“Yes. I gather from what she said over the phone that she came in on the train just now. Mabel evidently knew she was coming, but said nothing to me about it. The train was late. Carlotta was there and waited. Mabel either wasn’t there or else didn’t wait. Her mother is sore — trying to find some way of blaming the whole thing on me.”
Bertha said, “Your wife considered this eleven o’clock telephone call a lot more important than meeting her mother.”
“So it seems.”
Bertha said almost meditatively, “I’m not so certain but what I’ll have to revise my opinion of your mother-in-law,” and then turned her attention once more to the file of correspondence.
“What’s this?” Bertha asked abruptly.
Belder grinned as Bertha Cool picked up some dozen letters all clipped together with a big wire clip. On the top was a typewritten memo reading: “Look as though you were on a sucker list. I.D.”
Belder laughed. “Miss Dearborne told me I was going to get into trouble on that. You know, you get a certain number of solicitations from charitable organizations. Starving foreigners, underprivileged children, all that sort of thing. A few months ago I got one that was so personal in its appeal, so touching, that I sent twenty-five dollars, and this deluge is the result.”
Bertha Cool ran through the letters.
“They seem to be from different organizations.”
“They are. But you can see Miss Dearborne’s note at the top. Evidently they exchanged addresses. If you answer solicitations by mail from the Society for the Relief of the Starving Whosis, they evidently turn your name and address, as a likely prospect, over to the Association for the Underprivileged Daughters of Pre-Revolutionary Generals, and so on down the line. Once you make a remittance you’re positively deluged.”