“It’s mine.”
Nunnely said coldly, “I’m going to expect you to have the money here by four o’clock this afternoon; otherwise the deal’s off.”
Bertha started to make some answer, but the click of the receiver at the other end of the line stilled the words on her lips.
She glowered at the telephone. “Hang up on me, will you?” she stormed. “Wait until we get this deal cleaned up, my fine friend, and I’ll give you a piece of my mind.”
Bertha stamped out to her reception office to deliver a message to Elsie Brand personally. “If that man rings up again, I don’t want to talk with him.”
“Nunnely?”
“Yes.”
“Do I tell him in those words?”
“No. Tell him I’m busy and left word I wasn’t to be disturbed. Then, if he insists I’ll want to talk with him, ask him if he is the Mr. Nunnely who hung up on me the last time we talked. Keep your voice very sweet, as though you were asking merely as a way of identifying him.”
Elsie made a few rapid strokes of her pen in a note-book, nodded her head.