Death Has a Small Voice (2 page)

There was no letter from Jerry. Bergdorf and Saks and Lord & Taylor were having sales. Jerry's club had something to say to Jerry.
Who's Who in America
also sought communication with him; it would be wanting him to bring his biography up to date, which he had not done for almost a month. Pam put these aside, pending his return. It occurred to Pam that even three cats did not actually fill an apartment, however they animated it. “Why,” Pam asked Martini, who then returned from the kitchen, her mood improved—“why do so many authors seem to live in San Francisco?” Martini jumped to Pam's lap and settled down to distribute cat hairs. It was fortunate, Pam thought, not for the first time, that she was not particularly fond of dark clothing; it was remarkable how nearly white a Siamese cat's fur turned out to be when it had left a Siamese cat.

Pam picked up the morning papers, which were under the mail, and which she had read on the train from her week end in the country. Under the papers there was a square, stiff envelope. It bore a printed caution: “Do Not Bend.” It bore a printed explanation: “Voice-Scriber Record.” It was addressed, in pencil, scrawlingly, to Mr. Gerald North.

Pam turned it over in her hands, seeking a return address and finding none. She tried to decipher the postmark and failed. The envelope had not, she realized, been sent through the canceling machine, for reasons no doubt having to do with not bending. It had been postmarked by hand, and hurriedly. It might, so far as she could tell, have come from almost anywhere in the world—no, from anywhere in the United States.

She knew the machine called a Voice-Scriber; Jerry used one at his office. It was a compact recording phonograph, in essence. Into it—or half of it, the recording half—Jerry dictated. From the other half of it, the transcriber, Jerry's secretary typed what Jerry had said. Now and then, Jerry brought home his half, which fitted neatly into a carrying case and weighed only about fifteen pounds, and spent an evening talking into it—while the cats, frantic to discover to whom he talked, with Pam elsewhere, yammered at his study door. One of the advantages of the Voice-Scriber was that its small records could be mailed conveniently from dictator to typist.

This one, it appeared, was for some reason retracing its steps. Well, it, too, would have to wait until Jerry—She lifted the envelope to lay it on top of the communication from
Who's Who
and stopped. Was it really
Mr
. Gerald North? Or was it
Mrs
. Gerald North? She studied the scrawl. She couldn't, she slowly realized, be certain either way. But if to her—?

It has never been said of Pamela North—at least not said by anyone who knows her—that she is sluggish of imagination. Out of the most minor of inconsistencies, Pamela North has been known to create the most unlikely of melodramas. Charged with this, she has an answer ready: It has been her experience that unlikely melodrama is the likeliest to happen of anything in the world. “Particularly,” she adds, “to people who know Bill Weigand.” Not even Acting Captain William Weigand, Homicide Squad, Manhattan West, New York Police Department, denies this, although sometimes speculating on the relationship in time between chicken and egg.

What now occurred to Pam North, as she turned the Voice-Scriber record over in her hands, was that something had happened to Jerry, far away and alone in San Francisco. Momentarily, she considered the possibility that he was, for reasons she might come to later, held a prisoner in Chinatown, but this she rejected. She had seen San Francisco's Chinatown and been unimpressed. New York's was smaller, to be sure, but, to Pam, beyond comparison more devious. But elsewhere, in that most gayly exciting of smaller cities, anything, she thought, might happen. Since Jerry was there, and without her, anything might happen to him.

Suppose—well, suppose something had. Suppose that (for reasons she would come to later) he was in a position where he could not communicate with her more simply, but had access to a Voice-Scriber. Suppose he had got somebody to mail this record to her. (He had not mailed it himself, or, at any rate, not addressed it.) Suppose his safety somehow depended on her hearing his recorded message.

But on the other hand, suppose that Jerry had merely wanted to talk to her, and taken this way. Suppose he had been lonely on the other edge of the continent and had wished to say—well, put it, to say, “Hello, Pam. How are you, lady? How are the little cats?” Jerry did not often do such things; on the other hand, he had sometimes done them.

She looked once more at the address. The more she looked at it, the more sure she was that it read “Mrs.” not “Mr.” Gerald North.

“It isn't just curiosity,” she told Martini. Martini said, “Yah” in a tone combining irritation and skepticism. “Well, it isn't,” Pam said. “I've got to go see.”

She went. The cats had never been more put out in their lives, but Pam went all the same. She carried the record in her hand, since there was no room in her bag.

She found a cab with little trouble and gave the address of Jerry's office. The cab went up Fifth, through moderate traffic, turned right in the Thirties, crossed Madison and stopped in the block beyond it. The block was a quiet one, in which some residences quietly held their own in the face of trade; in which trade was, for the most part, suitably dignified. North Books, Inc., occupied the fourth, and top, floor of a building which was as self-effacing as a building might be.

Mrs. North's cab stopped in front of the building. A station wagon which had fallen in behind it near Washington Square passed the cab but, a few doors farther along the street, pulled to the curb and stopped.

Mrs. North went into a small lobby and an elderly man, sitting at a small table, reading
Time
magazine of the week before, looked up at her. He peered through rimless glasses; then he removed them.

“Oh,” he said, “hello, Mrs. North.”

“Good evening, Mr. Helder,” Pam said. “Isn't it a beautiful evening?”

“Won't last,” Sven Helder told her. “Want to go up?” Then he sighed.

“I'm afraid I do, please,” Pam North said. “I hate to bother you.”

“Can't be helped,” Sven Helder told her, and put
Time
magazine, open, spine up, on the table. “Probably,” he added. He turned a ledger toward her. “Have to sign in,” he said.

Pam North put purse and envelope on the table and signed it. She added, “North Books, Inc.,” after her name. Sven Helder looked at her signature with care. He took a large watch from a pocket and looked at it. He wrote “2132” after North Books. Then he got up, pushing himself up with both hands on the little table. He led the way to one of the two elevators and led the way into it. The elevator awoke and seemed to rub its eyes; it started up, not hurrying.

“Nobody up there,” Sven Helder said.

“I suppose not,” Pam said.

“Nobody in the building,” Sven Helder told her, as they trundled between the second floor and the third. “You're the only one.” There was resigned accusation in his tone.

“I'm sorry,” Pam said.

“Can't be helped,” Sven Helder said. “What I'm here for, I guess.” He sighed deeply.

“I won't be long,” Pam said, between third and fourth.

“Doesn't make much difference, does it,” Sven Helder asked her, slowly, making cautious approach. He stopped ten inches below the floor level. “Go too high she can jam,” he said.

“It's perfectly all right,” Pam said, and stepped up. “Ring when you want me,” Helder said, and sighed, and closed the sliding door. The elevator began to inch downward.

Pam unlocked the double doors lettered “North Books, Inc.” She went into the dark offices—the almost dark offices. Some light sifted in from windows; in New York it is never wholly dark. The offices, as they always did, seemed much larger at night. Pam found herself, and this again as always, wondering who sat at the many desks and what they did at them. Ideas formed in a mind, and words were found for them; the ideas were communicated, in varying degrees of accuracy, to other minds. That was the gist of it; but between, many people sat at many desks, and at machines, too. Tall filing cases, like those near the door, were filled with—with what? Pam turned on lights. She went among the desks to Jerry's book-lined office in a corner. She turned on lights there.

She could play back from Jerry's recorder, instead of from the other thing, whatever it was, on Miss Corning's desk. That way, Pam thought, she wouldn't have to use the earphones. Earphones made her feel shut in.

She found the recorder. She took the record from its envelope and dropped the envelope, absently, in a wastepaper basket. She put the record on the turntable and set it going. There was only a faint hum, first. Then there was a voice; a woman's voice. It was faint, as if the speaker had failed to hold the microphone close enough to lips. Yet it was distinct, and for all the present smallness of the captured sound, Pam felt that the voice itself had been raised, excited.

“You must be crazy,” the voice said. “Why would I—?”

“Because you have no choice,” another voice said.

A man had spoken this time; spoken sharply, breaking in. His voice, also, had been raised; it had an oddly metallic texture, but that might be the machine's distortion. There was a moment's pause. Then the woman laughed. The laughter seemed high to Pam North, listening; seemed too high by far.

“You'll huff and you'll puff,” the voice said. “You'll blow the girl down.”

“More,” the man said. “Much more, if necessary.”

“Really,” the woman said. “You've lost your mind, haven't you? Megalomania, isn't it? To save your withered little ego you want me—My God!”

“We're not going over that again,” the man said, rhyming the word with “rain.” “If you need the money, I'll make good what you'd lose.”

“Everything else aside, how would you know?” the woman asked. “How would anybody? And what's that got to do with it? I've spent a year on it. More than a year. Count all the time it was happening. All the time you—”

“We've been over that,” the man's voice said, cutting in again, now harsh. “You made yourself clear. You're very good at that sort of thing.”

“Clarity,” she said. “The fine edge of clarity, remember? Too fine an edge, I gather. Too—”

“I want the copies,” the man said. “Damn you, if you think—”

“See my agent,” the woman said, and laughed again.

He said, “Don't laugh!” He must have spoken very loudly. “I tell you, quit laughing!”

“The withered little ego!” the woman said. “The poor, trembling little man! When I remember—”

“Don't,” the man said. “I tell you—
don't!
”

“Pompous little man,” the woman said, and now her voice, also, was further raised—or she had moved nearer the microphone. “Frightened little man. Your reputation. Your precious little job. Oh, they'll laugh, all right. Don't think they won't laugh. They'll say, ‘You know who he is, don't you? He's the one who doesn't come up smiling. He's the prating, sniveling little man who couldn't—'”

“That was a lie,” the man said. He called her a name. His voice was high, violent.

“Suppose it was?” she said. “Literally, a lie. Essentially, the truth. Call it a symbol. You talked about symbols, remember? I didn't forget.” She laughed again.

Then there was a moment of silence before the man spoke once more. His voice now had a strange timbre; there was a curious detachment in his voice; it was almost, Pam thought, as if he spoke to ears which could no longer hear him speak.

“I told you not to laugh,” the man said. “Remember, I told you that. I gave you a chance, remember. I—”

The man's voice was harsh, monotonous. It did not, in tone, threaten. But the woman screamed.

It was a tiny, faraway scream, as it came from the record—a thin scream; it was as if a doll had screamed.

“It will be like killing a snake,” the man said, in the same harsh, uninflected voice. “A small, bright, deadly snake.”

“You ca—” the woman's voice said, and then there was a harsh, guttural sound—a sound made uglily of effort and of pain; perhaps of terror. There was no other sound for a minute or more. Then there was a sharp sound as if something of metal, or perhaps of glass, had fallen against a surface equally hard.

After that, there was only the low humming of the machine, as the record turned slowly on its table. No other sound came from the record.

Pamela North stood and watched the record turn; stood and waited for the voices to resume; stood and after a moment began to tremble a little, thinking that she had heard murder. She stopped the little machine, then. She took the record from it, and held the record in both hands and looked at it. It was only a little record. From a record like that one might hear a song.

It was while she stood so, holding the record, that Pam heard a sound from the outer office. It was a small sound; it was as if someone, moving carefully, had touched the back of a chair, and moved it against another chair, or against a desk. Pam turned toward the door she had left open behind her.

As she turned, the lights went off in the outer office.

Pam was quick, then. She was quick to the light switch by the door. After she had flicked it down she stood motionless, in semi-darkness, wishing it a deeper darkness. She listened, and heard no further sound. She tried to make her breathing soundless.

When still there was no repeated sound from the outer office, and in its shadow no movement, Pam thought that she might have been wrong. There had been someone there, of course. Someone had put out the lights. But could that have been Sven Helder, not—not the man whose voice had talked of killing? Perhaps he had come to get her, seen the lights on and not seen her, turned off the lights to go grumbling down again. Perhaps—