Gold Comes in Bricks Read Online Free PDF

that business talk, but she doesn’t fool me a darn bit. I—I hate her.”
    I observed that I thought Henry Ashbury was quite capable of handling the situation.
    “He isn’t,” Alta said. “No man is. She has him hamstrung and hogtied before he starts. If he accuses her of anything, she’ll throw one of her fits and Doctor Parkerdale will come rushing out with the rubber tube he puts around her arm and take her blood pressure— Oh, can’t you see what she’s doing is simply laying the foundation for filing a suit for divorce on the ground of mental cruelty, claiming that Father was so unreasonable and unjust with her that it ran up her blood pressure and ruined her health and kept Doctor Parkerdale from curing her. And she has the doctor all primed to give his testimony. The only thing Father can do is efface himself as much as possible and wait for something to break. That means he has to give in to her. Look here, Donald. Are you pumping me or am I just making a fool out of myself talking too damn much?”
    I felt like a heel again, only worse.
    She didn’t talk much after that.
    Someone called her on the telephone, and she didn’t like the conversation. I could see that much from the expression on her face. After her party had hung up, she telephoned and broke a date.
    I went out finally and sat on the sunporch. I felt more like a heel than ever.
    After a while she came out and stood looking down at me. I could feel her scorn, even though it was too dark to see the expression in her eyes. “So,” she said, “that’s it, is it?”
    “What?” I asked.
    She said, “Don’t think I’m entirely a nitwit. You, a physical director. I don’t suppose it ever occurred to you I’d take the license number of the car that calls for you every afternoon, and look up the registration. B. Cool, Confidential Investigations. I suppose your real name is Cool.”
    “It isn’t,” I said. “It’s Donald Lam.”
    “Well, the next time Dad tries to get a detective who’s going to pose as a physical director, tell him to get someone who looks the part.”
    She stormed out of the room.
    There was an extension phone down in the basement. I went down and called Bertha Cool. “All right,” I said, “you’ve spilled the beans.”
    “What do you mean, I’ve spilled the beans?’’
    “She wondered who was calling for me afternoons, waited around the corner, got the license number of your car, and looked it up. It’s registered in the name of the agency, you know.”
    I could hear Bertha Cool’s gasp over the telephone.
    “A hundred bucks a day thrown out of the window just so you could chisel a taxi fare,” I said.
    “Now listen, lover,” she implored, “you’ve got to find some way out of this. You can do it, if you’ll put your mind on it. That’s what Bertha has you for, to think for her.”
    I said, “Nuts.”
    “Donald, you must. We simply can’t afford to lose that money.”
    “You’ve already lost it.”
    “Isn’t there something you can do?”
    I said, “I don’t know. Drive the agency car out here, park it at the place where you usually meet me, and wait.”

CHAPTER FOUR
    A LTA WENT OUT about quarter to ten. The butler opened the garage doors, and while he was doing that, I was streaking down the street. That’s one thing I’m good at sprinting.
    Bertha Cool was waiting in the car. I climbed in beside her, and said, “Get that motor going. When a twelve-cylinder car streaks past us, give it everything you’ve got and keep the lights turned off.”
    “You’d better drive, Donald.”
    “There isn’t time. Get started.”
    She started the motor and eased away from the curb. Alta Ashbury went past us like a flash. I said to Bertha, “Go ahead. Give it the gun.” I reached over and switched out the headlights.
    Bertha started groping for the headlight switch. I jerked her hand away, grabbed hold of the hand throttle, and pulled it out all the way. We started going places. Bertha got