“How many are there?”
“Three.”
He leaned over and whispered something to one of the officers. The officer shook his head dubiously.
Bertha Cool looked at me with her forehead puckered in lines of worry. The lawyer looked smugly down his nose as though he’d actually done something.
We hit the city, and went screaming through the streets. The intersections whizzed past. The distances of city blocks dissolved under the wheels of the speeding automobile. That siren certainly flattened out traffic. In no time at all we were at the door of the apartment house where Esther Clarde lived.
I said to Bertha Cool, “Come on. I want a witness.”
One of the officers stayed with the car. The other one came along with us. The lawyer also got in on the party. We sounded like an army on the march pounding up the stairs. It was a walk-up, and the D.A.’s investigator, putting me in the lead, kept prodding me from behind. I think he thought he was going to leave Bertha Cool behind, but he reckoned without Bertha. She hoisted her two hundred and fifty-odd pounds up those stairs, keeping her place in the procession.
We got up to the third floor. One of the officers pounded on Esther Clarde’s door. I heard her voice saying, “Who is it?” And the D.A.’s man said, “The law. Open up.”
There was silence for four or five seconds. I could hear Bertha’s breathing. Then Esther Clarde called out, “Well, what do you want?”
“We want to come in.”