I skimmed through the unessential parts to concentrate on the paragraph dealing with the cause for divorce. It was cruelty. Her husband had hit and slapped her, had on one occasion pushed her out of an automobile when she was a little slow in getting to the sidewalk, had called her “bitch” and “whore” in the presence of witnesses, all of which had caused her great and grievous mental suffering and physical anguish.

I looked up, to find Bertha Cool staring at me with gray eyes in which the pupils had contracted until they were black pinpoints. The currency lay uncounted on the blotter in front of her.

“Aren’t you going to count it?” Alma Hunter asked.

“No,” Mrs. Cool said. She scooped the money into a drawer, picked up the telephone, and said to Elsie Brand, “When Alma Hunter goes out, give her a receipt made to Sandra Birks for one hundred and fifty dollars.”

She hung up the telephone and said to Alma Hunter, “That’s all.”

Alma Hunter got up and looked at me. I left the office with her. Elsie Brand had a receipt ready. She tore it from the receipt book, handed it to Alma Hunter, and turned back to her typewriter.

Alma Hunter looked across at me as we gained the corridor and started down toward the elevator. “I want to talk with you,” she said.

I nodded.

“And please understand me. I know how you’re feeling. After what Mrs. Cool said about having rented you, you feel like a gigolo or a poodle dog or something.”

“Thanks,” I said.

“Sandra told me the doctor would be patching her brother up for almost an hour, and not to come until he was finished.”

“And you decided to kill that hour talkng to me?” I asked.

“Yes.”

The light over the elevator shaft glowed red. “Is it too early for lunch?” she asked.

I thought of my twenty-five-cent breakfast and followed her into the elevator.

“No,” I said.

Chapter Three

CHAPTER THREE

WE SAT in a little, quiet restaurant down on a side street, a little place run by a big German woman. It was a new one on me. Alma Hunter said Sandra had been eating there for five or six months. The food was wonderful.

“Tell me—how long have you been working there?” Alma asked.

“You mean at the detective agency?”

“Yes, of course.”

I said, “About three hours.”

“I thought so. And you’ve been out of work for a while?”

“Yes.”

“How in the world did a man of your size decide to become—er—that is—what experience have you had—or perhaps I shouldn’t ask that.”

“You shouldn’t,” I said.