Crimson Clue

by George Harmon Coxe

  ‘Did you go out to Canning’s?’

  ‘Certainly we went out there. They’re still lying. All of them. They’re covering up just like I said. None of them would have an alibi if it wasn’t for the others. The old man, Luther, was in his study. The butler isn’t sure where Howard Elliott was but he’s sure he was home at nine o’clock. It stinks, all of it.’

  Bacon continued, blowing off his head of steam but not improving his mood much. Murdock waited until he ran out of breath and then asked about Saul Damin.

  ‘We’re working on him’, Bacon said. ‘And I’m busy and——’

  ‘Wait a minute.’ Murdock cut in, afraid the other would hang up. ‘What about those tape recordings that Klime had?’

  ‘Sergeant Unger’s out there now making copies. Ask him.’

  Murdock heard the connection break. He replaced the instrument, dark eyes thoughtful, and understanding how it was with Bacon. Presently he dialled the office and said he would be down later; then he called the Copley and asked for Ann Wright. When Audrey Wayne’s voice came to him she sounded nearly as disgusted as Bacon.

  ‘I’m still in bed’, she said wearily.

  ‘Not sick?’

  ‘Dying. Of boredom. Honestly if I have to stay in this room another day——’

  Murdock interrupted. He said he knew how it was. He complimented her; he flattered her. He asked if she had seen the Courier and when she said no, he told her to have a copy sent up.

  ‘Why?’ she asked, held by some inflection in his tone and no longer bored.

  He told her. He said apparently Klime had been killed by the same man who had shot at her and missed.

  ‘That,’ he said, ‘is why you have to stay there a while longer.’ He hesitated, and when there was no answer, he said: ‘I’ve been thinking about that envelope Neil Garvin showed you, the one he left at the desk.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You had it in your hands. You felt it. You must have wondered what it was, what was in it … I thought it felt round; about a quarter of an inch thick.’

  He paused again, hearing the sound of her breathing but getting no immediate answer.

  ‘You’ve seen tape recordings?’ he pressed.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well——’

  ‘It could have been’, she said. ‘It was round. I thought maybe it was a little record, a thick one. Why?’

  Murdock said he did not know. He was just wondering. ‘Be a good girl’, he said. ‘Stay there. I’ll stop by this afternoon and hold your hand and tell you how wonderful you are.’…

  Sergeant Unger was a tall and gangling man with unruly brown hair and glasses. He looked more like a high-school science teacher than a sergeant of police and his sense of humour was appropriate to neither.

  ‘If you want to take my picture,’ he said when he opened the door of Klime’s apartment and saw Murdock standing there, ‘you’ll have to clear it with the Commissioner.’

  Murdock grinned at him and said he had just talked to Bacon. ‘You’re the recording expert, hunh?’

  ‘Call me an electronic engineer’, Unger said. ‘I’m the forgotten man of Berkeley Street. I know maybe two per cent more about recorders than the other lads in the department but that makes me an expert. It means I can make one run—if it’s not too complicated.’ He waved a bony hand toward the corner of the room. ‘Witness my laboratory.’

  The two home recorders Murdock had seen the night before were still here, standing side by side now, the one with the dealer’s tag on the handle open and ready for operation, the older-looking one closed. On a table at one side stood a different type of machine in a black case, its microphone plugged in.

  Murdock did not know much about such things and had never actually operated one. He said so as he looked them over, adding that Bacon had told him Unger was making copies of the reels that Klime had on hand.

  ‘I’ve finished’, Unger said. He opened a drawer to show the three reels there. ‘These three,’ he said, ‘and the one on the machine.’

  Murdock lit a cigarette, his lean face thoughtful as he glanced from one machine to the other.

  ‘What would Klime want with two machines?’ he asked. ‘They’re both the same make.’

  ‘One’s newer; maybe better.’ Unger indicated the tag. ‘Probably had it sent up on approval to see how much better.’

  ‘You could have recorded your copies on the new one while the old one was playing, couldn’t you? You wouldn’t need a third one.’

  ‘Sure’, Unger said. ‘But I understand this one’—he nodded toward the black case—‘better. It’s a department machine and I’m used to it and I know what I can get. There’re a dozen different makes, all operating on the same principle, but all a little different with their controls and operation.’

  ‘How long will a reel play?’

  ‘An hour, I think. The old one does, anyway.’ He tapped the three reels which stood beside the police machine. ‘I’ve got it all down here on our tape in case we ever want it, which is doubtful as hell.’

  ‘What was on them?’

  ‘Music on two of them.’

  ‘Just music?’

  ‘Just music. All kinds. I think he taped some things that came over the radio. He was a nut. Look at them records’, he said, waving towards the shelves. ‘Tape was another way of taking off pieces or records that he liked … The other reel was reports he had dictated. I’ll let the brain department down at Headquarters decide if any of it is important.’

  Murdock pointed to the reel on the new machine. ‘What about that tape?’

  ‘Has one letter on it; that’s all.’ Unger chuckled. ‘Must be a new reel but I couldn’t be sure. He had it set up on the old machine and I rewound to the beginning and listened. There was this letter and nothing else, and I kept listening and then I thought maybe it was the machine’s fault. I took it off and put it on this new one but it was the same. One letter. Period. I’ll show you.’

  He fiddled with some controls and the reel rewound at high speed. He stopped it, flicked the controls again, adjusted the volume and then Murdock was listening to Lew Klime dictating a letter to some company about an overdue account. There were perhaps three minutes of threats about what would happen if the account was not paid and then there was silence, followed a few seconds later by a voice he did not recognize.

  Unger laughed.

  Murdock gave him a puzzled look and then, following the remarks that came from the speaker, realized it was the sergeant’s sense of humour breaking out again.

  ‘Sergeant Unger reporting,’ the voice said pontifically, ‘from Lew Klime’s apartment. All equipment is set up and ready for instant action. Men have been stationed at front and back doors, on the roof, and across the street. The suspect is known to be armed and has threatened to shoot it out rather than be taken alive …’

  Murdock’s mouth twisted and he eyed Unger aslant as the sergeant shut off the machine and laughed sheepishly.

  ‘I wanted to see how I came over’, he explained. ‘For laughs.’

  ‘You going to take that off on the police machine?’

  ‘You think I’m crazy? I’m going to erase it.’

  ‘How?’ Murdock asked. ‘I mean, I know you can use this tape over and over, but how does it erase? What’s the principle?’

  ‘Principle? What am I, an engineer?’ Unger said. ‘All I know is, it erases as it records. See this thing here?’ He pointed to a tiny, boxlike contrivance and a little arm, through which the tape was threaded as it passed from one plastic reel to the other. ‘That’s the gadget that does it but don’t ask me how. It’s the recording head and puts the impulse on the tape. I’ll show you.’

  He rewound a few feet of tape, flipped his control to reverse the tape and moved another switch to record. When he heard the words: ‘—Unger speaking,’ he reversed a little more, then stopped the tape.

  ‘When I move this to record again, whatever the mike picks up will register on the ta
pe and what I have on there now will be gone. If we keep quiet the tape will record the silence. Listen.’

  He put his finger to his lips and flipped the switch to start the reels. They stood that way, waiting, saying nothing. After a minute or so, Unger snapped his fingers in front of the microphone, still signalling for silence. Finally he stopped the machine, reset the controls, and rewound it partway.

  When he put it on speaker what came out was the end of the letter Klime had dictated. After that there was silence except for the faintest of hums, then a loud snapping sound of Unger’s fingers, then more silence.

  The sergeant shut off the machine. ‘See what I mean?’ He rewound the reel, removed it, and put it in the drawer with the others Klime had made. He started to close the police machine and then Murdock remembered something else.

  ‘What about that two-foot length of tape that was found on Klime’s machine last night. What was on it?’

  Unger said he had it right there, and when he brought it out Murdock saw that it had been spliced with Scotch tape into a longer length so it would be possible to thread it on a reel. He also noticed that while one side of it looked like Kraft paper, the other was a deep red colour, a crimson really. He spoke of this, adding that it was a different colour from the other tape.

  ‘Sure’, Unger said. ‘Different manufacturers make them in different colours—orange, buff, red. It don’t mean a thing.’

  He reached out and started the machine. The voice that came forth a moment later said: ‘Recorded at Alpert and Leeds, West——’ That was all.

  Murdock grunted. He said that should be a big help and Unger agreed. He gave a tug at his hatbrim, the thought forming that while this had all been very interesting it did nothing at all to solve the murder.

  Chapter 19

  IT was the middle of the afternoon before Kent Murdock had a chance to make enlargements of the two negatives he had taken from Lew Klime’s pocket the night before. Because he did not want anyone to get a look at the prints he had to wait until he had the Studio to himself, and now, at three o’clock, he went into the enlarging room and made his two prints.

  What he had when he finished was proof that he had taken the two pictures of Neil Garvin, nothing more. The photographs were clear-cut and detailed, the focus sharply outlining the man’s head and torso in one exposure while in the other the entire body in its sitting position was shown.

  The trouble was, the focus was too sharp. The background was hazy and dark. It had no character or distinction. From what Murdock could see there was nothing at all to indicate that the pictures had been made in any particular closet, or that it was a closet at all.

  He brought the prints out to his desk, found a large envelope and placed them inside. Opening the large, bottom drawer, he put the envelope under a pile of other envelopes and prints and then sat back, his dark eyes sombre as he put down his disappointment and tried to get his thoughts in hand.

  Lew Klime had developed his, Murdock’s original films. He had apparently turned over the two which showed Neil Garvin to Damin for delivery to the Cannings or Elliotts, but not before he had copied those negatives. That much was clear. Klime was holding out, with or without Damin’s knowledge and——

  Murdock sat up as his thoughts sliced off on a new tangent. His narrowed gaze slid to the window but the things he saw were a lot farther away than the rooftops outside. He was, at the moment, back in Klime’s apartment, focusing in imagination on the new recording machine that still had the dealer’s tag on it.

  Klime had held him up that first night and taken the envelope Neil Garvin had left Audrey. Whatever was inside had the size and shape of a reel of recording tape. This was a fair assumption and, if true, it followed that Klime would play that tape on his recording machine. Suppose then that Klime had brought a second machine home, not as Sergeant Unger had assumed, merely to try it out, but to make a copy of the recording he had stolen from Murdock?

  A man with the kind of mind that would copy a negative before releasing it might well make a copy of a recording the same way. And why, if not to try to collect on it?

  Murdock slapped the desk with the flat of his hand and interest kindled quickly in his eyes. Why not? Suppose Klime had tried to collect and had been killed by someone who wanted the recording. That torn, two-foot length of tape supported the idea but——

  He stood up, muttering to himself as he stepped to the window and glanced out. At the point of accepting the theory, he was brought up short by the additional thought that if this was so, what had happened to the copy Klime had made?

  For a minute more he kept banging away at the idea and getting nowhere. He wasn’t sure why he had to know, but he was at times a stubborn man and he was reluctant now to accept the obvious.

  The obvious answer told him that the killer had made off with both the original and the copy, and the only detail that made such a conclusion unacceptable was the character of Lew Klime’s mind. Klime was crafty, shrewd, unscrupulous. Would not a man like that, making a dangerous pitch, take some precaution by protecting either the copy or the original?

  Murdock had no answer for this but he had been trained for years to keep plugging on an assignment even when it seemed hopeless. Now, recalling the dealer’s name and address who had sold or loaned Klime the new recorder, he started for the door, not knowing what he expected to accomplish but unwilling to let the matter drop while there was still a chance to find an acceptable answer.

  The Melody Record Shop was a narrow-front store on Washington Street. Its single display window was fly specked and dusty and featured advertising cards, dummy albums, a home recorder, and a portable record-player. The sound of music came faintly from the darkened interior, and when Murdock went inside he saw a boy and a girl listening intently to some record they were playing in the tiny, glass-walled booth. There were three of these enclosures on one side, a counter opposite cluttered with leaflets, catalogues, and assorted record-players. The entire wall behind this was stacked with shelves and records.

  A small, middle-aged man, bald and bespectacled, put his cigarette in a tin ash tray and looked up as Murdock approached. ‘Yes, sir’, he said.

  ‘Do you sell home recorders?’

  ‘What kind?’

  ‘Wheelers.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Lew Klime bought his here, didn’t he?’

  The man’s eyes opened wide and his voice dropped a tone. ‘You know Lew? You read what happened to him? Shot. Murdered, the papers say.’ He shook his head. ‘Sure I know Lew.’ He waved his hand at the record shelves. ‘One of my best customers. Old titles and new. A kind of a nut on old Ellington and Berrigan and Armstrong. Got a couple of orders on my books now. A real collector, Klime.’

  Murdock said he had seen Klime’s collection. ‘That’s where I got the idea of the Wheeler. Lew had a new one of yours up at his place.’

  ‘That’s right. On approval.’

  ‘Anything wrong with the old one?’

  ‘Nothing. Thought he might trade. The new model’s got some improvements. I’ll call my boy. He’s got all the answers … Albert!’ he yelled.

  A slim, dark-haired youth in dungarees and a khaki shirt emerged from the shadows behind the last booth and advanced, wiping his hands.

  ‘This gentleman wants to know about a Wheeler’, the father said. ‘You can maybe demonstrate for him, hunh?… You go with Albert’, he added to Murdock.

  ‘It’s a nice machine’, the youth said as they went to the back of the store. Here’, he said, and removed the cover of an instrument like Klime’s. ‘Very sensitive’, he said. ‘I’ll show you.’

  He started the mechanism, walked away, and then clapped his hands. He played it back for Murdock. He said the microphone would pick up sounds not even in the room and then he was talking about fidelity, output, peaks, flutter, and noise ratio. Murdock let him go, nodding appreciatively as though he understood everything that was being said.

  ‘Plays an hour
on one reel?’ he asked finally.

  Albert grinned. ‘Two on this model.’

  Murdock looked at the size of the reel and found it the same as the ones he had seen at Klime’s.

  ‘You mean on a bigger reel?’

  ‘The same reel. Like this. You just turn it over and get an hour’s recording each way.’

  Murdock frowned. ‘You mean you play on both sides of the tape?’

  ‘No. Only one is sensitized. It’s like this.’ Albert indicated the tiny recording unit. ‘You run the reel through this way and only the top half of the tape records. When you finish’—he wound the reel and took both this and the empty one off—‘you just reverse the rolls on the spindles so you can record on the bottom half, which is then the top. That way you get two hours of recording altogether.’

  By that time Murdock was thinking hard. He began to get a little excited as new hope began to blossom in his mind. Outwardly, he kept his attention and interest on the machine, listening carefully and finally operating it himself. He asked about price and terms, and resale value. He said he’d think it over and let Albert know in a day or two, and Albert said it would be a good idea because new recorders were getting scarcer all the time.

  Murdock thanked him, backed out of the store, and walked a fast three blocks to where his car was parked. He drove directly to Klime’s apartment, which he knew was no longer sealed, and let himself in the same way he had the night before.

  He was a little nervous when he took the reel of tape out of the drawer and started to thread it into the empty reel. He was sure this was the right one because he remembered Unger had put it on top, and when he finally had the reels in their proper positions he switched the dials to their appropriate spots and flipped the switch. What he heard when the tube warmed up was Klime’s dictated letter so he stopped the machine and reversed the reels so that the one on top became the one on the bottom.

  Double checking to make sure everything was in its proper place, he tripped the switch again. The tube warmed, and as it did so the sound of music came to him, a man singing with a piano accompaniment which grew quickly louder until he cut down on the volume.