Give ’Em the Ax

12

I drove the car to the parking place across from the office and went up. It was half past twelve when I latchkeyed the door of the office. Elsie Brand was out to lunch.

I heard the sound of a creaking chair from Bertha’s private office, then heavy feet on the floor and the door was jerked open.

Bertha Cool stood in the doorway looking at me with icy exasperation.

“You!” she said.

“That’s right.”

“Why, goddamn you!” Bertha said. “Who the hell do you think you are, and what the hell do you mean by taking a powder? Here I thought you were all in. You looked like a ghost. I slave my fingers to the bone cooking eggs and bacon for you and you start philandering...”

“Do you want to quarrel in the outer office where clients can hear us?” I asked, dropping into a chair and picking up the morning paper.

“You irritating little impudent cold-blooded ingrate. Bertha used an eight dollar bottle of whisky to square things with that flatfoot from the police force, and you go...”

I jerked my head toward the transom. “People walking up and down the corridor can hear you, Bertha. Perhaps some possible client is standing outside...”

Bertha raised her voice. “I don’t give a damn how many clients are standing outside. I’m going to tell you this, and you’re going to listen to it. If you think you can come back here and...”

A black shadow formed on the door of the office. I pointed my finger at it.

Bertha checked herself with an effort.

Someone tried the knob of the door.

Bertha took a deep breath. “See who it is, lover.”

I put down the paper, crossed the room and opened the door.

A middle-aged man with a prominent bony nose, high forehead and big cheek bones looked past me with gray eyes that twinkled shrewdly over the rims of half glasses and said, “Mrs. Bertha Cool?”

Bertha Cool’s manner mellowed. “Yes. What can I do for you?”

The man reached in his pocket. “First, permit me to introduce myself. I am Frank L. Glimson, senior partner of the firm of Cosgate & Glimson, attorneys at law. And now, Mrs. Cool, I want you to do something for me.”

He extended a paper to Bertha.

Bertha took the paper mechanically and said, “We do a lot of work for lawyers, Mr. Glimson. We rather specialize in that field. Donald, put down that newspaper. This is my partner, Mr. Glimson, Donald Lam. He’s been in the Navy. Just back, and already hard at work. Now what was it you wanted? Something in these papers?”

Bertha unfolded the papers.

“Why— Why— Fry me for an oyster! Why, damn you for a...!”

Glimson held up his hand. “Just a moment, Mrs. Cool. Just a moment. Please let me explain.”

“Explain hell!” Bertha shouted at him. “This is a summons in the case of Mrs. Rolland B. Lidfield versus Esther Witson and Bertha Cool. What in hell do you mean?”

“Just a minute, Mrs. Cool. Just a minute. Please let me explain.”

Bertha whipped through the pages of the folded legal document. “Fifty thousand dollars!” she screamed. “Fifty... thousand... dollars!”

“Exactly,” Glimson said acidly. “And if you wish to remain hostile to me, Mrs. Cool, it is going to cost you fifty thousand dollars.”

Bertha was, for the moment, speechless.

Glimson went on smoothly, “Mrs. Cool, I am prepared to make you a proposition, a business proposition, which is why I brought the papers here myself.”

Glimson looked over at me and included me with an affable smile. “Now, Mrs. Cool,” he said soothingly, “we don’t really think that you were at all negligent. We think that Esther Witson is the one who was solely to blame for the accident.”

He beamed at Bertha Cool.

Bertha’s jaw was pushed forward like a prow of a battleship. “What’s your proposition?” she said ominously.

“Now, Mrs. Cool, you’re angry at me.”

“You’re damn right I’m angry at you,” Bertha screamed.

“Mrs. Cool, I’m not going to take any unfair advantage of you. I’m a lawyer and you’re not. I’m going to tell you exactly what the law is. It used to be considered that the exoneration of one tort-feasor exonerated the other. But that rule has now been changed — rather it has been clarified by our courts. The case of Ramsey versus Powers, 74 Cal. App. 621, holds that when a tort has been committed, and two or more parties are alleged by the plaintiff to have jointly committed the same...”

“What the hell do I care about tort-feasors?” Bertha interrupted.

“Don’t you see, Mrs. Cool? All that you have to do is to help us show that it really was Miss Witson who was at fault and that’s all there is to it. But there’s one peculiarity of the law, Mrs. Cool, and that is that in order to take a quick deposition as a matter of right, the person whose deposition is to be taken must be a party to the action. Now I don’t say that I made you a party to the action merely in order to take your deposition, Mrs. Cool, but I am going to tell you that I want to take your deposition right here at your office at three o’clock this afternoon. And if your testimony shows that the accident was all the fault of Esther Witson, we will ask the court to dismiss the case against you on the ground that there is no liability on your part.”

And Glimson beamed at her.

Bertha said, “Suppose this client of yours — what’s her name?”

“Mrs. Rolland B. Lidfield,” Glimson said.

“All right. Suppose Mrs. Lidfield was the one who was at fault?”

Glimson put long bony fingertips together. “Now, Mrs. Cool, I think you must have overlooked the significance of what I said to you just now. If the accident was occasioned by the negligence of Miss Witson, then we will move the court to dismiss the action...”

“What the hell is this, bribery or blackmail?” Bertha asked.

“My dear Mrs. Cool! My dear Mrs. Cool!”

“Don’t you my dear me,” Bertha said. “What the hell’s the idea of this thing anyway?”

“We want your deposition, Mrs. Cool. We feel that we are entitled to have your evidence perpetuated so that when the case comes up for trial we will know exactly what we have to contend with. In so many of these cases, Mrs. Cool, the evidence has a habit of jumping around. You’ll think you have a good case, and then when you get in court... But after all, Mrs. Cool, you are a woman of the world, and you understand these things.”

“I don’t understand a damn thing about it,” Bertha said, “except that I’m not going to be dragged into it. If you can show any negligence on my part, I’ll eat it!”

Glimson threw back his head and laughed. “You express it so quaintly, Mrs. Cool. But you’re going to feel rather foolish explaining in court why you gave the name Boskovitche!”

The telephone rang. I moved over to Elsie’s desk and answered it.

The voice that came over the wire was vibrant with eager excitement. “Hello, hello. Who is this?”

“Donald Lam talking.”

“Oh, Mr. Lam! This is Esther Witson. You know, the Miss Witson who was in that automobile accident, and who called...”

“Yes, I know.”

“I want to talk with Mrs. Cool.”

“She’s busy now. It might be better if she talked a little later.”

“But can’t she come to the telephone just long enough to...”

I said, “She’s busy now. It might be better if she called a little later.”

Esther Witson thought that over for a moment, then said, “Oh, you mean that she’s busy in connection with — something that has to do with that case?”

“Yes.”

She said, “I wonder if you could answer my questions, Mr. Lam.”

“I’ll try.”

“Is a hatchet-faced lawyer by the name of Glimson there?”

“Yes.”

“Talking with her now?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, Mr. Lam, I wonder if you could get this message to Mrs. Cool. My lawyer said that Glimson is trying to make Mrs. Cool a party so he can take her deposition, and that if Mrs. Cool would agree to whatever it is that Glimson wants without committing herself as to what her testimony is going to be, it would be the best way to trap Glimson in what my lawyer says is sharp practice.”

I said, “I’ll see what I can do.”

“I’ll come over a little later and explain things in detail,” she said.

“I’ll let you talk with Bertha,” I said, and motioned to Bertha.

“I’ll take it later,” Bertha said.

“Better listen to this, Bertha. You can make up your mind later, but listen now.”

Bertha moved over to the phone, said, “Hello,” then listened. After a while she said, “All right. Good-by,” and hung up.

She turned to Glimson. “Where do you want to take this deposition?”

He beamed at her. “We can take it right here, Mrs. Cool. I’ll have a notary who is also a shorthand court reporter move right in. It won’t inconvenience you at all, only a few minutes — a few simple questions...”

“What time?”

“I had suggested three o’clock, but...”

“All right,” Bertha snapped. “Make it three o’clock, and get the hell out of here so I can work.”

Glimson’s hand shot out. He shook my hand. He shook Bertha Cool’s hand. He nodded his head and backed out of the office still nodding.

“The dirty damned shyster,” Bertha said when the door closed on him.

I said, “Wait until after three o’clock this afternoon before you say anything. And you might start thinking over what you’re going to say. I think he may be an automobile lawyer.”

Bertha glowered at me. “Any time that bony-faced bastard thinks he can rattle me, he’s got another think coming. Automobile lawyer my foot! I’ll show him a thing or two.”

“It’s okay by me,” I said, and picked up the paper again.

Bertha glowered at me and was just starting to say something when Elsie Brand fitted her latchkey to the door, opened it and then seemed surprised as she saw Bertha and me there.

“Oh, hello! I’m not interrupting, am I?”

Bertha said angrily, “Damn it, do we always have to hold our conferences here in the outer office? What the hell do we have a private office for?”

Elsie Brand said, “Sorry,” in an impersonal tone of voice and crossed over to her typewriter.

Bertha turned to me, “We got interrupted,” she said, sudden anger in her eyes. “Where the hell did you sleep last night? Frank Sellers said you...”

She broke off as the outer door opened.

The man who entered was a broad-shouldered competent individual who at the moment looked as awkwardly self-conscious as a man at the ribbon counter of a department store. “Mrs. Cool?” he asked.

Bertha nodded.

“Mr. Lam?”

I got to my feet.

“My name,” he said, “is Ellery Crail.”

Bertha flashed me a glance, said hastily, “Come in. We were just on the point of going out — that’s how you happened to catch us in the outer office. But we’ll postpone it.”

“I’m sorry to interfere,” Crail apologized, “but I’m exceedingly busy and...”

“Come in,” Bertha said, “come right in.”

We filed into the private office. Bertha seated herself behind the desk, indicated a chair for me on her right, seated Crail in the big comfortable clients’ chair.

Crail cleared his throat. “In a way,” he said, “I’m not consulting you in your professional capacity.”

“No?” Bertha asked, her personality withdrawing itself behind a hard shell of incipient hostility. “Then what do you want?”

Crail said, “You were, I believe, a witness to an automobile accident yesterday.”

“Oh, that!” Bertha said.

“For reasons of my own,” Crail went on, “I would like very much to have that case settled out of court, have the matter compromised and dropped.”

Bertha pricked up her ears. Shrewd calculation glittered in her eyes. “Just how,” she asked, “did you propose to go about it?”

Crail said, “I don’t want to approach the attorneys on either side, but it occurred to me that you, being a professional woman, might be in a position to arrange for a cash settlement so that the entire matter would be dropped.”

“May I ask what’s your interest in it?” I inquired.

Crail said, “That’s a question I’d prefer not to answer.”

I said, “One of the parties to the accident wrote down the license numbers of the cars that were near by.”

Crail changed position in the big chair. “Then you know the answer.”

“What,” Bertha demanded, “would be in it for me — for us?”

“I could,” Crail said, “arrange to give you five hundred dollars if you could settle the matter for twenty-five hundred. That would make a total expenditure on my part of three thousand dollars.”

“In other words,” Bertha said eagerly, “you’ll pay three thousand dollars to settle the case, and anything we can get between the amount of the settlement and three thousand dollars will...”

“I didn’t say that,” Crail interrupted with dignity. “I said that I would be willing to pay you five hundred dollars to effect a settlement up to an amount of twenty-five hundred dollars.”

“Suppose we get a settlement for two thousand dollars?”

“Your fee would be five hundred.”

“The same as if we settled for twenty-five hundred?”

“Yes.”

“That doesn’t give us very much of an incentive to get a lower settlement.”

“Exactly,” Crail said. “I am making my proposition in the manner in which I have outlined it for a very definite reason. I don’t want you to try and increase your own compensation at the expense of delaying a settlement. I want this thing cleaned up at once.”

Bertha said, “Now let’s get this straight. All that you want us to do is settle this lawsuit over the automobile accident? That’s absolutely everything?”

“That’s all, yes. What else would there be?”

“I’m just getting it straight,” Bertha said, “so that it won’t interfere with any other work that we might have here in the office.”

“I see no reason why it should, Mrs. Cool. My proposition is very simple.”

Bertha said, “We’d want a retainer. At least a couple of hundred in advance.”

Crail reached in his pocket for his checkbook, unscrewed the cap of his fountain pen, then thought better of it, put the cap back on the pen, the pen back in his pocket, folded the checkbook, drew out a wallet and counted out two hundred dollars in tens and twenties.

Bertha scribbled a receipt which Crail folded, tucked in his wallet and then got to his feet smiling inclusively. He shook hands with Bertha and me and went out.

Bertha’s eyes glittered up into mine. “Well, lover, it’s working out all right. Two hundred bucks here and two hundred bucks there, and the first thing you know, we’ll have a real case out of it.”

I said, “Why do you suppose he wants the case settled, Bertha?”

Bertha’s eyebrows came up. “Why for the simple reason that he doesn’t want anyone to know his wife was following Stanberry.”

I said, “Somehow, in Mrs. Crail’s position, I’d hardly confide in a husband.”

“Well, what you’d do, and what she’s done, are two different things.”

“Perhaps, but I’m beginning to wonder if this case doesn’t have another angle we haven’t considered.”

Bertha said irritably, “That’s the devil of it with you, Donald. You keep arguing against established facts. Now you’re going out with Bertha and get a nice lunch so that you won’t get all run down like you were yesterday night.”

“I had a late breakfast,” I said.

“The hell you did! Say, where were you last night? I...”

The telephone made sound. Bertha glared at me for a minute, then snatched up the receiver.

I heard Elsie Brand’s voice saying, “Esther Witson is here.”

“Oh my God!” Bertha said. “I forgot she was coming. Send her in.”

Bertha slammed back the receiver and said to me, “Now if we could get two hundred dollars out of her, we’d really be getting somewhere.”