Sergeant Sellers settled himself back against the cushions. “All right,” he said to the chauffeur, “we’ll drive Mrs. Cool home. I’ll telephone headquarters, and we’ll put out a general pick-up order for this blind man. Strange he isn’t home. He can undoubtedly throw some light on what’s happened. Let’s go, Mrs. Cool.”
Bertha Cool maintained an aloof; discreet silence until Sergeant Sellers had deposited her at the door of her apartment.
“Good night,” he said.
“Good night,” Bertha Cool announced, biting off the end of the word. She marched with unforgiving hostility across the sidewalk and up to the entrance leading to her apartment house. The police car drove away.
Almost instantly Bertha Cool left the apartment house, walked rapidly down to the drugstore at the corner, summoned a taxicab, and once she had pulled herself into the interior, said to the driver, “I want to get to the Bluebonnet Apartments out on Figueroa Street, and I haven’t any time to waste.”
At the Bluebonnet Apartments, Bertha Cool pushed peremptorily at the bell button of Josephine Dell’s apartment, and it was with a feeling of relief that she heard Josephine Dell’s voice saying in the earpiece, “Who is it, please?”
“This is Mrs. Cool.”
“I’m afraid I haven’t time to talk with you, Mrs. Cool. I’m packing.”
“I must see you.”
“I have this new job, and I’m packing to take a plane. I—”