“Thank you. My clients prefer privacy. Strange of them, I’m certain, but somehow they do. A sort of subconscious clinging to the obsolete rights of an American citizen.”
Sellers kept grinning good-naturedly. “No cups and saucers, er, Bertha?... Mrs. Goldring told me there’d been another letter come for Mrs. Belder. Thought I might find you here, Belder. Of course, if you have that letter in your pocket, I’ll just take it along. It may be valuable as evidence.”
“You and who else?” Bertha blazed. “After all, there are certain Federal regulations that rate just a little higher than you smart-Aleck cops. If a letter’s addressed to Mrs. Belder, you can’t—”
“Come, come, Bertha. Don’t run up a blood-pressure over it. If you’re so touchy about the Federal regulations, what were you about to do?”
“I was about to cook a pot of tea,” Bertha all but shouted, “and I guess as yet there’s no law says you can’t cook a pot of tea in your own office.”
“You’d be surprised about that,” Sellers told her. “City ordinances concerning cooking — zoning ordinances concerning places where meals or refreshments are habitually furnished, given away, or—”
“I guess I could cook a client a cup of tea without having to take out a restaurant license.”
“That ‘habitually furnished’ covers a lot of ground,” Sellers said, still keeping his affable smile. “Elsie works here. Evidently you serve tea at this time every day.”
Bertha’s angry glare didn’t disturb the Sergeant’s serene complacency.
“Now then,” he went on, turning to Belder, “if you’ve received another poison-pen letter and were getting ready to steam it open, just cut me in on the party.”