“Glad to see it. You deserve the best there is. You’re all wool and—”
Bertha got angrily to her feet. “It wouldn’t have been so bad if you hadn’t stopped there,” she said. “Why the hell didn’t you go ahead and say ‘a yard wide’ and act as though it didn’t mean anything. But no, you had to stop and—”
“I was afraid you might take offence. I didn’t realize how it was going to sound until—”
“And why should I take offence?” Bertha demanded.
Sergeant Sellers coughed apologetically. “I was just trying to pay you a compliment, Bertha.”
“I see,” Bertha said sarcastically. “A yard wide! Phooey!”
Sergeant Sellers’ eyes remained fixed on the door after Bertha had slammed it shut. A smile twitched the corners of his mouth. He reached across the desk, picked up the receiver, said into the telephone, “Did you get all of that conversation Bertha had with her office?... Okay, write it out and bring it in. I want to look it over... No, let her go. Give her lots of rope... No, I don’t want her to hang herself, but when she gets tangled up, she starts moving with rapidity and violence. Someone who’s on the other end of the rope is going to get jerked into the limelight so fast it’ll scare him to death... No, no. Don’t try to intercept that Belder letter; we don’t want to take the responsibility of opening it. Let Bertha steam it open and then I’ll take it from Bertha.”
13
Simple, But Very Important
The woman who rose as Bertha Cool opened the door of her office seemed, at first glance, an attractive woman in the very early thirties, with a figure that could still have fitted into her wedding dress, and perhaps her graduation dress as well. It was only when Bertha Cool’s sharp eyes peered through the protection of the veil, past the mask of rouge and mascara, and detected the fine wrinkles about the eyes and the lines of tension about the mouth, that she placed her visitor as being somewhere around forty.