Ellery Queen’s Double Dozen

John Reese Hearing Is Believing

An ingenious and amusing adventure of two college seniors, with an old wrinkle on smuggling but an exceedingly new wrinkle on detecting...

“Are we ready?” said Jerry Runkle.

Mort Lisky made a fast examination of his circuits. Ready-lights glowed on both tape recorders. Microphones were in place, amplifiers plugged in, his monitor earphones “hot.” His long sensitive fingers caressed the switches lovingly. “I guess so, but I wish I could test the filter on an incoming call.”

“No time,” said Jerry. “They’re not going to horse around about contacting us. They’ve got a lot of heavy scratch riding on this caper.”

Mort gave him a pained look. “You were in that workshop original about gangsters, weren’t you? Kid, you gotta stop letting freshmen write your lines!”

“Corny or not,” said Jerry, “it’s true. And if you didn’t try to make friends with everybody after two beers, we wouldn’t be in this fix. You’re the genius who picked up those two characters!”

“But you’re the one who loaned Fox your camera, and that’s where we found the jewels,” said Mort. “I still think we ought to call the cops, or the customs agents, or somebody with badges and guns.”

Jerry shivered. “Not yet. Face it, Mort — until we can prove the jewels aren’t ours, we are the smugglers. We did bring them in, don’t forget that!”

“Forget it? How can I?” Mort said hollowly. “All right, maestro, we’ll do it your way. The script gets off to a fast start — I’ll say that for it. But are you sure you know what your third-act curtain’s going to be?”

No answer came from Jerry, who was a serious, blond youth of twenty-one, a senior majoring in theater arts at San Diego State College. Jerry did not yearn to be an actor himself. Once he had, but all that had been discarded with other purposeless yearnings of his callow years. Now Jerry wanted to write, direct, and produce, manipulating players as well as lines, to the greater glory of the modem theater.

Mort Lisky towered over him by six indies, being a swarthy six feet four of bones, chin, nose, and ungentle sarcasm. He too was a senior, but if Jerry felt himself ready for life, Mort knew his education was no more than started. True, he could make a living, and a good one, in any branch of electronics.

But next year Mort would begin postgraduate work at the University of California, one of a picked group of seniors from all over the nation, on something called Interplanetary Communications Project 9-D. Since time immemorial, men have projected their souls to the distant stars, seeking to draw from their constancy some inkling of their own fickle fates. To Mort, the stars talked back.

Jerry and Mort had shared an apartment for three years. They were totally unlike in ambitions, attitudes toward life, and politics — wherefore they were close friends. They had just returned from Mazatlán, Mexico, along with a hundred other San Diego Staters, where they had enjoyed the surf-bathing of Easter Week. They were tanned by the winter sun, exercised to healthy exhaustion, and exceedingly well nourished on the cheap but delicious Mexican beer. They should have felt very fit indeed.

They did not, and all because of a discovery Jerry had made just after crossing the border in the cab that took them from the Tijuana airport to their San Diego apartment. Jerry had decided, at the last minute, to have the cab stop so that he could leave the films of his Mazatlán outing at a photo shop. He remembered having loaned his fine, German-made reflex camera to Mr. Wilfred “Bill” Fox, attorney for that nice American investor, Mr. Barney Cupp. It was hardly likely that Mr. Fox would leave any film in the camera, but if he had, Jerry figured he might as well have that developed too.

So he opened his suitcase which, like all students’ baggage, had been given a once-over-lightly by the U.S. customs guards. There was no film in the camera, but it didn’t feel right to Jerry somehow. He opened its back, and a small cloth bag fell out. Call it a hunch, but at the same time Jerry’s heart fell so many millions of light-years that the most sensitive interplanetary radio could never have made contact with it.

“Ai! Ai! Ai!” said Jerry.

“You sound like a puppy that had its tail rocked on,” said Mort. “What’s wrong? Speak, boy!”

“Look what I found in my c-c-camera,” Jerry gurgled. “It f-f-f-feels like beads inside.”

Mort took the small cloth bag and opened it. His father was a jeweler and Mort had grown up in the shop, so his was no amateurish guess. “Nine diamonds, seven emeralds, and two of the finest rubies I have ever seen,” he said. “Uncut stones come in duty-free, but these have been cut, and are subject to duty. I’d say they’ll wholesale for around a hundred thousand dollars. Where did you pick up these baubles?”

“I loaned Mr. Fox the camera to shoot those girls water-skiing off Olas Atlas,” Jerry quavered. “They... they must be his.”

“And we’re not going to be a bit surprised when he comes after them, are we?” Mort said softly. “Because he got our address and phone number from me, and he and Mr. Cupp were on the same plane with us!”

“They’re smugglers!” Jerry moaned.

“Wrong,” said Mort. “We’re the smugglers. They are just a nice Beverly Hills investor and his nice attorney, who have been having a nice vacation while inspecting the very nice investment opportunities in Mazatlan. Jerry, we’re in trouble! What are we going to do about it?”

“I think I’ll swallow poison,” said Jerry.

Mort hefted the pouch of jewels. “There’s enough here to keep us for life, most of it in Leavenworth,” he said. “Let’s hunt up the nearest gendarme and cop out, as our fellow criminals put it.”

That expression, “cop out,” must have triggered the creative detonation in Jerry. To throw themselves on official mercy was too simple, also too risky. Because they were, after all, smugglers until they proved otherwise. In Jerry, self-preservation and the creative impulse both pointed to something more dramatic. Mort went along mostly because he had access to the electronic gear, and because, as he said, he was a born schmoe.

“I have to see which way the coin drops, even when it’s my coin and somebody else wins,” he said. “That is a schmoe’s function in life — to call ‘heads’ just as it turns up tails. I have just one request to make.”

“What?” said Jerry.

“Choose somebody else for your cellmate. They say they’ve got a good library at Leavenworth. I’m going to catch up on all the comic books I missed in college, and I don’t want any more of your stupid interruptions.”

That had been three hours ago. The combination living-dining room of their apartment now looked like any other student’s combination living-dining room — a mess. But this mess concealed some of Mart’s favorite wires, which in perfect concealment led through the kitchenette to the dead-end of a back service hall. There Mort had set up his tape recorders and control panel.

“Well,” said Mort, “I hope it works.”

“Of course it will work!” confidently exclaimed Jerry. “They won’t dream we looked in the camera. They’ll give us time to unpack, but they won’t wait too—”

The phone rang.

Mort clawed at his switches, his black eyes lighting up as he beheld the flickering of certain needles. “Give it time to ring a few times,” he yelled. “Don’t want to let ’em think we were sitting here waiting for their call. Besides, I want to check my gain on the ringing signal before you answer.”

Jerry let it ring a few times. He was a little surprised to hear the voice of Mr. Fox, the attorney, instead of that of Mr. Cupp, the nice investor.

“Jerry-boy?” Mr. Fox said gaily. “I’ll bet you’re surprised to hear from me so soon!”

“Not exactly,” said Jerry.

Mr. Fox apparently missed that. “Got a favor I’d like to ask you, keed! My sister here in San Diego had a new baby while I was in Mexico, and I’d like to shoot some pictures. I hate to use that cheap camera of hers. I wonder, Jerry-boy, would it be asking too much to borrow yours again for a couple of hours?”

Mr. Fox’s voice recalled his unappetizing person. He was a small, furtive, dirty-minded man with sandy hair, freckles, and pale, nervously blinking eyes. Witty but not funny, a tab-grabber who never let Jerry or Mort pay for anything, Mr. Fox had been tolerated in Mazatlán only because it was nice Mr. Cupp’s money he was spending.

“Skip the build-up, Mr. Fox,” Jerry said, trying to get the right quaver of fear into his voice. It came quite easily. “I have already looked in the camera.”

“Oh,” said Mr. Fox. “Oh, I see. You say you have already looked in the camera?”

“Yes, and I want to speak to Mr. Cupp.”

“Why, may I ask?”

“That was a dirty trick you played on me, Mr. Fox, and I just don’t think he’d stand for it, that’s why!”

There was a brief hesitation. “Jerry-boy,” Mr. Fox said, “unfortunately, Mr. Cupp was detained a while by the customs officers. They searched his baggage again and again, and of course couldn’t find anything. But they were still trying when I left, so it will probably be a little while before we can reach Mr. Cupp. Meanwhile, you understand it’s urgent that you and I get together. I’ll admit frankly that I played a dirty trick on you, but I’m going to make up for it.”

“How?”

“Jerry-boy, I’m going to bring you two of the fattest little old hundred-dollar bills you ever saw, when I come out there to see you.”

“Only you’re not coming to see me,” said Jerry. “Not without Mr. Cupp.”

“Jerry-boy, listen to reason!” Mr. Fox cried. “Barney Cupp is a respectable, honest businessman and I’m a dirty, rotten, double-crossing heel. Now I’ve made a mistake, a serious mistake, perhaps. But I’m going to make up for it to you. Why involve Barney in what I did?”

“All right then, I’m going to go to a policeman I know. He gave me a traffic ticket once, but—”

“Jerry-boy, think of Barney Cupp! Why bring in some cop who is not only an ignorant slob, but a thief besides?” Mr. Fox’s voice fell half an octave. “I don’t like to frighten you, keed, but think! Are you in any position to go to a slob of a policeman? If you like Mr. Cupp, and you value your own well-being, you’re not going to be so foolish, are you?”

“Mr. Fox, either I see Mr. Cupp or I go to a policeman.”

“Jerry-boy, I’m sure you don’t mean that,” Mr. Fox said softly. “I’m sure you realize it would be about the most dangerous thing you could do!”

“I’ll bet you wouldn’t threaten me if Mr. Cupp could hear you!” Jerry almost shouted. Then in a whimpering voice he went on, “Let’s cut this short, Mr. Fox. I’ve never been in any trouble like this before, and it makes me nervous. I don’t want to talk to you any more until I’ve seen Mr. Cupp!”

“Barney isn’t available yet. But if I know him, he’ll tell you to take my advice. Meanwhile, you have every right to be nervous. Suppose I make it three hundred bucks?”

“No!”

“How about five? Does five suit you, Jerry-boy?”

“No. Listen, Mr. Fox. I’m getting out of here right now!”

“Shut up and listen to me.” Mr. Fox’s voice was suddenly as frigidly poisonous as quick-frozen cobra venom. “If you must see Barney, I’m sure we can get together later this evening. Meanwhile, I wouldn’t want anything to happen to that camera package, and I don’t believe you do either. It wouldn’t be healthy for you, see, keed? Stop being childish! Leave there? Where would you go?”

“I’ll quit school. I’ll mail the jewels to the police and go to... to Hawaii. Or Alaska.”

“Jerry-boy, there is no place on earth you can hide if you double-cross me. Barney Cupp is a gentleman, but he can’t stand a dirty, cowardly rat either. Now, why can’t you and I get together on a friendly basis, without bothering him?”

“No, sir!” Jerry shouted. “Listen, this is final. I’ll be here at eight this evening, with the package from the camera, and you and Mr. Cupp can both come then. Both of you, you understand? Because if it’s just you, I won’t even open the door, and there’s no use coming before then because I’m leaving right now!”

He slammed down the phone. Almost immediately, it began ringing again. He ignored it to run toward the back of the apartment. When he reached the back service hall, Mort Lisky was already dismantling his recording equipment.

“Better get this inside, in case they try to kick in the back way,” said Mort. “Won’t take long to set it up for this evening again. Here, you take this tape and work from it where you can watch the front. I’ll keep an eye on the back — and I’ve really got a job of rectifying to do! I told you I should have had more time to check that phone induction coil.”

“I was tremendous, wasn’t I?” said Jerry. “I really sounded scared, didn’t I?”

“You still do,” said Mort. “To work, boy, to work! But I still think this is one of those down-beat scripts where the hero’s buddy dies a lingering, last-act death.”

Jerry took the smaller of the two tape recorders to the living room and plugged it in where he could sit near the front door. He dragged the coffee table over to use for a desk, and stacked some paper and pencils on it. He put on the earphones and sat down, with his eye near a crack in the broken old blind that covered the glass in the front door.

It was hard to see well enough to write, with all the shades pulled down. And, as he expected, through the crack in the blind he shortly beheld a cab stop at the curb. None other than Mr. Wilfred “Bill” Fox got out and ran up the steps. Jerry and Mort had a first-floor apartment with a door facing the street. Mr. Fox pounded on the door again and again.

Jerry sat there just inside it, with the sweat pouring off in rivers. Until this very moment, he had been quite sure that no one out there in the bright sunlight could make out anything in the dark apartment through that crack in the blind. But when he beheld Mr. Fox’s pale, malevolent eye at the crack, he wondered how he could have been such a fool. Mr. Fox was staring straight at him.

“Damn!” they heard Mr. Fox cut loose. “The little whelp did run, after all. Well, he’d better show up tonight, that’s all I’ve got to say!”

The eye was withdrawn. Jerry breathed again.

He ran the tape over and over, scribbling and listening at the same time. A little later Mr. Fox made two more attempts to get into the apartment. The second time, a man was waiting in the back seat of the cab. It might not have been Mr. Barney Cupp; on the other hand, it was about the same size man as Mr. Cupp, and he filled the cab with the same blue, rich-looking cigar smoke that continually surrounded Mr. Cupp.

This time, Mr. Fox tried to get in the back door too, but the landlady caught him and threatened to call the police. Mr. Fox beat a hasty retreat.

Meanwhile, Mort remained busy in the kitchenette, “rectifying” the tape, whatever that meant. They finished with their separate jobs about the same time. Then came the job of rerecording. Their hair stood on end while this was going on, because Jerry had to speak in a normal tone of voice, and sometimes louder than normal. But it did not take long and they were not interrupted.

From about five thirty on, they discovered, the phone rang regularly every ten minutes. The calls which they had to make, they spaced in between the calls from the outside. Several times, they had to call their party back, so Mr. Fox would not get a busy signal when he rang their number. It was imperative that he be convinced that they were away, and a busy signal would have told him that they — or at least someone — was using the phone in their apartment.

At eight o’clock — not a minute before and not a minute after — Mr. Barney Cupp and Mr. Wilfred Fox rang the front doorbell. Mort had moved his electronic gear back to the service hall; so Jerry admitted the two guests.

Mr. Cupp was impatiently affable. He was also smoking a big dollar cigar as usual. He did not wait to be asked to sit down. He made himself at home in the only comfortable chair in the room, leaned back, and crossed his legs.

“Bill tells me he pulled a silly sort of stunt and got you in trouble, Jerry,” he said. “Now, I don’t know what I can do to help you out, but if a few hundred bucks will do you any good, you know Bill’s not a tightwad.”

Mr. Fox smiled his pale-eyed smile. His freckles seemed to be a little pale, too. “That’s what I tried to tell Jerry-boy, Barney,” he said, exposing most of his pale gums. “But he seems to be greatly attached to you, and I can’t blame him for that, can I? The main thing is for me to get that stuff from the camera.”

“Exactly!” said Mr. Cupp. “Get the stuff back, give our pal Jerry a few hundred bucks to make life pleasanter for him, and get out of his hair, eh? Exactly!”

“First, Mr. Cupp,” said Jerry, “there’s something I think you should know. My conversation with Mr. Fox was recorded this afternoon.”

“What? Why, you idiot, you smart-aleck!” Mr. Cupp shouted. He half rose out of his chair. “Bill, you’re a worse idiot than he is!” he said, brandishing his cigar at Mr. Fox. “How much did you say over the phone?”

Mr. Fox blanched a little, but he said, “Nothing to worry about, Barney. They already knew the rocks were coming through, didn’t they? That’s why they held you so long this afternoon. And they can’t use wiretap evidence! The mere fact that a phone conversation of mine was recorded without a beeper makes it inadmissible in court.”

Slowly, Mr. Cupp settled back in his chair. He did not look happy — only relieved, and not very much of that. Before he had entirely assimilated Mr. Fox’s legal advice, Jerry addressed him again.

“Anyway, Mr. Cupp, I think you ought to hear the recording. It’ll only take a couple of minutes,” he said. “Okay, Mort, turn it on!”

From the six speakers of their hi-fi set the two voices, Jerry’s and Mr. Fox’s, came booming out clearly. Mr. Fox listened with a contemptuous little smile that soon turned to an expression of frozen, incredulous horror. He recognized his own voice. He even recognized some of the words. But these were only fugitive, phantom recollections of a call that he could have made only in his bad dreams:

Mr. Fox: Oh, I see! You say you already looked in the camera?

Jerry: Yes, and there is only half as much as you said there would be. Only four diamonds and four emeralds, and both rubies are missing. What are you trying to do — cheat Mr. Cupp?

Mr. Fox: Jerry-boy, Mr. Cupp was detained by the customs officers, so it will probably be a little while before-

Jerry: You mean arrested? You turned him in, like you said?

Mr. Fox: I’ll admit frankly that I played a dirty trick, but I’m going to make up for it.

Jerry: Don’t you go offering me any of those thousand-dollar bills again, to help double-cross Mr. Cupp!

Mr. Fox: Jerry-boy, I’m going to bring you two of the fattest bills you ever saw.

Jerry: Mr. Cupp’s thousand-dollar bills, you mean. After you ratted on him to the customs inspectors, too!

Mr. Fox: Jerry-boy, Barney Cupp is a dirty, rotten, double-crossing heel, an ignorant slob, a thief besides!

Jerry: If Mr. Cupp is in trouble, I’m going to the customs inspectors and tell them that I’ve got the jewels.

Mr. Fox: Jerry-boy, it would be about the most dangerous dung you can do.

Jerry: But it makes me nervous, sitting here with the jewels while he’s under arrest. Why, I wouldn’t go through with this for three thousand dollars!

Mr. Fox: How about five? I’m sure we can get together, keed, but Barney Cupp is a dirty, cowardly rat. Now, why can’t you and I get together on a friendly basis, without bothering him?

At this point, Mr. Fox found his voice. At any rate, he found somebody’s voice, because the strangled scream that issued from his throat sounded like no noise that he had ever made before.

“It’s a phony! I didn’t say that stuff, Barney,” he shrieked. “You’ve got to believe me!”

Mr. Cupp stood up. “So only four diamonds and four emeralds are left, hey?” he said. “And both of those lovely rubies are gone! You pinch them and then turn me in to customs, do you?”

“Barney, please, it’s phony, I tell you!”

“Do you think I don’t know your own voice? Ha! Maybe they can’t use a tape in court, but I’m not so particular. So I’m a slob and a coward and a rat, am I? And you’re going to pay Jerry off to shut up about it with five thousand of my money, are you?”

Mr. Cupp lumbered swiftly across the small living-dining room toward Mr. Fox, who leaped up on the shabby old couch. There he stood, with his back to the wall, quavering, “Barney, if you’ll only listen! Please, you’ve got to believe me!”

“I’ll believe my own ears,” said Mr. Cupp. He took Mr. Fox’s knees in one of his arms. “Tell me, Wilfred, where you put my beautiful diamonds and emeralds and rubies that I brought all the way from France to Mexico. Where are my jewels? Where are they?”

For a flabby Beverly Hills investor, Mr. Cupp was very strong indeed. Holding Mr. Fox by the knees with one arm, Mr. Cupp turned him upside down and bumped his head rhythmically against the floor. Jerry watched interestedly, regretting that he had neglected to have paper and pencil handy, so he could make notes.

Nothing he had ever seen on the stage equaled the scene before him for sheer drama — especially the point where the two customs inspectors stepped out and placed both Mr. Cupp and Mr. Fox under arrest. Mr. Fox remembered that he was a lawyer. He began shouting, “Entrapment, entrapment! And you can’t use any of that tape! In addition to being an illegal wiretap, there’s something phony about it.”

Said one of the agents, “There’s no entrapment, Mr. Fox. You came here to get certain jewels. They’re all here. Even without the doctored tape, we have your own admission and that of Mr. Cupp that they were unwittingly smuggled in for you by these boys. So long as we don’t touch a phone, we have a right to record anything on the premises with the written consent of the owners, tenants, or inhabitants thereof.”

“All this was recorded too?” said Mr. Fox.

“Yes,” said Mort. “Got an excellent record, and all sorts of witnesses that it wasn’t doctored, rectified, spliced, and rerecorded like the other one. So I’m pretty sure it will stand up in court.”

Mr. Fox moaned.

Mr. Cupp hit him on the jaw with a powerful right fist “What a lawyer!” he said. He held out his hands, wrists together, to the customs agents. He tried to smile as the handcuffs clicked home. “Do you think maybe I’ll draw Atlanta again?” he said. “I always did easy time there. Is this a big enough rap for Atlanta?”

“I wouldn’t be surprised,” said the agent.

The agent turned to Jerry and Mort. “You boys went to a lot of unnecessary trouble. We knew when these jewels were stolen in France and we knew when friend Cupp came into possession of them. We knew he was in Mexico, and we knew he’d try to bring them across to peddle them here. All you had to do was bring the jewels to us and tell your story! You’ll probably split a nice reward on this, but why do it the hard way?”

“It’s kind of difficult to explain,” said Jerry. “You see, we both put off our term papers all year, planning to do them during Easter vacation. Then we got this chance to go to Mazatlán for some surfing, and we were really up against it when we got back! This gives us our themes and our bachelor’s degrees, see?”

Jerry’s paper was titled, Use of Electronic Recording Tape and Substituted Dialogue in Simulated or Re-Created News Events — A Suggested Dramatic Technique. Mort’s was called, Rectifying Induction-Coil Signals by Various Methods, Including Magnetic Resonator and High and Low Frequency Tonal Separations. In addition to splitting a $10,000 reward, both boys got A-Plus.