Корнелл Вулрич - A Treasury of Stories (Collection of novelettes and short stories)

So, all in all, the inventory was a flop.

It was broad daylight out and I was afraid the Filipino would check in any minute, so I quit. In ten minutes time I had the place looking just like it had been when I first came in, everything in order.

When Vaillant came to in the chair he’d passed out in, I was sitting there looking at him all dressed and rosy as though I’d just got up feeling swell. His latchkey was back in his pocket but it had only taken a locksmith twenty minutes to make me a duplicate to it. The check stub I’d left at a photographer’s to have photostatic copies made of it.

“You’re a nice one,” I crooned when he opened his eyes, “folding up on me like that. Come on, get under the shower, I’ll fix you some coffee.”

When he’d finished his second cup he looked around. “There’s something familiar about this room,” he said. He got up and looked out the window and I saw his face turn white. “My God, it’s the same apartment,” he muttered, “let me out of here!”

“Got the jitters?” I said sweetly.

“I’m not yellow, but I’ve got a hangover,” he said. “Don’t ask me to tell you about it now, this ain’t the time. I’ve got to get some air.”

He grabbed his hat and I grabbed his sleeve. “Is that a promise?” I said. “Will you tell me later on? Tonight for instance?”

“There’s nothing to tell,” he said and slammed the door.

I’d been close that time! I picked up his empty cup and smashed it against the wall opposite me.

“I gotta have more than that!” barked Westman when I passed him the photostat of the check stub. “What am I, a magician? This don’t prove his connection with her . All this shows is he paid some guy named Joe Callahan two hundred bucks. There’s scads of ’em in New York. How you going to identify this ‘J.C.’ with the one that worked as doorman at her house? And, even if you do, that still don’t prove the payor had anything to do with her death. It may point to it — but that ain’t enough.”

“Wait,” I said, “who said this was all? I’m not through yet. Always remember the old saying, ‘Every little bit, added to what you’ve got, makes a little bit more.’ I only brought you this to put away in a safe place, put it in your office vault. There’s more coming, I hope, and this will tie up nicely with the rest when we get it. Meanwhile I’ll be needing more jack for what I have in mind.”

“I’m a lawyer, not a banker.”

“I sat through your last case,” I reminded him, “you’re a banker, all right. Give — it’ll be a good investment from your point of view.” I got it.

I went to the biggest music specialty shop in town and had a talk with the head man. “I’m trying out for the stage,” I said. “I want to make some records of my own voice — at home. Can it be done? Not singing, just speaking. But it’s got to come out clear as a bell, no matter where I’m standing.”

They had nothing like that on the market, he told me, only some of those little tin platters that you have to stand right up close to and yell at. But when I told him that expense was no object, he suggested I let him send a couple of his experts up and condition my phonograph with a sort of pick-up and string some wiring around the room. Then with some wax “master” records — blanks — and a special sort of needle I could get the same effect as the phonograph companies did at their studios.

I told him go ahead, I’d try it out. “See, there’s a famous producer coming to call on me and my whole career depends on this.”

He had to order the needle and dummy records from the factory. He didn’t carry things like that. “Make it two dozen, just to be on the safe side,” I said. “He might ask me to do Hamlet’s Soliloquy.” I could tell he thought I was a nut, but he said: “I’ll get you a trade discount on them.”

“Oh, and don’t forget the phonograph itself,” I said on my way out. “I forgot to mention I haven’t got one.”

They were all through by five that afternoon. There really wasn’t as much to it as I thought there’d be. It looked like just another agony box. The only difference was you couldn’t play anything on it like the real ones, it recorded sounds instead of giving them out.

“Now, here’s one very important thing,” I said. “I want to be able to start and stop this thing without going over to it each time.”

But that, it turned out, was a cinch. All they did was to attach a long taped cable with a plunger on the end of it, which had been featured commercially with certain types of phonos for years. You sat across the room from it, pushed the plunger and it started, released it and it stopped. It was plugged in of course, didn’t need winding.

“Move it up closer against the daybed,” I said. “As close as you can get it, that’s where I want it to go.”

When it was all set, we put a record on and I tried it out. I stood off across the room from it and said: “Hello, how are you? You’re looking well,” and a lot of other junk, anything that came into my head. Then I sat down on the daybed and did it from there.

They took the record off and played it for me on a little portable machine they’d brought with them — it couldn’t be played on the original machine, of course — and with a softer needle, fibre or bamboo, so as not to spoil it. The part it had picked up from across the room was blurred a little, but the part it had picked up from the daybed came out like crystal and so natural it almost made me jump.

“We’ll let it go at that,” I said. “Just so long as I know where I’m at, that satisfies me. By the way, how am I going to tell when a record’s used up and it’s time to put a new one on?”

“It’s got an automatic stop, the plunger’ll come back in your hand.” After they’d gone I made a couple of minor improvements of my own. I hung an openwork lace scarf over the cabinet so you couldn’t tell what it was and I paid out the cable with the plunger under the daybed, where it was out of sight. But it could be picked up easily by just dropping your hand down to the floor, no matter which end you were sitting on.

He was completely sold on me when we got back from the Gay Nineties the next night. I’d purposely left there with him earlier than the night before and kept him from drinking too much. It’s easier to get anyone to talk when they’re cockeyed, but it doesn’t carry much weight in court.

He came in eating out of my hand but grumbling just the same. “Why couldn’t we have gone to my place? I tell you I don’t like it here, it gives me the heebies.”

This time I mixed the nightcaps right in front of him. He took the glass I passed him and then he smiled and said: “Is this another Micky Finn?”

I nearly stopped breathing. Then I did the only thing there was to do. I took the glass back from him and drank it myself. “You say some pretty careless things,” I answered coldly. “Can you back that up?”

“I suppose you did it to keep me from making a pass at you,” he said. I got my breath back again. Then he said: “How you going to stop me tonight?”

I hadn’t exactly thought of that. Just because my mind was strictly on business, I’d forgotten that his might be on monkey business.

“Make yourself comfortable,” I said quietly, “while I get off the warpaint,” and I went inside. I was halfway through when I suddenly heard him say, “Where’s the radio? Let’s have a little music.”

My God, I thought, if he finds that thing! I ran back to the doorway and stuck my head out and it must have been pretty white. “I— I haven’t got any,” I said.

“What’s this thing?” he said, and reached over to lift up the lace scarf covering it.