(1969) The Seven Minutes

by Irving Wallace

  He tried to rid his mind of despair, and he glanced at the shop windows once more. There was a window display of children’s wear. There was a display of Dresden china. There was a display of radios and electronic gadgets and a large advertising poster. His eyes had passed over the poster, and then returned to it, and then read it once, twice, three times. There was something about the poster. He moved slowly back to the store window. The poster read:

  THE SHERLOCK ELECTRONIC EAVESDROPPER!

  FOR BUSINESSMEN, INVESTIGATORS, ATTORNEYS!

  A PRIVATE MONITOR THAT CAN BE FITTED INTO any TELEPHONE!

  Install this transmitting bug, smaller than a thimble, in any telephone. It draws its power from the telephone itself. It is hidden from view. Placed inside the telephone, it will broadcast every word spoken into the phone, every two-way conversation, and it will send these conversations to an FM receiver in another building across the city, where every word can be taped. Retail at $350.

  As if in a hypnotic trance, Barrett stared up at the poster.

  Slowly he pivoted away from the window. His mind felt like a Ferris wheel, spinning round and round, carrying his thoughts round and round, and abruptly the wheel stopped and disgorged a single thought. He had the truth all at once. He was certain. The mysteries of the past weeks, the frustrations and disappointments, were finally explained.

  In his mind’s eye, the powerful inner Cyclops eye, he could envision the black telephone on his office desk in Los Angeles. On this telephone he had listened to Kimura confide to him Christian Le-roux’s hideout in Antibes. And then, by coincidence, someone had got to Leroux and spirited him away. On this telephone he had been informed where Norman C. Quandt was secretly located and waiting. And then, by coincidence, someone had alerted the police to raid the place while Banett was there. On this telephone he had purchased the precious Jadway letters from Olin Adams and told Adams when he would be by to pick them up. And, by coincidence, someone had visited Adams first and deprived the defense of the letters.

  By coincidence - crap!

  By electronic eavesdropper - you bet!

  Why hadn’t he thought of that obvious Listening Tom earlier? He was anything but stupid. Yet he had thought of it, at least had known of the possibility earlier, only it had been too much earlier, and this was what had made him overlook the danger later. He recalled now the exact moment when a bugging device had first been mentioned. It had been the morning he had checked into Zelkin’s suite, and Abe had been taking him on a tour of the premises, and they had arrived in the grand room that was to be Barrett’s own office. Zelkin, as pleased as Keats’s Cortez on a peak in Darien, had announced, ‘Here it is, Mike, all yours - spanking new, freshly painted, fully gadgeted, everything in order. Why, we even had a counterbugging outfit in to sweep the room - in fact, kept them

  half a day to check our entire suite for any possible hidden transmitting equipment. Can’t play it too safe, you know. The best offense is a good defense.’

  That early precaution was what had disarmed Barrett. He had thought that once they were protected, their privacy was certified as safe from that day onward. It had made him forget that bugs could secretly invade at a later time.

  Yes, he’d bet on an electronic eavesdropper. But used by whom, exactly?

  This had not been authorized by Elmo Duncan personally, of that he was sure. Duncan was not only the District Attorney, but the square of squares. A fancier of Motherhood, Apple Pie, and My Country Right or Wrong does not indulge in illegal wiretapping. Even if Duncan had wished to do it, he would not have risked it. He wasn’t merely a law-enforcement officer. He was a politician on the make. He would not dare exposure.

  No, not Duncan, but someone who knew what was best for Duncan, and who might feel free to act on his behalf without Duncan’s knowledge. Someone who knew about industrial espionage and sophisticated electronic devices. Someone with a huge stake in making Duncan a winner. Someone who was above ordinary law and morality. Someone who was behind the scenes.

  Duncan’s Richelieu and Rasputin.

  Namely, Luther Yerkes.

  Barrett cast about him, and his eyes held on the street sign. He was standing at the corner of Lexington Avenue and Fifty-second Street. He knew his New York and he knew where there would be a familiar telephone booth.

  Turning into Fifty-second Street and moving in the direction of Park Avenue, Mike Barrett walked rapidly to the middle of the block and entered the Four Seasons restaurant.

  Along the right wall of the vast foyer was a line of telephone booths. Barrett shut himself into the first booth, and he put through a collect call to Los Angeles.

  On the other end of the line, Donna, who was going to work through the weekend, welcomed him and was eager to learn of the contents, of the Jadway letters.

  “There are no Jadway letters,’ said Barrett, ‘and I don’t want to go into it now. You let Abe and Leo know, and tell them I’ll explain when I get back six hours from now.’

  ‘Reminder, boss. You were going to look in on Isabel Vogler after you got off the plane.’

  ‘I’ll do that. Here’s why I’m calling, Donna. I’ve got a question. Please listen carefully. Since I checked in to work with Abe on this Fremont case - anyway, since my own office telephone was installed - have there been any repairmen working on your phone or mine?’

  ‘On my phone, none. On yours - if you’ll hold on a minute, 1*11

  skim back through my appointment book.’ Donna left the line, but less than a minute later she was back. ‘As a matter of fact, yes, boss. It says here that the same day you went to International to pick up Philip Sanford, two telephone repairmen came in to check your phone. I remember them. They said some client had complained that he wasn’t getting through, and so they wanted to look your phone over.’

  ‘Were you with them, Donna, when they checked it?’

  ‘No, I couldn’t spare the time, boss. I had to mind my own desk. I did look in once to ask if everything was all right. They had the top plastic cover off the phone base, and they said they’d found what was wrong and had fixed it. So I left them to finish up their job.’

  ‘How long were they in there working on it ?’

  ‘Hard to remember. Not long. Maybe ten minutes. Maybe not that much. Why? Is something wrong?’

  “There has been, and not only with the telephone. Okay, You’ve told me what I wanted to know. Now let me tell you something, and no questions, please, until I get back. I’ll fill you in on everything then. For the next few hours just do as I say, Donna. It’s an order. No one, but no one, is to make an outgoing call or accept an incoming one on my office telephone until I return. Get it ? If you or Abe or Leo happen to be in my office when my phone rings, don’t touch it. Take it on another phone. If Phil Sanford comes by and wants to use my office -‘

  ‘He’s in Washington, D.C., for the American Booksellers Association convention at the Shoreham.’

  “That’s right. Okay. Hands off my phone today, and that includes any telephone repairmen who might show up again.’

  ‘Wilco, boss. Your office is off limits this afternoon.’

  ‘Til see you later in the day, Donna.’

  ‘You mean you want me to stay here until you return? I don’t mind.’

  T forgot. I’m seeing Mrs Vogler. No, you don’t have to hang around tonight. I’ll be getting in too late. Bad enough keeping you chained to the desk all day Saturday and Sunday, without making it worse. No, when you’re through, go. Leave any messages on my desk. I’ll look in before returning to the apartment. One last thing. Give me Mrs Vogler’s address again.’

  He wrote it down, and then he hung up.

  Leaving the booth, he was tempted to forgo food on the plane and to proceed into the dining section of the Four Seasons and lunch beside the spectacular indoor fountain. That was always a lift - an expensive one, but it made you feel like somebody. And he needed to feel like somebody. But he could see that his time was running out. He still had to
get to The Plaza, repack his bag, check out, and take the long ride to Kennedy Airport. He would just about make his plane back to Los Angeles. Lunch could wait. He had enough else to digest.

  Mike Barrett was in Los Angeles again, but it was later than he had intended it to be, and most of the day had been wasted.

  There had been a delay at Kennedy Airport when one engine of the jet airliner had caused some concern and had had to be inspected once more, and the scheduled takeoff had been held up nearly an hour. The cross-country flight itself had been accomplished in the allotted five hours and a half. Then Barrett’s convertible, which he had left overnight in the parking lot at International Airport, was heeling over to one side when he found it. The flat tire had taken a half hour to repair.

  After that, the going-home traffic had clogged the San Diego Freeway all the way north to the valley, and only after he took the off ramp into Van Nuys did he make time.

  Now, as he parked before the modest gray bungalow that Mrs Vogler rented, it was five-fifty in the afternoon. Shutting off the ignition, he stepped into the street and started for her front door. He prayed that she was home. There had been no time to contact her and explain his tardiness. She would likely be home, he decided, for it was almost dinnertime and she did have a ten-year-old son to feed.

  At the stoop, he pressed the doorbell. There was someone running inside, and then the door was thrown open, and a little boy wearing a toy astronaut’s space helmet pressed against the porch screen.

  ‘Hey, now,’ Barrett greeted him, ‘when you heading for the moon? That’s a mighty fine space helmet you’ve got on.’

  ‘It ain’t nothing compared to the rest,’ piped the boy ecstatically. ‘You should see all the things Mom bought me today. Even an air gun and three games to play.’

  ‘Wonderful,’ said Barrett. ‘Is your mother in?’

  ‘Not in the house. In the back.’

  ‘How do I - ?’ He looked off. ‘Is that your driveway?’

  ‘You go that way zoom to Cape Kennedy. Yah. That way.’

  ‘Thank you, Astronaut Vogler.*

  Barrett bounded down from the porch, cut across the brownish patch of lawn, and strode up the cracked cement surface toward the old Fork parked in the driveway before the dilapidated garage. He squeezed between the side of the Ford and the hedges along the driveway, ducked under the clothesline, and came upon Isabel Vogler.

  She could not see him at first. Her face was hidden behind a large carton -clothes spilled out of the top of it -which she had removed from the garage and was carrying toward several cartons of dish-ware and furnishings already piled next to her back screen door. He watched her waddle across the yard, lower the carton, and balance it on top of another, and only when she turned to retrace her steps did she see him.

  She shaded her eyes and squinted at him.

  Quickly he closed the distance between them. Her brow and downy upper lip were beaded with perspiration. She was wiping her plump hands on her already soiled apron. Her eyes offered no sign of recognition.

  ‘Remember me?’ he said. ‘Mike Barrett. I said I’d see you today. Sorry I’m late. Barrett, remember?’

  ‘Oh, yeah, hiya. Somebody left a message with my boy yesterday afternoon you were coming over. There was no return number or I’d of called back.’

  ‘Called back?’ Barrett echoed. ‘What did you want to call back about, Mrs Vogler?’

  ‘About if you wanted to see me because you were reconsidering hiring me. Because I couldn’t do it no more. I’m all through with day work and live-in work. I’m finished being a domestic, thank the Lord.’

  More perplexed than ever, Barrett said, ‘You’re confused, Mrs Vogler. I never intended to hire you as a domestic. Have you -‘

  ‘Oh, I know you didn’t,’ she said belligerently, hands on her hips. ‘No references, no job, I’m not forgetting. But I thought maybe you changed your mind, that’s what. If you haven’t, what are you doing here, anyway?’

  Had this woman suffered amnesia ? Or was she plain crazy ? ‘Mrs Vogler, apparency you’ve forgotten, but after you came to see me on that interview - Wait, you do agree we met in my apartment yesterday morning, don’t you?’

  ‘I just said I saw you. But it was no references, no job, and so that was that.’

  He decided that she was utterly insane. That, or this was a bad dream. ‘Mrs Vogler, surely you remember. We discussed Frank Griffith, your last full-time employer. You said you had a run-in with him, and he fired you and wouldn’t give you a reference after that. I told you I wasn’t interested in hiring you as a domestic, reference or no reference. I wanted to employ you as a defense witness in our trial, and I was going to recompense you for that. You were to testify how rotten Frank Griffith really is, and how the kind of environment he provided may have hurt his son more than the book I’m representing. Now do you remember?’

  She stood solid as the Rock of Gibraltar. ‘I remember telling you I worked for Griffith, yes, and he never believed in no written references, but I don’t remember one other word you’re saying, because none of it is true. Where did you get such a story ? Lord in Heaven, why would I ever testify against a fine, upstanding man like Frank Griffith ? He was always good to me, and we only had a parting because Mrs Griffith wanted her niece to move out here to be her companion, and that’s the whole of it. He hated to let me go. I’ve always held him up in the highest consideration, as the kindest man to his wife and his boy and the whole world. I never had any employer who was more kind or so generous’

  He gaped at Isabel Vogler, dumbfounded. He felt as though he had gone down the rabbit hole and found himself face to face with the Mad Hatter. ‘Mrs Vogler, listen -‘

  ‘You listen, young man. You have your nerve coming here and trying to involve me in your lawyer shenanigans, trying to turn Frank Griffith’s friends against him. I have a mind to call the police about you, that’s what. You stay away from Frank Griffith, that’s my warning to you. He’s a good man, and even when he had his odd side, like not giving references to former employees, he was always ready to help any of them if they were in need. Like me. He found out I was having a struggle on my own and trying to raise my young one. So you know what that good man did ? He didn’t call or send someone around, but he came here to see me himself this morning, right this morning. And you know the first thing he said to me? “Isabel,” he said to me, “I hear you’re having a little trouble. Now, what’s this all about? I’m here to lend a hand to an old friend.” And when he heard out my troubles, he did help me the way he offered. You can see for yourself, I’m packing right now. Mr Griffith, he said I was always deserving of a bonus, and now he’s given it to me so’s I can go back to Topeka with my youngster where I always belonged. We’re leaving on Monday.’

  Barrett continued to gape at her, but no longer was he dumbfounded, only struck with wonderment.

  Life was imitating art. For his mind had gone back to a baffling, and chilling folk tale familiar to him in his youth. It was about the elderly lady en route with her daughter from Bombay, via Paris, to her native village in England. The original vanishing lady. Now you see her, now you don’t. The lady and her daughter had stopped overnight at the Hotel Crillon in Paris. The lady had been feeling ill, and her daughter had gone off to a distant sector of Paris to obtain a special medicine from a pharmacist. This had been Paris in 1890, at the time of the Exposition, and the streets had been teeming with people, and the daughter in her quest had been repeatedly delayed. Finally, after a lapse of four or five hours, she had returned with the medicine. At the lobby desk, the clerk had not recognized her. No lady such as the girl’s mother had been registered, he said. There was no room that fitted the daughter’s description of the one she and her mother had occupied. No one in the hotel, in the British Embassy, in the Suret6, could help. The lady had no existence. Now you see her, now you don’t.

  Yesterday morning there had been Isabel Vogler, foe of Frank Griffith, friend of the defense. This afternoo
n that Isabel Vogler had vanished, and in her place stood Isabel Vogler, supporter of Frank Griffith, enemy of the defense.

  Barrett remembered that there had eventually been a solution to the mystery of the English lady who had vanished from the Crillon in 1890. The lady had died of the black plague, and if the cause of her death had been made known, even to the daughter, if it had

  become public knowledge, not only would the hotel have been ruined, but the mighty Exposition would have been ended and Paris might have become a ghost town. So the truth could not be known, the room had to be repapered and redecorated in hours, and the lady could not be admitted to have existed.

  There had been an answer then, and Barrett knew that there must be an answer now. The disappearance of the Isabel Vogler he had met and known might be an act of magic to those in the audience. It could not be an act of magic for those backstage who were aware of the wizard’s arsenal of tricks.

  Frank Griffith had first tried to make the lady vanish the easy way. He had requested that Willard Osborn II have Faye pressure Barrett into dropping this hostile witness. Barrett had refused. Frank Griffith had then proceeded to eliminate the hostile witness in a more hazardous way. He had gone to her directly, exposed his need to her. He had then diagnosed her need and offered to remedy it. This morning he had performed a financial lobotomy. The prefrontal lobes had been severed. Under the skilled hand of the surgeon, hostility had been excised, and what remained was sweetness and light. Toward Frank Griffith, that is. By Monday, the day of the trial, the operation would have been completed. The witness would have disappeared entirely from the Los Angeles scene. A room to the past had been repapered and redecorated.

  ‘Mrs Vogler,’ Barrett said desperately, ‘I know what you promised me yesterday and I know what you’re saying now. It is clear to me what has happened in between. But even though Frank Griffith has tried to buy you off -‘