Alphabet Hicks

Twenty-two

James Vail, as with deliberation he turned a chair to face the divan and sat on it, and leveled his gaze at Judith Dundee, was not a particularly prepossessing object. His visage, with the broad insensitive nose, the thin selfish mouth, and the cold shrewd eyes, had never been intended to excite admiration, even when, well-groomed and fed and rested, he moved in the congenial orbit of a top-flight business executive; and now, not too clean, not combed, not in any respect jaunty, with an enormous disfiguring lump on the side of his head above his left ear, he was simply ugly. Under the enveloping fat folds of his lids it was difficult to tell where his eyes were focused in that light, but as he leaned back and stuck his thumbs in his vest pockets it was Mrs. Dundee he spoke to.

“I want to assure you, Judith,” he began, “that I am willing to do everything possible to limit the damage in this business, even at considerable risk—”

“You’re not talking to me,” she snapped. “Talk to Mr. Hicks.”

“Oh, but I am talking to you. As you will see. I am willing to take considerable risk, but not to the extent of exposing myself to the danger of being arrested as an accessory to a murder. Two murders. So talking here to four of you, I shall have to be — uh — somewhat discreet regarding what I know and what I surmise. Some things I can tell you. Some I can’t. But I can tell you enough to show you the vital necessity of a very careful and very rigorous discretion on the part of all of us.”

Hicks grunted. “New paragraph. It’s late.”

Vail ignored him. “In the first place, I have known for over a year that Dick had a sonotel installed in my office. I knew it the day after he did it. No matter how. I am not a greenhorn in business, and I’m not a novice in the application of plastics to the science of sound recording. I amused myself by conveying to him some hints on formulas that I don’t think he found very helpful. Dick was enraged by Republic’s success, and he got so he was little better than a maniac. His suspicions that I was getting his formulas were completely unfounded, but it was no use talking to him.”

“If you want to rest a minute,” Hicks put in, “maybe I can go on with it. You went to a play and heard an actress with a voice exactly like Mrs. Dundee’s, and decided to have some fun. You got the actress to come to your office and do a little dialogue with you for the sonotel—”

“No,” Vail said. His eyes did not shift from Judith Dundee. “I can do this better without interruptions. I have to be a little cautious about it, for as I said, there is at least one risk I don’t care to take. I hope I don’t need to persuade you, Judith, that I would not regard it as fun to involve you in such a mess. The first I knew that you were involved was Thursday last week — a week ago yesterday. I got a phone call from Herman Brager, saying he wanted to see me. Naturally I was interested in such a call from the second-best plastic research man in the world, so I made an appointment and met him that evening. I was hoping that perhaps he was ready to quit Dundee, but quite the contrary. He was after my blood, figuratively speaking. He told me that Dick had a sonotel record from a machine picking up from my office, with a conversation between you and me, showing that I was getting Dundee formulas from you.”

Judith, frowning, spoke. “Herman Brager told you that?”

“He did. I gathered that he — uh — admires you, a sentiment in which of course he has no monopoly. I gathered that, because he seemed to resent, not so much my getting his formulas, as my getting you involved. He had formed the same theory that Hicks here has advanced, that, knowing of the sonotel, I had found someone to imitate your voice and put on a performance, and he demanded that I should clear you by telling Dick the facts. I denied it, naturally, since it wasn’t true. His admiration of you must be extreme, for I was impressed by his vehemence. If he were a man of violence, his being after my blood might not have been merely figurative.”

Vail took a breath, audibly. “Well. Since there had been no such conversation between you and me, I concluded that although I had staged no performance, someone certainly had, with an imitation not only of your voice, but of mine also. I tell you frankly that my guess was that it had been done by Dick himself, because I couldn’t imagine who else would have a motive for doing such a thing. Why Dick wanted to put it on you I had no idea, but there are many things between husbands and wives of which their friends have no idea — and, as I said, I was already convinced that Dick was little better than a maniac. Strictly speaking, I had every right to take a hand in the matter, since the fake sonotel record Brager told me of was a damaging attack on my business ethics, but I—”

Judith said, “You didn’t mention it when I called at your office yesterday.”

“I know I didn’t. I hadn’t seen or heard the record and didn’t know where it was. It concerned more than business ethics and Dick’s idiotic jealousy of me and my company; it also involved his relations with his research man and his wife. I didn’t want to mix up in that. So I told you I knew nothing about it and there was nothing I could do.

“Not that I intended to drop it. It isn’t my habit to drop things that affect my interest, business or personal. I would certainly have done my best to get hold of that record with a voice on it supposed to be mine. I did in fact take certain steps. But a different face was put on the matter when I read in the paper this morning that a beautiful young woman had been murdered at the Dundee place at Katonah. It seemed to me there were three possibilities. It might have nothing to do with Dick or you. Or it might have been the woman who had imitated your voice and she had tried blackmail. Or it might have been the woman for whose sake Dick was framing a case against you—”

“My sister never knew Mr. Dundee!” Heather cried. “And she had only just got back—”

She stopped when Hicks squeezed her arm. “Let him finish,” Hicks said. “He’s doing a swell job.”

Vail paid no attention. “As I say, there were those possibilities. At any rate, I intended to find out if I was likely to be involved, however indirectly, in anything as unsavory as a murder. When this man Hicks called at my office yesterday to try some kind of a trick with my help, I had foolishly ordered him out. This morning I made inquiries about him and decided to go to see him. While I was there George Cooper came in — I recognized him, of course, from his picture in the paper — and demanded that Hicks tell him the whereabouts of a phonograph record with his wife’s voice on it! Not only that, he repeated the first words of the record, and they were the same as those which Brager had told me began the sonotel record of the conversation between you and me! Hicks denied any knowledge of such a record, and Cooper left.”

“And then you left by request,” Hicks muttered.

Vail ignored him. “So I knew beyond question that the murdered woman was the one who had imitated your voice, and undoubtedly her murder was connected with that fact. Since an imitation of my own voice was recorded along with hers, it was up to me to do something. My first impulse was to go to the police, and I drove to White Plains. On the way there I decided it would be desirable to see what I could find out before going to the police, and with that in mind I intended to phone Brager and arrange to have a talk with him if possible, when by a stroke of luck I ran into him on Main Street in White Plains.”

Vail stirred in his chair, paused, appeared to hesitate, and then went on. “I’m being careful here. I’m telling this to four of you. I had a long talk with Brager, and found that his opinion of the matter roughly coincided with mine. He didn’t know where the sonotel record was, but suspected that Ross Dundee had sneaked it out of his father’s office to protect you. The first thing to do was to get hold of that record, and since Cooper had evidently heard it, he was the man to go for. He had left Hicks’s place with the expressed intention of going to Katonah. Brager being completely ineffectual outside of a laboratory, and not wishing to put in an appearance at Katonah myself, we arranged that Brager should return there, get Cooper aside, and persuade him to go to meet me at a spot not far off. Brager decided on the spot, a secluded roadside beyond a place called Crescent Farm. He left to return to Katonah, and I drove to the spot, arriving a little before five o’clock. I waited there, keeping out of sight, for nearly six hours, having no idea, naturally, what was happening. I got damned impatient, and I got suspicious. When it fell dark I got a pistol that I carry in my dash compartment and put it in my pocket. When a car approached, which happened only twice on the deserted road, I concealed myself — after all, the woman whose voice was on that record with what was supposed to be my voice had been murdered. Finally a car came from the direction I expected, and stopped just behind my car. I crouched in front of the hood, and when their footsteps came up alongside my car, I stood up with the pistol in my hand. One of them came at me right over the car, and the next thing I knew I was on the ground with my head buzzing.”

Ross said to his mother, “That’s when I knocked him cold. I grabbed the gun and beaned him with it.”

“D’Artagnan,” Hicks grunted. “Where’s the gun?”

“Right here.” Ross took it from his pocket.

“Let me see it.”

Ross hesitated.

“Don’t be silly,” his mother told him. “Give it to him. Is it loaded?”

“I don’t know, I didn’t look.”

Hicks did look. “It is,” he announced. He put the muzzle to his nose and sniffed several times, then slipped the pistol into his pocket. “People who jump over cars at men with guns,” he stated, “are too brave for this world, so they usually get sent to another one. Continue the explanation, Vail. It’s fascinating.”

Vail spoke as before to Mrs. Dundee. “So far, Judith, I have told you facts. I have not gone into theory. But I ought to, I’ll have to, to make you understand what I meant when I spoke of the vital necessity of a very careful and very rigorous discretion. Only before I do that I need some information myself. Doubtless Hicks can give it to me.”

“It’s yours for the asking,” Hicks declared. “What, for instance?”

“First about Cooper. He was shot?”

Hicks nodded. “While you were waiting there on the road for him but keeping yourself concealed. At six thirty-five Brager and Miss Gladd were in the office of the laboratory and heard a shot. They went outdoors and found Cooper with a hole in his temple, dead. Brager thought he heard movement in the woods, but saw no one.”

“Where were the rest of you?”

“Mrs. Dundee was in New York. So was I. Father and son were around the place somewhere. Outdoors.”

“Together?”

“No.”

“Then...” Dundee paused, and shook his head. “Where is that sonotel record?”

“Safe.”

“In whose possession?”

“If I say it’s safe, whose do you think? Mine.”

“Good,” Vail said approvingly. “I was afraid the police had it. Did you get it from young Dundee?”

“I got it by a combination of ingenuity, intrepidity, and dumb luck. From whom or where is for the present my business.”

“It doesn’t matter so long as you have it. I was afraid the police had got hold of it. Another item of information I need, Miss Gladd seems to have received a message that took her to the place where I was waiting. She seems to think I sent it, but young Dundee seems to think you did. Did you?”

“No.”

“Who did?”

“That’s a question,” Hicks said judiciously. “Miss Gladd and I conversed in her room and agreed to sneak out of the house separately and meet down the road where I had a car. While she was sitting in the car with Ross, who was apparently already in training for the role of D’Artagnan, a boy came with a message that had been phoned to his home, which was near by. It was signed ABC, meaning me, I suppose, and told her to drive to a certain spot and find me in a car with the license JV 28.”

“Ah,” Vail said.

“Right. Ah.”

The fat folds of Vail’s lids were leaving him no eyes at all. He murmured, “The message was phoned to a near-by house.”

“Correct. You may have time out to reflect on that if you—”

“I don’t need to reflect. The conclusion is obvious. You didn’t send the message, if for no other reason, because you didn’t know I was there in that car. I couldn’t have sent it, because I didn’t know where Miss Gladd was. Who did know where she was besides you? You say you conversed with her in her room. Could Brager have overheard you?”

“Brager?” Hicks’s eyes glittered. “Now you’re putting on speed. I didn’t see that one go by. Why Brager?”

“Could he have overheard you?”

“Well — his room is next to Miss Gladd’s, but there’s a wall between them and we kept our voices down.”

“Bah,” Vail said contemptuously. “Brager probably has that house wired like a central for experimental purposes, and a sonotel mike the size of a prayer book will pick up a whisper at twenty feet. Unquestionably he heard you, and he telephoned the message.”

“Say he did.” Hicks’s brow was creased. “For the sake of the argument. I still can’t see you. What put that playful idea into his head?”

“I don’t know, but it isn’t hard to guess. A double motive, I should say. Cooper was dead. Brager thought I might possibly get from Miss Gladd the information I had hoped to get from Cooper; and he wanted to be sure Miss Gladd got away, not only from that place but also from Dundee — and from you who were in Dundee’s pay. He knew she was in danger, because she was dangerous. She might at any moment, by any chance, meet Mrs. Dundee and hear her voice, and that could not be permitted to happen.”

“Oho!” Hicks ejaculated. “Now I get you! Brager and I would make a good team. The same thought struck me.”

“Do you mean,” Mrs. Dundee demanded, “that Brager wanted to get her out of reach of my husband? Of Dick?”

“I do,” Vail asserted. “Dick was desperate because he was in deadly peril. If anyone learned of the amazing resemblance between your voice and Martha Cooper’s — if the police ever got that tip and got started on that trail — they were sure to get him for the murder of Mrs. Cooper and her husband. And they still are. That’s what I’m here to tell you. They still are!”