looks at you and chews his cigar. His eyes call you a damn liar, but he doesn’t say anything. Hell’s bells, he don’t have to.”
Sergeant Sellers seemed in no great rush to get started for the scene of the crime. He seemed more anxious to get Bertha’s story down to the last detail.
“Now, let’s get this straight,” he said, chewing his cigar over to a corner of his mouth. “You went out there to see this blind man. That right?”
“Yes.”
“You knew him?”
“Yes.”
“He’d been to you and hired you to do a job?”
“Yes.”