A. Fair: Bats Fly at Dusk

“We’d like very much to help you get it.”

“Well, how am I going to find out about it?”

“You might call the hospitals and ask them if a patient was received for an examination sometime between six and seven o’clock last Friday night. I take it, you can describe the patient?”

“Generally.”

“You know her name?”

“No.”

The traffic officer shook his head. “Well, you might try it.”

Bertha tried it, sweating in the confines of a telephone booth, reluctantly dropping coins into a pay telephone. After having expended thirty-five cents, her patience was worn thin. She had explained and re-explained, only to be told, “Just a moment,” and connected with some other department to whom she had to explain all over again.

At the end of her list she was out thirty-five cents and had no information, which hardly improved her irascible disposition.

Traffic rumbled past the busy intersection at the corner. Pedestrians returning from lunch streamed across the street in intermittent rivulets of moving humanity. The bells on the automatic block signals clanged with monotonous regularity at fixed intervals. Occasional streetcars grinding past to the accompaniment of clanging gongs added to the noise of automobile traffic, the clashing of gears, the sound of engines as they were intermittently speeded up or braked to a stop.

The day was warm and sunny, and the smell of exhaust gases clung to the concrete canyon of the streets in a sticky vapour.

Kosling sat in a little patch of shade in front of the bank building, his legs doubled under him, his stock of neckties displayed in a tray suspended by a strap from his shoulders. Over on the left on a smaller tray were the lead pencils. At occasional intervals a coin jangled into the tin cup. Less frequently someone stopped to look at the assortment of ties.

Kosling knew his merchandise by a sense of touch and a keen memory for its position on the tray. “Now this tie is very nice for a young man, madam,” he would proclaim, touching a vivid bit of red silk, splashed with white and crossed with black stripes. “Over here is something very nice in a deep blue, and here’s a checkered effect which would make a splendid gift. Here’s something that goes very nicely with a sport outfit, and—”

He broke off as his ears heard the pound of Bertha Cool’s determined feet on the sidewalk.

“Yes, ma’am, I think you’ll be satisfied with that one. Yes, ma’am, fifty cents is all. Just drop it in the cup, please. Thank you.”

Because the man couldn’t see he didn’t look up as Bertha bent over the tray. “Well?” he asked.

Bertha bent down. “No progress,” she said, “as yet.”

The blind man sat patiently waiting for more, saying nothing.

Bertha hesitated a moment before deciding on an explanation. “I’ve checked the traffic records and called the hospitals. There hasn’t been a thing, I’ve got to have more information to go on.”

Kosling answered in the quiet, flat monotone of one who has nothing to gain by impressing his personality upon his listeners. “I’d done all that before I came to you.”

“You had!” Bertha exclaimed. “Why in hell didn’t you say so?”

“You didn’t think I’d pay twenty-five dollars just to get someone to run an errand, did you?”

“You didn’t tell me you’d done that,” Bertha exclaimed indignantly.

“You didn’t tell me that you intended to do the stuff anybody could do. I thought I was hiring a detective.”

Bertha straightened, went pounding away, her face flushed, eyes glittering, feet swollen in her shoes from contact with the hot sidewalk.

Elsie Brand looked up as Bertha came in. “Any luck?”

Bertha shook her head and marched on into the inner office where she banged the door shut and sat down to think things over.

Her cogitations resulted in an advertisement to be placed in the personal columns of the daily papers.

Persons who saw accident at corner of Crestlake and Broadway last Friday at about quarter to six please communicate with B. Cool, Drexel Building. No annoyance, no trouble, no subpoena. Simply want to get information. Reward of five dollars paid for licence number of automobile which struck young woman.

Bertha settled back in the swivel chair, looked the copy over, consulted the classified rates, and started crossing words out with her pencil.

As finally completed, the ad read:

Witnesses accident Crestlake Broadway Friday communicate B. Cool, Drexel Building, Three-dollar reward licence number.

Bertha studied that ad for a moment, then, with her pencil, crossed out the words three-dollar and wrote two-dollar in its place.

“Two dollars is quite enough,” she said to herself. “And be sides, no one would have remembered the licence number unless he’d written it down; and if he wrote it down, he is the kind who would like to be a witness. Two dollars is quite enough for him.”

It was Wednesday afternoon when Elsie Brand opened the door of Bertha Cool’s private office. “A gentleman outside; won’t give his name.”

“What’s he want?”

“Says you put an ad in the paper.”

“About what?”

“Automobile accident.”

“So what?” Bertha asked.

“He wants to collect two dollars.”

Bertha Cool’s eyes glittered. “Show him in.”

The man whom Elsie Brand escorted into Bertha Cool’s private office seemed to be trying to get through life by expending the least possible effort. He had a semi-pretzel posture as though neck, shoulders, hips, and legs all seemed afraid they would support more than their fair share of the weight, and even the cigarette which he held in his mouth drooped nonchalantly, bobbing up and down when he talked.

“Hello,” he said. “This the place that wanted information about the automobile accident?”

Bertha Cool beamed at him. “That’s right,” she said. “Won’t you sit down? Have that chair — no, not that one, it’s not so comfortable. Take this one over by the window. That’s it; it’s cooler there. What’s your name?”

The man grinned at her.

He was somewhere in the middle thirties, around five-foot-nine, slightly underweight; with an indolent motion, a sallow complexion, and eyes that were bright with impudence. “Don’t think for a minute,” he said, “that anybody’s going to slap a subpoena on me and say, ‘Now you’re a witness, and what are you going to do about it?’ There’s a lot of talk that has to take place before that happens.”

“What kind of talk?” Bertha asked, carefully fitting a cigarette into her long, carved ivory holder.

“The kind of talk that starts in with a discussion of what’s in it for me,” the man said.

Bertha smiled affably. “Well, now, perhaps I can fix things so there’ll be a good deal in it for you — if you saw what I am hoping you saw.”

“Make no mistake, sister. I saw it all. You know how it is; some people don’t want to be witnesses, and you can’t blame them. Somebody slaps them with a subpoena. They go up to court five times, and learn that the lawyers have continued the case. The sixth time there’s another trial going on, and they wait two days before their case comes up. Then a lot of lawyers throw questions at ’em and make monkeys of ’em. When the case is finished, the lawyer sticks his mitt out and tells ’em he’s much obliged, and coughs up a cheque for ten or fifteen bucks witness fees. The guy’s testimony gave him the break that resulted in a verdict of fifteen grand, but the lawyer soaks the client fifty per cent of it. It’s the witness that’s the sucker. My mother didn’t have any foolish children.”