“Then why was Seebright so excited about a single master record last night...?”
“Oh, that! That was THE master record — the one from which the other masters would have been cut.” He grunted. “That’s what ruined us. Con Carson made that recording and rushed off, to fly to Hollywood. He got killed and he couldn’t make any more recordings. And then our original record was — disappeared...”
“Before you’d a chance to make any other masters off it?”
Dorcas nodded. “That record would have saved this company.”
“Do you suppose somebody who wanted this company to go broke took it?”
Dorcas looked sharply at Johnny. “Who would want to wreck this company?”
“Maybe a competitor? Wasn’t Continental Records sore when you got Carson away from them?”
“Sure, but companies don’t hire burglars... Or do they?”
“I wouldn’t know — I’ve never been a company.”
A loudspeaker blasted the stillness of the plant. “Mr. Dorcas,” the loudspeaker called, “Mr. Dorcas...!”
Dorcas grunted and walked away from Johnny and Sam. In the center of the big room was a small stand on which reposed a telephone. He picked it up.
“Dorcas talking.”
He listened for a moment, nodded. “Okay.”
He hung up and came back to Johnny and Sam. “They want me over in New York. I’ve got to get ready.” He started to walk off, but suddenly turned. “Say — just what did you come over here for?”
“No particular reason.”
“What was that business last night — pretending you had the Con Carson master?”
Johnny shook his head. “I never told Seebright I had a master. I just asked him what it was worth.”
“It was worth plenty — yesterday.”
“Today?”
“Nothing, to the Mariota Company.”
“But to another company?”
“They’d have to buy it from the receiver. They probably will.”
“If the record’s ever found.”
“It’ll be found!”
As they walked away from the plant of the Mariota Record Company, Sam Cragg said: “I don’t see that we got anything here.”
“We got the motive for the murder of Marjorie Fair.”
“Oh, we did? What is it?”
“The record we’ve got in our room. Sam — the master record.”
Sam screwed up his face in thought. “You mean Marjorie swiped it from the plant here?”
“I hardly think so. She got it by mistake — in place of the record she made.”
Sam thought that over for a moment, then exclaimed, “That means Dorcas murdered her!”
“Not necessarily. Almost any employee in the place could have known — or guessed about the mistake.”
“Yes, but would the record be worth anything to any employee?”
“He could have thought so. As a matter of fact, yes. See-bright was so desperate last night he offered me five thousand dollars for it and no questions asked. With a bit of tact, I could have run it up to ten thousand...”
“Why didn’t you? We could certainly use ten grand.”
“Could you sleep nights knowing a girl had been murdered for that record?”
Sam shook his head doggedly. “Your ethics are too much for me, Johnny. You think nothing of skinning eight banks—”
“I haven’t skinned any banks — yet. If I can get that other G out of Esbenshade I’m an honest man tomorrow. Besides, a bank isn’t any sitting duck. It’s a sporting proposition. If I juggle a few checks and get away with it, I’ve scored. If I slip up, I’m in the clink. But nobody’s going to get murdered over it.” He took Sam’s arm and squeezed it. “Don’t look around now, but I think we’ve got a tail.”
Sam exclaimed, “Where...?” and despite the cautioning pressure on his arm, looked around.
Some forty yards behind them, a heavy-set man stopped and looked idly into a shop window.
“I’m almost sure he was on the subway, coming from New York,” Johnny said.
“I’ll find out.” Sam tore loose from Johnny’s grip, started toward the man in front of the window. The man, without seeming to look at Sam, turned and sauntered away.
Sam quickened his step. The man walked faster. Sam started running. The man ran. He was a good runner and Sam, seeing that he was out-distanced, stopped and trotted back to Johnny.
“D’you see him run?” he cried.
“I see he’s stopped,” Johnny said.
Sam looked back. The man he had chased was standing a hundred yards away, looking at Sam and Johnny.
Johnny reached into his pocket and took out a twenty-dollar bill. “I’m going to lose him. Here’s some money. Stay here and keep him from following.”
“You mean I’ve got to go back to New York alone?”
“That’s why I’m giving you this money. Take a taxi back.”
Leaving Sam watching the shadow, Johnny started off briskly. The shadow crossed the street and came forward, intending to by-pass Sam and continue after Johnny. Sam headed for the middle of the street.
Stopping at the next corner, Johnny looked back. Sam and the shadow were both in the street, the shadow trying to pass Sam and the latter trying to block him.
Johnny darted around the corner, sprinted a block and crossing the street, darted into a store. He emerged on the side street, cut across and went into another store. Two blocks away he got into a taxicab. “One Hundred and Twenty-fifth Street ferry,” he told the driver.
“That’s quite a long haul,” the cabby remarked.
“It’s nothing to me — I’ve got money to throw to the birds,” Johnny retorted.
A half hour later he boarded the ferry that would take him over to 125th Street in Manhattan. There was a wait of two or three minutes before the ferry was to pull out... and just before the barrier was lowered, a man came aboard — the man that Sam Cragg was supposed to have stopped in Newark.
Johnny went up to him.
“Oh, hello,” the man said cheerfully.
“Where’d you leave my pal?” Johnny asked.
“In Newark. I let him chase me into a drugstore. I guess he’s still waiting out in front.”
“Smart lad, aren’t you?”
“You mean figuring you’d head for the ferry here?” The man grinned. “I put myself in your place, in Newark, and I said to myself, now suppose I was trying to lose a man in Newark and get back to New York — what’d be the best way and I answered myself, Union City and One Hundred and Twenty-fifth Street in Manhattan. So I jumped into a cab and here I am — and here you are.”
“How’re you at swimming?” Johnny asked.
“You and who else are going to throw me overboard?”
Johnny walked away and seating himself inside, got a shoeshine. As the ferry docked at 125th Street the shadow rejoined Johnny.
“Figuring on giving me the slip over here?” he asked, grinning.
“I’m going to my hotel,” Johnny replied. “Feel like taking a cab with me and splitting the fare?”
“To Forty-fifth Street? Why not?”
“Is it against the rules to ask who you’re working for?”
“Be kind of silly of me to tell, wouldn’t it?”
“Well, you’re shadowing me and from the looks of it, we’re going to be together for awhile. I can’t just keep on calling you YOU can I?”
“Call me Joe — because it ain’t my name.”
The barrier went up and the passengers began to get off the ferry. Johnny and Joe walked through the building, had someone leap into a taxi ahead of them and caught the second one.
“Forty-fifth Street Hotel,” Johnny said to the cabby.
“Uh-uh,” said Joe. “Make that Eighty-eighth Street and Second Avenue.”
Johnny looked down at Joe’s left hand. It was partly in his coat pocket, but enough was out of the pocket to show Johnny a neat little .32.