Give ’Em the Ax

1

As I got off the elevator and started down the corridor, the old familiar surroundings took me back to that first day when I’d made that same journey, looking for a job.

At that time, the sign on the door had read, B. COOL, CONFIDENTIAL INVESTIGATIONS. Now it read COOL & LAM, with the name B. COOL in one corner, and DONALD LAM down in the other. There was something reassuring about seeing my name on the door. It was as though I really had something to come back to.

I pushed open the door.

Elsie Brand was pounding the keyboard of the typewriter. She turned and looked up over her shoulder, her face automatically assuming the welcoming smile with which one reassures the nervous clients who call to see a private detective.

I saw the expression jerk off her face. Her eyes widened.

“Donald!”

“Hello, Elsie.”

“Donald! My, I’m glad to see you. Where did you come from?”

“South Seas, and various places.”

“How long are you... When do you have to go back?”

“I don’t.”

“Not ever?”

“Probably not. I’m supposed to have a check-up in six months.”

“What happened?”

“Bugs — tropical bugs. Okay if I take it easy for a while, live in a cool climate, and don’t get too excited. Bertha in there?”

I jerked my head towards the door of the office that had B. COOL, PRIVATE, lettered on the door.

Elsie nodded.

“How is she?”

“Same as ever.”

“How’s her weight?”

“Still keeping it at one hundred sixty-five, and hard as barbed wire.”

“Making any money?”

“She did for a while, and then she got in a sort of a rut. Things haven’t been coming so well lately. Guess you’d better ask her about that.”

“Have you been sitting there hammering that typewriter all the time I’ve been gone?”

She laughed. “No, of course not.”

“What do you mean?”

“Only eight hours a day.”

“Seems like pretty much of a rut to get into. I thought you’d have quit the job and gone into an airplane factory.”

“Didn’t you get my letters?”

“They didn’t say anything about staying on the job.”

“I didn’t think I had to say anything.”

“Why?”

She avoided my eyes. “I don’t know. Guess it’s my contribution to the war effort.”

“Loyalty to the job?”

“Not to the job,” she said, “so much as— Oh, I don’t know, Donald. You were out there fighting and... well, I wanted to do what I could to hold the business together.”

The inner office buzzer made noise.

Elsie picked up the receiver on the telephone, switched it over to Bertha Cool’s office, said, “Yes, Mrs. Cool.”

Bertha was so mad the receiver couldn’t contain all of her voice. I could hear the rasping, angry tones over where I was sitting. “Elsie, I’ve told you to talk with clients only long enough to find out what they want, then call me. I’ll do the talking for the outfit.”

“This isn’t a client, Mrs. Cool.”

“Who is it?”

“A... a friend.”

Bertha’s voice rose a full octave. “My God! Do I pay you to hold social soirées in the office, or do I pay you to get out a little work once in a while? For God’s sake... a friend!... A... Well, I’ll soon fix that!”

The slam of the receiver in Bertha’s office threatened to pull the telephone out by the roots. We heard the pound of two quick steps, then the door was jerked open and Bertha stood on the threshold, her glittering little eyes sharp with anger, her big jaw thrust out.

She flashed a swift look to get my bearings, then came barging down on me like a battleship trying to ram a submarine.

Halfway there, her eyes managed to get the message to her angry brain.

“Why, you little devil!” she said, stopping as though her feet had frozen to the floor.

For a moment she was glad to see me, then you could see her catch herself. She certainly wouldn’t let anyone know it. She whirled to Elsie and said, “Why the hell didn’t you tell me?”

Elsie said demurely, “I was trying to, Mrs. Cool, when you hung up. I was going to tell you that...”

“Humph! ” Bertha snorted her into silence. She turned to me. “It’s a wonder you wouldn’t send a wire.”

I used the only argument that would impress itself on Bertha’s mind. “Wires cost money.”

Even that didn’t dent her. “Well, you could have sent one of those tourist messages. You get a low rate on those. You come busting in here and...”

Bertha broke off, her eyes on the frosted glass panel of the corridor door.

The head and shoulders of a feminine figure were silhouetted against the glass, a chic slender woman, evidently young, and either because it was a mannerism or because of the way she was standing, the head was perked slightly to one side, giving it a jaunty appearance.

Bertha muttered, “Damn it! Clients always do catch me in the outer office. It’s undignified. Looks as though we weren’t busy.”

She grabbed up a bunch of papers from Elsie’s desk, struck a businesslike poise, started pawing through the papers.

But the visitor didn’t come in.

There was a long matter of seconds which seemed minutes during which the silhouette was pasted against the frosted glass, then abruptly the shadow went on down the hall.

Bertha Cool slammed the papers down on the desk. “There you are,” she said. “That’s the way things have been going lately. The damned little tramp will probably go on down the hall to the Transcontinental Detective Agency and spill her troubles there.”

I said, “Cheer up, Bertha. Perhaps she’s just nervous and is coming back.”

“Well,” Bertha snorted, “something about the place didn’t seem right to her. She was all set to come in, and then she didn’t come. It didn’t sound like a business office. Elsie, you start pounding that typewriter. Donald, you come in the private office. Remember, Elsie, if she comes in she’ll be nervous. That type won’t wait. She’ll sit down for a minute, then pretend she’s forgotten something and jump up and run out, and that’ll be the last we ever see of her. She’s wearing a little hat on one side of her head with a...”

“I got a good look at her silhouette,” Elsie said.

“All right. The minute she comes in let me know. Don’t stall around. Reach for the telephone. After all, I can’t go out in the corridor and grab ’em the way they do when a customer stops in front of a pawn shop. Indecision. Never could understand it myself. If you’re going to do a thing, why not do it? Why start and stop and back and fill and mince around? Donald, come inside. Let Elsie get to work on that typewriter.”

Elsie Brand flashed a glance at me and let me see the quiet amusement in her eyes, then she was pounding away again at the typewriter.

Bertha Cool put her big strong hand under my arm and said, “Come on, Donald, get in the office and tell me what this is all about.”

We entered Bertha Cool’s private office. Bertha strode around the desk and slammed herself down in a creaking swivel chair. I sat on the arm of a big overstuffed chair.

Bertha looked me over, said, “You’ve toughened up, Donald.”

“I’ve been toughened.”

“What do you weigh now?”

“A hundred and thirty-five.”

“You look taller.”

“I’m not taller. It’s the way they made me stand.”

There was a moment’s silence. Bertha had an ear cocked for noises in the outer office but there was no cessation in the muffled pounding of Elsie Brand’s typewriter.

“Business not so good?” I asked.

“Terrible!” Bertha grunted.

“What’s the matter with it?”

“Damned if I know. Before you came along, I was making a living piddling along with a lot of picayunish cases, little shadowing jobs, divorce cases, stuff of that sort. Mostly I got my business by catering to the domestic relations work that other agencies wouldn’t handle. Then you came along. First rattle out of the box you threw me into the big time — more money, more risk, more excitement, more clients — and then you enlisted in the Navy and for a while I carried on all right. Then something happened. I haven’t had a worthwhile case in the last year.”

“What’s the matter? Don’t people come in any more?”

“They come in,” Bertha said, “but somehow I don’t impress them. They don’t do things my way, and I can’t do them your way. I’m sort of a hybrid.”

“What do you mean, you can’t do them my way?”

“Look at that chair you’re sitting on,” she said. “That’s a good example.”

“What do you mean?”

“After you became a partner you went down and spent a hundred and twenty-five dollars on that chair. Your theory was that you can’t win a client’s confidence when he’s uneasy, and that you can’t get a person to confide in you when he’s uncomfortable. You let the client sit down in the depths of that chair, and it’s as though he was sitting on top of the world in a feather bed. He settles back and relaxes, and starts talking.”

“Well, doesn’t he?”

“He seems to do it for you, but he doesn’t do it for me.”

I said, “Perhaps you don’t make the people feel comfortable.”

Bertha’s eyes glittered angrily. “Why the hell should I? We paid a hundred and twenty-five bucks for the chair to do that. If you think I’m going to squander a hundred and twenty-five dollars just in order to...”

She broke off in midsentence.

I listened, and for a moment couldn’t hear anything. Then I realized that Elsie Brand had quit typing.

A moment later the buzzer sounded on Bertha Cool’s phone.

Bertha snatched the receiver off the cradle, said cautiously, “Yes?” then in a low voice, “is that the woman who... Oh, it is?... What’s her name?... All right, send her in.”

Bertha hung up the telephone and said, “Get out of that chair. She’s coming in.”

“Who?”

“Her name’s Miss Georgia Rushe. She’s coming in. She...”

Elsie Brand opened the door and said as though granting a great concession, “Mrs. Cool will see you immediately.”

Georgia Rushe weighed about a hundred and fourteen. She wasn’t as young as I’d thought when I had sized up the shadow on the door — somewhere around thirty-one or thirty-two, and she didn’t carry her head on one side. That cocking to one side of the head that we’d seen when she stood at the corridor door must have meant that she was listening.

Bertha Cool beamed at her and said in a voice that dripped sweetness, “Won’t you be seated, Miss Rushe?”

Miss Rushe looked at me.

She had dark, emotional eyes, full lips, high cheek bones, a smooth olive skin, and very dark hair. The way she looked at me you’d have thought she was about to turn and run out of the office.

Bertha said hastily, “This is Donald Lam, my partner.”

Miss Rushe said, “Oh!”

“Come in, come in,” Bertha invited. “Sit down in that chair, Miss Rushe.”

She still hesitated.

I gave a deep yawn without making any attempt to cover it, took a notebook from my pocket, said casually, “Well, I’ll go cover that matter we were talking about — or,” I added as an afterthought, turning to Miss Rushe, “do you want me to sit in on this?”

I made my tone sound somewhat bored as though another job would be just another chore. I heard Bertha gasp and start to say something, but Georgia Rushe smiled at me, said, “I think I’d like to have you sit in on it,” and walked over and settled herself in the big chair.

Bertha’s face was beaming. “Yes, yes, Miss Rushe. What is it?”

“I want some help.”

“Well, that’s what we’re here for.”

She toyed with her purse for a minute, crossed her knees, carefully smoothed her skirt down, her eyes avoiding those of Bertha.

She had nice legs.

Bertha said enticingly, “Anything we can do...”

Georgia Rushe hastily averted her eyes.

I took a notebook from my pocket and scribbled a note to Bertha Cool. “Quit being so eager. People want results. No one wants to hire a big-boned woman detective who’s all sticky with sweetness.”

I tore the page out of my notebook and slid it across the desk to Bertha.

Georgia Rushe watched Bertha pick up the note and read it.

Bertha’s face got red. She crumpled the note, slammed it in the wastebasket, glowered at me.

“Okay, Miss Rushe,” I said casually, “what’s your trouble?”

Georgia Rushe took a deep breath and said, “I don’t want to be censured.”

“No one is going to censure you.”

“I don’t want to have to listen to any moral lectures.”

“You won’t.”

She glanced apprehensively at Bertha and said, “A woman might not be as tolerant.”

Bertha smiled all over her face, said coyly, “Oh, my dear,” then suddenly remembering my note jerked herself back into character and said abruptly, “To hell with that stuff. What’s on your mind?”

“To begin with,” Georgia Rushe said determinedly, “I’m a home wrecker.”

“So what?” Bertha asked.

“I don’t want to listen to any moral lectures when you hear what I’ve done.”

“Got enough money to pay our bills?” Bertha asked.

“Yes, of course, otherwise I wouldn’t be here.”

Bertha said grimly, “Go ahead and wreck ’em all you want, dearie. What do you want us to do? Scout out good homes for you to wreck? We can do it.”

Miss Rushe laughed nervously, then said after a moment, “I’m glad you’re taking it that way, Mrs. Cool.”

Bertha said, “Homes aren’t wrecked. They wreck themselves.”

Georgia Rushe said, “I’ve been with Mr. Crail for nearly four years now.”

“Who’s Mr. Crail?” Bertha asked.

“Ellery Crail, head of the Crail Venetian Blind Company.”

“I’ve heard of the company.”

“Since the war we’ve taken over a lot of war contracts in wood cartridge containers, and things of that sort.”

“How long’s he been married?”

“Eight months.”

I settled back and lit a cigarette.

Georgia Rushe said, “I started working in the personnel department. At that time, Ellery was married. His wife died shortly after I came to work. It left him rather dazed. I don’t know how much he loved her, but he certainly missed her when she was gone. He’s a man who would love a home, a great big, loyal, stouthearted man who is so fair and square himself that he just can’t imagine anyone being otherwise.”

She hesitated for a moment, then sighed deeply, and went on, “After a while he began to get over the first numbing shock of the grief, and... well, I saw a little something of him.”

“You mean he took you out?” Bertha asked.

“We went out to dinner once or twice, yes.”

“Theater?”

“Yes.”

“Call at your apartment?”

“No.”

“You at his?”

“No. He isn’t that sort.”

“When did his present wife meet him?”

Georgia Rushe said, “I was run down from overwork. We’d had a lot of problems to deal with. Mr. Crail thought I should take a long vacation and suggested I leave for a month. When I came back he was married.”

“Slipped a fast one over on you?”

Georgia Rushe’s eyes blazed. “He was the victim of a shrewd, scheming, designing, hypocritical, sniveling, mealymouthed individual, if you can flatter a negative personality like that by calling her an individual.”

“She gave him the rush act?” Bertha asked.

“Very much so.”

“How did it happen?”

“It all began one night when Mr. Crail was driving his automobile back from work. He doesn’t see too well at night, and it had been raining and the streets were slippery. Even so, I don’t think it was entirely his fault, although he tries to make out that it was. There was a coupé immediately ahead of him, and a signal changed and the coupé came to a sudden stop. The brake light wasn’t working. Of course, Irma swore that she put out her hand to signal a stop, but she’d swear to anything that would feather her own nest.”

“Irma is the girl?”

“Yes.”

“What happened?”

“Mr. Crail bumped the back of her car — not particularly hard so far as the actual damage to the automobile was concerned. Fifty dollars would have covered both cars.”

“Personal injuries?” Bertha asked.

“Some sort of a spinal injury. Ellery jumped out of his car and ran up to the car ahead. He started apologizing as though it had been all his fault, just as soon as he saw the car was operated by a woman. And Irma Begley looked up at Ellery’s big strong face, and into his sympathetic eyes and determined she was going to marry him — and she didn’t lose any time.”

“The sympathy racket?” Bertha asked.

“Apparently, a little bit of everything. Ellery’s wife had died and he was lonely. He’d grown to depend on me a lot more than he realized, and then I’d gone away. Afterwards, I found in the files a wire he had sent, asking me if I could possibly cut my vacation short and return. For some reason the wire was never delivered. If it had been, it might have changed my whole life. As it was, he thought I simply hadn’t answered.”

I looked at my watch.

Miss Rushe hurried on. “Well, Irma Begley was very nice about it, but she thought that Mr. Crail would prefer to have the car repaired himself so that he’d be certain he wasn’t being victimized, and Ellery thought that was very very fair and considerate, so naturally with true magnanimity he had the whole damn car overhauled. Everything a mechanic could find wrong with it was fixed. Then he returned it to Irma, and by that time Irma was beginning to have headaches so she went to see a doctor, and the doctor took X-rays, and then it appeared that her spine had been injured. And she was so brave and so sweet and so self-effacing about the whole business!”

“Well, of course, Irma let Ellery see that she wasn’t in any position to support herself without work, and so Ellery insisted on footing the bills, and — of course no one knows just how it happened, but I returned from a month’s vacation to find my boss on his honeymoon!”

“How long ago?”

“Six months.”

“What happened then?”

“Well, at first the boss seemed sort of dazed with the suddenness of it all. He was particularly embarrassed when he was with me. He felt that he owed me some sort of an explanation as to how it happened and yet he was too much of a gentleman to say even a word about it.”

“What did you do?” Bertha asked.

“I was too angry and hurt to make things easy for him. I told him I was going to quit as soon as he could get someone else to take my place. Well, he couldn’t get anyone to take my place, and then he asked me to please stay with him and — and, well, I did.”

“When did you determine you were going to be a home wrecker?”

“To tell you the truth, Mrs. Cool, I don’t know. At first I was completely crushed. I felt that the bottom had dropped out of everything. I didn’t realize how much I was in love with Ellery until after... well, after things seemed irrevocably broken.”

“I know,” Bertha said. “I’m trying to find out the facts.”

“Well, after all, Mrs. Cool, I don’t know as it’s important, because that doesn’t enter into it except incidentally. I wanted to get that over with first because I didn’t want you to find out about it afterward and start getting upstage on me.”

“But you’ve made up your mind you’re going after Mr. Crail?”

“I’ve made up my mind that I’m not going to put any obstacle in the way of his going after me.”

“And he’s showing some indications?”

“He’s dazed and he’s hurt. He’s wandering around in a fog.”

“And beginning to gravitate toward you for guidance?”

Georgia Rushe met Bertha Cool’s eyes. “Let’s be frank about it, Mrs. Cool. I think he’s realized that he’s made a terrific mistake — and I think he realized it very shortly after I came back.”

“But he’s too loyal to do anything about it?”

“Yes.”

“Yet you think he may do something?”

“He may.”

“And if he does, you’re going to make it easy for him?”

Georgia Rushe said determinedly, “That little scheming trollop stole him from me. She deliberately played her cards so she had him all tied up before I got back. I’m going to steal him back.”

Bertha said, “All right, we have the background. Go ahead and tell us what’s on your mind.”

“Do you know anything about the Stanberry Building?”

Bertha shook her head, then said, “Wait a minute. It’s out on Seventh Street, isn’t it?”

Georgia Rushe nodded. “A four story building — stores on the lower floor, offices on the second floor, the Rimley Rendezvous on the third floor and apartments for Mr. Rimley and some of his executives on the fourth floor.”

“What about the Stanberry Building?”

“She wants Ellery to buy it for her.”

“Why the Stanberry Building?” I asked.

“I don’t know, but I think it has something to do with the night club.”

“What is there about the night club that makes the building such a marvelous investment?”

“I don’t know. Pittman Rimley has four or five places scattered around town. I think he’s the only one who’s been able to make a success out of combining a lunch trade, swinging into an afternoon pickup business, and then operating as a night club. He rotates his floor shows and seems to do a very good business.”

“What do you mean a pick-up business?” Bertha asked.

“Afternoons,” she said. “Women gravitate into these Rendezvous joints for a cocktail and there’s dance music and pick-ups.”

“Crail has money?” I asked.

She said evasively, “I think the Venetian blind business has been very profitable.”

“He has money?”

“Yes — quite a bit.”

“And just what do you want us to do?”

She said, “I want you to find out what’s back of it all. She’s rotten to the core, and I want you to find out what’s going on.”

Bertha Cool said, “All that’s going to cost you money.”

“How much?”

“Two hundred dollars for a starter.”

Georgia Rushe was coldly businesslike. “To just what does that two hundred dollars entitle me, Mrs. Cool?”

Bertha hesitated.

I said, “It entitles you to ten days work.”

“Less expenses,” Bertha snapped, hastily.

“What can you find out in that time?” Georgia Rushe asked.

Bertha said crisply, “We’re detectives, not clairvoyants. How the hell should I know?”

That seemed to be the right answer. Georgia Rushe opened her purse. “No one must know that I’m back of this,” she said.

Bertha Cool nodded. Her greedy little eyes fastened on the purse.

Georgia Rushe took out a checkbook.

Bertha fairly shoved the fountain pen into her hand.