Mandelbaum was up. “Objection, Your Honor. Conclusions of the witness are not admissible.”
“He is merely relating,” Donovan submitted, “what he said to Mr. Ashe. The Assistant District Attorney asked him to.”
“The objection is overruled,” Judge Corbett said dryly.
Wolfe resumed. “I said I had concluded that it would be impossible for any one operator to eavesdrop frequently on her lines without the others becoming aware of it, and therefore it must be done collusively if at all. I said that I had spoken at some length with two of the operators, Alice Hart and Bella Velardi, who had been working and living there along with Marie Willis, and had received two encouragements for my surmise: one, that they were visibly disturbed at my declared intention of investigating them fully and ruthlessly, and tolerated my rudeness beyond reason; and two, that it was evident that their personal expenditures greatly exceeded their salaries. I said-may I ask, sir, is it necessary for me to go on repeating that phrase, ‘I said’?”
“I think not,” Donovan told him. “Not if you confine yourself strictly to what you said to Mr. Ashe this morning.”
“I shall do so. The extravagance in personal expenditures was true also of the third operator who had lived and worked there with Marie Willis, Helen Weltz. It was her day off, and Mr. Goodwin and I drove to her place in the country, near Katonah in Westchester County. She was more disturbed even than the other two; she was almost hysterical. With her was a man named Guy Unger, and he too was disturbed. After I had stated my intention to investigate everyone connected with Bagby Answers, Incorporated, he asked to speak with me privately and offered me ten thousand dollars for services which he did not specify. I gathered that he was trying to bribe me to keep my hands off, and I declined the offer.”
“You said all that to Mr. Ashe?”
“Yes, sir. Meanwhile Helen Weltz had spoken privately with Mr. Goodwin, and had told him she wanted to speak with me, but must first get rid of Mr. Unger. She said she would phone my office later. Back in the city, I dared not go to my home, since I was subject to arrest and detention, so Mr. Goodwin and I went to the home of a friend, and Helen Weltz came to us there sometime after midnight. My attack had broken her completely, and she was in terror. She confessed that for years the operation had been used precisely as I had surmised. All of the switchboard operators had been parties to it, including Marie Willis. Their dean, Alice Hart, collected information-”
There was an interruption. Alice Hart, on the aisle, with Bella Velardi next to her, got up and headed for the door, and Bella followed her. Eyes went to them from all directions, including Judge Corbett’s, but nobody said or did anything, and when they were five steps from the door I sang out to the guard, “That’s Alice Hart in front!”
He blocked them off. Judge Corbett called, “Officer, no one is to leave the room!”
The audience stirred and muttered, and some stood up. The judge banged his gavel and demanded order, but he couldn’t very well threaten to have the room cleared. Miss Hart and Miss Velardi gave it up and went back to their seats.
When the room was still the judge spoke to Wolfe. “Go ahead.”
He did so. “Alice Hart collected information from them and gave them cash from time to time, in addition to their salaries. Guy Unger and Clyde Bagby also gave them cash occasionally. The largest single amount ever received by Helen Weltz was fifteen hundred dollars, given her about a year ago by Guy Unger. In three years she received a total of approximately fifteen thousand dollars, not counting her salary. She didn’t know what use was made of the information she passed on to Alice Hart. She wouldn’t admit that she had knowledge that any of it had been used for blackmailing, but she did admit that some of it could have been so used.”
“Do you know,” Judge Corbett asked him, “where Helen Weltz is now?”
“Yes, sir. She is present. I told her that if she came and faced it the District Attorney might show appreciation for her help.”
“Have you anything to add that you told Mr. Ashe this morning?”
“I have, Your Honor. Do you wish me to differentiate clearly between what Helen Weltz told me and my own exposition?”
“No. Anything whatever that you said to Mr. Ashe.”
“I told him that the fact that he had tried to hire me to learn the identity of the Bagby operator who would service his number, and to bribe her to eavesdrop on his line, was one of the points that had caused me to doubt his guilt; that I had questioned whether a man who was reluctant to undertake such a chore for himself would be likely to strangle the life out of a woman and then open a window and yell for the police. Also I asked him about the man who telephoned him to say that if Ashe would meet him at the Bagby office on Sixty-ninth Street he thought they could talk Miss Willis out of it. I asked if it was possible that the voice was Bagby’s, and Ashe said it was quite possible, but if so he had disguised his voice.”
“Had you any evidence that Mr. Bagby made that phone call?”
“No, Your Honor. All I had, besides my assumptions from known facts and my own observations, was what Miss Weltz had told me. One thing she had told me was that Marie Willis had become an imminent threat to the whole conspiracy. She had been ordered by both Unger and Bagby to accept Ashe’s proposal to eavesdrop on his line, and not to tell Mrs. Ashe, whom Miss Willis idolized; and she had refused and announced that she was going to quit. Of course that made her an intolerable peril to everyone concerned. The success and security of the operation hinged on the fact that no victim ever had any reason to suspect that Bagby Answers, Incorporated, was responsible for his distress. It was Bagby who got the information, but it was Unger who used it, and the tormented under the screw could not know where the tormentor had got the screw. So Miss Willis’s rebellion and decision to quit-combined, according to Miss Weltz, with an implied threat to expose the whole business-were a mortal menace to any and all of them, ample provocation for murder to one willing to risk that extreme. I told Mr. Ashe that all this certainly established a reasonable doubt of his guilt, but I also went beyond that and considered briefly the most likely candidate to replace him. Do you wish that too?”
The judge was intent on him. “Yes. Proceed.”
“I told Mr. Ashe that I greatly preferred Mr. Bagby. The mutual alibi of Miss Hart and Miss Velardi might be successfully impeached, but they have it, and besides I have seen and talked with them and was not impressed. I exclude Miss Weltz because when she came to me last evening she had been jolted by consternation
