Give ’Em the Ax

4

Bertha came in just before five. Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes glittering. She jerked the door open, strode into the office, took one look at me and said all in one breath, “Donald, why the hell don’t you go in the private office and read the newspaper?”

“I’ve seen the newspaper.”

“Well, sit in there and twiddle your thumbs then. Don’t sit out here. It takes Elsie’s mind off her business.”

“She’s been typing right along,” I said. “Anyhow it’s quitting time.”

“Well,” Bertha snapped, “it takes her mind off her business just the same. I’ll bet she’s been making mistakes.”

She strode over to the typewriter, looked at the last two pages Elsie had done and pointed an accusing finger. “There you are,” she said. “An erasure, another erasure. Here’s a third one.”

“What of it?” I said. “Rubber companies pay dividends out of selling typewriter erasers. They know that stenographers are going to make mistakes once in a while. Three mistakes on four pages isn’t too much.”

“Humph! That’s what you think. Look at these.”

She ran through several other pages. There wasn’t so much as the evidence of an erasure on them.

I looked at Elsie. Her cheeks were flaming red.

“A fine detective you are,” Bertha grunted. “Come in.”

I started to say something, but Elsie’s eyes were pleading with me not to, so I followed Bertha into the private office.

“A hell of a mess,” Bertha said angrily, slamming back the cover of the humidor and helping herself to a cigarette.

“What’s the matter, did you miss them?”

“No, I picked them up all right. She’s Mrs. Ellery Crail and she’s driving a Buick Roadmaster that’s registered in her name. The man with her is Rufus Stanberry. He’s the man who owns the building. He lives at 3271 Fulrose Avenue in the Fulrose Apartments. That’s a swanky place with lots of liveried servants and a lot of gingerbread on the lobby entrance. He drives a big Cadillac.”

I said, “It looks to me as though you’ve done a pretty good job, Bertha. What’s the trouble?”

“Trouble! ” Bertha all but screamed at me. “Of all the dirty damn messes!”

“Go ahead, unburden yourself.”

Bertha, controlled herself with an effort, said angrily, “God knows what it is. I guess it’s a knack you have — something like an evil eye. Whenever you start in on a case, it never runs smooth. Something always goes sour.”

I fished out one of the packages of cigarettes I had bought from the girl at the Rendezvous and shook out a cigarette.

Bertha’s hand jerked toward the humidor on the desk. “Use one of these, lover, during office hours. I charge them to office expense.”

I conveyed my cigarette to my lips, put the pack back in the pocket, struck a match and said, “This is on the expense account, too.”

“How come?”

“I bought it from the girl at the Rendezvous.”

Bertha started to say something, then thought better of it.

I took all three packages from my pocket, placed them on the desk.

Bertha glowered. “What the hell’s the idea?”

“Nothing,” I said casually. “They’re my brand, and she had pretty legs, that’s all.”

Bertha all but choked.

“Go ahead,” I invited.

“Damn you,” Bertha said, “I don’t know whether you realize how much you irritate me.”

I met her angry eyes. “Want to dissolve the partnership?”

“No!” she yelled.

“Then shut up,” I said.

We locked eyes for a minute, then I gave her a chance for a diversion. “What happened when you shadowed Mrs. Crail?”

Bertha took a deep drag at the cigarette, exhaled, said, “I sat out in front of the Rendezvous. I’ve been there perhaps five minutes when the door opens and these two people come out. You’ve described them to a tee. It’s like shooting fish in a rain barrel.

“They stand in front of the building for a minute, then separate. The man looks at a wrist watch, then gets in a big Cadillac. The woman goes tripping down the street. I have to make up my mind. I pick the man.”

I nodded. “The man was the one I wanted.”

Bertha’s eyes glittered at me. “You’d jammed the agency car right up against this big Cad, and he just shoved it the hell out of there without even trying to inch his way out. Made me so damn mad I all but gave him a piece of my mind.”

I didn’t say anything.

“You shouldn’t have left the agency car there. You’d squeezed right up against this big Cad.”

I took a drag at the cigarette.

“Well,” Bertha went on, “I tailed this Cad. He drove pretty fast to Garden Vista Boulevard. Then he went down the boulevard and damned if there wasn’t some car tagging along behind me! I took a gander, and it was Mrs. Crail following this Cad.”

I raised my eyebrows.

“Well, I pulled off to the right to see whether she was trying to tail me, and she slowed right down, waiting for some other car to move in. She didn’t want to get close enough to the Cad so the driver could see her.”

“So what did you do?” I asked.

“Well I was in something of a spot, so I swung clean over to the right hand traffic lane and trailed along in the blind spot of the Cad and to one side of Mrs. Crail’s Buick.”

“Good stuff,” I said, “unless they happen to turn left.”

“Well,” Bertha snapped, “he turned left.”

“And you lost him?”

Bertha said, “Shut up! I’m not that dumb!”

She puffed angrily at the cigarette for a moment, then said, “When I saw he was going to turn left, I slowed for the car that was directly behind me to go on past, then I was going to cut across to the left-hand lane of traffic. The car behind me was driven by a buck-toothed little bitch who didn’t like the way I was driving. She slowed when I slowed, then suddenly pulled up abreast of me and yelled at me, something about why didn’t I tell her I was going to spend my two weeks vacation in that one spot, then gave it the gun and shot on past.”

“And then?” I asked.

“And then,” Bertha said, “she looked to see where she was going just a little too late. Another car coming from the opposite direction was making a left-hand turn. I don’t think this trollop ever saw him until half a second before the crash. Even then she might have put on the brakes and saved herself, but she was going fast and she tried to whip around the corner to the right and cut inside of him. She didn’t make it.”

“Anybody hurt?”

“The man wasn’t, but the woman with him pulled a faint. They blocked me absolutely and completely. There was traffic behind, and this mass of wreckage right square in front of me.”

“And that was when Stanberry turned left?”

“Don’t be silly,” Bertha said. “Traffic at that intersection was all jammed to hell. It took a cop five minutes to get it moving. And the buck-toothed trollop flagged a taxicab that was swinging left into a parking station and rode away just as calmly as you please, leaving her goddamned car right in my road.”

“Without getting the names of witnesses, or seeing who...?”

Bertha said, “She gave her name and address to the driver of the other car, and she went over to Stanberry’s car, got his name and address, then went around to the other cars. She even came to me. That was while traffic was jammed. It was through her that I got Stanberry’s name and address.”

“How come?”

“Traffic was all snarled up. The traffic coming toward town on the boulevard kept inching past and you couldn’t bust into it with a chisel. Stanberry seemed very decent about it. Of course the cars behind were raising hell. The driver of the other car didn’t go around any, but he was writing down license numbers. The buck-toothed biddy was turning on personality and getting names and addresses. I saw she had Stanberry’s name in her book so when she came to me, instead of telling her to go to hell, I smiled sweetly at her and told her I’d be glad to, but that she’d have trouble spelling my name, and I’d better write it down for her.”

“What did she do?”

“Did just what I hoped she’d do,” Bertha said. “She gave me the little notebook and told me to write it down. The name directly above mine was Rufus Stanberry, 3271 Fulrose Avenue. I fumbled around with her pencil getting a good look at the names and addresses so I’d remember them, and then I wrote down a name for her.”

“Your own?” I asked.

Bertha glared at me. “Don’t be a fool. I thought up the damnedest Russian spelling I could think of and gave the first address that popped into my head out in Glendale, smiled sweetly at the pop-eyed little wench, and handed it back to her. Then I started signaling for the traffic behind me to get out of my way and tried backing up.”

“And then what?”

“And then,” she said, “I had to argue with some damn bird behind me who couldn’t back up because there was somebody behind him who wouldn’t back up. There was a lot of tooting horns, and I lost my temper. I tried to slam the car back and locked bumpers with some dumb egg who had come up too close behind me, and this traffic cop came along and poured acid all over everybody, and the damn horse-toothed cluck that had caused the whole business gave a sweet smile to the traffic cop, caught a taxi that was turning left into a hotel parking stand over on Mantica and went away and left her heap right in the street.”

“What did you do?”

Bertha said, “I finally stood on my damned bumper while the other man lifted on his, and got the cars loose. By that time...”

“Did the woman get Mrs. Crail’s name?”

“Sure. It was a couple of names above Stanberry’s. I saw it was there. I didn’t bother with the address because we have it. I was trying to find who the man was.”

“Did Stanberry see Mrs. Crail’s name?”

“No. I’m the only one who wrote down my own name in the book. She’d done the writing on the others, also their license numbers. You can bet I didn’t write my license number for her.”

“So what did you do when you got free of the other car — come directly back here?”

“No. I figured she’d probably be taking Stanberry home, so I beat it out to 3271 Fulrose Avenue. I cased the joint and found it had a private switchboard, hung around there for a while, and then when they didn’t show up, I decided to hell with it and came back to the office. What did you do?”

I said, “I got kicked out of the Rimley Rendezvous.”

“Flirting with women?”

“No. The manager invited me in, bought me a drink and told me to get out and stay out.”

“He’s got a crust.”

“He’s right,” I said. “He’s running a joint where married women drop in for an afternoon pickup, where a few tired businessmen hang around after the merchant’s lunch to do a little casual dancing. A private detective is as welcome there as a case of smallpox on an ocean liner.”

“How did he know you were a private detective?”

“That,” I said, “is what gets me. He knew it. He knew my name, knew everything about me, knew all about you.”

“Did he know what case you were working on?” Bertha asked.

I said, “I’m wondering whether he put two and two together; that call for Mrs. Crail, and then no one being on the telephone; the fact that Mrs. Crail and Stanberry must have left at just about the time I was being entertained in the office, and then all of a sudden Rimley wanting to terminate the interview. That could have been after he’d received a signal that Mrs. Crail had made her getaway. I don’t think it occurred to anybody that you’d be waiting outside to pick them up, and...”

The telephone rang.

Bertha Cool scooped up the receiver. I heard Elsie Brand’s voice coming through, then a click and another voice. Bertha was all suave smiles. “Yes, Miss Rushe,” she said, “we’re making progress. Mrs. Crail was at the Rimley Rendezvous this afternoon with Mr. Stanberry.”

There was silence for a while, then Bertha said, “I’ll let you talk with Donald. He’s here.”

She passed the phone over to me and said, “Miss Rushe wants a report.”

I picked up the telephone. Georgia Rushe said, “Do you have anything to add to Mrs. Cool’s information, Mr. Lam?”

“I think so,” I said.

“What?”

I said, “You say the present Mrs. Crail was formerly Irma Begley, and she got acquainted with Ellery Crail through an automobile accident?”

“That’s right.”

“Crail struck her car?”

“Yes.”

“She sustain personal injuries?”

“Yes. A spinal injury.”

“Think she really has it?”

“It seems to have been definitely authenticated by X-rays.”

I said, “Well, she probably got it a year or so earlier in another automobile accident. If we could prove that, would that mean anything to you?”

“Would it!” she said ecstatically.

“Well, don’t get excited about it, and don’t try any amateur detective work. Let us handle it.”

“You’re sure about this other automobile accident?” she asked.

“No, of course not. It’s simply a lead.”

“How long will it take you to find out?”

I said, “It depends upon when I can locate the other party to the accident, a man named Philip E. Cullingdon, and find out what he says.”

“How long will it take you to do that?”

“I don’t know. I’m starting on it right away.”

She said, “I’ll be waiting to hear from you, Mr. Lam. You folks have my telephone number up there. Call me at once in case you find anything. At once, please.”

“Okay, I’ll let you know,” I said, and hung up.

All of a sudden Bertha began chuckling.

“Why the amusement?” I asked.

Bertha said, “I’m thinking of the way that little strumpet bawled me out when she went past, and then came back with that sickly sweet smile when she wanted me to be a witness for her. And I’m also thinking of the sweet time she’ll have when she goes messing out around the address I gave her in Glendale trying to find a woman by the name of Boskovitche.”