Cats Prowl at Night

15 The Forgotten Overcoat

The Terminal Tonsorial Parlour was a seven-chair shop with only three men working. Bertha, entering, surveyed the filled chairs, the half-dozen men who were waiting. “Where’s the boss?” she asked.

“Out getting a bite to eat,” one of the men said.

“You mean to say he goes to dinner at this hour?” Bertha demanded.

“Lunch at this hour,” the man grinned. “He’s been trying to get away ever since two o’clock — that’s supposed to be his lunch-time. He— Here he comes now.”

Bertha turned, surveyed the man who was just opening the street door, ignored the curious glances of the waiting patrons, shoved a card in front of the bewildered barber, and said, “Where can we talk for five minutes?”

The barber wearily looked at the filled chairs. “I don’t have time to talk,” he said. “I’m so short-handed!”

“Five minutes,” Bertha insisted. “And you’ll like it better if we talk where other people can’t hear us.”

The man was too utterly tired to argue. “All right,” he surrendered. “Come on back here,” and led the way toward the back room. “You’ll have to talk with me while I’m putting on my shop coat,” he warned in a voice loud enough to reach the men who were waiting. “I’ve got a shopful of customers.”

“Okay,” Bertha said.

The back room was a small, dimly lit place which had been partitioned off from the main shop. Several coats on hangers were suspended from hooks which had been screwed into a board that ran the length of the room. An old-fashioned hat tree held three hats. The barber took his off and made it four.

“All right, what do you want?” he asked, unbuttoning his vest.

“Everett Belder,” Bertha said, “know him?”

“The sales engineer?”

“Yes.”

“Yes. I know him. Has an office in the Rockaway Building. I’ve done his work for years.”

“Think back to last Wednesday. Was Belder in here?”

“Wednesday,” the barber said, knitting his forehead. “Let’s see... Yes, that’s right. It was Wednesday. He was in here and got quite a job done — haircut, manicure, shine, massage. Don’t do much massage work any more — seems like people are too rushed and too busy, Lord knows we are. I can’t get men and—”

“How long was he here?” Bertha asked.

The barber took off his coat and vest, carefully fitted them to a wooden coat hanger and put the coat hanger back on the hook. “Must have been here an hour and a half in all,” he said, taking a white barber’s jacket from another hanger and struggling his right arm into it.

“Know the exact time?” Bertha asked.

“Why, yes. Mr. Belder doesn’t like to wait. He comes in during the slack time — along about eleven o’clock in the morning. He was a little late Wednesday; got in just before half-past eleven. I remember now. There was a high fog that day with a raw wind. He had his overcoat with him. The sun came out shortly after he got in the chair and we talked about the wind blowing the fog away. When he left, he left his overcoat. That’s it hanging on the hook over there. I rang him up and told him I had it, and he said he’d come by and pick it up... Say, what difference does it make? Why are you checking up on him?”

“I’m not checking up on him,” Bertha said. “I’m just trying to help him.”

“He hiring you?”

Bertha said, “I told you I’m trying to help him. Has anyone else been in here asking questions about him?”

The man shook his head.

“They probably will,” Bertha said.

“I remember seeing in the papers, now, there’d been some trouble up at his house. A maid fell down the cellar stairs and killed herself, didn’t she?”

“Something like that.”

“This anything to do with that?”

Quite apparently the man had been too tired to give much thought to Bertha’s first questions. He had answered them while changing his clothes, anxious to get rid of her so he could finish up with the afternoon rush. Now, as he turned inquisitor, he was beginning to become suspicious.

Bertha glared him into submission. “What possible connection would there be between the time that he came by your barber shop and a maid falling down the stairs?”

The barber thought that over while he was buttoning the white jacket. “Nothing, I guess. I was just wondering. That’s all I know about Belder’s last visit here.”

Bertha followed him out of the little room with a meek docility which would have aroused Sergeant Sellers’ instant suspicions, but the barber had already forgotten her by the time he took up his position behind his chair.

“Who’s next?” he asked.

A man got up, started for the barber’s chair. Bertha, her hand on the doorknob, said, “I left my purse in there,” and started for the back room.

The barber glanced after her, then devoted his attention to whipping a white cloth around the neck of his customer. “Hair trim?” he asked.

Bertha had all the time she needed in the back room. She went over to where Everett Belder’s overcoat was hanging and began a methodical search of the pockets.

There was a handkerchief and a half-used paper of matches in the left pocket. The right-hand pocket held a pair of gloves and a spectacle case of the kind that snaps shut.

Bertha casually opened the spectacle case.

There were no glasses on the inside — only a removable gold bridge containing two teeth.

Bertha picked up the purse she had purposely left on the small table, opened it, dropped in the spectacle case and walked out through the barber shop.

“Good day,” the man said mechanically. “Come again.”

“Thank you,” Bertha told him, “I will.”