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but he didn’t reach for the phone. “Who the devil,” he demanded, “could have done such a thing? How did she get there? Did she come alone?”
    “Yes. Who did it will have to wait. I’d advise you to quit stalling, because we might be interrupted. Let’s see the proof you told your wife about.”
    “I haven’t got it.”
    “You told her you had it.”
    “I did have it. It’s gone.”
    “Gone? You mean lost? Stolen? Burned? Dissolved?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “What was it?”
    Dundee scowled at the phone, reached a hand for it, stopped the hand in mid-air and after a second withdrew it, rested his elbows on the desk, and stared at Hicks with his mouth drawn tight.
    “Suit yourself,” Hicks said as if he wasn’t interested. “The cops won’t like it that I went for a walk. If one of them drops in here, say two minutes from now, and starts asking me questions, I’ll answer by the book. I came out here to try to earn the two hundred bucks your wife gave me. That will certainly make him curious, and I have nothing to conceal.”
    Dundee’s mouth stayed tight.
    Hicks twisted his head around for a glimpse of the meadow path through the window, and then shifted his chair so that he could keep an eye on it without twisting. “My mouth isn’t watering,” he declared. “I’d prefer to catch the next train back to town and forget it, but that isn’t practical.”
    Dundee snapped, “It was a sonotel record of a conversation between my wife and Jimmie Vail.”
    Hicks met his angry eyes. “What’s a sonotel record?”
    “A sonotel is an electric eavesdropper. I had a detective agency plant one in Vail’s office over a year ago. I had reason to believe that Republic was getting some of our formulas, and I knew thatif they were it was Vail who was working it. For a year I got nothing—at least, I didn’t get what I was after. Then I did get something.” Dundee looked grim. “I got more than I bargained for. A record of my wife in Vail’s office talking with him, telling him she hoped he’d be pleased with what she’d brought him, and him saying he would if it was anything like carbotene. The damned crook. In 1938 we had developed a formula to the patent stage, and found that a patent had already been applied for by Republic, the identical formula and process. They called it carbotene, and they’re going to make millions on it.”
    “What date was it? The conversation.”
    “September fifth. Two weeks ago today.”
    “How sure are you it was your wife’s voice?”
    “I’ve been listening to it for twenty-five years.”
    Hicks nodded. “Long enough. What does a sonotol record look like?”
    “It’s a plate. Like these sonograph plates.” Dundee indicated the stack of disks on the desk. “They’re made from one of our plastics. That’s what I was doing, looking for that record—”
    Hicks shook his head. “Go back a little. Where and when did you see it last?”
    “I only saw it once. In the testing room at my office. I thought I took it—”
    “When was that?”
    “Tuesday. A week ago Tuesday.”
    “But you said the conversation took place on the fifth, and a week ago Tuesday was the tenth.”
    “What of it?” Dundee was not making friends. “I had paid for so damned many of those records from Vail’s office without any result that I had lost interest in them. I had them stacked in cases in the testing room. Once in a while I ran through a batch. I was doing that, that afternoon, and there I heard it—my wife’s voice and Vail’s. I was stunned. I was absolutely stunned. I ran it through again, and right in the middle of it somebody came in. I stopped the machine and took the plate off and put it at the end of the case. Other men came. We had a conference scheduled, among other things to test results on variations of the formula on this plastic. We’re selling it for all kinds of sound reproduction. They came from Bridgeport, from the factory, for the conference. I stayed