The Whispering Master

Chapter Fourteen

The plant of the Mariota Record Company was a sprawling, four-story brick building that had seen better days. It was a silent building. When there’s no money in the main offices over in Manhattan the machinery in the plants in Newark, Jersey City, Brooklyn, stops turning.

There was a little office in a corner of the first floor of the Mariota Record Company. A stout woman with hennaed hair sat at a desk, working a crossword puzzle.

“What’s a four-letter word meaning chicken?” she asked as Johnny and Sam came up.

“Gump,” said Johnny.

“Gump? I never heard of such a word.”

“That’s because you’ve never raised gumps... Quiet around here, isn’t it?”

“If you’re selling something — yes, we’re not doing much these days. In fact, we’re not doing anything, as of this morning.”

“Because of a five-letter word meaning kaput?”

“Oh, you read the newspapers, do you?” Johnny grinned. “I’m looking for Joe Dorcas.”

“With a summons?”

Johnny held up both hands, palms out, so she could see they were empty. “No summons.”

“Well, he’s somewhere in the plant, but I don’t think he’ll be in a talkative mood this morning.”

“I’ll talk for both of us.”

“Since I’m probably not< getting paid for today anyway, I don’t see what point there would be in my stopping you from going into the plant...”

“Thank you, miss.”

Johnny led the way into the plant. The first floor was taken over by a number of huge mixing vats, boxes, barrels, cartons and supplies necessary to a phonograph record company. There wasn’t a soul on the floor.

They climbed a flight of stairs to the second floor. Here, there were rows and rows of strange machines and pungent, tangy odor of shellac. A man was wandering forlornly among the machines. He saw Johnny and Sam at a distance.

“Here you, fellows, what are you doing here?” he called. Then, still fifty feet away, he recognized Johnny. “What the hell do you want?”

“Why, I thought I’d drop in and say how sorry I was.”

Joe Dorcas came up and scowled at Johnny. “Do you go around every day to companies that go into bankruptcy and tell them you’re sorry?”

“No,” said Johnny. “But I was talking to my friend Doug Esbenshade this morning—”

Dorcas’ face twisted. “That dirty—!”

“Is that a way to talk about the man who sold you all that nice shellac?” Johnny asked chidingly.

“Sure, he sold us shellac — and he threw us into bankruptcy, too.”

“It takes three creditors to do that.”

“He lined up two besides himself. This company’s as sound as it ever was. Our accounts receivable and physical assets amount to more than our debts.”

“Well, maybe the receiver will bring you through.”

“Receiver!” snarled Dorcas. “A receivership is a political plum. A judge appoints a relative as a receiver and the receiver bleeds the business.” He swore luridly. “One good receivership and a receiver is fixed for life. When he gets through with this company, you can carry off what’s left in your vest pocket. And all because of your friend Esbenshade!”

“Esbenshade didn’t ask much, did he? An audition for his girl...”

“I gave it to her, didn’t I? I even made a record. It was that skinny punk, Armstrong, killed it, over in the main office. He said she sang like a hungry cat with fleas.”

“Her voice couldn’t have been that bad.”

“It wasn’t bad at all. With any effort, we could have sold ten thousand platters and even made a few bucks on the deal. But no, those wise guys couldn’t see it. We only handle artists, they said. Well, they can handle artists now.” He picked up a black lump of some substance and threw it to the floor.

Johnny stooped and picked up the black stuff. “What’s this?” The lump was a flattened piece of plastic, about an inch thick and two or two and a half inches in diameter. It weighed several ounces.

“That’s a record — in the rough. We call it a biscuit.”

“And that becomes a shiny phonograph record?”

“Why not? It’s heated and put in one of these pressing machines. See — the master record is pressed down on it, like this...” He brought down the hinge of a pressing machine.

“You mean each individual record is pressed out like that? That seems like a rather slow operation. Takes you a long time to press out a hundred thousand records.”

“Not as long as you’d think. One man can press a thousand records in a day and we’ve got two dozen of these machines.”

“Two dozen? But if you’ve only got one master record...”

“Who said anything about one master record? We make as many masters as we want.”

“Then why was Seebright so excited about a single master record last night...?”

“Oh, that! That was THE master record — the one from which the other masters would have been cut.” He grunted. “That’s what ruined us. Con Carson made that recording and rushed off, to fly to Hollywood. He got killed and he couldn’t make any more recordings. And then our original record was — disappeared...”

“Before you’d a chance to make any other masters off it?”

Dorcas nodded. “That record would have saved this company.”

“Do you suppose somebody who wanted this company to go broke took it?”

Dorcas looked sharply at Johnny. “Who would want to wreck this company?”

“Maybe a competitor? Wasn’t Continental Records sore when you got Carson away from them?”

“Sure, but companies don’t hire burglars... Or do they?”

“I wouldn’t know — I’ve never been a company.”

A loudspeaker blasted the stillness of the plant. “Mr. Dorcas,” the loudspeaker called, “Mr. Dorcas...!”

Dorcas grunted and walked away from Johnny and Sam. In the center of the big room was a small stand on which reposed a telephone. He picked it up.

“Dorcas talking.”

He listened for a moment, nodded. “Okay.”

He hung up and came back to Johnny and Sam. “They want me over in New York. I’ve got to get ready.” He started to walk off, but suddenly turned. “Say — just what did you come over here for?”

“No particular reason.”

“What was that business last night — pretending you had the Con Carson master?”

Johnny shook his head. “I never told Seebright I had a master. I just asked him what it was worth.”

“It was worth plenty — yesterday.”

“Today?”

“Nothing, to the Mariota Company.”

“But to another company?”

“They’d have to buy it from the receiver. They probably will.”

“If the record’s ever found.”

“It’ll be found!”

As they walked away from the plant of the Mariota Record Company, Sam Cragg said: “I don’t see that we got anything here.”

“We got the motive for the murder of Marjorie Fair.”

“Oh, we did? What is it?”

“The record we’ve got in our room. Sam — the master record.”

Sam screwed up his face in thought. “You mean Marjorie swiped it from the plant here?”

“I hardly think so. She got it by mistake — in place of the record she made.”

Sam thought that over for a moment, then exclaimed, “That means Dorcas murdered her!”

“Not necessarily. Almost any employee in the place could have known — or guessed about the mistake.”

“Yes, but would the record be worth anything to any employee?”

“He could have thought so. As a matter of fact, yes. See-bright was so desperate last night he offered me five thousand dollars for it and no questions asked. With a bit of tact, I could have run it up to ten thousand...”

“Why didn’t you? We could certainly use ten grand.”

“Could you sleep nights knowing a girl had been murdered for that record?”

Sam shook his head doggedly. “Your ethics are too much for me, Johnny. You think nothing of skinning eight banks—”

“I haven’t skinned any banks — yet. If I can get that other G out of Esbenshade I’m an honest man tomorrow. Besides, a bank isn’t any sitting duck. It’s a sporting proposition. If I juggle a few checks and get away with it, I’ve scored. If I slip up, I’m in the clink. But nobody’s going to get murdered over it.” He took Sam’s arm and squeezed it. “Don’t look around now, but I think we’ve got a tail.”

Sam exclaimed, “Where...?” and despite the cautioning pressure on his arm, looked around.

Some forty yards behind them, a heavy-set man stopped and looked idly into a shop window.

“I’m almost sure he was on the subway, coming from New York,” Johnny said.

“I’ll find out.” Sam tore loose from Johnny’s grip, started toward the man in front of the window. The man, without seeming to look at Sam, turned and sauntered away.

Sam quickened his step. The man walked faster. Sam started running. The man ran. He was a good runner and Sam, seeing that he was out-distanced, stopped and trotted back to Johnny.

“D’you see him run?” he cried.

“I see he’s stopped,” Johnny said.

Sam looked back. The man he had chased was standing a hundred yards away, looking at Sam and Johnny.

Johnny reached into his pocket and took out a twenty-dollar bill. “I’m going to lose him. Here’s some money. Stay here and keep him from following.”

“You mean I’ve got to go back to New York alone?”

“That’s why I’m giving you this money. Take a taxi back.”

Leaving Sam watching the shadow, Johnny started off briskly. The shadow crossed the street and came forward, intending to by-pass Sam and continue after Johnny. Sam headed for the middle of the street.

Stopping at the next corner, Johnny looked back. Sam and the shadow were both in the street, the shadow trying to pass Sam and the latter trying to block him.

Johnny darted around the corner, sprinted a block and crossing the street, darted into a store. He emerged on the side street, cut across and went into another store. Two blocks away he got into a taxicab. “One Hundred and Twenty-fifth Street ferry,” he told the driver.

“That’s quite a long haul,” the cabby remarked.

“It’s nothing to me — I’ve got money to throw to the birds,” Johnny retorted.

A half hour later he boarded the ferry that would take him over to 125th Street in Manhattan. There was a wait of two or three minutes before the ferry was to pull out... and just before the barrier was lowered, a man came aboard — the man that Sam Cragg was supposed to have stopped in Newark.

Johnny went up to him.

“Oh, hello,” the man said cheerfully.

“Where’d you leave my pal?” Johnny asked.

“In Newark. I let him chase me into a drugstore. I guess he’s still waiting out in front.”

“Smart lad, aren’t you?”

“You mean figuring you’d head for the ferry here?” The man grinned. “I put myself in your place, in Newark, and I said to myself, now suppose I was trying to lose a man in Newark and get back to New York — what’d be the best way and I answered myself, Union City and One Hundred and Twenty-fifth Street in Manhattan. So I jumped into a cab and here I am — and here you are.”

“How’re you at swimming?” Johnny asked.

“You and who else are going to throw me overboard?”

Johnny walked away and seating himself inside, got a shoeshine. As the ferry docked at 125th Street the shadow rejoined Johnny.

“Figuring on giving me the slip over here?” he asked, grinning.

“I’m going to my hotel,” Johnny replied. “Feel like taking a cab with me and splitting the fare?”

“To Forty-fifth Street? Why not?”

“Is it against the rules to ask who you’re working for?”

“Be kind of silly of me to tell, wouldn’t it?”

“Well, you’re shadowing me and from the looks of it, we’re going to be together for awhile. I can’t just keep on calling you YOU can I?”

“Call me Joe — because it ain’t my name.”

The barrier went up and the passengers began to get off the ferry. Johnny and Joe walked through the building, had someone leap into a taxi ahead of them and caught the second one.

“Forty-fifth Street Hotel,” Johnny said to the cabby.

“Uh-uh,” said Joe. “Make that Eighty-eighth Street and Second Avenue.”

Johnny looked down at Joe’s left hand. It was partly in his coat pocket, but enough was out of the pocket to show Johnny a neat little .32.

“Oh,” said Johnny. “It’s like that”

“Yep!”

“I could yell, you know.”

“In which case I’d have to plug both you and the driver.”

“Tough guy, eh?”

Joe leaned back, away from Johnny. He smiled confidently. Johnny slid morosely over to the far side of the seat and the taxi jerked and jolted through the streets of upper Manhattan.

Crossing Fifth Avenue, at 110th Street, Joe leaned forward and called to the driver, “I’ve changed my mind. Drive to One Hundred and Thirty-fifth Street and Lenox Avenue.”

Ten minutes later the cab pulled over to the curb.

Johnny and his abductor got out. Joe kept his left hand in his pocket as he paid the cabby. Then he fell in beside Johnny.

“Now, we walk.”

They walked two blocks, turned off Lenox Avenue and went another block. Then Joe nodded to the dingiest building in all New York, a building that should have been condemned years ago, but hadn’t been.

Joe led Johnny up to the door and taking a key out of his pocket, unlocked the door.

He stepped back for Johnny to enter.

Johnny went in. A thousand smells assailed his nostrils. Inside Joe closed the door and took his left hand out of his pocket. He prodded Johnny with the .32.

“Up one flight, first door on your left.”

They climbed the stairs and Joe unlocked an apartment door, revealing a small apartment furnished with worn, shabby furniture.

“Little hideaway,” Joe said cheerfully.

“So?”

“So now we talk business. You’ve got a phonograph record...”

“Says who?”

Joe shook his head. “Let’s keep it on a friendly basis and no hard feelings, what do you say? All right — you’ve got a phonograph record.”

“Just for the sake of argument, let’s say I’ve got a phonograph record. What then?”

“Why, you give it to me. That’s all. Then you go your way and I go mine and nobody’s hurt.”

“Who wants this phonograph record?”

“I do.”

“Somebody’s paying you for this job?”

“Of course. I can’t work just for the fun of it, can I?”

“That’d be against the union rules, wouldn’t it?”

“Natch!”

“But what if I don’t give you this phonograph record?”

“Are you kidding?”

Johnny seated himself on a threadbare sofa. “I’ve got an awfully stubborn streak in me. A girl was murdered because of that phonograph record and somehow it goes against me to make her murderer a present of that record.”

There was a telephone across the room. Joe went to it and keeping one eye on Johnny, dialed a number. Then he put the receiver to his ear. After a moment he said: “Georgie? What about it? What...?” He nodded. “I’ve got the chump here. Better come over.” He hung up. “The record wasn’t in your hotel room,” he said to Johnny.

“Did your chum try the hotel safe downstairs?” Johnny asked, sarcastically.

“Oh, so that’s where it is!” Joe seated himself in a chair, facing Johnny across the room. “We’ll give your friend time to get back to the hotel, then we’ll give him a buzz, huh?”

“Buzz all you like, but it won’t get you the record.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t say that.” Joe toyed with his little revolver. “Don’t go making up your mind. A fella makes up his mind too hard he hates to change it. And that makes things kinda tough. So keep an open mind, huh?”

Johnny glowered. “How much are you getting paid for this?”

“Enough.”

“A hundred dollars if I walk out of here.”

Joe showed interest. “You’ve got a hundred dollars?”

Johnny winced. “Not with me, but...”

“Turn your pockets inside out,” Joe said.

Johnny sat stubbornly still.

“This gun don’t make too much noise,” Joe went on.

“You kill me and you kill the chance of getting the record,” Johnny said grimly.

“Who said anything about killing?” Joe demanded. “I wouldn’t bump a guy for no amount of money.”

“You mean that?”

“Why, of course. They execute guys for murder. But I was thinking about your knee. One of these little slugs would kinda chew up the kneecap and make it hurt pretty bad, but a broken knee wouldn’t kill a man. So how’s about standing up and emptying the old pockets, huh?”

“You wouldn’t shoot,” Johnny said. “The people downstairs would hear the shot.”

“The people here mind their own business. A man wants to beat up his wife, it’s his business, or hers. And there’s rats in this building. We shoot them sometimes. So, how’s about getting up, huh?”

Johnny looked steadily at the man with the gun. Something he saw in his eyes caused him to get up. Joe cocked his gun as Johnny reached into his pocket.

Johnny took out his money, including the three nice new hundred dollar bills. He tossed them across the room. Joe looked down and saw the figures on the new bills.

“Pay dirt!” he cried.

“Me and my big mouth,” said Johnny bitterly.

“Oh, don’t worry, chum,” Joe said consolingly, “we’d a searched you anyway, when George got here.” He scooped up the bills. “Uh, we’ll keep this little deal a secret between us, huh?”

Down in the building a door slammed. Then heavy feet pounded creaking stairs. Joe went swiftly to the door, opened it a crack and peered out. Then he pulled open the door.

“Hi, Georgie!” he greeted the newcomer.

A man very much the size of Sam Cragg, but with the meanest look Johnny had ever seen in a human, came into the apartment. He sneered at Johnny. “So this is the sucker. He doesn’t look like much.”

“Oh, he isn’t such a bad sort, Georgie. A Utile unreasonable maybe, but I think he means right.”

“I do like hell,” Johnny snorted. “And what’s more, you took four hundred bucks out of my pocket.”

Georgie brightened. “Four hundred coconuts?”

Joe shook his head. “Not quite, George, not quite four hundred...”

“Give!”

Joe took the money from his pocket, gave Johnny another hurt look and divided with Georgie. “Fifty-fifty, right down the line. That’s being partners, Georgie.”

“You said it. Same with the grand that—”

“Hold it, Georgie...!”

“Oh, I wasn’t gonna spill the guy’s name. Don’t worry. I can keep my trap shut. Well, how about it, Sher...?”

“Joe’s my name!” snapped Joe. “Watch it.”

“Okay, okay.”

Joe pointed to the telephone. “Fletcher, your friend ought to be back at the hotel by now.”

“Maybe.”

The geniality faded from Joe’s face. “You’ll call him. He’ll get the record from the hotel people and he’ll bring it up here. And he won’t say a word to anyone — anywhere. On account of what’ll happen to you, if he does. Got that?”

“I’ve got it,” said Johnny, “but I’m not calling Sam Cragg.”

Georgie’s eyes widened. “I thought you said he was okay?”

“Maybe I didn’t ask him polite enough. Fletcher, I’m asking you again — for the last time, polite. Call your chum on the phone.”

Johnny folded his arms stubbornly. “Go to hell!”

Joe sighed. “All right, Georgie...”

Grinning wickedly, Georgie walked up to Johnny. He reached down and gathered up a handful of Johnny’s coat front, his shirt and a bit of his skin. He lifted Johnny to his feet. And then still smiling, he smashed his fist into Johnny’s face — a blow so savage that it went through Johnny’s hurriedly thrown-up defense and sent him reeling across the room. The wall brought him to a stop, but it didn’t hold him. He slid down it to a sitting position.

In a haze, Johnny saw Georgie bearing down on him. Even as the big man stooped to catch him up, he raised his foot and kicked Georgie in the groin. Georgie went back, gasping with pain.

Johnny struggled to his feet and met Georgie, maddened with pain. Georgie hit him in the stomach, straightened him with an uppercut and smashed him to the floor with a terrific left hook. Johnny fell into a black, bottomless pit and then — although he didn’t feel it — Georgie kicked him.

He was still kicking Johnny when Joe tore him away.