Erle Gardner - The Case of the Moth-Eaten Mink

“You don’t ordinarily make mistakes, do you? You look to me like a rather efficient young woman.”

“I try not to make mistakes.”

“And you’re not vague in your thinking, are you?”

“I hope not.”

“All right,” Sergeant Jaffrey said, “never mind the thinking then. Is this the woman or isn’t it?”

“I think—” She paused as she saw the grin on Sergeant Jaffrey’s face.

“Go ahead,” Lieutenant Tragg said.

“It’s the woman,” she said.

“Now, then,” Mason said, “may I see that photograph? You know I had a better opportunity to look at the woman who was in room 721 than anyone else. Miss Hamlin, of necessity, had only a quick glimpse of her when she...”

“Who was the woman who was in 721 with you?” Lieutenant Tragg asked.

“I don’t know,” Mason said.

Sergeant Jaffrey said to Minerva Hamlin, “Write your name on the back of that photograph.”

“And the date,” Lieutenant Tragg said.

Minerva Hamlin did so, then Tragg passed the photograph over to Frank Hoxie. “Write your name on it.”

Hoxie complied.

“And the date,” Sergeant Jaffrey said.

Mason said, “If you’ll let me look at it, Lieutenant, I’ll...”

Sergeant Jaffrey stood up. “Look, Mason,” he said, “you have a certain immunity as a lawyer. The law gives you a loophole. You can squirm out of giving us information. You can claim that things that were said to you were privileged communications from a client. We can’t put pressure on you. Now, I’m going to ask you straight from the shoulder whether the woman who was in that room with you was Dixie Dayton, and whether she didn’t tell you that Morris Alburg was going to kill George Fayette.”

Mason said, “Permit me to point out two things, Sergeant. If the woman in that room was not Dixie Dayton, then anything she said wouldn’t have the slightest evidentiary value against anyone. If she was Dixie Dayton, but wasn’t acting in concert with Morris Alburg, nothing she said could be used against Morris Alburg. And if this person was Dixie Dayton and was my client, anything that she said to me concerning her case would be a confidential communication.”

“That’s just what I thought,” Jaffrey said. “Let me see the picture, Lieutenant.”

Lieutenant Tragg handed him the picture.

Sergeant Jaffrey promptly thrust it into the inside pocket of his coat.

“I think that’s all, Mason,” he said. “Drake, you’ve been yelling about having to go back to run your business. Go ahead. Mason, I guess we can dispense with any more assistance from you.”

“And do I get to see the photograph?” Mason asked.

Jaffrey merely grinned.

“I’ll tell you this much, Mason,” Lieutenant Tragg said, “this is an authentic photograph of Dixie Dayton, the girl who left town at the same time as Thomas E. Sedgwick, on the night that Bob Claremont was murdered.”

“Why give him information when he won’t give us any?” Jaffrey asked.

“I want to be fair with him,” Lieutenant Tragg said.

Jaffrey snorted. “Let him be fair with us first.”

Tragg turned to the shorthand reporter. “You have my statement that this is an authenticated photograph of Dixie Dayton?”

The shorthand reporter nodded.

“I think that’s all,” Tragg said. “This time, Mason, you can leave the hotel.”

“Can I take one more look in room 721?” Mason asked.

Lieutenant Tragg merely smiled.

Sergeant Jaffrey gave a verbal answer. “Hell, no,” he said.

Tragg said, “Come to think of it, Sergeant, it might be better to hold Mason and Paul Drake here until we’ve located that — that thing we were looking for.”

Jaffrey nodded emphatically.

“You may go, Miss Hamlin,” Lieutenant Tragg said. “Drake, you and Mason can wait in the lobby.”

Sergeant Jaffrey flung the door open. “This way out,” he said.

Mason waited in the hallway for Minerva Hamlin.

Abruptly Jaffrey stepped out and said to the uniformed officer who was guarding the corridor, “Here, take this girl down and put her in a taxicab. Send her back to her office. Don’t let anyone talk with her.”

“Look here,” Drake said, “this is my employee. I have to give her some instructions about how to run the office until I can get back and...”

“Give them to me,” Jaffrey said, “and I’ll pass them on to her.”

Drake and Mason sat in the lobby, impatiently watching the hands of the clock. Daylight had started to filter through the big plate-glass windows of the lobby. A few early trucks rumbled past. A milk wagon went

“What the devil are they looking for?” Drake asked Mason.

Mason shrugged his shoulders. “I suppose they gave you the works, Paul.”

“They gave me the works,” Drake said, and then added fervently, “And how!”

“What did you tell them?”

“I followed your instructions. I didn’t hold out on them.”

“It’s a cinch,” Mason said, “that that room was wired for sound. As nearly as I can figure it out, Morris Alburg expected to get some witness in there. He wanted me to interrogate that witness and he wanted to have a record of what was said. I’m willing to bet money that the adjoining room, or some room nearby, had a complete recording outfit.”

“I gathered that was what you had in mind,” Drake said.

“Their questions were too apropos to be just groping in the dark,” Mason told him. “Having a shorthand reporter there and asking us those specific questions, particularly bearing down on you the way they did, meant that they were loaded for bear and were trying to get your license. That’s why I told you to tell them the whole thing.”

“Well, they sure knew everything that went on in that room,” Drake said. “I’m satisfied you’re right, Perry. I wasn’t too certain at first, but after they asked me questions about the messages written in lipstick I knew that you were on the right track.”

“The question is,” Mason said, “how far back those records go, how much they know.”

“I think there’s a gap of some sort,” Drake said. “They sure want to know what happened when you entered the room, just what was said. They kept trying to find out from me what I knew about that.”

“What did you tell them?”

“All I knew, which wasn’t much.”

Mason said, “Look, Paul, there aren’t too many authorized private detective agencies here in the city. Now, then, suppose you had a job and you wanted to have a tape or disc recording made, just whom would you get?”

Drake said, “We all of us have sound equipment, Perry. We have to be a little careful about how we use it, but we have tape recorders, microphones, and the best of the agencies have all the latest gadgets.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“These machines that you can leave on a plant,” Drake said, “without necessarily having to monitor them. The feed is automatic. There’s a relay of acetate discs so that a fresh one comes on as soon as one has been filled up. There’s a clockwork mechanism by which the machine automatically shuts itself off if there’s silence in the room for a period of around ten seconds. Then as soon as any sound comes over the wires, the machine cuts in again... Or, of course, you can set them for continuous recording. Often when we want to know what’s going on in a room over a twenty-four-hour period we put the machine on its automatic adjustment. In that way the disc revolves only when people are talking.”

“They work pretty well?”

“Pretty well,” Drake said. “Of course, those are the latest gadgets, and conversations of that sort aren’t much good as evidence because there’s no way of telling how much time elapses between conversations, and there’s no one to testify to the fact that the conversation took place in the room where the microphone was placed. Theoretically it would be possible for someone to get into the room where the recording mechanism was housed and fake the thing.”