“All right, come in.”
The manager led the way to a ground floor apartment, indicated a chair for Bertha, opened a drawer containing a file of cards, and selected a card which had names and figures on it.
“It was exactly a month ago,” she said, “that she moved in. The maid told me that another name had been placed next to that of Josephine Dell on the directory. I asked Miss Dell about it the next night. She said that a friend of the man for whom she was working had moved in with her. I told her that the rent had been fixed on the basis of single tenancy, and she got mad and wanted to know what difference it made to me how many people were in there. She said that she’d paid the rent and that was all there was to it; that if two people lived in a single apartment, it made it inconvenient for them but it didn’t hurt the apartment any.
“As a matter of fact,” the manager said, “I think she’s right, but I don’t make the rules of the place. I only enforce them. A bank owns it, and they tell me what to do. Well, there isn’t anything in the agreement under which the apartments are rented that covers it. The only thing you can do is raise the rent five dollars at the next rent day, and you have to give thirty days’ notice in writing in order to do that. We have some regular printed notices, and all we have to do is fill in the number of the apartment, the amount of the rent, the date, and sign them. I had a notice all prepared, and I gave it to her, notifying her that her rent would be raised five dollars. She was good and angry, but that was all there was to it.”
“Did she say she’d move out?”
“Not then.”
“How long has Miss Dell been here?”
“Five months yesterday.”
“You’ve met this Myrna Jackson?”
“Yes, twice. Once shortly after the conversation when she came to me and tried to talk me out of raising the rent. I told her that it was a house rule. There was nothing I could do about it, and that I didn’t own the place.”