“Oh,” Bertha said, “I see,” and laughed.
“No, no,” he corrected her hastily. “It isn’t that. I really am blind. It’s the steps I can tell.”
“You mean you can recognize the steps of different people out of a whole crowd?”
“Of course,” Kosling said simply. “People walk as distinctively as they do anything else. The length of steps, the rapidity of the steps, the little dragging of the heels, the— Oh, there are a dozen things. And then, of course, I occasionally hear their voices. Voices help a lot. You and Mr. Lam, for instance, were nearly always talking as you walked past. That is, you were. You were asking him questions about the cases he was working on when you’d go to work in the morning, and at night you’d be urging him to speed things up and get results for the clients. He rarely said much.”
“He didn’t need to,” Bertha grunted. “Brainiest little cuss I ever got hold of — but erratic. Going out and joining the Navy shows the crazy streak in him. All settled down with a deferred rating, making good money, just recently taken into the business as a full partner — and he goes and joins the Navy.”
“He felt his country needed him.”
Bertha said grimly, “And I feel that I need him.”
“I always liked him,” the blind man said. “He was thoughtful and considerate. Guess he was pretty well up against it when he started with you, wasn’t he?”
“He was so hungry,” Bertha said, “his belt buckle was cutting its initials in his backbone. I took him in, gave him a chance to earn a decent living; then he worked his way into the partnership, and then — and then he goes away and leaves me flat.”
Kosling’s voice was reminiscent. “Even when he was pretty well down on his luck, he’d always have a pleasant word for me. Then when he began to get a little money, he started dropping coins — but he never dropped coins when you were with him. When he dropped money, he wouldn’t speak to me.” The blind man smiled reminiscently, and then went on, “As though I didn’t know who he was. I knew his step as well as I knew his voice, but he thought it would embarrass me less if I didn’t know who was making the donation — as though a beggar had any pride left. When a man starts begging, he takes money from anyone who will give it to him.”