“I don’t know.”
“It takes you a long time to make progress,” he said. “Remember I’m paying for results.”
I waited until the silence had made its own punctuation mark, and then said, “Bertha Cool handles all the business affairs.”
He laughed then. “I’ll say one thing for you, Donald. You’re a little guy, but I never saw a big one who had more guts... Let’s go up and dress.”
He didn’t say anything about the reason for his inquiries about where I’d been or what progress I was making with his daughter. I didn’t ask for any explanations. I went up and took my bath and came down to breakfast.
Mrs. Ashbury was all upset. Maids were running in and out of her room. Her doctor had been called. Ashbury explained she’d had a bad night. Robert Tindle looked as though someone had put him through a wringing machine. Ashbury didn’t say much. I studied him covertly and came to the conclusion that the guys in this world who have the money and keep it are the ones who can dish it out and take it.
After breakfast Ashbury went to his office as though nothing had happened. Tindle rode up with him in his car. I waited until they’d cleared out. Then I called a taxi and said I wanted to go to the Fidelity Building.
C. Layton Crumweather had a law office on the twenty-ninth floor. A secretary tried to find out something about me and about my business. I told her I had some money I wanted to pay Mr. Crumweather. That got me in.
Crumweather was a gaunt, bony-faced individual with a narrow, sloping nose down which his spectacles kept sliding. He was big-boned and under-fleshed. His cheeks looked as though they’d sunken in, and that emphasized the big gash that was his mouth.
“What’s your name?”