“Yes, ma’am. Room three nineteen.”
“Ring him, please.”
A moment later, Bertha Cool heard Christopher Milbers’s sleep-drugged voice saying, “Hello. Yes, hello. What is it?”
Bertha Cool said crisply, “I have something important for you. I’ll be up in exactly one minute.”
“Who is this talking?”
“Bertha Cool,” she said, and hung up.
Bertha Cool marched deliberately across the lobby, entered an elevator, and said, “Third floor.”
The elevator operator looked at her questioningly as though to ask her whether she was registered in the hotel, then thought better of it. Bertha, having the manner of one who knew exactly what she intended to do, strode down the hall, located the door of 319, paused, and was in the act of knocking when Christopher Milbers opened the door. “Sorry,” he said, “I’d been in bed about an hour. I’m hardly dressed for company.”
He was wearing pyjamas, a silk robe, and sandal slippers. His eyes were puffy from sleep, and the hair which customarily was trained so carefully around the bald spot now hung forgotten and neglected on the left ear and down to the neck, giving his head a peculiar lopsided appearance.
Bertha said, “I’m not much at b ting around the bush.”