“I think,” Heather said shakily, “I’m going to throw my arms around you and kiss you. Your voice — you have no idea, Mrs. Dundee—”
“Indeed I haven’t. You poor kid. I have no idea about anything, but I think that man Hicks has. His voice sounded like it—”
“Hicks?” Ross demanded in astonishment.
“Yes. That’s why I was expecting Miss Gladd. He phoned and said she would probably come here because he had told her to—”
“When did he phone?”
“An hour ago. More. He should be here any minute.” Mrs. Dundee took Heather’s hand again. “My dear, he told me what happened today — your being there and hearing the shot and finding your brother-in-law dead — and I think you’re amazing. A child your age! I expected you to look like a hard-boiled female sergeant, and here you’re as lovely as a dream! I’m bitterly ashamed—”
“Do I understand,” Vail interrupted, “that Hicks is on his way here?”
“Yes.”
“Is Dick with him?”
“No.”
“I’m glad of that. I came here, Judith, to give you an explanation of this business, at least what I know of it—”
“I don’t care to hear it.” Mrs. Dundee didn’t look at him. “I don’t even ask how you came to arrive here with my son and Miss Gladd. The whole thing is so utterly incomprehensible that I have ceased to pretend I have a mind capable of functioning. I wasn’t even surprised when I entered and saw you here. I am no longer capable of surprise. Apparently my son has knocked you cold, as he expressed it. When or on what provocation I have no idea. If you have an explanation to give you can give it to Mr. Hicks—”
A buzzer sounded.
Ross went to answer it. Vail scowled at the young man’s receding back, stuck his thumbs in his vest pockets, straightened himself, and breathed deeply and audibly. Voices sounded in the hall, and a door closed, and in a moment Hicks entered, followed by Ross. As Hicks crossed to the divan a glance was all he had for Vail; a corner of his wide mobile mouth curved upward as he saw that Judith and Heather, sitting, were hand in hand.
“You were right about her,” Judith said. “She came all right.”
“Sure she did.” Hicks patted Heather’s knee. “Good girl.”
“What happened to you?” Heather demanded. “I got a message—”
“I know you did. We’ll get around to that.” Hicks seated himself on the divan beside her and looked up at Vail, at Ross. “Sit down, everybody. Let’s have a little talk.”
Vail blurted aggressively, “I came here to—”
“To explain things?”
“Yes. To tell Mrs. Dundee—”
“Fine. Sit down and make yourself comfortable. I’d love to hear you explain things. Go right ahead.”
Twenty-two
James Vail, as with deliberation he turned a chair to face the divan and sat on it, and leveled his gaze at Judith Dundee, was not a particularly prepossessing object. His visage, with the broad insensitive nose, the thin selfish mouth, and the cold shrewd eyes, had never been intended to excite admiration, even when, well-groomed and fed and rested, he moved in the congenial orbit of a top-flight business executive; and now, not too clean, not combed, not in any respect jaunty, with an enormous disfiguring lump on the side of his head above his left ear, he was simply ugly. Under the enveloping fat folds of his lids it was difficult to tell where his eyes were focused in that light, but as he leaned back and stuck his thumbs in his vest pockets it was Mrs. Dundee he spoke to.
“I want to assure you, Judith,” he began, “that I am willing to do everything possible to limit the damage in this business, even at considerable risk—”
“You’re not talking to me,” she snapped. “Talk to Mr. Hicks.”
“Oh, but I am talking to you. As you will see. I am willing to take considerable risk, but not to the extent of exposing myself to the danger of being arrested as an accessory to a murder. Two murders. So talking here to four of you, I shall have to be — uh — somewhat discreet regarding what I know and what I surmise. Some things I can tell you. Some I can’t. But I can tell you enough to show you the vital necessity of a very careful and very rigorous discretion on the part of all of us.”
Hicks grunted. “New paragraph. It’s late.”
Vail ignored him. “In the first place, I have known for over a year that Dick had a sonotel installed in my office. I knew it the day after he did it. No matter how. I am not a greenhorn in business, and I’m not a novice in the application of plastics to the science of sound recording. I amused myself by conveying to him some hints on formulas that I don’t think he found very helpful. Dick was enraged by Republic’s success, and he got so he was little better than a maniac. His suspicions that I was getting his formulas were completely unfounded, but it was no use talking to him.”
“If you want to rest a minute,” Hicks put in, “maybe I can go on with it. You went to a play and heard an actress with a voice exactly like Mrs. Dundee’s, and decided to have some fun. You got the actress to come to your office and do a little dialogue with you for the sonotel—”
“No,” Vail said. His eyes did not shift from Judith Dundee. “I can do this better without interruptions. I have to be a little cautious about it, for as I said, there is at least one risk I don’t care to take. I hope I don’t need to persuade you, Judith, that I would not regard it as fun to involve you in such a mess. The first I knew that you were involved was Thursday last week — a week ago yesterday. I got a phone call from Herman Brager, saying he wanted to see me. Naturally I was interested in such a call from the second-best plastic research man in the world, so I made an appointment and met him that evening. I was hoping that perhaps he was ready to quit Dundee, but quite the contrary. He was after my blood, figuratively speaking. He told me that Dick had a sonotel record from a machine picking up from my office, with a conversation between you and me, showing that I was getting Dundee formulas from you.”
Judith, frowning, spoke. “Herman Brager told you that?”
“He did. I gathered that he — uh — admires you, a sentiment in which of course he has no monopoly. I gathered that, because he seemed to resent, not so much my getting his formulas, as my getting you involved. He had formed the same theory that Hicks here has advanced, that, knowing of the sonotel, I had found someone to imitate your voice and put on a performance, and he demanded that I should clear you by telling Dick the facts. I denied it, naturally, since it wasn’t true. His admiration of you must be extreme, for I was impressed by his vehemence. If he were a man of violence, his being after my blood might not have been merely figurative.”
Vail took a breath, audibly. “Well. Since there had been no such conversation between you and me, I concluded that although I had staged no performance, someone certainly had, with an imitation not only of your voice, but of mine also. I tell you frankly that my guess was that it had been done by Dick himself, because I couldn’t imagine who else would have a motive for doing such a thing. Why Dick wanted to put it on you I had no idea, but there are many things between husbands and wives of which their friends have no idea — and, as I said, I was already convinced that Dick was little better than a maniac. Strictly speaking, I had every right to take a hand in the matter, since the fake sonotel record Brager told me of was a damaging attack on my business ethics, but I—”
Judith said, “You didn’t mention it when I called at your office yesterday.”
“I know I didn’t. I hadn’t seen or heard the record and didn’t know where it was. It concerned more than business ethics and Dick’s idiotic jealousy of me and my company; it also involved his relations with his research man and his wife. I didn’t want to mix up in that. So I told you I knew nothing about it and there was nothing I could do.