Kept Women Can’t Quit

Bertha Cool’s telephone jangled.

Bertha ignored it for a couple of rings but the bell had thrown Sellers off his stride and he looked up, waiting for Bertha to answer it.

Bertha picked up the telephone, said, “Hello,” then frowned and said, “He’s busy now, Elsie. It can wait, can’t it?”

Bertha listened for a moment, hesitated, then said, “Well, all right, I’ll put him on.”

Bertha turned to me. “Elsie says it’s something important.”

I picked up the telephone and Elsie Brand, talking in a very low voice so that what she said couldn’t be picked up by anyone else in the room, said, “There’s a Mrs. Hazel Downer here to see you, Donald. She looks like a million dollars and she says It s Important and highly confidential.”

I said, “He’ll have to wait until I—”

“It’s a her,” Elsie interrupted.

“I said he’ll just have to wait. I’m in an important conference in Bertha’s office.” I hung up the phone.

Bertha’s greedy little eyes snapped. “If he’s a good client, don’t take any chance on losing him, Donald,” she said. “Sergeant Sellers only wanted to find out whether this Hazel Downer had been in touch with us. He’s said everything he wanted to say.”

Sergeant Sellers took the cigar out of his mouth, looked around and said, “Why the hell don’t you keep spittoons in this joint, Bertha?”

He deposited the remains of the soggy, chewed-up cigar in Bertha’s ash tray.

“We don’t keep spittoons,” Bertha said. “This is a high-class place. Take that goddam thing out of here. It stinks up the office. I don t like it... All right, Donald, Sergeant Sellers has told you what he wanted to say. Go ahead and do whatever it is this man wants done.”

I said to Sellers, “He ordered two sandwiches, one with onions, one without?”

“That’s right.”

“And then ate them both?”

“That’s what I said.”

“Then he must have become suspicious after he’d ordered the sandwiches and before they were delivered to him.”

“He wasn’t suspicious,” Sellers exploded. “It was the jane who was to join him. She stood him up. That’s why he ate both sandwiches.”

I said, “Then why not phone her from the drive-in? Why would he leave the place and then stop to telephone?”

Sellers said, “He wanted to find out why she hadn’t joined him. He didn’t know he was being tailed.”

“But he did see the binoculars?” I asked.

“I thought he did.”

“And went into a panic?”

“I ranked it,” Sellers admitted. “I sprung the trap too soon. He may not have seen the binoculars, but he seemed to be looking right into my eyes.”

I said, “Perhaps you missed something, Sergeant. I don t think he’d have let you watch him telephone if—”

Sergeant Sellers interrupted me. “Now look,” he warned, “you’re one damn smart customer. I’m not underestimating you one bit. My neck’s stuck out on this thing but I don’t need your help, and I don’t want your hindrance. Just lay off — understand?”

Bertha said, “You don’t need to talk to Donald like that, Frank.”

“The hell I don’t,” Sellers said. “This guy is too damned clever to suit me. He’s smart. He’s too damned smart. He thinks he’s even smarter.”

I said, “I didn’t give you as a character reference to anybody that I know of. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m busy. We have a living to make and we can’t make it just sitting around listening to people making threats.”

I walked out of Bertha Cool’s office, hurried across the reception room down to my private office and opened the door.

Elsie Brand jerked her thumb toward the inner office and said, “In there.” And then added, “Boy-oh-boy! This one is a knockout!”

I handed Elsie a key.

“What’s this?” she said.

“The key to the men’s washroom down the hall,” I said. “Take her down there, get inside and bolt the door.”

“What?”

“You heard me.”

“Why down there? Why not to the ladies’ room? Why not—?”

“Down there,” I said. “Get started.”

I opened the door to the inner office and walked in.

Hazel Downer was sitting with her knees crossed, facing the door. The pose had been carefully studied with just the proper amount of cheesecake and then perhaps because she’d been afraid I wouldn’t take sufficient notice she had added a little to the visible nylon. It looked great.

I said, “Hello, Hazel. I’m Donald Lam and you’re in a jam. This is Elsie Brand, my secretary. She’s taking you down the hall. Go with her and wait.”

I turned to Elsie. “I’ll give you my code knock on the door.”

“Come along, Hazel,” Elsie said.

“Where is this place?” Hazel asked, somewhat suspiciously.

“It’s the washroom,” Elsie said.

“Well, what do you know!” Hazel said, and got up off the chair, holding her chest out, and accompanied Elsie out of the office without looking back to see if I was watching her hips.

She didn’t have to. She was dressed so it would have been an impossibility not to have watched.

I sat down in my office swivel chair and started doodling on paper.

It was about a minute and a half before the door was jerked open by Sergeant Sellers. Bertha was looking apprehensively over his shoulder.

“Where’s your man?” Sellers asked.

“What man?”

“Your client.”