A. Fair - Bats Fly at Dusk

Bertha said, “I’m not going to. I just want to leave you a message for Sergeant Sellers. Tell him that his threat didn’t work, will you? Tell him that I’m going to have his scalp, and now, GOOD MORNING!”

Bertha Cool turned toward the door.

“Just one more thing, Mrs. Cool.”

“What is it?” Bertha demanded.

“You can’t slam the door,” the matron said. “We’ve put an automatic check on it for that particular purpose. Good morning.”

Bertha found herself ushered out of a steel-barred door into the morning sunlight, just as though she had been some ordinary criminal. She found also that the fresh air, the freedom of motion, the feeling that she was able to go as she pleased, when she pleased, and how she pleased, was a more welcome sensation than she had ever realized.

It was eight-forty-five when she got to her office.

Elsie Brand was opening the mail.

Bertha, storming into the office, slammed her purse down on the table, and said in a voice quivering with indignation, “You get me Sergeant Sellers on the line, Elsie. I don’t give a damn if you have to get him out of bed or what happens, you get Sergeant Sellers for me.”

Elsie Brand, looking at Bertha’s quivering, white-raged indignation, dropped the mail, grabbed the telephone directory, and immediately started putting through the call.

“Hello, police headquarters? I want to talk with Sergeant Sellers immediately, please. It’s important. Yes, Bertha Cool’s office. Just a moment, Sergeant. Here he is on the line, Mrs. Cool.”

Bertha Cool grabbed up the telephone. “I’ve got something to say to you,” she said. “I’ve had a long time to think it over — a good long time, sitting in your damned jail. I just want to tell you that I’m going to—”

“Don’t,” Sergeant Sellers interrupted, laughing.

Bertha said, “I’m going to—”

“You’re going to cool down,” Sellers interrupted again, the laughter suddenly gone from his voice. “You used to run a fairly average detective agency; then you got tied up with this streak of dynamite, Donald Lam, and you started cutting corners. You’ve cut corners in every case you’ve had. Because Lam is a whiz, you’ve been able to get away with it. But now you’re out on your own, and you’ve stubbed your toe. You’ve been caught breaking into a house. All the police have to do is to press that charge against you, and you’d lose your licence and—”

“Don’t you think you can intimidate me, you great big fool,” Bertha Cool shouted. “I wish I were a man just long enough to come up there and pull you out of your office chair and pin your ears back. I know now how people can get mad enough to commit murder. I just wish I had you where I could get my hands on you. Why, you—”

Bertha choked with sheer inarticulate rage.

Sergeant Sellers said, “I’m sorry you feel that way about it, Mrs. Cool, but I thought it was necessary to keep you shut up overnight while I made a few investigations. It may interest you to know that as a result of those investigations we’ve made substantial progress toward clearing up the case.”

“I don’t give a damn what you’ve done,” Bertha said.

“And,” Sellers went on, “in case you’re in a hurry to go back to Riverside and pick up your aged mother who’s had a stroke, Mrs. Cool, you save yourself the trouble, because your mother is here in my office at the present time. I’m having him make an affidavit as to what happened. After the district attorney sees that affidavit you may have another interval of incarceration. I think you’ll find in the long run it pays to be law-abiding and to co-operate with the police. And, by the way, we picked up your automobile and drove it back to the garage where you store it. After searching it, of course. The next time you want to go anywhere, I’d suggest you just go to the garage and drive out in your car. Not that it’s any of my business, but your juggling around with streetcars and automobiles will convince a grand jury that you intended to commit some crime when you started for San Bernardino yesterday. That’s not bad, you know. Good-bye.”

Sergeant Sellers dropped the receiver into place at the other end of the line.

Flabbergasted, Bertha Cool made two abortive attempts get the receiver in its cradle before she finally succeeded.

“What is it?” Elsie Brand asked, looking at her face.

Bertha’s rage was gone now. An emotional reaction left her white and shaken. “I’m in a jam,” she said, and walked over to the nearest chair and sat down.

“What’s the matter?”

“I went out and got that blind man. I smuggled him out of the hotel. I was absolutely satisfied the police would never trace me. I stubbed my toe. Now, they’ve got him — and they’ve got me. That damn, overbearing, bullying, sneering police sergeant is right. They’ve got me over a barrel.”

“That bad?” Elsie Brand asked.

“It’s worse,” Bertha Cool said. “Well, there’s no use in stopping now. You’ve got to keep on moving. It’s like skating near the centre of a pond where the ice begins to buckle. The minute you stop, you’re finished. You’ve just got to keep moving.”

“Where to?” Elsie asked.

“Right now, to Redlands.”

“Why Redlands?” Elsie Brand asked. “I don’t get it.”

Bertha told her about the music box, the conversation Sergeant Sellers had had with the owner, and with a sudden unusual burst of confidence, the entire adventures of the night.

“Well,” Bertha Cool said at length, heaving herself up out of the chair, “I didn’t sleep a damn wink last night. I was just too mad. I never regretted taking off weight as much in my life as I did last night.”

“Why?” Elsie asked.

“Why!” Bertha exclaimed. “I’ll tell you why. There was a damn snooty matron who kept calling me dearie. She was a husky, broad-shouldered biddy, but before I took off my weight, I could have thrown her down and sat on her. And that’s exactly what I’d have done. I’d have sat on her and stayed there the whole blessed night. I’m in a jam, Elsie. I’ve got to get out of the office and lay low until the thing blows over. They’ve got that blind man, and he’ll tell them the whole business. Sergeant Sellers was right. I should have kept on doing business in the routine way. But Donald is such a reckless little runt, and he did such daring damn things, he got me into bad habits. I got to thinking, Elsie, I’m going out of here and get a drink of whisky — and then I’m going to Redlands.”

Hot, dry sunlight beat down on Redlands. The dark green of orange groves laid out in neat checkerboards contrast, with the deep blue of the clear sky and the towering pea which rose more than ten thousand feet above sea level the background. There was a clean, washed freshness about the dry air which should have been invigorating, but Bertha worry and preoccupation made her entirely oblivious of the beauty of the scenery and the freshness of the air.

Bertha dragged herself out of the automobile, plough across the sidewalk, head down, arms swinging, climbed the steps of the sanitarium, entered the lobby, and said in a flat dejected voice to the girl at the information desk, “Do you by any chance, have a Josephine Dell here?”

“Just a moment.” The girl thumbed through a card index said, “Yes. She has a private room, two-o-seven.”

“A nurse there?” Bertha asked.

“No. Apparently she’s just here for a complete rest.”

Bertha said, “Thank you,” and went pounding her weary way down the long corridor. She found the elevator, went the second floor, found room 207, knocked gently on the swinging door, and pushed it open.