Bertha Cool detoured the opportunity to discuss philosophy and brought the subject back to dollars and cents. “Why do you want me to find this girl? Why can’t you find her yourself?”
“She was hurt in an automobile accident at the street intersection. It was about a quarter to six in the evening, last Friday. She’d been working late at the office, I think, and was hurrying as she walked past me. Perhaps she had a date and was in a hurry to get home and get her clothes changed. I don’t think she’d taken over two steps off the curb when I heard the scream of tyres, a thud, and then the girl cried out in pain. I heard people running. A man’s voice asked her if she was hurt, and she laughed and said no; but she was badly scared and shaken up. He insisted that she go to a hospital for a check-up. She refused. Finally she said she’d let him give her a lift. When she was getting in the car, she said her head hurt and that perhaps it would be well to be examined by a doctor. She didn’t come back Saturday, and she wasn’t back Monday. This is Tuesday, and she isn’t back today. I want you to find her.”
“What’s your interest in her?” Bertha asked.
The blind man’s smile was benign. “You may put it down as a charitable impulse,” he said. “I make my living out of charity, and — well, perhaps this girl needs help.”
Bertha stared coldly at him. “I don’t make my living out of charity. It’s going to cost you ten dollars a day and a minimum of twenty-five dollars. If we don’t have any results when the twenty-five dollars is used up, you can decide whether you want to go ahead at ten dollars a day or not. The twenty-five dollars is payable in advance.”
The blind man opened his shirt, unbuckled his belt. “What is this?” Bertha asked. “A strip tease?”
“A money belt,” he explained.
Bertha watched him while he pushed a thumb and finger down into the well-filled pockets of a bulging money belt. He brought out a thick package of folded bills, took one from the outside, and handed it to Bertha. “Just give me the change,” he said. “Never mind the receipt.”
It was a one-hundred-dollar bill.
“Have you,” Bertha asked, “got anything smaller?”
The blind man answered her with a single monosyllable. “No.”
Bertha Cool opened her purse, took out a key, unlocked a drawer in her desk, pulled out a steel cash box, slipped a key from a cord around her neck, opened the cash box, and took out seven ten-dollar bills and a five.
“How and where do you want your reports?” she asked.
“I want them made orally,” he said, “since I can’t read. Just stop by the bank building and report progress. Lean over and speak in a low voice. Be careful no one’s listening. You can pretend you’re looking at a necktie.”
“Okay,” Bertha said.
The blind man got up, picked up his cane, and, with the tip, explored his way to the door. Abruptly he stopped, turned, and said, “I’ve partially retired. If the weather isn’t nice, I won’t be working.”
Chapter II
Bertha Cool glared down at Elsie Brand, taking her indignation out on the stenographer.
“Can you beat that?” she demanded. “The guy pulls open his shirt, unbuttons his pants, and has a money belt wrapped around him that looks like a spare tyre. He opens one of the pockets, pulls out a bunch of bills, and peels off one. It’s a century. I ask him has he got anything smaller, and he says no.”
Elsie Brand seemed to see nothing peculiar about that.
“A guy,” Bertha Cool said, “who sits down on the sidewalk, doesn’t have to pay any rent, has no taxes, no employees, and doesn’t have to make out a lot of social security reports. He has a money belt strapped around him that has a fortune in it. I have to change that hundred, and it takes damn near every cent in my cash box. And then,” and Bertha Cool’s voice rose to a high pitch of emotion, “and then, mind you, he turns around at the door and says that he won’t be working unless the weather is good. I’ve never been able to stay in bed on those cold, rainy mornings — or when there’s a damp, slimy fog. I get out and slosh my way up to the office, splashing around through puddles, getting my ankles soaking wet, and—”
“Yes,” Elsie Brand said, “I do the same thing. Only I have to get here an hour earlier than you do, Mrs. Cool, and if I had to change a hundred-dollar bill, I’d—”
“All right, all right,” Bertha Cool interrupted quickly, sensing that the conversation had turned on dangerous ground, and that Elsie Brand might be going to mention quite casually the high wages that were being paid government stenographers. “Never mind that end of it. Skip it. I just stopped by to tell you that I’m going to be out for a while. I’m going to find a girl who was hurt in an automobile accident.”
“Going to handle it yourself?” Elsie Brand asked.
Bertha Cool all but snorted. “Why should I pay an operative,” she asked, “to go out on a simple little thing like that? The girl was hurt when an automobile ran into her at the corner, last Friday night at a quarter to six. The man who ran into her took her to a hospital. All I’ve got to do is to drift down to the traffic department, get a report on the accident, take a streetcar out to the hospital, ask the girl how she’s feeling, and then report to this blind man.”
“And why does he want the information?” Elsie asked.
“Yes,” Bertha Cool said sarcastically, “why does he? He just wants to know where the little dear is, so he can send her flowers, because she brought sweetness and light into his life. He liked to hear her feet tripping along the sidewalk, and he misses her now she’s gone, so he pays me twenty-five bucks to find the little darling. Phooey!”
“You don’t believe it?” Elsie Brand asked.
“No,” Bertha said shortly. “I don’t believe it. I’m not the type. You might believe that it’s all being done for sweet charity. Bertha Cool doesn’t believe fairy stories. Bertha Cool believes twenty-five bucks. She’s going to earn it in just about an hour and a half. So if anyone comes in and wants anything, find out what it is and make an appointment for right after lunch — if it looks as though there’s any money in it. If it’s someone soliciting contributions for anything — and I don’t give a damn what it is — I’m out of town.”
Bertha strode across the office, slamming the door viciously behind her, noting with satisfaction that the keyboard of Elsie Brand’s typewriter exploded into noise almost before the door was closed.
At the traffic department, however, Bertha got her first jolt. There was no report whatever of an accident at that street intersection on the date and hour named.
“That’s a hell of a note,” Bertha complained to the man in charge of the records. “Here’s a man smacks into a girl, and you don’t know a thing about it.”
“Many times motorists fail to make reports,” the officer explained patiently. “We can’t make ’em. The law requires they must do so. Whenever there’s an officer within reasonable distance, he notes the licence number, and we check to see that the report is made out and filed by the motorist.”
“And you mean to say that at an intersection like this there wasn’t a traffic officer within earshot?”
“At that intersection,” the man explained, “the traffic officer goes off duty at five-forty, and walks two blocks over to the main boulevard to help handle traffic there. We’re shorthanded, and we have to do the best we can.”