Sellers said, “You have the envelope, Bertha. I’d suggest you put in another circular from the furrier and make as good a job of sealing it up again as you did on the other. Not that I give a damn. I’m simply trying to fix it so your client’s home life won’t be quite so disagreeable. Mrs. Goldring was very much interested in that trick of putting the hundred-and-fifty watt light in the cardboard cone and holding a letter against it. She’ll be laying for this envelope, waiting to pounce on it. About the first question she’ll ask Belder is whether he has it in his pocket. Well, I’ve got to be getting on.”
Sellers got up, reached across Elsie Brand’s desk, and calmly tapped ashes from the end of his cigar with his little finger.
Belder turned to Bertha Cool.
“Can’t we do something about this? Doesn’t a citizen have some right?”
Bertha didn’t say anything until the door closed. “He caught us red-handed,” Bertha said bitterly. “He had us over a barrel — and how well he knew it. Damn him.”
Belder’s voice held the dignity of cold rage. “Well, Mrs. Cool. I think that is just about the last straw. You’ve bungled everything in this case from the time you started on it. If you had used ordinary skill in shadowing my wife, we’d have known exactly where she went. I gave you a letter in strictest confidence, and you let that letter fall into the hands of the police. I come to you with a third letter which may contain most important information, and you let that get whipped out from under your nose. I had misgivings about hiring a woman detective in the first place. Sergeant Sellers wouldn’t have imposed on a man in this way.”
Bertha looked through the man, her forehead furrowed in thought. She gave no indication that she had heard a word Belder said.
Belder marched stiffly to the door and followed Sergeant Sellers out into the corridor.
Elsie Brand looked sympathetically at Bertha Cool. “Tough luck,” she said. “But after all, it wasn’t your fault.”
Bertha might not have heard her. Her eyes were slitted into level-lidded concentration. “So that’s it.”