Bertha Cool scraped a match on the underside of the desk, lit her cigarette, looked at me, and said, “Nuts.”
She smoked for a while in silence, then she said thoughtfully, “Cop cars were scattered all around the joint. You pretended not to see them. You didn’t want to ring her apartment. You wanted to ring the manager. You went on up, asked a couple of questions, turned around, and went back down. You knew something had happened. What you wanted to find out was whether the police were there. Going to tell me about it?”
“There’s nothing to tell.”
Bertha Cool opened a drawer, took out a card, looked at the number on the card, picked up the telephone, and dialled a number. When the party at the other end of the line answered, she said, in that cooing voice of hers, “Mr. Donald Lam has a room at your place I believe, Mrs. Eldridge. This is Mrs. Cool, head of the Cool Detective Agency. Donald works for me, you know. I’m very anxious to find him. Do you know if he’s in his room?”
Bertha Cool listened while the receiver made noises, then she said, “I see. About an hour ago, eh? Well, can you tell me if someone called on him shortly before he went out?” Again she listened, and said, “Oh, yes, I see. Can you describe her, please?”
Again Bertha Cool listened, her lids half closed. Beneath them her cold, grey eyes shifted to glance at me, then she said, “Thank you very much, Mrs. Eldridge. If he comes in, tell him I was trying to reach him, will you?”
She hung up, pushed the telephone back across the desk, turned to me, and said, “All right, Donald. Who was she?”
“Who?”
“The girl who came to see you.”
“Oh,” I said. “That was a girl who went to law school with me. I hadn’t seen her for a long time. She heard I was working for you and rang up this afternoon to get the address. Elsie gave it to her.”