The girl stopped typing long enough to nod her head, and then went back to the typewriter.
The woman behind the counter gave me a tired smile of dismissal.
I went out and stood in the corridor, thinking.
Edna Cutler. Many business dealings with Silas Roxberry... Yet she never came to the office... Howard Chandler Craig, a bookkeeper... Out riding with Roberta Fenn... A mysterious love pirate, and the bookkeeper of the Roxberry Estates, the one who must have had all the financial transactions of Silas T. Roxberry at his finger tips, murdered.
I rang up the office, found that Bertha Cool hadn’t come in yet, told Elsie Brand I would be in around noon, and if Bertha came in, to tell her to wait.
I went down to police headquarters.
Sergeant Pete Rondler of the Homicide Squad had always got a kick out of me. For one reason, he had had a couple of run-ins with Bertha Cool, and hated the ground she walked on. When I started working for her, he’d predicted I’d be a thoroughly broken-in doormat within three months. The fact that I’d worked up to a partnership and that, on occasion, I stood up to Bertha Cool gave him a great deal of private satisfaction.
“Hello, Sherlock,” he said as I opened the door. “Want something?”
“Maybe.”
“How’s the sleuthing?”