Bats Fly at Dusk

Chapter XXVIII

Slow, methodical steps echoed down the steel-lined corridor.

Bertha Cool, sitting in seething indignation on the edge of an iron cot, heard the clank of keys, then the sound of a key the door outside. A moment later, the door came open and a rather drab-looking woman said, “Hello,” in a lifeless voice.

“Who are you?” Bertha asked.

“I’m a trusty.”

“What do you want?”

“They want you down in the office.”

“What for?”

“That’s all I know.”

“Well, to hell with them. I’m staying here.”

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”

“Why not?”

“It won’t get you any place.”

“Let them come and take me,” Bertha said.

“Don’t kid yourself. They can do that, too. But I’d go along if I was you. I think they’re going to turn you loose.”

“Well, I’ll stay right here.”

“For how long?”

“From now on.”

“That won’t do you no good. Lots of them feel that way, but you don’t hurt nobody by staying here. You’ve got to go sometime, and then they have the laugh on you.” The trusty spoke in the same dejected, flat monotone with a leisurely drawl, as though the effort of speaking wearied her and consumed too much vitality. “I remember one woman said she was going to stay here, and they told me just to leave the door unlocked and tell her she could go whenever she wanted to. She stayed there all morning. It was the middle of the afternoon when she finally went out, and everybody gave her the ha-ha.”

Bertha, without a word, got up from the cot and followed the trusty down the echoing corridor, through a locked door into an elevator, down to an office where another matron who was a stranger to Bertha looked up from some papers and said, “Is this Bertha Cool?”

“This is Bertha Cool, and you’d better take a good look at me because you’re going to see more of me. I’m going to—”

The matron opened a drawer, pulled out a heavy, sealed Manila envelope and said, “These are your personal belongings which were taken from you when you were put in last night, Mrs. Cool. Will you please look them over and see if they’re all there?”

“I’m going to take this damn place apart,” Bertha said. “You can’t do anything like that to me. I’m a respectable woman making a decent, honest living, and—”

“But, in the meantime, will you please check your personal belongings?”

“I’m going to sue the city, and I’m going to sue Sergeant Sellers. I—”

“I know, Mrs. Cool. Doubtless you are. But that’s outside of my department. If you’ll please check your personal property—”

“Well, you may think it’s outside of your department, but, by the time I get done, you’ll find out it isn’t outside of anybody’s department. I’ll—”

“When did you intend to start this suit, Mrs. Cool?”

“Just as soon as I get to see a lawyer.”

“And you can’t get a lawyer until you get out, and you can’t get out until you check your personal property, so please check your personal property.”

Bertha Cool ripped open the envelope, pulled out her purse, opened it with rage-trembling hands, glanced through it, snapped it shut, and said, “So what?”

The matron nodded to the trusty.

“This way, ma’am.”

Bertha Cool stood over the desk. “I’ve heard of lots of outrages being perpetrated on citizens, but this is—”

“You were held on suspicion of burglary last night, Mrs. Cool. I don’t think that any disposition has been made of the charge, but the order came through to release you pending a further investigation.”

“Oh, I see,” Bertha said. “You’re threatening me now. If I start anything, you’re going to bring up that burglary charge, are you? I—”

“I don’t know anything at all about it, Mrs. Cool. I’m simply telling you the state of the record. It’s our custom to do that with persons who are held on suspicion of crime. Good morning, Mrs. Cool.”

Bertha still stood there. “I’m a business woman. I have important things to do in connection with running my business. Taking me away from my work, holding me all night on a trumped-up charge—”

“Your time’s valuable?”

“Certainly.”

“I wouldn’t waste any more of it standing here then, Mrs. Cool.”

Bertha said, “I’m not going to. I just want to leave you a message for Sergeant Sellers. Tell him that his threat didn’t work, will you? Tell him that I’m going to have his scalp, and now, GOOD MORNING!”

Bertha Cool turned toward the door.

“Just one more thing, Mrs. Cool.”

“What is it?” Bertha demanded.

“You can’t slam the door,” the matron said. “We’ve put an automatic check on it for that particular purpose. Good morning.”

Bertha found herself ushered out of a steel-barred door into the morning sunlight, just as though she had been some ordinary criminal. She found also that the fresh air, the freedom of motion, the feeling that she was able to go as she pleased, when she pleased, and how she pleased, was a more welcome sensation than she had ever realized.

It was eight-forty-five when she got to her office.

Elsie Brand was opening the mail.

Bertha, storming into the office, slammed her purse down on the table, and said in a voice quivering with indignation, “You get me Sergeant Sellers on the line, Elsie. I don’t give a damn if you have to get him out of bed or what happens, you get Sergeant Sellers for me.”

Elsie Brand, looking at Bertha’s quivering, white-raged indignation, dropped the mail, grabbed the telephone directory, and immediately started putting through the call.

“Hello, police headquarters? I want to talk with Sergeant Sellers immediately, please. It’s important. Yes, Bertha Cool’s office. Just a moment, Sergeant. Here he is on the line, Mrs. Cool.”

Bertha Cool grabbed up the telephone. “I’ve got something to say to you,” she said. “I’ve had a long time to think it over — a good long time, sitting in your damned jail. I just want to tell you that I’m going to—”

“Don’t,” Sergeant Sellers interrupted, laughing.

Bertha said, “I’m going to—”

“You’re going to cool down,” Sellers interrupted again, the laughter suddenly gone from his voice. “You used to run a fairly average detective agency; then you got tied up with this streak of dynamite, Donald Lam, and you started cutting corners. You’ve cut corners in every case you’ve had. Because Lam is a whiz, you’ve been able to get away with it. But now you’re out on your own, and you’ve stubbed your toe. You’ve been caught breaking into a house. All the police have to do is to press that charge against you, and you’d lose your licence and—”

“Don’t you think you can intimidate me, you great big fool,” Bertha Cool shouted. “I wish I were a man just long enough to come up there and pull you out of your office chair and pin your ears back. I know now how people can get mad enough to commit murder. I just wish I had you where I could get my hands on you. Why, you—”

Bertha choked with sheer inarticulate rage.

Sergeant Sellers said, “I’m sorry you feel that way about it, Mrs. Cool, but I thought it was necessary to keep you shut up overnight while I made a few investigations. It may interest you to know that as a result of those investigations we’ve made substantial progress toward clearing up the case.”

“I don’t give a damn what you’ve done,” Bertha said.

“And,” Sellers went on, “in case you’re in a hurry to go back to Riverside and pick up your aged mother who’s had a stroke, Mrs. Cool, you save yourself the trouble, because your mother is here in my office at the present time. I’m having him make an affidavit as to what happened. After the district attorney sees that affidavit you may have another interval of incarceration. I think you’ll find in the long run it pays to be law-abiding and to co-operate with the police. And, by the way, we picked up your automobile and drove it back to the garage where you store it. After searching it, of course. The next time you want to go anywhere, I’d suggest you just go to the garage and drive out in your car. Not that it’s any of my business, but your juggling around with streetcars and automobiles will convince a grand jury that you intended to commit some crime when you started for San Bernardino yesterday. That’s not bad, you know. Good-bye.”

Sergeant Sellers dropped the receiver into place at the other end of the line.

Flabbergasted, Bertha Cool made two abortive attempts get the receiver in its cradle before she finally succeeded.

“What is it?” Elsie Brand asked, looking at her face.

Bertha’s rage was gone now. An emotional reaction left her white and shaken. “I’m in a jam,” she said, and walked over to the nearest chair and sat down.

“What’s the matter?”

“I went out and got that blind man. I smuggled him out of the hotel. I was absolutely satisfied the police would never trace me. I stubbed my toe. Now, they’ve got him — and they’ve got me. That damn, overbearing, bullying, sneering police sergeant is right. They’ve got me over a barrel.”

“That bad?” Elsie Brand asked.

“It’s worse,” Bertha Cool said. “Well, there’s no use in stopping now. You’ve got to keep on moving. It’s like skating near the centre of a pond where the ice begins to buckle. The minute you stop, you’re finished. You’ve just got to keep moving.”

“Where to?” Elsie asked.

“Right now, to Redlands.”

“Why Redlands?” Elsie Brand asked. “I don’t get it.”

Bertha told her about the music box, the conversation Sergeant Sellers had had with the owner, and with a sudden unusual burst of confidence, the entire adventures of the night.

“Well,” Bertha Cool said at length, heaving herself up out of the chair, “I didn’t sleep a damn wink last night. I was just too mad. I never regretted taking off weight as much in my life as I did last night.”

“Why?” Elsie asked.

“Why!” Bertha exclaimed. “I’ll tell you why. There was a damn snooty matron who kept calling me dearie. She was a husky, broad-shouldered biddy, but before I took off my weight, I could have thrown her down and sat on her. And that’s exactly what I’d have done. I’d have sat on her and stayed there the whole blessed night. I’m in a jam, Elsie. I’ve got to get out of the office and lay low until the thing blows over. They’ve got that blind man, and he’ll tell them the whole business. Sergeant Sellers was right. I should have kept on doing business in the routine way. But Donald is such a reckless little runt, and he did such daring damn things, he got me into bad habits. I got to thinking, Elsie, I’m going out of here and get a drink of whisky — and then I’m going to Redlands.”