by Frances
Jerry paused to get a grip on himself and told her. In the first place, Dan Beck sounded last night just as he always sounded. “Awful.” She was imagining things. To start with, she had nothing to start with.
He wasn’t, Pam told him, being very clear. But she thought she understood what he was trying to say, and it was a matter of opinion. Suppose, just for argument, that she had something to start with. Suppose there was something wrong with Beck’s talk on the radio the night before. Suppose, just for argument, that it was different.
“How different?” Jerry said, deciding to take it a step at a time. “It was the same voice, wasn’t it?”
“I don’t know,” Pam said. “It didn’t sound unlike the same voice. But it was on the radio, remember. They can do it with a mixer, or something. The sound engineers. If the man who was impersonating Mr. Beck had a voice just something like his, they could make it sound right enough to fool almost everybody if they were expecting it to be Mr. Beck’s voice. Because most of the time you hear what you expect to hear. Not what you really hear.”
There was, Jerry had to admit to himself, something in that. But it was, he felt, beside the point. Because even Pam admitted that it sounded like the same voice, if you expected to hear Beck’s voice. And that seemed to argue that Pam hadn’t expected to hear Beck’s voice.
“Really,” Pam said, “I didn’t notice the voice first. You’re right about that. It was only afterward that I realized how it would be about the voice, if it sounded just reasonably like the right voice. Really it was what he said.”
Jerry said it sounded like the same sort of thing to him. He said it sounded like, using the more polite of the several things it sounded like to him.
“Of course,” Pam said. “It was the same sort of thing—generally. But it didn’t feel like the same thing. It was—a matter of style, I guess. It sounded rougher, and at the same time less—less certain. The other times I’ve heard it—oh, it swung along. Swang along? Anyway, you felt that it was going very well, even when you hated to admit it was going very well. Confident and—dramatic. And all the sentences the right length. And last night it sounded like an imitation. And then I thought—suppose it is an imitation? Suppose it isn’t Mr. Beck at all, but somebody imitating him.”
“And then,” Jerry said, “you thought somebody had stolen him.”
Pam nodded.
“And that somebody was impersonating him,” she said. “Nazis. Or Japanese. Don’t you see what they could do?”
Jerry looked at Bill Weigand, and now there was doubt in his eyes.
“Come to think of it, Bill,” he said, “it wouldn’t be a bad trick. It would even be a pretty good trick. It could be made—oh, into a kind of sabotage of minds. Beck has a tremendous following—and a not very bright following. Suppose—suppose you wanted peace, say. Peace of the Nazi kind, of the Jap kind. You could—you could work on them. Subtly, of course. Not all at once. I could do it myself, if I were a Nazi and had the chance. Anybody could do it who knew the tricks. It could be—it could be a tremendous thing, really.”
Bill hesitated. He was, Pam decided, thinking it over.
“Suppose you were doing that,” she said. “Suppose you were an agent for Germany. And you had it all fixed up—you had somebody to impersonate Beck; you had the people fixed you would have to have fixed. And then suppose, by accident somehow, a girl like Ann Lawrence stumbled on the truth. She knew the real Beck; suppose she saw the substitute Beck—suppose something came up so that they couldn’t keep her from seeing him—and knew right away that he wasn’t Beck. If you were an agent and found out that she knew, wouldn’t you kill her? And if she had told other people—like the McCalley girl, and her servant, and Elliot, as she might, wouldn’t you kill them too? And wouldn’t that account for the different weapons and things, and the fact that Mrs. Pennock was killed while she was actually talking to somebody who logically ought to have been the murderer? Because it would have to be a gang and anybody in the gang could be sent out to murder any of them. One of them could kill Mrs. Pennock, for example, while she was talking to another one.”
It was a long speech and Pam was almost breathless when she finished. She was also intent and anxious, because the more she outlined it the more she believed it. And Bill had not interrupted her, even by the shaking of a head.
She waited after she had finished and still Bill Weigand did not interrupt. He was thinking about it, she decided, and finding something in it.
He was thinking about it. He was thinking, specifically, of one small odd thing of which Mrs. North knew nothing. He was thinking of a comfortable, middle-aged housekeeper who helped her husband take care of Dan Beck, and of the way, as a detective had left, she had peered surreptitiously after him. It was a tiny, clear picture in his mind, and he had almost forgotten it. And it fitted. It fitted Mrs. North’s picture of a gang. Or it fitted another picture, which was—in final outcome at any rate—the same picture. Because, although it was clear that Mrs. North didn’t, he doubted the impersonation theory. That would be difficult to bring off. He told her why.
“Impersonation on that scale is story-book stuff,” he said. “It isn’t possible—or it’s so improbable, so involved, that for practical purposes it isn’t possible. You could find somebody about Beck’s size, probably. Maybe you could find somebody who looked enough like him so that, if you didn’t know either of the men very well, you would have difficulty telling which was which. Perhaps you could even find somebody with a voice enough like Beck’s to confuse people—on the radio anyway. But none of these similarities, even if you got them all in the same man, would be enough to fool anybody. Not even a little; not even for a minute. Not anybody who knew Beck better than by sight. They’d simply say, ‘That isn’t Beck.’ You could say it looks like Beck and sounds like Beck and anybody who knew him would grant you that and still merely laugh and say, ‘But of course it isn’t Beck. It isn’t even very like Beck.’”
“Well,” Pam said, “he could just keep away from people who knew Beck that well, couldn’t he? I don’t say it would be perfect—really. I said all along it wouldn’t be. I said it didn’t fool Ann Lawrence.”
But Bill Weigand shook his head, and when Pam looked hopefully at Jerry, he shook his head too.
“Beck couldn’t, Pam,” Jerry said. “That’s just it. A recluse—a man who didn’t see very many people. But not Beck. For one thing, he broadcasts three times a week. He has to go to a radio studio, with attendants who know him and an announcer who knows him and people in the sound room who know him. All of them would know too well to be fooled. Think of the sound engineers, for example. They must know every intonation of his voice.”
“But,” Pam said, “I said it would have to be a conspiracy. There would have to be a lot of people in it. I think there were a lot of people in it, not only at the studio but a lot of people in lots of places. Maybe this Mr. Pierson was in it along with a lot of others. Maybe he really did kill Ann—maybe he killed any of them or all of them. But it was because he was in the conspiracy. Maybe stealing Ann’s money was part of the conspiracy. Maybe that’s how they financed it. Maybe it isn’t Nazis, but just people in this country who think like Nazis.” She paused. “Because,” she said, “I do think there are American fascists, even if the newspapers make fun and get indignant. Because there are so many people in this country there would almost have to be every kind of people there were anywhere.”
There was a short pause, during which Jerry and Bill Weigand declined the conversational opening provided by Pam North’s concluding venture. Then Bill suggested the other idea. He said that it had come to him as he thought of the little old woman at Beck’s—the little woman who looked so motherly and was so evidently spying on him as he left. Of course, he pointed out, she might have been merely innocently curious.
“The other possibility,” he said, “is that Beck is really Beck, but that he’s under some sort of pressure. I mean, if I believed your theory at all, Pam
, I’d believe some such version as that—not the impression theory. Suppose Beck was, in some way, really being held prisoner and made to say what these people—the people in your conspiracy, the Axis agents—wanted him to say. Suppose the nice old couple in his apartment are really guards in a way, put there to see that Beck obeys orders. Suppose he knows he’ll be killed if he doesn’t do what he’s told. Or suppose—”
Bill Weigand stopped suddenly and thought what he was saying. It was preposterous, of course, but the further he went into it the more small hints came up to make him think it might not of necessity be preposterous. First the little woman spying; now Beck’s past.
“He lived for a good many years abroad,” Weigand said. “During the time Hitler was coming up. And it isn’t clear just where he lived or what he did. At least it isn’t to me. Somehow, in that time, he might have left—hostages. There may be someone over there in Nazi hands—a woman or a child, perhaps—who is being used to keep Beck in line.”
Pam shook her head.
“The trouble is,” she said, “that there’s nothing to all this if it’s really Beck. Because the only point to any of it is that I don’t think it is Beck. So there’s no point in saying that it’s really Beck acting under duress.” She looked at Jerry. “And I can spell duress,” she said. She did. “Because if it is, he’d still sound like Beck. And the point is, he doesn’t.”
They thought of that. Jerry didn’t agree, fully. He said that the circumstances might very well alter the way Beck sounded.
“I mean,” he said, “if somebody had a gun in my back, I wouldn’t sound the way I do now. At least, I shouldn’t think anyone would. You’d be nervous and uncertain; you’d probably—I mean in Beck’s predicament—be saying things you didn’t believe, perhaps even things they had written down for you to say, instead of what you wanted to say. At best, you wouldn’t put the same conviction into it.”
Pam said it was very logical; she said that all both of them said was very logical. She said that she thought, just the same, that somebody had stolen Beck and that it was an impersonation.
“And after all,” she said, “I listened to him. Jerry didn’t, really, and you, Bill—you were off arresting Mr. Pierson. I was the one who discovered it wasn’t Mr. Beck, really, and it’s my theory you’re both explaining away. Only as far as I’m concerned, it doesn’t go away.”
“Right,” Bill said. “You stick to your theory, Pam. And—just on the chance there’s something to it—don’t go off on your own and try to prove it. If you get to feeling that you want to, remember Elliot. Just to reassure you, I’ll look into it. Right?”
“Well—” Pam said. “If you’ll really, look into it. Not just to humor me, but to find out something. As if you thought there was something to find out. Only I’m not sure you can, because you don’t believe it yourself.”
Bill didn’t like that, and his expression said so. He said he was serious; very serious. Even if she was not really right in her theory, she might run into something if she tried to find out about it by herself.
“Damn it, Pam,” Bill said, “it’s dangerous.”
“It’s not dangerous if Pierson is the man,” Pam pointed out. “You’ve got him locked up. If you really believe your own theory, it doesn’t matter what I do, because there isn’t any danger.”
Bill Weigand smiled faintly. He stood up.
“All right,” he said. “I’m not sure enough about Pierson to risk anybody’s life on it. Particularly yours, my dear.”
He was rather grave about it. But Jerry seemed confident. He told Bill not to worry.
“Because,” he said, “I’ll see she doesn’t get into any trouble. This time, I’ll keep her locked up.”
Bill seemed relieved by that, and went on toward the magistrate’s court and the arraignment of Alfred Pierson. It was not until he had gone that Pam, very innocently, reminded Jerry that he was going to be on the radio himself that evening—on a book program—and that he couldn’t very well be there and still keep an eye on her.
“Unless you mean really lock me up,” she said. “And you couldn’t do that on account of fire.”
Jerry was not as taken aback as Pam expected. He pointed out that he could take her with him. He added that that was precisely what he planned to do.
XIII. Thursday, 10:20 A.M. to 9:35 P.M.
Justice moved briskly through the preliminary stages of the case of the State of New York vs. Alfred Pierson. Pierson was sandwiched between a jostling case, which involved a known pickpocket, and a charge of simple assault. Pierson looked rested. He had managed to get a fresh suit and he sat with an attorney of reputation and presence. The reputation was in some respects a little curious; it was the jaundiced view of the police department that Francis D. Kendall had never knowingly defended an innocent man. Juries, however, rather consistently disagreed with the Police Department, and most of Mr. Kendall’s clients went out, finally, into the free air. They did not, the police felt, notably freshen it.
The preliminary hearing of Mr. Kendall’s new client, before Magistrate Barrsmith, was exceedingly brief. Mr. Pierson pleaded not guilty on the short affidavit, signed by Police Lieutenant William Weigand and charging suspicion of homicide. He waived preliminary examination. Magistrate Barrsmith ordered him held without bail for action of the Grand Jury, gave a suspended sentence in the simple assault case, and regarded Franklin Martinelli, held by the police as a material witness. Martinelli remained small and truculent.
The District Attorney’s office, represented by an exceptionally downy assistant district attorney, asked that Franklin Martinelli be held in substantial bail as a material witness in the case of the State of New York vs. Alfred Pierson, charged with homicide in connection with the death of one Ann Lawrence.
“The man who was just before your honor,” the downy assistant district attorney reminded Magistrate Barrsmith.
“I remember, counselor,” the magistrate said testily. “The court it not wholly without intelligence.”
“No sir,” the assistant district attorney said. Magistrate Barrsmith regarded him narrowly, apparently considering the answer equivocal.
“Well,” Magistrate Barrsmith said. “What do you claim he knows about the case?”
“The State expects, through this witness, to place the defendant Pierson at the scene of the crime,” the assistant district attorney told him. “The State considers the evidence which will be given by Mr. Martinelli very material.”
“This court,” Magistrate Barrsmith said, thinking that if things went on as they were he would really have to see a doctor about his digestion, “does not lightly regard the tendency of the police to regard every citizen, regardless of his rights as a citizen and regardless of his presumptive need to make a living, as a mere pawn in the efforts of the police to—”
It came over Magistrate Barrsmith, gloomily, that he did not know precisely where he was going next. This was embarrassing, because the man from the AP local had started to take down what the court did not lightly regard. The other reporters who were covering Pierson’s arraignment were not taking it down, but they would get it from the AP man if it was hot enough. Magistrate Barrsmith was unhappily aware that it had cooled off. The AP man, looking a little tired, had stopped taking it down.
Magistrate Barrsmith looked darkly at the downy assistant district attorney.
“You were about to say something, counselor?” he inquired, in icy tones.
The assistant district attorney, who had had no intention of saying anything, and was merely waiting, with rather awed curiosity, to see how the magistrate’s sentence came out, jumped.
“No, your honor,” he said. “I wasn’t going to say anything.”
“Then don’t interrupt,” Magistrate Barrsmith advised, belligerently.
The young representative of the majesty of the State of New York was overcome with a mysterious sense of guilt.
“I’m very sorry, sir,” he said.
“Well,�
� the magistrate said, inconclusively. “Where was I?”
His tone did not invite anyone to tell him where he was.
“Oh, yes,” he said, “I don’t hold with this business—this custom—of the police locking up everybody they think might know something about a crime. At a time when the country needs the hand of every worker if it is to triumph in this vital war against the forces of evil, it is essential that no man’s work be interrupted without due cause. What do you claim this boy saw, counselor?”
The counselor looked around at Weigand.
“The defendant going into the house of the deceased,” Weigand said. “At about the time set by the Medical Examiner’s office for the killing. This man will testify that the defendant Pierson stayed from half to three-quarters of an hour, all of the period being included in the critical time.”
“Well,” the magistrate said, “what was this man doing there? Have you thought of that, Lieutenant?”
Lieutenant Weigand wished inwardly that Magistrate Barrsmith would do something about his digestion. Or only hold court after lunch, which always seemed to soothe him.
“That question has come up, your honor,” Weigand said. “That is one of the reasons we would like to have him held in substantial bail. Your honor will understand that the inquiry is not completed. And this witness is not engaged in essential war work, your honor. His draft board has classified him as 1A.”
The magistrate looked sharply at Bill Weigand, who looked back mildly.
“When is this going before the Grand Jury, Lieutenant?” he wanted to know. Weigand looked at the assistant district attorney.
“As soon as these formalities are completed, your honor,” the attorney said, unwisely.
“Formalities?” Magistrate Barrsmith repeated. “So you consider this purely a formality, counselor? You regard this court as a pure formality, do you?”
Weigand found himself wishing that the downy young attorney would forget himself and answer “Yes.” Merely for the cause of honesty. But the attorney was not that downy.