A. Fair: Gold Comes in Bricks

Hashita faced me, teeth glittering. “We try again,” he said, and picked up the gun.

I saw his arm coming up. I gritted my teeth and lunged. This time I caught him by the wrist. I was surprised to find how easy it was to pivot. My shoulder came up under his armpit. I jerked down.

Then unexpected things happened. I knew, of course, that Hashita had given a little leap as I pulled, but the effect was spectacular. He came up over my head. I saw his feet fly up and his legs silhouette against the blazing brilliance of the lights. He twisted suddenly in the air like a cat, wrenched his arm free, and came down on his feet. The gun was lying on the canvas. I was certain he’d dropped it purposely. But that didn’t detract from the effect on the audience.

Bertha Cool said, “I’ll be damned! The little shrimp!”

Ashbury glanced swiftly at Bertha Cool, then stared at me, startled respect in his eyes.

“Very good,” Hashita said. “Very, very good.”

I heard Bertha Cool say casually to Ashbury, “He’s working for me. I run a detective agency. The little runt is always getting beaten up. He’s too light to make a good boxer, but I thought the Jap could teach him jujitsu.”

Ashbury turned to take a good look at her.

He saw only Bertha Cool’s profile. She was watching me with hard, glittering eyes.

There was nothing soft about Bertha. She was big and well-fleshed, but it was hard flesh. She had a big neck, big shoulders, a big bosom, big arms, and a good appetite. Her face had that placid look of meaty contentment which comes to women who have quit worrying about their figures and feel free to eat what they want as often as they want it.

“Detective did you say?” Ashbury asked.

Hashita said, “Now I show you slowly please.”

Bertha Cool kept her eyes on us. “Yes. B. Cool Confidential Investigations. That’s Donald Lam doing the wrestling.”

“He’s working for you?”

“That’s right.”

Hashita took a rubber-bladed dagger from his loincloth and presented the hilt to my fingers.

“He’s a little runt, but he’s brainy,” Bertha Cool went on, talking over her shoulder. “You wouldn’t believe it, but he was a lawyer, got admitted to the bar. They kicked him out because he told someone how to commit a murder and go scot-free. Smart as a steel trap—”

Hashita said, “Stab please with knife.”

I grabbed the knife and doubled my right arm. Hashita stepped smoothly in, caught my wrist, and the back of my arm, pivoted, and I went up in the air.

As I got to my feet I heard Bertha Cool say, “... guarantee satisfaction. A lot of agencies won’t handle divorce cases and politics. I’ll handle anything there’s money in. I don’t give a damn who it is or what it is, just so the dough’s there.”

Ashbury was looking exclusively at her now.

“I suppose I can trust your discretion?” Ashbury asked.

Bertha Cool seemed to have lost interest in me. “Hell, yes. Absolutely! Anything you say to me stops right there... Don’t mind my cussing.”

“Advisable not to light on head please,” Hashita said. “Honorable pupil must learn to twist in air, so to come down on feet.”

Bertha Cool flung over her shoulder, without even looking at me, “Get your clothes on, Donald. We’ve got a job.”

I sat in the outer office, waiting. I could hear the low hum of voices coming from Bertha Cool’s private office. Bertha never liked to have me listen in while financial arrangements were being made. She paid me a monthly guarantee, which she kept as low as possible, and sold my services for as much as she could get.

After about twenty minutes she called me in. I knew from the expression on her face the financial arrangements had gone to suit her.

Ashbury was sitting in the client’s chair, touching it at only two points — the base of his neck and his hip pockets. That posture caved his chest in and pushed his neck forward. Looking at him, I knew where his watermelon stomach came from.

Bertha oozed sweetness and good will. “Sit down, Donald.”

I sat.

Bertha’s jeweled hand glittered as she scooped a check off the top of the desk and dropped it into the cash drawer before I could even get a glimpse of the figures. “Shall I tell him,” she asked Ashbury, “or will you?”

Ashbury had a fresh cigar in his mouth. His head was bent forward so that he had to look at me over the tops of his glasses. Ashes from the old cigar had dribbled over his vest. The new one was just getting started. “You tell him,” he said.

“Henry Ashbury,” Bertha Cool said with the precision of one compressing facts into a concise statement, “married within the last year. Carlotta Ashbury is his second wife. Mr. Ashbury has a daughter by his first wife. Her name is Alta. On the death of Ashbury’s first wife, half of her property was left to our client, Mr. Ashbury,” and Bertha indicated him with a nod of the head, like a schoolteacher pointing out a figure on a blackboard, “and one half to their daughter, Alta.”

She looked at Ashbury. “I believe,” she said, “you didn’t give me even the approximate amount.”

Ashbury rolled his eyes over the top of the glasses from me to her. “I didn’t,” he said without taking the cigar from his mouth, and the motion dribbled more ashes down on his necktie.

Bertha covered up that one with fast conversation. “The present Mrs. Ashbury had also been married before — to a man named Tindle. She has a son by that marriage. His name is Robert. Just to give you the whole picture, Donald, Robert was inclined to take life a little too easy, following his mother’s second marriage. Is that right, Mr. Ashbury?”

“Right.”

“Mr. Ashbury made him go to work,” Bertha went on, “and he has shown a remarkable aptitude. Because of his winning personality and—”

“He hasn’t any personality,” Ashbury interrupted. “He didn’t have any experience. Some of his mother’s friends took him in on a corporation because of his connection with me. The boys hope to stick me one of these days. They never will.”

“Perhaps you’d better tell Donald about that,” Bertha said.

Ashbury took the cigar from his mouth.

“Couple of chaps,” he said, “Parker Stold and Bernard Carter, control a corporation, the Foreclosed Farms Underwriters Company. My wife has known Carter for some time — before her marriage to me. They gave Bob a job. At the end of ninety days, they made him sales manager. Two months later, the directors made him president. Figure it out for yourself. I’m the one they’re after.”

“Foreclosed Farms?” I asked.

“That’s the name of the concern.”

“What does it handle?”

“Mines and mining.”

I looked at him, and he looked at me. Bertha asked the question. “What in the world would a Foreclosed Farm Underwriters Company have to do with mines and mining?”

Ashbury slumped lower in his seat. “How the hell should I know? I can’t imagine anything which causes me less concern. I don’t want to know Bob’s business, and I don’t want him to know mine. If I ask him any questions, he’ll start trying to sell me stock.”

I took out my notebook, jotted down the names Ashbury had mentioned, and added a note to look up Foreclosed Farms Underwriters Company.

Ashbury didn’t look at all like he had up at the gymnasium. He rolled his eyes over his glasses to look at me again, and reminded me of a chained mastiff. His eyes seemed to say that if he could get a couple more feet of chain, he’d snap my leg off.

“What do you want me to do?” I asked.

“Among other things, you’re going to be my trainer.”