Bats Fly at Dusk

by Erle Stanley Gardner

  “It’d be the same in any language,” he told her.

  Bertha said, “I’ll take a gamble with you. I’ll pay you twenty-five dollars cash money for the information.” He laughed at her.

  “Well, that’s all there is to it,” Bertha said. “I’d be paying that out of my own pocket, because she hasn’t hired me to do anything with the insurance company. Anyway, she wouldn’t want to stick ‘em on a settlement, just her doctor’s bill and compensation for the time she’s lost. She figures the total at twenty-five dollars.”

  “That’s what she wants?”

  “That’s right.”

  “You’d educate her, of course.”

  Bertha said, “I probably won’t have anything to do with it.”

  “Maybe the insurance company would like to buy my notebook.”

  “Perhaps it would. Why don’t you try it?”

  “I may at that.”

  “You probably have.”

  “No. I’m strictly on the up-and-up. I wouldn’t alter my testimony for anyone. That’s why I didn’t go to this girl direct and get a cut from her. Some lawyer would smoke out what I’d done and raise the devil with me. But some private, confidential arrangement with you would be different. Then when some mouthpiece asks me if the plantiff has offered to pay me anything, I’d just look wise and say, ‘The usual witness fees is all.’ “

  Bertha laughed cynically. “Twenty-five dollars,” she announced, “is the limit of what she’ll ask at present, and that’s my limit to you. I’ll take that much of a gamble.”

  “Twenty-five per cent.,” he insisted.

  “I tell you there isn’t anything to get a cut from—not as yet.”

  “All right, perhaps things will look up later.”

  “Look here,” Bertha asked, “where can I get in touch with you?”

  He said, grinning, “You can’t,” and sauntered out of the office.

  Bertha glowered at the door as it closed behind him. “Damn him,” she said. “I’d like to slap him right across the mouth.”

  “Why don’t you?” Elsie Brand asked curiously.

  “I’ve probably got to play ball with him,” Bertha said. “You mean, accept his proposition?”

  “Eventually—if I can’t get a better one.”

  “Why?” Elsie Brand asked curiously. “Why do you get mixed up with people of that stripe, particularly when you don’t like them?”

  “Because there’s money in it,” Bertha said, and strode across the office to closet herself with the morning newspaper in her private office.

  She was halfway through the sporting sheet when the telephone buzzed on her desk. Bertha picked up the receiver, and Elsie Brand said, “Have you time to give a few minutes to a Christopher Milbers? He says that he’s met you.”

  “Milbers—Milbers?” Bertha repeated the name a couple of times, then said suddenly, “Oh yes, I place him now. What does he want?”

  “He didn’t say.”

  “Tell him to come in.”

  Christopher Milbers seemed even more self-effacing in Bertha Cool’s office than he had in Josephine Dell’s apartment. “I hope I’m not disturbing you,” he said apologetically.

  “What is it you wanted?” Bertha asked.

  “Miss Dell told me you were a detective. I was astounded.”

  “We make confidential investigations.” Bertha Cool said. “A detective sounds so much more romantic than an investigator—don’t you think so?”

  Bertha fixed him with a cold eye. “There isn’t any romance in this business. It’s a job, and I have an overhead just like any business. What do you want?”

  Milbers said, “I’d like to employ you. I don’t know what your rates are.”

  “It depends on the nature of the job and the amount of money involved.” Her eyes were showing keen interest now. “You won’t mind,” Milbers asked, “if I take the time to tell you the story from the beginning?”

  “Go ahead.”

  “Well, my cousin Harlow was rather eccentric.”

  “I gathered as much.”

  “He was very much of an individual. He wanted to live his own life in his own way. He didn’t want to be dictated to or dominated. His attitude toward his relatives was always rather —shall we say coloured—by that attitude.”

  Christopher Milbers raised his hands, opened the fingers far apart, and placed the tips together, pointed upward toward his chin. He looked at Bertha Cool over the upturned fingertips as though pathetically anxious to make certain she got exactly the point he was trying to make.

  “Married?” Bertha Cool asked.

  “His wife died ten years ago.”

  “No children?”

  “No.”

  “You’re the only relative?”

  “Yes.”

  “How about the funeral? Who had charge of that?”

  “The funeral is tomorrow. I’m having it here. I didn’t get the telegram announcing his death until Monday night. I was out of town, and there was some delay in getting the telegram to me. I trust you appreciate the delicacy of the decision that was then thrust upon me—as to the funeral?”

  Bertha said, “I don’t know a damn thing about funerals. What do you want to see me about?”

  “Yes, yes, I’m coming to that. I’ve told you that my cousin was eccentric.”

  “Yes.”

  “Among other things he had no confidence whatever in the economic security of established business.”

  A spasm of expression crossed Bertha Cool’s face. “Hell!” she said. “That isn’t eccentricity. That’s sense.”

  Christopher Milbers pressed his hands together until the fingers arched backwards at the knuckles. “Eccentricity or sense, whatever you wish to call it, Mrs. Cool, my cousin always kept a large sum of currency in his possession—in a billfold in his pocket, to be exact. I know that for a fact. I have a letter from him so informing me. He felt that at anytime a major emergency might develop. Moreover, on Thursday he drew out an additional five thousand- dollars from his account. He planned to attend an auction sale of rare books on Friday afternoon.”

  “Well?”

  “When I arrived here to take charge, I was given the things that were on his body at the time of death: the clothes and personal possessions, watch, card case, and—the wallet.”

  “What about the wallet?” Bertha Cool asked, her eyes glittering with eagerness.

  “In the wallet,” Christopher Milbers said, “there was one one-hundred-dollar bill, one twenty-dollar bill, and three one-dollar bills—nothing else.”

  “Oh—oh!” Bertha observed.

  “You can imagine my perturbation.”

  “Did you say anything?”

  “Well, a person dislikes to say anything which might be considered an accusation until he is certain of his ground.”

  “So you want me to make you certain of your ground, is that it?”

  “Well, not exactly that. I’m certain now.”

  “Yes?”

  “Yes, Miss Dell, you know.”

  “What about her?”

  “She knows about the money being in his possession.”

  “Flow come?” Bertha asked.

  “Miss Dell was his secretary for more than a year, and she remembers the occasion when he dictated the letter in which he said he was going to keep five thousand dollars on hand. That is, she did after I refreshed her memory.”

  “Where’s the letter?” Bertha asked.

  “I have it in Vermont—that is, I hope I have it there. I very seldom destroy important correspondence.”

  “Correspondence from your cousin was considered important?”

  “Frankly, Mrs. Cool, it was.”

  “Why?”

  “He was my only living relative. I felt very close to him, very much attached to him. You know how it is when the family circle narrows down to just two people.”

  Milbers beamed at her over his fingertips.

  “And one of them is wealthy,” Bertha Co
ol supplemented acidly.

  Milbers didn’t say anything.

  “How long since you’d seen him?” Bertha asked.

  “It had been some time—four or five years.”

  “You didn’t keep up with him very well, considering all the facts.”

  “He preferred it that way. He liked to write, but as far as personal contact was concerned—well, I thought it was better in the interests of a harmonious family relationship to let our contact be by correspondence.”

  Bertha said, “That’s one of those pretty speeches that sound as smooth as silk until you stop to pick the words to pieces to see what they mean. I’d say that you didn’t get along too well.”

  “In oral conversation,” Milbers admitted, choosing his words with careful precision, “we had our differences. They were predicated upon certain radical political and economic beliefs. In carrying on a correspondence, it is possible to avoid certain controversial subjects if one is tactful. In a conversation, it is not so easy.”

  Bertha said, “You could save a lot of your time and a lot of mine if you’d come right out and call a spade a spade.”

  Milbers’ eyes lit up with the fire of enthusiasm. “Ah, Mrs. Cool, there you go, making exactly the same error that so many people make. A spade is not a spade. That is, a spade is a very rough general classification covering gardening implements of a certain conventionalized shape but used for different purposes. There are spades and shovels. There are various types of spades and various types of shovels. Popularly, a shovel is considered a spade, and a spade considered a shovel. As a matter of fact, however –”

  “Skip it,” Bertha said. “I can appreciate why your cousin felt the way he did. Go on from there.”

  “You mean about the spades?”

  “No, about your cousin. Where did he live? Hotel, boarding house, club, or–”

  “No, Mrs. Cool. He didn’t live in any of those places. Unfortunately, he sought to maintain his own domicile.”

  “Who ran it for him?”

  “A housekeeper.”

  Bertha’s glittering eyes commanded additional information from her visitor.

  “A Mrs. Nettie Cranning. A woman who, I should say, is somewhere in the forties. She has a daughter, Eva, and a son-in-law, Paul Hanberry.”

  “Paul and Eva live in the house with them?” Bertha asked.

  “That’s right, Mrs. Cool. Paul was the chauffeur who drove my cousin around on the somewhat rare intervals when he went places in an automobile. Mrs. Cranning, Paul, and Eva Hanberry live there in the house. Eva, I believe, acted technically as an assistant to her mother. They all drew rather large salaries, and it was, if you ask me, a highly inefficient and expensive arrangement.”

  “How old is Eva?”

  “I should say around twenty-five.”

  “And her husband?”

  “About ten years older.”

  “What do they say about the money that was supposed to have been in the wallet?”

  “That’s just the point,” Milbers said. “I haven’t mentioned it to them.”

  “Why not?”

  “I am very much concerned that whatever I do say won’t seem to be an accusation; yet I feel it is something that should be discussed.”

  “Do you, by any chance, want me to do the discussing?” Bertha asked with a sudden flash of inspiration.

  “That’s right, Mrs. Cool.”

  Bertha said, “I’m good at that.”

  “It’s a field in which my weakness is deplorable,” Milbers admitted.

  Bertha, regarding him speculatively, said, “Yes, I can imagine—if the housekeeper is of a certain type.”

  “Exactly,” Milbers agreed, separating his fingertips and bringing them together again at regular intervals. “She’s precisely that type.”

  “Now, there was a letter about one five thousand dollars in cash. How about the other five grand?

  “That was because my cousin wished to attend an auction of some rare books. His sickness prevented him from doing so. His bank, however, confirms the five thousand withdrawal. As I compute it, Mrs. Cool, my cousin had—must have had—ten thousand dollars in his wallet at the time of his death.”

  Bertha puckered her lips, whistled a few bars, and asked suddenly, “How about you, are you well fixed?”

  “What does that have to do with it?”

  “It gives me the whole picture.”

  Christopher Milbers, after deliberating for a moment, said cautiously, “I have a farm in Vermont. I make maple sugar and syrup, and sell by mail. I make a living, but I can’t say I do any more than that.”

  “Your cousin a customer?”

  “Yes, he bought his syrups from me. He liked maple sugar, but had that sent to his office rather than the house. From time to time I would send him samples of new confections I was putting out—sent him one, in fact, only last week. It’s so hard to think of him as not being still alive–—”

  “Large samples?”

  “No. Definitely not. In selling sweets, one never sends enough to cloy the taste, only just enough to whet the sweet tooth.”

  “Charge your cousin, or send him the stuff free?”

  “I charged him regular list less thirty per cent.—and he always was careful to take off an additional two per cent. for cash.”

  Bertha held up her right hand, the first and second fingers spread wide apart in a V. “In other words,” she said, “you and your cousin were close to each other—just like this.”

  Milbers smiled. “You should have known my cousin. I doubt if anything ever got close to him—not even his undershirt.”

  “No? How about the housekeeper?”

  A shadow crossed the man’s face. “That is one of the things that worries me. She undoubtedly wanted him to become dependent upon her. I am a little afraid of her.”

  “I’m not,” Bertha said. “Let’s go.”

  Chapter VIII

  NETTIE CRANNING, RED-EYED with grief, gave Bertha Cool her hand and said, “Do come in, Mrs. Cool. You’ll pardon me, but this has been a terrible shock to me—to all of us. My daughter, Eva Hanberry, and this is my son-in-law, Paul Hanberry.”

  Bertha invaded the reception hallway with brisk competence, shook hands with everyone, and forthwith proceeded to dominate the situation.

  Nettie Cranning, a woman in the early forties who devoted a great deal of attention to her personal appearance and had cultivated a mannerism which was just short of a simper, quite evidently tried to be a perfect lady at all times.

  Her daughter Eva was a remarkably good-looking brunette with long, regular features, thin, delicate nostrils, arched eyebrows, a somewhat petulant mouth, and large, long-lashed, black eyes which seemed quite capable of becoming packed with emotion if occasion presented.

  Paul Hanberry seemed very much a masculine nonentity. drained dry by the relatively stronger personalities of the two women. He was of average height, average weight; a man who created no particular impression. As Bertha Cool expressed it afterwards in her letter to Donald Lam, “You could look at the guy twice without seeing him.”

  Christopher Milbers promptly effaced himself into the background, hiding behind Bertha Cool’s dominant personality as though he had been a child tagging along when his mother went to school to “investigate” the administration of a discipline of which she did not approve.

  Bertha lost no time getting to the point.

  “All right, folks,” she said. “This isn’t a social visit. My client, Christopher Milbers, is getting things cleaned up here.”

  “Your client?” Mrs. Cranning asked with cold, arch reserve. “May I ask if you’re a lawyer?”

  “I’m not a lawyer,” Bertha said promptly. “I’m a detective.”

  “A detective!”

  “That’s right.”

  “Well, good heavens!” Eva Hanberry exclaimed.

  Her husband pushed his way forward. “What’s the idea of having a detective in on the job?” he asked with a lu
dicrous attempt at bluster which made it seem as though he might be trying to bolster his own courage.

  bertha said, “Because there’s ten thousand dollars missing.”

  “What?”

  “You heard me.”

  “Are you,” Mrs. Cranning asked, “accusing us of taking ten thousand dollars?”

  “I’m not accusing anybody,” Bertha said, then waited a moment and added significantly, “yet.”

  “Would you kindly explain exactly what you mean?” Eva Hanberry demanded.

  Bertha said, “When Harlow Milbers died, he had ten thousand dollars in his wallet.”

  “Who says so?” Paul Hanberry asked.

  “I do,” Christopher Milbers announced, coming forward a step so that he was standing at Bertha Cool’s side, “and I happen to be in a position to prove my statement. My cousin was intending to negotiate for the purchase of some very rare contemporary historical books: Because of certain considerations which needn’t enter into the discussion, the purchase was to be for currency. He had ten thousand dollars in currency in his possession the day he died.”

  “Well, he hid it somewhere, then,” Mrs. Cranning said, “because it wasn’t in his wallet when he died.”

  “No, he didn’t,” Christopher Milbers said. “He always kept five –”

  Bertha Cool brushed him backwards and into silence with a sweeping gesture of her arm. “How do you know it wasn’t in his wallet when he died?” she demanded of Mrs. Cranning.

  Mrs. Cranning exchanged glances with the others, and failed to answer the question.

  Eva Hanberry said indignantly, “Well, good heavens, I guess if we’re responsible for things here, it’s up to us to look through the things a dead man leaves, isn’t it?”

  Paul Hanberry said,-“We had to find out who his relatives were.”

  “As though you didn’t know,” Christopher Milbers said.

  Bertha Cool said belligerently, “I didn’t come out here to waste time in a lot of arguments. We want that ten thousand dollars.”

  “He might have concealed it in his room,” Nettie Cranning said. “I’m quite certain it wasn’t in his wallet.”

  “It most certainly wasn’t in his wallet by the time I got it,”

  Milbers said, growing bolder as Bertha Cool’s direct tactics got the others on the defensive.