A. Fair - Up for Grabs

I hung up. Bertha was watching me with shrewd, glittering eyes.

“What have you done to that man?”

“Why?”

“You’ve hypnotized him. He was pretty much put out earlier in the day but then he got some phone calls from an agent somewhere. It looks as though they’ve caught him with his hand in the cookie jar and he’s certainly yelling for help now. He wants to talk with you and he says it’s so confidential he can’t even tell me what it is he wants to talk with you about. He says you’ll understand but that it would take too much explanation for me to get the picture.”

I grinned at her and said, “Perhaps things will right after all.”

Bertha said, “That secretary of yours said there was a note under your blotter that you should read as soon as you came in.”

“Important?” I asked.

“She probably thinks it’s important. She thinks anything you do is important. She left word with the switchboard operator to let her know immediately if you called in.”

“Okay,” I said, “I’ll take a look under my blotter, see what it’s all about and then run out to see Breckinridge.”

“And then what?”

“Then I don’t know,” I said. “We’ll see how things are shaping up.”

“Did we get all the dope on that little nurse you wanted?” Bertha Cool asked.

“Not quite,” I said. “I talked with her boy friend this morning and then I talked with her roommate.”

“What did you find out?”

“She’s been accused of stealing X-ray photographs that show injuries and presumably peddling them out to persons who are malingering.”

“Don’t those X-ray photographs have key numbers on them that show where they came from?”

“Sure,” I said, “but they can get around that. They copy the part of the X-ray picture that shows the injury, then they superimpose another plate with a key number and patient’s name on it, and it would take an expert to find anything wrong.

“If someone has his suspicions aroused and is specifically looking for something of the sort, it might be possible to detect the fake, but the average insurance adjuster having an attorney dig an X-ray photograph out of the files and seeing the name of the patient and all of that, is pretty much inclined to take it for granted, and if the X-ray photograph shows a real injury, the agent will settle on that kind of a basis.”

“And you think this nurse has been pulling out photographs?”

“The hospital seems to think so,” I said. “Apparently they’d like to get rid of her but they don’t want to make an out-and-out accusation. On the other hand, the whole trouble may be due to a supervisor who doesn’t like her and is trying to get rid of her.

“That’s where you come in and what we’re going to be doing during the next hour. We’re going out to the Bulwin Apartments and you’re going to talk with the roommate, a girl named Josephine Edgar.”

“You’ve already talked with her?” Bertha asked.

“I’ve already talked with her,” I said, “but I didn’t get anyplace. She has lots of this and that and these and those and she stood close to me and moved her body a little bit, and when I accused her of using sex, said she hadn’t used sex... yet.”

Bertha sighed and said, “That’s the effect you have on all of them.”

I shook my head, “Not that much of an effect,” I said. She was too impressionable, too fast. She pulled that sex stuff too fast and it was early in the morning.”

“So what do I do?” Bertha asked.

“You,” I said, “take her to pieces and I’ll see what makes her tick.”

Bertha heaved herself up out of the squeaking chair, said, “Let me powder my nose first, and I’ll be with you.”

She waddled over to the door and down the hall.

I walked into my office, pulled up the blotter on my desk and found the note from Elsie. It was written so that no one else would know what it meant. It said:

I told you he was horrid and I thought so until he called this afternoon and asked me to come out and meet him for a talk. Donald, he’s really wonderful! He does understand all of the things I thought he didn’t appreciate last night. I waited until late for you. I put through the telephone call you wanted, and the party I talked with said she would check on M. D. but she had heard M. D. had checked out. She was going to find out about it and laid you could call her this evening. If there’s anything I can do for you, call me. Elsie.

I folded the note, put it in my pocket and waited for Bertha.

We pulled up in front of the Bulwin Apartments.

Bertha looked the place over, said, “Pretty classy dump for a couple of working gals, if you ask me.”

“I didn’t ask you,” I said. “I brought you.”

Bertha heaved herself out of the car and we walked into place and went up to Apartment 283.

Luck was with us. Josephine Edgar was home.

“Why, hello, Donald,” she said with syrup dripping from her voice and then turned to look at Bertha.

I said, “Miss Edgar, I want to present Bertha Cool. She’s my partner. She wants to talk with you.”

Bertha didn’t say a word. She just pushed forward, and Josephine gave ground in order to keep from being trampled.

Bertha barged on into the room, looked around and then turned to me. “What about it?” she asked me.

I said, “I want to find out about Melita Doon.”

Josephine said with something of a panic in her voice, “I told you everything I knew this morning, Donald.

“As far as I know, Melita Doon is a perfectly respectable young woman. She’s working hard trying to support her invalid mother, and I resent having you come barging into the apartment this way.”

“Resent and be damned,” Bertha said, “but if you think you’re going to pull that line of stuff with a professional investigator, you’re crazy as hell.”

“What do you mean?” Josephine asked.

“This business about the poor little girl supporting her mother and trying to get along as best she can,” Bertha said. “Take a look at this dump, it costs money. No two girls can afford this on the type of money you make — particularly if they’re supporting invalid mothers.

“Where the hell is Melita’s bedroom?”

Josephine was speechless, she simply gestured toward a door.

“Then this one must be yours?” Bertha said.

“That’s right.”

Bertha started walking toward Josephine’s bedroom.

“Here, you, come out of there!” Josephine said.

Bertha kept right on walking.

Josephine ran and grabbed Bertha and tugged.

Bertha gave a sidearm swipe and sent Josephine spinning across the apartment.

Bertha walked in through the open door, started looking through closets.

“Who do these men’s clothes belong to?” Bertha asked.

“You... you... you get out of here I’m going to call the police.”

Bertha tossed a couple of men’s suits out on the bed, looked in the inside breast pockets for a tailor’s label, picked a shirt from a drawer and noted the neat letter C embroidered on the breast pocket.

“You must think a lot of that guy,” Bertha said.

“That’s my cousin,” Josephine said defiantly. “He left some things here while he was gone on a trip.”

Bertha Cool prowled around the bedroom, then walked back into the living room, went into the other bedroom, prowled around, came back and said, “What the hell’s the idea?”

“What idea?”

“Stealing X-rays.”

“She wasn’t stealing X-rays!” Josephine said. “I tell you it’s that supervisor.”

“This Doon girl got a boy friend?” Bertha asked.

“No, absolutely not!”

“Baloney,” Bertha said.