I said, “Okay, I think I’ve got the answer. Now, look, Elsie, things are going to get tough.”
“How?” she asked.
I said, “They’re going to get plenty tough. I’m out working on a case. It’s such an important case that I’m not even going to let you know where I am. But you remember to tell everyone that I was in this morning. I didn’t seem in any particular hurry and that I went out to work on a case. You…”
The door burst open. Bertha Cool, standing in the doorway, was sputtering with indignation.
“What happened?” I asked.
“Why,” she said, “that damn bank! I’ll pin their ears down. The — why, what the hell do they think they’re doing?”
“What bank?” I asked. “And what’s it all about?”
“That cheque Claire Bushnell gave us. They have the crust to tell me that they’re going to charge my account with it, that they accepted the cheque only on the contingency of a cheque Claire Bushnell had deposited for collection being good.”
“And that cheque wasn’t good?”
“That’s what they say.”