He slammed down the phone. Almost immediately, it began ringing again. He ignored it to run toward the back of the apartment. When he reached the back service hall, Mort Lisky was already dismantling his recording equipment.
“Better get this inside, in case they try to kick in the back way,” said Mort. “Won’t take long to set it up for this evening again. Here, you take this tape and work from it where you can watch the front. I’ll keep an eye on the back — and I’ve really got a job of rectifying to do! I told you I should have had more time to check that phone induction coil.”
“I was tremendous, wasn’t I?” said Jerry. “I really sounded scared, didn’t I?”
“You still do,” said Mort. “To work, boy, to work! But I still think this is one of those down-beat scripts where the hero’s buddy dies a lingering, last-act death.”
Jerry took the smaller of the two tape recorders to the living room and plugged it in where he could sit near the front door. He dragged the coffee table over to use for a desk, and stacked some paper and pencils on it. He put on the earphones and sat down, with his eye near a crack in the broken old blind that covered the glass in the front door.
It was hard to see well enough to write, with all the shades pulled down. And, as he expected, through the crack in the blind he shortly beheld a cab stop at the curb. None other than Mr. Wilfred “Bill” Fox got out and ran up the steps. Jerry and Mort had a first-floor apartment with a door facing the street. Mr. Fox pounded on the door again and again.
Jerry sat there just inside it, with the sweat pouring off in rivers. Until this very moment, he had been quite sure that no one out there in the bright sunlight could make out anything in the dark apartment through that crack in the blind. But when he beheld Mr. Fox’s pale, malevolent eye at the crack, he wondered how he could have been such a fool. Mr. Fox was staring straight at him.
“Damn!” they heard Mr. Fox cut loose. “The little whelp did run, after all. Well, he’d better show up tonight, that’s all I’ve got to say!”
The eye was withdrawn. Jerry breathed again.
He ran the tape over and over, scribbling and listening at the same time. A little later Mr. Fox made two more attempts to get into the apartment. The second time, a man was waiting in the back seat of the cab. It might not have been Mr. Barney Cupp; on the other hand, it was about the same size man as Mr. Cupp, and he filled the cab with the same blue, rich-looking cigar smoke that continually surrounded Mr. Cupp.
This time, Mr. Fox tried to get in the back door too, but the landlady caught him and threatened to call the police. Mr. Fox beat a hasty retreat.
Meanwhile, Mort remained busy in the kitchenette, “rectifying” the tape, whatever that meant. They finished with their separate jobs about the same time. Then came the job of rerecording. Their hair stood on end while this was going on, because Jerry had to speak in a normal tone of voice, and sometimes louder than normal. But it did not take long and they were not interrupted.
From about five thirty on, they discovered, the phone rang regularly every ten minutes. The calls which they had to make, they spaced in between the calls from the outside. Several times, they had to call their party back, so Mr. Fox would not get a busy signal when he rang their number. It was imperative that he be convinced that they were away, and a busy signal would have told him that they — or at least someone — was using the phone in their apartment.
At eight o’clock — not a minute before and not a minute after — Mr. Barney Cupp and Mr. Wilfred Fox rang the front doorbell. Mort had moved his electronic gear back to the service hall; so Jerry admitted the two guests.
Mr. Cupp was impatiently affable. He was also smoking a big dollar cigar as usual. He did not wait to be asked to sit down. He made himself at home in the only comfortable chair in the room, leaned back, and crossed his legs.
“Bill tells me he pulled a silly sort of stunt and got you in trouble, Jerry,” he said. “Now, I don’t know what I can do to help you out, but if a few hundred bucks will do you any good, you know Bill’s not a tightwad.”
Mr. Fox smiled his pale-eyed smile. His freckles seemed to be a little pale, too. “That’s what I tried to tell Jerry-boy, Barney,” he said, exposing most of his pale gums. “But he seems to be greatly attached to you, and I can’t blame him for that, can I? The main thing is for me to get that stuff from the camera.”
“Exactly!” said Mr. Cupp. “Get the stuff back, give our pal Jerry a few hundred bucks to make life pleasanter for him, and get out of his hair, eh? Exactly!”
“First, Mr. Cupp,” said Jerry, “there’s something I think you should know. My conversation with Mr. Fox was recorded this afternoon.”
“What? Why, you idiot, you smart-aleck!” Mr. Cupp shouted. He half rose out of his chair. “Bill, you’re a worse idiot than he is!” he said, brandishing his cigar at Mr. Fox. “How much did you say over the phone?”
Mr. Fox blanched a little, but he said, “Nothing to worry about, Barney. They already knew the rocks were coming through, didn’t they? That’s why they held you so long this afternoon. And they can’t use wiretap evidence! The mere fact that a phone conversation of mine was recorded without a beeper makes it inadmissible in court.”
Slowly, Mr. Cupp settled back in his chair. He did not look happy — only relieved, and not very much of that. Before he had entirely assimilated Mr. Fox’s legal advice, Jerry addressed him again.
“Anyway, Mr. Cupp, I think you ought to hear the recording. It’ll only take a couple of minutes,” he said. “Okay, Mort, turn it on!”
From the six speakers of their hi-fi set the two voices, Jerry’s and Mr. Fox’s, came booming out clearly. Mr. Fox listened with a contemptuous little smile that soon turned to an expression of frozen, incredulous horror. He recognized his own voice. He even recognized some of the words. But these were only fugitive, phantom recollections of a call that he could have made only in his bad dreams:
Mr. Fox: Oh, I see! You say you already looked in the camera?
Jerry: Yes, and there is only half as much as you said there would be. Only four diamonds and four emeralds, and both rubies are missing. What are you trying to do — cheat Mr. Cupp?
Mr. Fox: Jerry-boy, Mr. Cupp was detained by the customs officers, so it will probably be a little while before-
Jerry: You mean arrested? You turned him in, like you said?
Mr. Fox: I’ll admit frankly that I played a dirty trick, but I’m going to make up for it.
Jerry: Don’t you go offering me any of those thousand-dollar bills again, to help double-cross Mr. Cupp!
Mr. Fox: Jerry-boy, I’m going to bring you two of the fattest bills you ever saw.
Jerry: Mr. Cupp’s thousand-dollar bills, you mean. After you ratted on him to the customs inspectors, too!
Mr. Fox: Jerry-boy, Barney Cupp is a dirty, rotten, double-crossing heel, an ignorant slob, a thief besides!
Jerry: If Mr. Cupp is in trouble, I’m going to the customs inspectors and tell them that I’ve got the jewels.
Mr. Fox: Jerry-boy, it would be about the most dangerous dung you can do.
Jerry: But it makes me nervous, sitting here with the jewels while he’s under arrest. Why, I wouldn’t go through with this for three thousand dollars!
Mr. Fox: How about five? I’m sure we can get together, keed, but Barney Cupp is a dirty, cowardly rat. Now, why can’t you and I get together on a friendly basis, without bothering him?
At this point, Mr. Fox found his voice. At any rate, he found somebody’s voice, because the strangled scream that issued from his throat sounded like no noise that he had ever made before.