“So Mrs. Croftus called up Dolly Cornish, pretended to be Mrs. Belder, and intimated she’d murdered her maid and that Dolly was next on the list. That was long after Mrs. Belder had gone to the Happy Hunting Grounds, but it would have eased a lot of tension if Dolly Cornish had only reported to the police. But a slicker clerk at the apartment-house used his two-cylinder brain to stop that because he thought, in his little moron way, that Dolly should protect her reputation at all costs, and shouldn’t let the newspapers give her a lot of publicity — which made Bertha a lot of trouble.”
“Well, lover, I’m not going to tell you all the details. I kept floundering around in the case. Bertha’s heavy-handed when it comes to things like that. She certainly missed your deft touch, but she huffed and she puffed and she heaved, and damned if she didn’t finally put one and one together and make two. Then, Sergeant Sellers took over, and he put two and two together and made four. The two older women sat tight, but dear little Carlotta had to cave in and tell everything. Believe it or not, after what those two women did for her, she tried to make a deal to turn State’s evidence against her mother and the woman who had adopted her. That’s the sort of little bitch she is.”
“But after that, the damnedest thing happened. You’ll never guess what it is in a million years. Frank Sellers wants me to marry him. You could have knocked me over with a feather. At first I felt like laughing, but now I just don’t know. In some ways he’s awfully nice and he just worships the ground you walk on, Donald. He thinks you’re all brains, which you are. He fixed up a slander suit Imogene Dearborne brought against me. He dug into her record and found where she’d really made a racket of lawsuits. The damned quote estimable unquote mealy mouthed little twirp. Anyway, Frank really smeared her back in her place, and, of course, she’d been playing games with her boss. Sally had found that out and duly reported to Mrs. Croftus, who had that for her third ‘poison-pen’ letter. That two-faced little hypocrite of a secretary! She sued me and I had to see a lawyer about drawing an answer. He wanted to stick me twenty-five dollars, and after we broke the case wide open and I told him not to draw up anything, he still wanted the twenty-five. Bertha is getting terribly soft, lover, because she finally weakened and gave him two and a half. Damn him, he wasn’t entitled to a cent.”
“But to get back to Sergeant Frank Sellers. He says I bring him luck, and he likes my courage and guts and the way I tear into things. Well, I’m not reaching any decision yet. How am I going, Elsie? Am I going too fast?”
Elsie Brand looked up with awed respect in her eyes. “I’ll say one thing for you, you’re certainly covering lots of territory. You are a fast worker!”
“I meant too fast in my dictation,” Bertha snapped.
“Sorry,” Elsie said, and held her pencil poised over the book. “I’m up with you on the dictation, Mrs. Cool. Go ahead.”
Bertha started to say something, then suddenly checked herself. “And that’s enough,” she snapped. “We’ll leave him something to wonder about so he’ll want to come home before his vacation dough runs out. You might put a P.S. on there, that we’re sharing in the Belder estate on a percentage basis... No, the hell with it. Just tell him that we’re doing all right if the income tax doesn’t break us.”
And Bertha heaved herself to her feet and started for her private office.
“If any clients come in,” she called over her shoulder, “be sure that I see them.”