Turn on the Heat

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I opened the door marked Bertha Cool — Confidential Investigations — Entrance. Elsie Brand looked up from her shorthand notes, and, without missing a beat on the keyboard, said, “Go on in. She’s waiting.” The staccato rhythm of her typing followed me across the office and through the door marked Bertha Cool — Private.

Bertha Cool, profane, massive, belligerent, and bulldog, sat back of her desk, her diamonds flashing in the morning sunlight as she moved her hand over a pile of papers, sorting and re-arranging. The thin man in the middle forties seated in the client’s chair looked up at me with anxious, apprehensive eyes.

Bertha Cool said, “You were long enough getting here, Donald.”

I said nothing to her, but sized up the client, a slender man with greyish hair, a grey, close-clipped moustache, and a mouth which seemed more decisive than the general anxiety of his appearance would indicate. He wore blue glasses so dark that it was impossible to distinguish the colour of his eyes.

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