The Case of the Moth-Eaten Mink

Chapter 12

Traffic signals on the through boulevard changed from the static amber warning signals to synchronized stop-and-go lights when they were half a mile from East Colter Avenue. Mason slowed down in order to ease his way through the signals, then turned on East Colter Avenue and found the number.

“Doesn’t look as though anyone’s up,” Drake said.

Mason parked the car at the curb, ran up the steps to press the front doorbell.

After he had rung for the third time, slippered feet sounded in the corridor, and a sleepy-eyed man in dressing gown, pajamas and slippers, opened the door and blinked at his visitors.

“What’s the trouble?” he asked.

Paul Drake said, “You know me, Fulda. I’ve met you a couple of times and...”

“Oh, yes, Mr. Drake. How are you?”

“This is Perry Mason,” Drake introduced.

“I’m very glad to know you, Mr. Mason. You’ll pardon my appearance... What seems to be the matter? Is there something I can do for you?”

“We want to talk,” Mason told him.

“Now?” he asked.

“Now’s the best we can do,” Mason said. “I’d have preferred an hour ago.”

Fulda raised inquiring eyebrows, started to say something, checked himself, and said, “Come in.”

A woman’s voice called anxiously from a bedroom, “What is it, Arthur?”

“It’s all right, honey,” Fulda said, his voice edged with impatience. “Go back to sleep. Just a couple of men to...”

“Who are they?”

“A detective I know and...”

Bare feet hit the floor. There was a shuffling sound, then a moment later a woman, in housecoat and mules, stood in the doorway.

Fulda’s voice held savage rebuke. “I’m sorry it bothered you, honey. Go back to bed.”

She continued to stand there in the doorway.

“My wife,” Fulda said. “This is Mr. Mason and Paul Drake, honey. Paul Drake’s a detective who has an office...”

“Oh, a private detective.”

“Yes,” Fulda said. “Don’t worry. Just go back to bed.”

She hesitated a moment, then smiled, and said, “Make yourselves at home. Can I fix you some coffee?”

“You don’t need to get up, honey.”

“No, it’s all right. I’ll fix some coffee. Just a few minutes. Do sit down.”

Fulda pressed a button which turned on a gas furnace, said, “Sit down, gentlemen. I take it this is something urgent?”

“That’s right,” Mason said. “We haven’t got a lot of time.”

“How much time?”

“I don’t know. Tell me all you know about that job at the Keymont Hotel.”

Fulda, who had been lighting a cigarette, paused, and held the match near the end of the cigarette. “The Keymont Hotel?” he asked.

“Room 721,” Mason said. “Come on, make it snappy.”

“I don’t know what the devil you’re talking about, Mr. Mason.”

Mrs. Fulda, who had started for the kitchen, stopped at the swinging door, holding it partially open, waiting and listening.

Mason said, “Don’t be a sap, Fulda. You were in on that job. You wired the rooms. Now I want to know how long you stayed there. I want to know whether you were there personally, or whether you had somebody on the job, or...”

“Good Lord,” Fulda said. “Do you mean to say you two have come barging out here and pulled me out of bed in order to ask me a fool question like this?”

“Exactly.”

Fulda made a show of anger. “Well, I resent that! I have absolutely nothing to say to you gentlemen. If you want to ask me questions about routine business, you can come to the office after nine o’clock. Furthermore, I see no reason for being questioned. Now, since you gentlemen seem to be in a hurry and working on an urgent matter, I’m not going to detain you any further.”

Mason said, “That’s your position?”

“That’s my position.”

“Want to change it?”

“No.”

Mason said, “I think you’re covering up, Fulda. I have an idea you were in on that job. If you were, it’s pretty important that we find out just what...”

“I know you, Mr. Mason, and I know your reputation, and I don’t intend to be browbeaten in my own home. I’ve given you my answer and that’s final. Now, do you gentlemen want to come to my office at nine o’clock?”

“No,” Mason said.

“All right, you don’t have to.”

“We’re going to talk right here.”

“We’ve already talked.”

“Sure we have,” Mason said. “We’ve said about one-half of what we’re going to say.”

“It seems to me I have already expressed myself clearly. I’ve said everything I care to say.”

Mason said, “All right, now I’ll tell you something.”

“You don’t need to tell me a thing, Mr. Mason.”

“I know,” Mason said. “You’re one of these smart fellows, you know it all.”

“Mr. Mason, I resent that.”

“Go right ahead,” Mason said, “resent it. If you were really smart you’d at least listen until you knew what the score was.”

“I know what the score is right now.”

“Like hell you do,” Mason said. “There was a murder committed in the Keymont Hotel.”

Fulda made an elaborate gesture of shrugging his shoulders. “I guess those things happen even in the best of hotels.”

“And the Keymont isn’t the best,” Mason reminded him.

Fulda said nothing.

“The Homicide Squad went into action,” Mason went on. “They found that room 721 had been wired. The wires ran into another room. Presumably there was a lot of high-priced equipment in use; equipment that recorded conversations, automatic stuff that would switch on and off...”

“And simply on the strength of that you come to see me?”

“And,” Mason continued, without apparently noticing the interruption, “Lieutenant Tragg of Homicide is very anxious to find out who had done the wiring.”

“Naturally he would be.”

“Now, Lieutenant Tragg didn’t say anything to me,” Mason said, “but my best guess is that he’s starting to trace this equipment, and that shouldn’t be too hard. I would gather that it’s very modern, very recent, very expensive, and right up to the minute. Whoever bought that equipment probably didn’t pay all cash for it. It’s probably being purchased under contract. There are serial numbers on the machines. Lieutenant Tragg will get those serial numbers. He’ll call up the manufacturers. They’ll refer him to their local agency. The local agency will get out its contracts and...”

“Oh, my God!” Fulda said, and sat down in the chair as though somebody had knocked the props out from under him.

Mason nodded to Mrs. Fulda. “I think,” he said, “your husband is going to want some of that coffee.”

She continued to stand in the doorway for a moment, then silently glided into the kitchen. The swinging door closed, then, after a moment, was pulled open and left open.

“I’d never thought of the serial numbers,” Fulda said.

“You should have,” Mason told him. “You should have thought of that the first thing.”

“I felt — felt I could— Well, I didn’t realize they’d trace me that way or that soon.”

“What’s your story?”

“I want time to think.”

“I know,” Mason said, “you came home, got out of your clothes, mussed up your hair a little bit and decided you’d bluff it out. You scared your wife half to death, and you’re pretty badly frightened yourself now. What happened to frighten you?”

“I–I don’t know.”

“All right, let’s find out. Tell us your story and tell it fast. There’s just a chance we can help you.”

“I–I don’t know what to do.”

“Start talking.”

“I specialize in sound equipment—”

“Yes, I know.”

“In recording conversations — blackmail and things of that sort in the criminal field, and recording speeches and depositions, courtroom proceedings and so forth in the noncriminal field.”

“Tell us about the Keymont Hotel,” Mason said.

“Not so long ago,” Fulda said, “I did a job for Morris Alburg. It was — well, it was confidential.”

“It won’t be,” Mason said.

“Well, it is now.”

“By the time the district attorney starts asking questions—”

“That’s different.”

“I’ll read about it in the papers then.”

“All right,” Fulda said, “you’ll read about it in the papers, but until you do, it’s confidential. All I can say is it was a blackmailing job, and it was carried through very successfully.”

“How long ago?”

“A little over a year.”

“Then what?”

“So yesterday afternoon Morris Alburg came to me. He wanted me to fix a setup in the Keymont Hotel, and — well, of course, it had to be very confidential and...”

“Go on,” Mason said, “that isn’t what’s worrying you. Tell us what’s worrying you.”

“Well,” Fulda said, “the damn fool told me that he was wanted by the police and that put me in a spot.”

“Did he say what he was wanted for?”

“He said they were looking for him and he was keeping under cover.”

“And you took the job on that basis?”

Fulda nodded morosely.

“All right,” Mason said, “you don’t need to tell the police all the conversation you had with your client. So far as you were concerned it was a routine job. What did you do?”

“I got my sound equipment together, went up to the hotel, told the clerk my sister was coming on an evening plane and I wanted two rooms, preferably adjoining.”

“And he wouldn’t give them to you?”

“He said he didn’t have two adjoining rooms, but he did have two rooms on the same floor. I asked him where they were located and he said they were 721 and 725, so I told him I’d take a look at them.”

“You went up and looked them over?”

Fulda nodded.

“Then what?”

“They were ideally suited. I told him that I was going to move in, that I’d sleep for a while before dinner and didn’t want to be disturbed because I was going to meet my sister on the night plane.”

“How did that register?”

“He gave me a knowing leer and let it go at that.”

“So what did you do?”

“All of this modern sound equipment is fixed so it resembles hatboxes, suitcases and that stuff.”

“I know,” Mason said.

“The bellboy got a hand truck and we moved the stuff up. We distributed it. Some in 721, some of it in 725.”

“Then what?”

“Then after the boy left, I moved it all down to 725, all the recording machinery and all that stuff, and left nothing in 721 but a microphone. I did a good job concealing that.”

“How? In the wall?”

“No. These new jobs are slick. The bug was in a reading lamp I clamped to the head of the bed. Aside from the fact it looked too classy for the dump it was in, it was perfect. I ran the wires along the picture molding, then out through the transom and down the corridor and into 725. I had to work fast, but I was all prepared to work fast, and I did a good job of it.”

“Then what?”

“Then I tested the equipment to see that it was working, and then left word for Morris Alburg to come to room 721, that everything was all right.”

“How did you leave word?”

“I called the number he had given me and said that if Morris came in to say that Art had told him everything was okay.”

“That’s all?”

“That’s all.”

“Then what?”

“Then I holed up in 725.”

“Wasn’t the equipment automatic?”

“That’s right, but I wanted to make certain that it was working. And I thought Alburg would want a witness. It was new equipment and I wanted to monitor the conversations myself. You should always do that if you’re going to testify. You can’t introduce evidence if you simply show that you went away and left a room, and when you came back you found certain acetate discs on the machine, you...”

“Don’t bother trying to educate me on the law of evidence,” Mason said. “Tell me what you did.”

“Well, I lay down in 725 and went to sleep.”

“When did you wake up?”

“I woke up about eight-thirty or nine o’clock, I guess. I went out and had something to eat and called that number again and asked if Morris Alburg had been in. They said he had and that he’d received my message.”

“You didn’t tell them who you were?”

“Just Art.”

“All right, then what?”

“I filled up on a good dinner. I got some sandwiches and a thermos bottle of hot coffee, and went back to the hotel.”

“Then what?”

“I read for a while, then dozed off, and was suddenly awakened by the sound of my equipment being turned on.”

“What happened?”

“Well, that stuff is equipped so that when there are voices in the room that’s wired the machines turn on automatically and start recording. I heard the click of the switch, and there’s a green light that comes on on the recording machine when everything is working all right. I jumped up off the bed, went over and saw that everything was coming in all right. I plugged in earphones and could hear the conversation.”

“What was the conversation?”

“Morris Alburg and some woman were talking and — well, I couldn’t get it.”

“What couldn’t you get? You mean the recording didn’t come in clearly or what?”

“Oh, the equipment was working fine. It was the conversation that I couldn’t follow. It was a peculiar conversation.”

“What was peculiar about it?”

“Well, evidently Morris and a woman were in there and they were expecting you to come, and Alburg said, ‘He’ll be here any minute. I phoned him and he said he’d come right up,’ and the woman said something about him being late, and then all of a sudden the conversation seemed to veer off on a peculiar tangent.”

“What sort of a tangent?”

“Well, for a while there they had talked — oh, just casually. Alburg said, ‘I want you to tell him just what you told me. I want you to be frank with him. He’s my lawyer and everything is going to be all right. Now I’m telling you everything is going to be all right. You’ll be taken care of and all that.’ ”

“And then what?”

“Then Alburg began to worry and said that you might have gone back to sleep, so he told the girl to call you, and there was silence for a moment, and then the girl said in a low voice, ‘Call the police.’

“A second later the phone rang and the girl laughed and said, apparently into the telephone, ‘Of course not — just a gag. Forget it,’ and hung up.

“After that I heard sounds of motion. Someone would start to say something and stop suddenly in mid-sentence.”

“What sort of sounds of motion?” Mason asked.

“I can’t very well describe it.”

“Struggle?”

“I wouldn’t go so far as to say that — peculiar sounds.”

“Then what?”

“I heard the woman say, ‘Just lipstick. You ruined my mouth,’ and then a little while later a door opened and closed.”

“Then what?”

“Then nothing else. There was five seconds of silence and then everything clicked off.”

“Then what?”

“Then after ten or fifteen minutes there were more voices, and these were different people. There was a man and a woman, and the woman said, ‘I tell you she left a message somewhere,’ and the man said, ‘We haven’t time to look for it. How did she leave it?’ and the woman said, ‘Probably written in lipstick,’ and the man said, ‘Give me your lipstick and I’ll fix that.’ ”

“Then what?”

“Then more sounds and again the equipment went silent.”

“And after that?”

“After that you came, Mr. Mason, and I guess you know as much about what happened then as anyone. When I heard you telephone for Paul Drake and tell him to get someone on the job, I decided it was time for me to get out. Things were getting a little bit too hot. It certainly wasn’t the ordinary kind of an assignment I was called in on, and I heard you mention things that disturbed me a lot. I — well, I felt that if I got out no one would know I’d been in there. They would feel that the equipment was registering all by itself.”

Mason nodded.

“It wasn’t until after I got home,” Fulda said, “that I realized what an utterly asinine thing I’d done. I’d taken the recorded discs with me.”

“You mean you’d filled up more than one record?”

“No, but, without thinking, I slipped in a fresh disc when I left so the machine would be loaded with a fresh one. We get to do that so it’s almost second nature. You want to have it so the machine is fully loaded at all times. There’s enough on there to cover a two-hour-and-thirty-minute recording when it’s full, and — well, I didn’t want to have any slip-ups.

“That’s one thing about the machine that they haven’t been able to lick as yet. Suppose it’s on automatic, and you come in and have a talk with someone at ten o’clock at night. You go out and close the door. Five seconds later the equipment clicks off. Then at three o’clock in the morning someone comes in and opens the door and starts talking. The sound even of people moving around in the room immediately actuates the relay switch and turns the machinery on and it starts recording... Now, when I play that disc back to a client, it will sound as though there was a continuing conversation except for a five-second pause. There’ll be nothing to show that one conversation took place at ten o’clock in the evening, and the next conversation, which apparently follows right along with it, took place at three o’clock in the morning. That’s one of the reasons why you should monitor the equipment... Well, that’s the story.”

“And what are you so frightened about?”

“I felt that if no one found out the room was wired I could go back and get my equipment out, but that if it should be discovered the room was wired — well, Morris had told me he was keeping under cover and — well, there were complications. Sometimes the police don’t like to have us move in and wire a hotel that way. It’s always advisable, wherever possible, to use a private office somewhere rather than a public hotel... And if it became a police case they’d know I had been there because they could listen back on the discs and find out when the conversation started.

“I assumed the police would know, for instance, that you entered that room, and about what time — and the night clerk saw me go out. If it became a police case I’d be in a mess.”

“All right,” Mason told him. “It’s a police case. You’re in a mess.”

The aroma of freshly made coffee came from the kitchen and penetrated to the living room.

Mason motioned to the telephone. “Call Police Headquarters.”

Fulda hesitated. “I’m in so deep now, I...”

“Call Police Headquarters. Ask for Homicide Squad. See if Lieutenant Tragg is still on the job. Tell him your story.”

“How should I explain the fact that I’m calling Homicide?”

“Tell them I told you to,” Mason said.

Fulda hesitated.

From the door between the kitchen and the dining room his wife’s voice said sharply, “You heard what Mr. Mason said, Arthur. He knows best.”

Fulda glanced at Paul Drake. Drake’s countenance was completely wooden.

“Well—” Fulda said reluctantly, and walked over to the telephone.

He called Police Headquarters, asked for Lieutenant Tragg, learned that Tragg was not in and left his name and telephone number. “Tell Lieutenant Tragg to call me as soon as he comes in,” he said. “He— Well, I prefer to talk with Lieutenant Tragg. It’s about some sound equipment and... That’s right, that’s the place. The Keymont Hotel... That’s right, I’ll be right here. Tell him to call me. I’ll be waiting right by the phone.”

He hung up, and said to Mason, “I hope that was the right thing to do.”

Mason, who had been standing at the front window, turned and said over his shoulder, “I’ve just saved your license for you, you damn fool. Lieutenant Tragg is just parking his police car at the curb. That call will save your life.”

“Lieutenant Tragg!” Fulda exclaimed. “How in the world did he get here this soon?”

“He probably located you the way I told you he would,” Mason said.

Steps pounded on the porch. The chimes sounded on the door. Mason turned the knob and pulled the door open. “Walk right in, Lieutenant,” he said. “You’re just in time for coffee.”

Tragg’s face darkened. “What the hell are you doing here, Mason?”

“Asking questions.”

“All right,” Tragg said, “you’ve asked the questions. I’ll get the answers... Your name Fulda?” he asked the man back of Mason.

“That’s right,” Fulda said.

“You wired 721 and 725 in the Keymont Hotel?”

Fulda nodded. “I’ve been trying to get in touch with you, Lieutenant. I called Homicide Squad and left a message.”

Tragg’s mouth was grim. “Let’s hope,” he said, “for your sake, that you did, because it’s going to mean all the difference in the world in the way you get treated.”

“You can ring up and find out that I did,” Fulda said.

“In that case, that’s the one only really smart move you’ve made so far,” Tragg said.

Mrs. Fulda appeared from the kitchen, smiling somewhat nervously. “Good morning, Lieutenant. I’m Mrs. Fulda. I’m just making some coffee for the gentlemen, and perhaps if you’d...”

“I’ll drink all of it,” Tragg said. “The gentlemen are leaving. They can get their coffee at a restaurant.”

She smiled rather vaguely as though at a joke.

“I mean it,” Tragg said. “What were they doing out here, Fulda?”

“Why, just asking me a few questions.”

“That’s fine,” Tragg said. “Now I’ll get the answers, and I’ll also ask you a couple of questions that they didn’t know about, and, believe me, those are the questions that are going to count.”