The Case of the Green-Eyed Sister

by Erle Stanley Gardner

  Drake continued to listen, then chuckled, “You seem to have Brogan going. Is this after the recording was played?”

  “That’s right. I asked him to play it the second time. What’s happened with Brogan? Has he led your men to J. J. Fritch yet?”

  “Not yet. He hasn’t even gone out.”

  Mason’s voice showed his surprise. “You mean he hasn’t left his apartment?”

  “No. My men are stationed there.”

  “How long have they—”

  “Plenty of time. They were there before you and Mrs. Atwood left. They saw you going out.”

  Mason frowned, then let a smile erase the frown. “That means Brogan is having one hell of a time trying to find out what happened to his tape recording. He doesn’t dare to report to Fritch.”

  “Gosh, Perry, what actually did happen?”

  Mason grinned. “I messed up Brogan’s evidence.”

  “How?”

  “To be perfectly frank with you,” Mason said, “it was an idea that came to me on the spur of the moment. I thought I might ask for a drink and perhaps get him out of the room so I could at least look at the tape and see if it had been spliced. He was too smart for that.”

  “He would be,” Drake said. “Gosh, Perry, the way that guy plays the game he wouldn’t have left you alone with that tape recording for a minute. According to his code of ethics it would have been all right for you to have grabbed the tape and thrown it out of the window.”

  “I know,” Mason said. “He insisted on all three of us going into the kitchen. Then he was so afraid I’d put knockout drops in his drink, or that I would think that he might have drugged ours that he insisted on everyone mixing his own drink. I noticed a magnetic knife holder over the drain-board and that was when I got a sudden idea.”

  “What did you do?”

  “Managed to be the last one to leave the kitchen, pulled the knives off the magnetic holder, slipped the holder out of its socket, and had a nice flat magnet which I was able to insert under the cloth on the table just where I felt certain he was going to put the spool of tape. He didn’t notice there was anything under the cloth. I raised the point that I wanted to see some of the tape, so he obligingly rotated the spool while it was within the magnetic field and, of course, erased everything on it.”

  “Did what?” Drake asked incredulously.

  “Erased everything on it.”

  “I don’t get it,” Drake said. “How did it erase?”

  Mason grinned. “A tape recorder is simply an arrangement of molecules on a magnetized tape. You can erase the conversation and use the tape over and over again by bringing it through a magnetic field, which is, roughly speaking, what happens when you use the tape a second time. As it goes through a magnetic field the old conversation is erased just before the new conversation is put on.

  “You can take a good horseshoe magnet, run it around a spool of tape and erase everything on it, but a good flat magnet works a lot better.”

  “Well I’ll be darned,” Drake said. “I never knew that. That is, I never thought of it in exactly that way. I knew, of course, that conversations were recorded due to pulsations in a magnetic field. What did Brogan do? I’ll bet he had a fit.”

  Mason chuckled. “He certainly was in a panic for a minute. Then he probably remembered that he had means of duplicating the tape, so he rushed us out of there, assuring us it was something wrong with the machine.”

  “Does he know what you did?”

  “He knows I messed it up some way,” Mason said, “but he doesn’t know how, and that’s worrying him a lot.”

  “But if he’s lost that tape recording then what?”

  “That tape recording,” Mason said, “was synthetic.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean this—Fritch probably got Ned Bain into a long conversation about a lot of things, politics, old times, business, cattle, oil and all the rest of it. Then Fritch went to some sound recording studio. He ran off portions of the tape recording of his conversation with Ned Bain, and some unscrupulous sound technician helped him fix up a master roll of spliced conversation.”

  “I still don’t get it.”

  “Just this way, Paul. Let’s suppose that in their actual conversation Fritch said to Bain, ‘You remember that time we killed the big deer up by the point of the mountain?’ and Bain said, ‘I remember it just as plain as day, J.J. I never will forget it.’

  “All right, Fritch goes to a sound studio. They take that answer that Bain made and on another tape Fritch says, ‘You remember the time I raised capital for your oil well venture in Texas by holding up that bank, Ned?’

  “Then the sound technician cuts out that part of the tape-recorded conversation where Ned Bain says, ‘I remember it just as plain as day, J.J. I never will forget it,’ and splices that right in so that it seems an answer to Fritch’s question.”

  Drake said, “You mean the whole conversation was put together that way?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Then the tape is a mass of splices?”

  “The original tape must be,” Mason said, “but the splices have been cunningly made. They’re handled in such a way that you can’t possibly detect them by listening. Then that master tape was boiled down to about twenty minutes of generalized conversation with four or five very incriminating statements incorporated in it. After that was done the whole thing was dubbed on another spool of tape, which is supposed to be the original sound recording of a conversation.”

  “How are you going to prove all that?” Drake asked.

  “That, of course,” Mason admitted, “is the problem. I think I have a clue and a good one.”

  “What’s that?”

  “The sound technician was too clever.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The actual conversation between Fritch and Bain took place in a room or in an apartment somewhere. The voices bounced back from the walls. You can hear just the faint sound of an echo whenever Ned Bain is talking. You hear it sometimes when Fritch is talking. But whenever Fritch asks a question to which Ned Bain makes an incriminating answer, Fritch’s question comes in without the faintest sound of echo.

  “You can see what that means. That question was asked in a soundproof room in a studio somewhere, and while Fritch tried his best, probably with careful coaching, to make it sound like a casual question as part of the other conversation, the fine quality of the recording during those particular periods is manifest even to an untrained ear.

  “You see, what happens in an ordinary room, Paul, is that a voice, particularly if it’s a man’s heavy voice, bounces back in a whole series of echoes, from the floor, the walls and the ceiling. In ordinary conversation we focus those sounds out and the ear doesn’t hear them, but when you record the conversation through a sensitive microphone, every one of those echoes is picked up.

  “Sound studios naturally can’t afford to have that happen, so they use soundproof rooms with specially prepared walls that break up the echoes so there isn’t any voice bounce.

  “Now I’ve listened pretty carefully to that tape recording and at no time do I find Ned Bain making any actual admission. All that Ned Bain does is to make statements confirming certain things J. J. Fritch has said. I think for that reason we can prove the tape recording is a fake if we have to, but the method I used today is going to prove it, provided we get a break.”

  “What do you think happened?”

  “I think that just about as soon as we got out of there Brogan phoned Fritch and said, ‘Mason managed to do something to erase the conversation on this spool we have. We’ll have to make another copy from the master record. Then we’ll destroy this tape recording and substitute the new one. I’ll tell Mason it was a defect in the machine. Mason will know I’m lying, but there’s nothing he can do about it. There’s nothing he can prove.’ Then Fritch and Brogan will run off another dubbed copy and tell me that’s the same one I listened to, that the troub
le wasn’t with the tape but with the playback.”

  Drake thought that over. “Can you prove that the substitute is a new recording, Perry?”

  “No.”

  “Then what did you gain by erasing that first recording?”

  “It’s going to force Brogan to get in touch with Fritch. When he does that we’ll have a line on Fritch. It’s also going to force them to make another copy of that master recording. They’ve got that master spool of spliced tape locked away somewhere in a safe-deposit box. By following Brogan to Fritch and Fritch to the bank we’ll know where the master spool is located. Then we’ll slap a subpoena duces tecum on Fritch ordering him to produce the spool of spliced tape from box number so-and-so in the safe-deposit vault at such-and-such a bank. It will scare them to death. They won’t know how much we know.”

  “But Brogan hasn’t left his apartment.”

  “Probably because Fritch is out some place and he’s been unable to get in touch with him.”

  “What about your client? Does she know you sabotaged the tape?”

  “She knows it, but she doesn’t know how I did it. Brogan knows and it’s frightened him. He’d give a good deal to know how it was done.”

  “Well, my men are on the job,” Drake said. “I thought I’d check with you.”

  Mason nodded.

  “You think you can hear the difference in quality of conversation when Fritch asks one of those incriminating questions?”

  “I think,” Mason said, “that even this little recorder I have did a good enough job of reproducing so you can hear it on the copy. Of course, you must remember that it was coming in over a loud-speaker and there was a certain amount of echo from the walls and ceiling of Brogan’s apartment. However, those voice bounces would be equally distributed over all the conversation so that there’ll still be a better quality of recording in the incriminating questions asked by Fritch.”

  Mason threw a switch on the tape recorder, shut off the wire recorder, spun the tape recorder back for a few minutes, then turned it on to the playback and let Drake listen.

  “Now this part of the conversation,” Mason said, “is coming in just about equally clear, as Fritch’s voice and Bain’s voice have about the same number of echoes. They’re talking about the cattle business there. Now listen to this.”

  Suddenly Fritch’s voice said, “I’m wondering what will happen if anyone should ever find out that I’m the one who committed the bank robbery.” And Bain answered casually, so casually in fact that he seemed to be discussing some routine matter, “How are they ever going to find out, J.J.?”

  Mason cut off the machine. “See what I mean, Paul?”

  “I’m not certain that I do,” Drake said. “I heard Fritch’s question very plainly. The thing that impressed me was the fact that Bain took it all so casually.”

  “He took it casually,” Mason said, “because he was talking about something else. I’m going to play it once more. Now you listen. Even in this dubbed copy you can hear the difference in quality if you listen closely. Fritch asked that question in a studio. Now I’ll turn it back and you listen carefully.”

  Mason turned back the machine. Drake closed his eyes so he could listen to better advantage.

  This time when Mason shut off the machine Drake was nodding.

  “I get you now, Perry. You can sure hear a difference in quality there.”

  “Of course,” Mason went on, “you can’t hear it on this dubbed recording anywhere near as well as you can on the original record.”

  “If that occurs to them couldn’t they fix it up?” Drake asked.

  “Sure,” Mason admitted. “They’d make a new master tape with Fritch’s questions asked in an apartment where there’d be a normal voice bounce. Then they’d make a new copy. But, try as they could, they couldn’t get Fritch to ask the same questions, even if they used a script. There’d be a word different here and there, a change of pace or of expression.

  “That’s the advantage of having this recording. If they change it in the least, or change the wording of Fritch’s questions, I’ll flash this recording on them and claim that they made two different recordings. That’s what I was hoping would happen when I went over there this morning. I was hoping I could get a copy of the recording they had and then frighten them into trying to fake a new recording that would have some different element injected into it. Then I’d be able to prove conclusively that the whole thing was a put-up job.”

  “That, of course, would be better than relying on the difference in quality on the sound recording,” Drake said.

  “I’ll probably do it yet,” Mason told him. “But I couldn’t resist the temptation to erase that tape recording right under Brogan’s nose.”

  “It’ll give him more respect for you,” Drake said. “He-”

  Della Street’s phone rang. She picked up the receiver and Drake waited to see if the call was for him.

  Della Street cupped her hand over the mouthpiece and said, “Mr. Brogan is calling you, Chief.”

  Mason grinned, said, “I’ll take it. Tell Gertie to switch it on to my line.”

  Mason picked up his telephone and said, “Hello.”

  Brogan’s voice said, “I just wanted you to know that I’ve located the trouble in the machine.”

  “Indeed,” Mason said, and added dryly, “I trust that the tape wasn’t ruined.”

  “No, no, no, no, nothing like that,” Brogan said. “The tape is quite all right. There was nothing wrong with the tape at all. It was simply a loose connection in the machine itself that prevented the conversation from being broadcast over the loud-speaker so that you could hear it. The tape is quite all right. The machine is fixed and everything’s working perfectly now.”

  “That’s fine,” Mason said. “Where are you now? At your apartment?”

  “At my apartment?” Brogan said in some surprise. “Heavens, no. I’m at my office.”

  “Oh, I thought perhaps you were still tinkering with the machine.”

  “I took the machine to a repair shop,” Brogan said. “They found the loose connection.”

  “Then you haven’t played the tape back?”

  “No, I haven’t played it back, but I have played other tapes so that I know the machine is working.”

  “And you’re not sure then that the defect in the machine didn’t erase the other tape?”

  “It couldn’t have.”

  “But you haven’t played it back?”

  “I’ve played back just an inch or two of it to make sure.”

  “And it came in all right?”

  “Clear as a bell. It’s really a very good recording, all things considered.”

  “Of course,” Mason said, “you understand my position, Brogan. I’ll have to hear it again to make sure you’re not kidding me about the tape.”

  “I want you to,” Brogan said.

  “Where, when?”

  “As soon as possible. How about tomorrow morning at nine o’clock at my apartment. Will that be too early?”

  “No, that’s fine,” Mason told him. “The early hour suits me. I’ll be there.”

  “Thank you,” Brogan said and hung up.

  Mason turned to Paul Drake. “Brogan says he’s at his office, but he’s found the trouble, which was in the loudspeaker attachment on the machine, that everything’s all ready to go, that the tape was not hurt in the least, that at nine o’clock tomorrow morning at his apartment he’ll give us another playback.

  “Now we know he hasn’t left his apartment. You know what that means, Paul. It means the master tape is located somewhere in his apartment, that he has a series of machines there just as I have here, and that he’s made another dubbing and has completed it. He said he was at his office, yet we know he’s still in his apartment.”

  “That means he has the master recording and Fritch doesn’t,” Drake said.

  Mason nodded. “Apparently so.”

  “You want me to keep my men on the job?”r />
  “Keep them on the job,” Mason instructed. “I want Brogan shadowed, but we now know that he has the master recording.”

  Mason’s telephone shrilled into noise and Della Street, answering, said, “Yes, Gertie, who is it.… Just a second, Gertie.”

  She cupped her hand over the mouthpiece of the telephone, said to Mason, “It’s Sylvia Atwood. She says it’s terribly important. She simply must speak to you right away.”

  Mason nodded, picked up the telephone, said, “Hello,” and heard Sylvia Atwood’s voice, sharp with excitement.

  “Mr. Mason, you must come at once. Something terrible has happened.”

  “What?”

  “Fritch telephoned Dad and told him that he had to dismiss you or he would sell his story to the bank. J.J. said he felt there was no call for him to have any further loyalty to Dad, that he was going to play the thing for his own best interests. At first, of course, Dad didn’t have the faintest idea of what he was talking about, and then gradually Fritch kept on until it dawned on him. Dad’s had a terrible upset. He knows now an attempt is being made to blackmail us on the oil property.

  “We thought the very best way possible of reassuring Dad would be to let him talk with you. I think you can reassure him and do more good than all the doctor’s medicine in the world.”

  “You want me to see him?”

  “Yes, please.”

  “When?”

  “Just as soon as possible. Right away, if you possibly can.”

  “You’re out there with him now?”

  “No. I’m downtown. I could be in your office in five minutes, drive you out and bring you back.”

  Mason said, “Just a minute.” He raised his head, frowned in thoughtful concentration for a moment, then said, “All right, come on in. I’ll go out with you.”

  Mason hung up the telephone, said to Paul Drake, “Now why would Fritch pull a stunt like that?”

  “Like what?”

  “Ringing up Ned Bain and telling him that he had to dismiss me.”

  “Well, why not?”

  “Because,” Mason said, “the best hold Fritch had on the family was on the theory that Ned Bain mustn’t know anything at all about what was going on. Now then, Fritch has deliberately thrown that card away. Apparently it was a trump card. Why did he do it?”