I got up, walked to the bar, and poured myself another drink. “Look,” I said, “don’t strongly urge me. I understand the deal. I’ve published bad books that didn’t earn me a dime. Why shouldn’t I publish a bad book that’s going to make me a lot of dough? That part of it is all right. Just don’t high-pressure me. I want to think.”
Walter watched me with a concerned expression on his face. “Richard-something is bothering you. What is it?”
I wasn’t sure what was bothering me. My head was swimming too fast. I hadn’t had a chance to collect my thoughts in twenty-four hours. But he was right. Something was definitely bothering me. “Tell me one more thing, Walter,” I said.
“If I can.”
“What did Jean Dahl have to do with this?”
Walter sighed. “Nothing,” he said. “So far as I know she had nothing whatsoever to do with this.”
“She wasn’t one of your stockholders?”
Walter laughed shortly. “Of course not!”
“She had no interest in the book? No access to it?”
“Absolutely not.”
“You may be interested to know, Walter, that Jean Dahl came in to my office a week ago and offered to sell me the new Anstruther book for fifty thousand dollars.”
“Incredible!” Walter said. “Utterly incredible. She was bluffing, of course. There are three typewritten copies of the manuscript in existence. And all three of them are there in my safe.”
I walked over to the window and looked out at the park. “Walter,” I said, “what kind of paper are your three copies typed on?”
Walter looked puzzled.
“Ordinary typing paper,” he said. “I don’t know what you mean…”
“Ordinary white paper?”
“Naturally.”
Naturally?
There was nothing natural about it. Jean Dahl had showed me a sheet of yellow paper in the office. A sheet of yellow paper that I was sure was authentic. There was something just a little bit wrong. I didn’t know quite what it was. But something was wrong somewhere.
Walter rose abruptly and walked toward me.
“Richard, I have been very patient with you. But I must have a definite answer. I am going in to have breakfast with Janis. Sit here and think. Try to make up your mind.”
“Don’t worry,” I said. “I’ll make up my mind. But, listen, Walter, I want you to understand something. I know you’re lying to me about a lot of things. I just want you to know that I realize that. I don’t trust you, Walter. I don’t trust you at all. For all I know you killed Jean Dahl. And for all I know you were the man who called me on the phone last night with your trick imitation of Max Shriber’s voice. I just want you to know that I don’t trust you for a second. You’ve got this house all rigged with sliding pictures and God knows what. If I had any sense at all, I’d tell you where to stick your book and get the hell out of here right now.”
Walter giggled happily.
“You have a most suspicious nature,” he said. “It’s positively morbid. And, I must say that I admire you for it. I myself am a terribly suspicious person. And as far as this house is concerned…” He giggled again.
Then he leaned over to his control board and pressed one of the several dozen buttons. He fiddled with the switches for a moment or two. Then I heard the hum of the loudspeaker on the phonograph. Then a whirring sound. Then voices.
Walter’s voice said, “Richard, you are making yourself perfectly ridiculous. Now let go of me and hand me a towel. Please.”
Then another voice said, “I’m sorry, Walter. But I’ve got to talk to you.”
He reached over and pressed another button. The voices stopped.
Walter was grinning like a little boy. “It’s done with wire recorders,” he said proudly. “I wired the whole thing myself. It’s vastly complicated. I knew absolutely nothing about electricity. But I bought every available book on the subject and taught myself. Look.”
He fiddled with some more gadgets.
“This one is really amusing. The pickup is built into the bedstead in my guest room. The way some of my guests do carry on!”
Over the loudspeaker Janis Whitney’s voice said, “Where the hell is Walter? The coffee is getting cold.”
Jimmie’s voice said, “He’s still in there with Dick Sherman.”
“Oh, that one,” Janis said. “I think he’s real cute.”
Walter switched off the microphone.
I had to grin.
“Walter,” I said, “I overestimated you. I thought you were a murderer and a crook and a big operator. Hell, you’re just a nasty, evil-minded old maid.”
Walter did not seem to be upset. He smiled broadly and said, “Janis is absolutely right, Richard. I think you’re real cute too.”
He said the words, “I think you’re real cute too,” and for an instant I thought the mike was back on. His voice took on the throaty quality with just a trace of left-over southern accent. If you closed your eyes you could swear you were talking to Janis Whitney.
“My God, Walter,” I said, “that’s uncanny.”
“Isn’t it?” Walter said. “I have an amazing gift for mimicry. And an almost perfect ear.”
“You had her voice exactly,” I said. “Even to that trace of southern accent that she hasn’t quite lost yet.”
“Speaking of uncanny,” Walter said, “it’s uncanny how Janis has got rid of her drawl. You just barely notice it now. And I regard it as particularly uncanny since she was born and raised in Utica, New York.”
Then Walter sighed. All the amusement went out of his face. “Now then, Richard, I don’t like to hurry you but we must settle this one way or the other. I must have the contracts signed as soon as possible. Why don’t you call your partner and have him come up here now? We can get this settled this afternoon.”
“Listen, Walter,” I said. “We’ll get this settled all right. I may do this and I may not. I’ll talk it over with Pat. But I’m not going to talk to him here. I don’t like to have my private conversations recorded. I don’t like to have people peering at me through mirrors. Pat and I will talk this over and if we’re interested we’ll let you know about it.”
Walter sighed again. “You’re such a wild one,” he said. “I shall expect to hear from you by five this afternoon. I cannot possibly delay any longer than that.”
“You’ll hear from me,” I said. “You’ll hear plenty.”
I turned and left the room.
Chapter Eight
I had not been to the office in a week. But nothing had changed.
“You look just ghastly, Mr. Sherman,” Miss Dennison said by way of greeting.
“Thank you, Miss Dennison. Is Mr. Conrad in his office?”
“No.” She smiled maliciously. “He’s at Twenty One with Miss Carstairs. She was very disappointed you weren’t here.”
In spite of the fact that I was feeling even more ghastly than I looked, I could not help grinning. “Poor Pat,” I said. “Poor Pat.”
I went into my office, sat down at the desk and stared out the window.
After a while I picked up the telephone. I had decided that it was now time to find out a little about a man named Max Shriber.
I made three casual telephone calls. To three people who, between them, know everything there is to know about everything. One was a book salesman, one was an associate editor at a large publishing house, and the third was a lady literary agent.
The book salesman knew only that Max Shriber was a big agent. I was getting a little tired of that phrase. The associate editor had met him twice, knew very little about him, but was under the impression that he had once been a gangster. The lady literary agent told me that he handled some very big people, both writers and actors. That he was very attractive in a George Raft sort of way, and that there were rumors that he had spent time in jail for killing a man.