“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 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 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 damned 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.”

  Chapter 13

  The morning mail brought the letter from Morris Alburg. A check for $1,000 was enclosed.

  The letter, however, as a rather harassed, nervous Mason pointed out to his secretary, was something less than a masterpiece of clarity. It said simply:

  DEAR MR. MASON:

  You will remember the fur coat matter. I want you to represent me and the girl in that thing. I am enclosing a thousand dollars as a retainer, and there’s more where that came from if you need it.

  Hastily, MORRIS ALBURG

  Mason angrily tapped the letter with his forefinger. “Represent him in ‘that thing.’ … That’s broad enough to include every crime in the Penal Code.”

  “And probably does,” Della Street said.

  At three-thirty that afternoon, Paul Drake, looking worn and haggard, tapped his code knock on the door of Mason’s private office.

  Della Street admitted him. Drake dropped into the big overstuffed chair, stretched, yawned, shook his head, and said, “I can’t take it any more, Perry.”

  Mason grinned. “You’re just out of practice, Paul. You haven’t been working for me enough lately. What you need is a few more sleepless nights to keep in training.”

  Drake said, “For a fact, Perry, I used to be able to keep going all night and through the next day and keep alert. Now I have spells of being groggy.”

  Mason merely grinned.

  “How about the Chief?” Della Street asked. “He had a million problems confronting him this morning and …”

  “Oh, him,” Drake said. “You never need to worry about him. He’s the old human dynamo. He manufactures energy faster than any human being can use it up. If we only had some way of soldering wires on him we could get rich selling surplus energy to run-down millionaires.”

  “What’s on your mind beside all that stuff?” Mason asked.

  “That girl,” Drake said. “Minerva Hamlin.”

  “What about her?”

  “I rang her house fifteen minutes ago and told her mother I wanted to speak with Minerva as soon as she wakened. I wanted her to call me.”

  “Well?”

  “She wasn’t home.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “She was down at Police Headquarters. The mother—now get this, Perry—the mother said she had been called down about half an hour ago to make an identification.”

  Mason whistled.

  “Does that mean they have Dixie Dayton?” Della Street asked.

  “It could mean a lot of things,” Mason said, pushing back his desk chair and getting to his feet. “Hang it, I don’t like that, Paul.”

  Mason started pacing the office.

  “I don’t like it either.”

  “Under ordinary circumstances, wouldn’t she have called and reported to you, at least told you what they said they wanted her for?”

  “That depends on what you mean by ‘ordinary circumstances,’ Perry. She’s one of these self-sufficient women who wants it definitely understood she isn’t going to stand for any foolishness. She’s been so satisfied with herself that she had me feeling the same way.”

  “I doubt if she’s really efficient,” Mason said. “She’s simply cultivated an efficient manner. She’s acting a part, the part of extreme competence, probably aping a secretary she saw in a show someplace, and that was merely an actress portraying a part the way she thought it should be portrayed.”

  Drake said, “I’ve been checking up on her a little bit, Perry—”

  “Go ahead,” Mason said, as Drake hesitated.

  “Well, I always felt she was thoroughly competent, but I find that the other help doesn’t think very much of her. She always seems to have the situation well in hand, but, damn it, she does make mistakes. I found that out. The girl who comes on in the morning and takes over the switchboard after she leaves has been covering up a few of her boners.”

  “What were they?”

  “Minor matters. A couple of the operatives who have been in on night stuff have tried to kid her along a little bit and she’s frozen them in their tracks.”

  “Making passes?” Mason asked.

  “Hell, no,” Drake said, “just the ordinary stuff that happens around an office—or should happen around an office where people are supposed to be working together with some degree of co-operation.

  “You know how it is, Perry, in a business like mine where things are more or less informal, you get a sort of family relationship. Of course, the girl who comes on during the night shift always is a more or less queer fish. She starts in at midnight and quits work at eight in the morning. For the most part the switchboard and office end doesn’t amount to anything, so in order to keep her busy we usually have her do the typing work on most of the cases. She files letters that have been written during the day, and types out the operatives’ reports.

  “For instance, a man will come in at five or six o’clock in the evening. He’s been working on a case all day. Most of those fellows can bang out a report with two fingers on a typewriter if they have to, but it’ll be a pretty botchy job of typing and a pretty sketchy job of reporting, so I encourage them to sit down at a dictating machine and tell the story—not in too great detail, but enough of a picture so the client will really know what’s going on, and in that way we keep better records.”

  Mason nodded.

  “The girl who comes on at four o’clock and works until midnight transcribes part of them, and the girl who comes on at midnight and works until eight transcribes the rest of them, does the filing and does the odd jobs.