“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 a 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 an 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.”