Bats Fly at Dusk

Chapter II

Bertha Cool glared down at Elsie Brand, taking her indignation out on the stenographer.

“Can you beat that?” she demanded. “The guy pulls open his shirt, unbuttons his pants, and has a money belt wrapped around him that looks like a spare tyre. He opens one of the pockets, pulls out a bunch of bills, and peels off one. It’s a century. I ask him has he got anything smaller, and he says no.”

Elsie Brand seemed to see nothing peculiar about that.

“A guy,” Bertha Cool said, “who sits down on the sidewalk, doesn’t have to pay any rent, has no taxes, no employees, and doesn’t have to make out a lot of social security reports. He has a money belt strapped around him that has a fortune in it. I have to change that hundred, and it takes damn near every cent in my cash box. And then,” and Bertha Cool’s voice rose to a high pitch of emotion, “and then, mind you, he turns around at the door and says that he won’t be working unless the weather is good. I’ve never been able to stay in bed on those cold, rainy mornings — or when there’s a damp, slimy fog. I get out and slosh my way up to the office, splashing around through puddles, getting my ankles soaking wet, and—”

“Yes,” Elsie Brand said, “I do the same thing. Only I have to get here an hour earlier than you do, Mrs. Cool, and if I had to change a hundred-dollar bill, I’d—”

“All right, all right,” Bertha Cool interrupted quickly, sensing that the conversation had turned on dangerous ground, and that Elsie Brand might be going to mention quite casually the high wages that were being paid government stenographers. “Never mind that end of it. Skip it. I just stopped by to tell you that I’m going to be out for a while. I’m going to find a girl who was hurt in an automobile accident.”

“Going to handle it yourself?” Elsie Brand asked.

Bertha Cool all but snorted. “Why should I pay an operative,” she asked, “to go out on a simple little thing like that? The girl was hurt when an automobile ran into her at the corner, last Friday night at a quarter to six. The man who ran into her took her to a hospital. All I’ve got to do is to drift down to the traffic department, get a report on the accident, take a streetcar out to the hospital, ask the girl how she’s feeling, and then report to this blind man.”

“And why does he want the information?” Elsie asked.

“Yes,” Bertha Cool said sarcastically, “why does he? He just wants to know where the little dear is, so he can send her flowers, because she brought sweetness and light into his life. He liked to hear her feet tripping along the sidewalk, and he misses her now she’s gone, so he pays me twenty-five bucks to find the little darling. Phooey!”

“You don’t believe it?” Elsie Brand asked.

“No,” Bertha said shortly. “I don’t believe it. I’m not the type. You might believe that it’s all being done for sweet charity. Bertha Cool doesn’t believe fairy stories. Bertha Cool believes twenty-five bucks. She’s going to earn it in just about an hour and a half. So if anyone comes in and wants anything, find out what it is and make an appointment for right after lunch — if it looks as though there’s any money in it. If it’s someone soliciting contributions for anything — and I don’t give a damn what it is — I’m out of town.”

Bertha strode across the office, slamming the door viciously behind her, noting with satisfaction that the keyboard of Elsie Brand’s typewriter exploded into noise almost before the door was closed.

At the traffic department, however, Bertha got her first jolt. There was no report whatever of an accident at that street intersection on the date and hour named.

“That’s a hell of a note,” Bertha complained to the man in charge of the records. “Here’s a man smacks into a girl, and you don’t know a thing about it.”

“Many times motorists fail to make reports,” the officer explained patiently. “We can’t make ’em. The law requires they must do so. Whenever there’s an officer within reasonable distance, he notes the licence number, and we check to see that the report is made out and filed by the motorist.”

“And you mean to say that at an intersection like this there wasn’t a traffic officer within earshot?”

“At that intersection,” the man explained, “the traffic officer goes off duty at five-forty, and walks two blocks over to the main boulevard to help handle traffic there. We’re shorthanded, and we have to do the best we can.”

“You listen to me,” Bertha Cool demanded. “I’m a taxpayer. I’m entitled to this information. I want it.”

“We’d like very much to help you get it.”

“Well, how am I going to find out about it?”

“You might call the hospitals and ask them if a patient was received for an examination sometime between six and seven o’clock last Friday night. I take it, you can describe the patient?”

“Generally.”

“You know her name?”

“No.”

The traffic officer shook his head. “Well, you might try it.”

Bertha tried it, sweating in the confines of a telephone booth, reluctantly dropping coins into a pay telephone. After having expended thirty-five cents, her patience was worn thin. She had explained and re-explained, only to be told, “Just a moment,” and connected with some other department to whom she had to explain all over again.

At the end of her list she was out thirty-five cents and had no information, which hardly improved her irascible disposition.