“Ross! Okay! Hold it!”
They turned, staring at Hicks.
“My husband,” Judith said determinedly.
“What was that?” Brager demanded hoarsely.
The door to the laboratory opened and R. I. Dundee was there. Ross backed up. Judith dropped onto the chair her husband had formerly occupied, and he stood beside her.
“That,” Hicks said grimly, “was the shot that killed George Cooper. You ought to recognize it by this time, Brager, since you fired it and also reproduced it.”
“I—” Brager gulped. “I will say nothing. Nothing! But you will see! These tricks! They will be paid for!”
“They sure will,” Hicks agreed. “You’ve used the right word for it. Foolishness. You’ve insisted all along that everyone but you is a fool, and you’ve certainly proceeded on that theory. I admit you were right up to a point, but you carried it too far. Don’t you think so? Now?”
“I will say nothing!”
“Do you mean,” Judith Dundee demanded, “that he did it all? That sonotel record—”
“It started long before that,” Hicks asserted. “Whenever it was that he began selling Dundee formulas to Vail. That was a good trick, nothing foolish about that. He got big money from your husband for discovering the formulas in this laboratory, and then he collected from Vail for them too.”
“He actually — did that?”
“He actually did. Of course I can’t prove it, but that’s where Vail will be a help. Yes, you will, Vail, don’t think you won’t! This, Mrs. Dundee, is my final report on the job you hired me to do. I’ll leave off the embroidery — for instance, I suspect that the police will find upon investigation that the coin Brager was raking in was being used for Nazi propaganda in this country, but we’ll leave that to them. Anyhow, he was getting it coming and going. But it began to get a little complicated. First, Dundee naturally got wise to the fact that he was being diddled by someone, and Brager had to watch his step. Second, Brager got captivated by your charm. Being emotionally a mixture of an ape and a sentimental ass, as Germans of a certain type always are, that led first to his abasing himself, and then to a boundless and barbarous fury when he found that his affection wasn’t returned. I make a guess. Didn’t you humiliate him by rejecting his advances?”
Judith shivered. “Yes,” she said succinctly.
Hicks nodded. “So he hated you. Plenty. And he had a miraculous bit of luck. Through a sonotel that he had installed in the house here for experiment, he found himself in possession of a batch of records with a woman’s voice on them exactly like yours. That was nearly a year ago, but the use he could make of them probably didn’t occur to him until recently. He could kill two birds with one stone: divert any possible suspicion in Dundee’s mind from himself, and get revenge on you. He knew that Martha Cooper was in Europe, and figured that it would all be over, and you disgraced for good, before she returned. He knew, of course, that Dundee had a sonotel in Vail’s office, and had informed Vail.”
Vail snapped, “I told you I knew that sonotel was in my office. But I didn’t learn it from Brager.”
“No?” Hicks smiled at him. “We’ll see. Let me finish my report.” He continued to Judith: “So he faked that sonotel record, using excerpts from the records he had in Martha Cooper’s voice, and Vail collaborating with his own voice. You heard Vail himself admit that any good technician could do it. Then Brager found an opportunity to plant the faked record among those delivered by the detective agency, in a case in the testing room in the Dundee offices in New York.
“But it began to get gummed up right from the start. Ross, thinking to protect you from what he suspected to be a plot, made off with the record and brought it out here and hid it, and your husband had to postpone the showdown until he could find it again. That was bad enough, but it was nothing compared to what happened Monday evening, five days ago. George Cooper suddenly appeared, arriving here Monday evening to see Miss Gladd, and his wife had returned with him from abroad. That was worse than a nuisance, it was a threat of disaster. Martha was apt to show up here any minute, and if Ross met her and heard her speak, good-bye. So Brager made preparations. When Martha did come, Thursday afternoon, he was ready with a batch of records that would place him ostensibly in the laboratory while he sneaked through the woods to the house and took whatever action the circumstances offered. His luck seemed to have turned again. He was able to get into the house unseen, wield the candlestick through the open window without appearing on the terrace, and leave again and return to the laboratory still unseen. Also, I was here in the office with Miss Gladd, making his alibi that much better.”
“You gave us that alibi,” Manny Beck growled.
Hicks ignored him. “But still, even with Martha’s voice quiet for good, everything was far from rosy. Brager had plenty to worry about. Where the devil was the record? He had to find it and destroy it. Also Vail, learning of the murder, would know who had done it, and Vail might be hard to handle. Friday morning Brager phoned him from White Plains and arranged to meet him. They met, and probably it was an unpleasant session, but for his own protection Vail agreed to keep his mouth shut. Also he decided to take steps of his own, and as a starter he called on me. At my place he saw Cooper, and learned that Cooper knew of the sonotel record — had actually heard it, or at least part of it.
“Of course that was bad. Very bad. On leaving my place Vail got in touch with Brager — probably phoned him by prearrangement to some number in White Plains — and told him about Cooper. Undoubtedly he urged him to make every possible effort to find that record. For Vail’s voice was on that record.”
Hicks turned to Vail. “This raises the question, naturally, whether you were an accomplice in Cooper’s murder. I doubt it. I think you were already as close as you ever wanted to be to murder, and a good deal closer. I think you merely warned Brager of Cooper’s knowledge of the record, and urged him to sidetrack Cooper if possible, and above all to find the record.”
“I’ll thank you when you’re done,” Vail said in a tone of controlled fury.
“Don’t bother,” Hicks told him, returning to Mrs. Dundee. “Also Vail arranged for a rendezvous with Brager, Brager designating the spot on a deserted stretch of road not far from here. I wouldn’t be surprised if they had used that spot before during the three years that Brager was selling Vail the Dundee formulas. Anyhow they used it today. Vail drove there at once, and waited. It was getting hot for him now, entirely too hot for comfort. In fact, he was scared stiff.
“But I doubt if Brager was scared. He’s too cold-blooded to get scared. Look at him now, he’s not even scared now, though God knows he ought to be. What he did, he beat it back here as fast as he could come and prepared to receive Cooper by getting his revolver from wherever he kept it, and by getting the recording machine in the laboratory in readiness so that all he had to do was turn on the switch. Since no one else saw Cooper when he arrived, I suppose Brager met him at the entrance and took him around by the road here to the laboratory. You may think I don’t know what he said to him, but I do. No question about it. He told him he had that record he was looking for, and he took him into the laboratory to prove it by playing the record. Cooper wouldn’t know the difference between a recording machine and a playing machine. Brager started the machine going, and while Cooper was gazing at it, waiting to hear the record, paying no attention to Brager, Brager shot him in the temple, with something — his handkerchief — over the muzzle of the revolver to prevent powder stain. So I do know. It couldn’t have been any other way.”