Free Death Has a Small Voice by Frances Lockridge Page B

“Somebody read it. I only looked at a couple of pages. That was plenty.”
    â€œYou never met him?” Weigand asked, blowing dust from the surface of the Voice-Scriber.
    Jerry hadn’t. But then he remembered something else: with the manuscript, there had been a letter from Eaton. Eaton had thought Mr. North might like “My Life in Crime” because Mr. North knew about things like that, being a “kind of detective.” Jerry remembered the phrase; he heard it or its equivalent too frequently.
    â€œRight,” Bill said. “Mullins!”
    Mullins turned from the filing case.
    â€œHere,” Bill Weigand said. “Let’s see the blow-up.”
    They both looked, then. They looked from the blown-up photograph of Pam North’s fingerprints to whorls in gray dust, and back again.
    â€œO.K., Loot,” Mullins said. “That’s it.”
    They kept at it; they found other of Pam North’s prints. One set under the edge of the desk top—a set of four fingers of her left hand, as if she had hooked her fingers there, standing in front of it. Several individual prints on the Voice-Scriber.
    When they had finished, Bill Weigand stood for a minute or more and looked at nothing.
    â€œIt could be this way,” he said, then. He spoke slowly. “Eaton steals a Voice-Scriber, planning to hock it. He finds a record on it and plays the record back. Something he hears—well, we can’t guess. Say it worried him. He didn’t want to come to us, naturally. He doesn’t want anything to do with us. So—he sent the record to you. I don’t know how he’d happen to have an envelope.”
    â€œIn the case,” Jerry said. “The carrying case. There’s a compartment for them.”
    â€œRight,” Bill said. “He mailed it to you. Pam opened it. Probably thought it was addressed to her. I’ve seen Eaton’s writing. It’s a scrawl. She brought it here and played it. But somebody—” He stopped, then. He looked at Jerry;
    â€œSomebody killed Eaton,” Jerry said.
    â€œListen,” Bill said, “we don’t know this was why, do we?”
    â€œFor God’s sake, Bill!” Jerry said.
    â€œTake it easy,” Bill said. “Take it easy, fella. We don’t know. Pam’ll be all right.”
    â€œSure,” Jerry said. His voice was dull. He sat down suddenly. “I was out in San Francisco,” he said. “I was at a party. Listen, Bill— I was at a party. ”
    â€œSnap out of it!” Bill Weigand said.
    â€œSure,” Jerry said. “Sure, Bill I’ll snap out of it.” He sat and looked at nothing. His fists clenched. He raised them a few inches, and brought them down again. Then, suddenly, he stood up.
    â€œWhy don’t we do something?” he demanded. “Why the hell?”
    â€œListen,” Bill said. “Get yourself together. Listen! We’ll do something.”
    Jerry North looked at him, not seeming to see him. He spoke dully. “There’s no place to start,” he said.
    There was, Bill told him. If he’d snap out of it, he’d see the place to start.
    â€œWhat?” Jerry said.
    He was told to think.
    â€œHilda Godwin’s,” Jerry said. “It started there.”
    â€œRight,” Bill Weigand said. “You’re damned right.”
    The three of them went down in the slowly creaking elevator. They waited while Helder unlocked the front doors. As they crossed to the police car, they heard him lock the doors again. They went downtown, fast, to the little house in Elm Lane.
    â€œListen, Loot,” Mullins said. “We got no warrant.”
    â€œNo,” Bill said. “We haven’t, have we?”
    â€œO.K.,” Mullins said. “I just mentioned it.”
    The little house was dark. But it was after midnight, then. It was a time for houses to be dark. They rang the bell at the top of