All the way

held eleven $100 Express checks. I pulled out the wallet and checked her driver’s license. What little she’d told me about herself appeared to be the truth. Mrs. Marion Forsyth, it said, 714 Beauregard Drive, Thomaston, La. Hair, black. Eyes, blue, 5’-7”. 112 pounds. Born 8 November, 1923. She’d be thirty-four in a few days. This surprised me; I wouldn’t have thought she was over twenty-nine or thirty. The wallet held about six hundred dollars. I dropped it back in the bag.

I dressed, and looked out into the corridor. It was clear. I went back to my room, called down for orange juice and coffee and the Miami Herald, and had a quick shower and shave. It was nine twenty-five and I was just finishing the coffee when she called. She was going over to Miami, and would be back at noon. The message was as clipped and precise as an inter-office memo.

I killed a couple of hours swimming off the beach and had just come in and changed when the phone rang. This time her voice was a little friendlier, and there was a hint of suppressed excitement in it. “I’ve got something to show you,” she said.

I knocked lightly on 316, and she opened almost immediately. Her hair was up in the chignon, of course, softly clubbed and worn low on the nape of the neck, and while the dress was just a summer cotton she looked as slender and smart as a fashion show. I kissed her. She submitted agreeably enough, but I could sense impatience. Pulling away from me, she nodded towards the dresser.

There were two things on it that hadn’t been here this morning. One was a small tape recorder about the size of a portable typewriter, and the other an old briefcase plastered all over with labels. It had come air express, and I could see the return address on one of the labels. It was the same as that on her driver’s license.

“That’s the mail you were waiting for?” I asked.

She nodded. “It’s just come. And the tape recorder is what I went to Miami for. Have you ever heard your voice on one?”

“I don’t think so,” I said. “Did you buy the recorder?”

“Yes,” she replied. “Why?”

“I just wondered. I assume it has something to do with that proposition you mentioned, and it occurred to me I must represent a sizable investment by this time. Four or five hundred to have me investigated by those keyhole astronomers, and now another couple of hundred for the recorder. You must be very sure of yourself.”

“It’s a calculated risk,” she said.

She unstrapped the briefcase. I could see excitement growing in her face as she opened it and began removing its contents. They appeared to me to be largely rubbish. There were a dozen or more thin pamphlets I recognized as the annual statements of corporations, some old fire-insurance policies, and two or three stenographer’s notebooks. She casually tossed all this into the wastepaper basket.

“I didn’t want my housekeeper to know what I was really after,” she explained. “So I told her to ship the briefcase and I’d look for the papers I needed. Oh—Here we are.”

There were two of them, flat cardboard boxes about seven inches square. They were packed with reels of tape. She selected one and put it on the machine, and stuck an empty reel on the other spindle. When the tape was connected, she ran several feet of it on to the empty reel with a control on the front panel, and pressed the “Play” switch. A man’s voice issued from the speaker. She adjusted the volume.

“—take a chance and hold the Lukens Steel for another five points. I think it’ll go, but the minute it does, sell. It’s too volatile for my blood pressure. How’d Gulf Oil close, Chris?”

“Let’s see—” This was also a man’s voice. “Here we are. Gulf was up three-quarters. I’d say hang on to it.”

“I intend to. And buy me another hundred shares in the morning.”

“Right. One hundred Gulf at the market. Anything else, Mr. Chapman?”

“Just one more thing. Will you ask the research department to send me everything they’ve got or can dig up on an outfit called Trinity Natural Gas? It’s a pipeline company that was formed about two years ago. The stock sold over the counter until last month, but now it’s listed on the American Exchange. Marian has a hunch about it. She went to college with the man who’s head of it, and says he’s a ball of fire.”

She stopped the machine and glanced at me. “Do you know what it is?”

I lit a cigarette. “Sounds like a man talking to his broker over the phone.” I couldn’t see what the excitement was, or why she wanted me to listen to it.

“Right,” she said. She ran the tape back, watching the mechanical counter on the panel. “Now listen closely. I’m going to play that last speech again, and I want you to repeat it.”

“Okay,” I said.

She pressed the “Play” switch again. Chapman’s voice began. “Just one more thing. Will you ask the research department—” I listened, noting at the same time that she was taking it down in shorthand. It was only five or six sentences.

She stopped the machine at the end of it, and rapidly transcribed her notes. She handed me the sheet of paper with the sentences written out in longhand.

“I don’t need it,” I said. “I’ve heard it twice.”

“Read it anyway,” she said. “So you won’t pause or stumble.” Plugging in the microphone, she handed it to me. “Hold it about there. Don’t jiggle it, or bump it. When I throw the machine on “Record” and the tape starts rolling, begin reading.”

“Don’t you have to erase what’s on there first?”

She shook her head. “It erases and records at the same time. Ready? Here we go.”

She started it, and I read the speech into the microphone. She stopped the machine, and ran the tape back, still watching the counter. I could sense she was keyed-up. I knew what she was doing by now, of course, but it struck me as absurd. She put the machine on “Play Back” and sat down near me on the end of the bed. I started to say something, but she cut me off with an imperious gesture of her hand. She sat with her head lowered, listening intently.

She’d gone back pretty far this time, and it was the man called Chris who was speaking.

“—one hundred Gulf at the market. Anything else, Mr. Chapman”?”

“Just one more thing. Will you ask the research—”

Chapman’s voice went on through the speech. At the end of it there was a little whrrp where she’d put it on “Record” and I’d started speaking.

“Just one more thing. Will you ask the research department to send me everything they’ve got —”

I sat bolt upright. “Hey—!” She clapped a hand over my mouth. We both sat perfectly still until it was finished.

She got up and turned the machine off. Then she turned to me with a faint smile. “Now you know what I was listening to all the time.”

I stared at her. “It’s incredible. They’re almost exactly the same.”

She nodded. “That’s the reason I wanted to do it this way, with the two voices end-to-end. As a comparison check, it’s absolutely conclusive. You see, it’s not only the timbre—plenty of male voices are down in that low end of the baritone range—but you both have the same quick, alert, self-assured way of speaking. Clipped, and rather aggressive. Either of you could do a perfect imitation of Ralph Bellamy playing one of those detective roles. In fact, Harris quite often does, at parties.”

“Harris?” I asked.

“Harris Chapman, the man you were just listening to.”

“Do we actually sound that much alike?” I asked. “Or is it the recording?”

She shook a cigarette from a packet on the dresser, and leaned down. I held the lighter for her. She sat in the armchair, facing me with her knees crossed. “I could tell you apart, in person,” she said thoughtfully. “And on hi-fi equipment. I might even, in fact, on the telephone—because I’m aware there are two of you.”

“What do you mean by that?” I asked.

She inhaled smoke and regarded me coolly. “It’s obvious, isn’t it? If you were speaking over the telephone to anybody who knew Harris Chapman but didn’t know you, you’d be Chapman.”

“I’m not so sure—”

“Let me explain,” she interrupted. “If you said you were Harris Chapman, why should he doubt it? Your voices are almost identical, and they’re not there side-by-side for comparison. Add to that the way you both speak—which