“Why?”
“He’s been my friend — oh, it hasn’t been an unselfish friendship, but he’s—”
Bertha Cool interrupted. “Donald, you look at me. We’re going to have this thing out right here and now. It isn’t a question of whether we’re going to talk with this girl. It’s a question of who the hell is running this office. Now you—”
I said to Esther, “She wants us to get out of here. Perhaps we’d better go,” and started for the door.
It took a moment for that to soak in, then Bertha pushed her hands down on the arms of the swivel chair and tried to lift herself out of the chair quickly. “You come back here,” she yelled at me. “I want to know what’s going on in this case. You can’t leave me batting around in the dark. What’s Crumweather trying to do? What’s the double-cross he—”
I opened the door, escorted Esther Clarde through.
“Donald, you little runt, you heard me! You come back here and—”
The closing door cut off the rest of it. I walked across the outer office with Esther, while the two secretaries stared open-mouthed. The door of Bertha Cool’s private office jerked open just as I opened the door to the corridor. She knew better than to try to catch up with us. Her big beam and avoirdupois were too much handicap. As we went out, she was still standing in the door of the office.
In the corridor I said, “Listen, Esther, there’s one thing I have to know. Don’t lie to me. Who gave you those letters?”
“I never saw the letters,” she said, “until after Jed Ringold had them, and I haven’t any idea who gave them to him.”