“It seems so.”
“But let’s figure Double Z on the job, pretending to be Judge Tolland. That wouldn’t be difficult. You could double for Tolland, and so could Fennimann, here. Nobody’s seen Tolland for more than a year. He’d be apt to be changed in appearance, anyway. So we’ll consider Double Z a hound for leaving his mark or showing his hand.
“He gets a phony message to Caulkins. The reporter goes up there. He meets Double Z, who calls himself Tolland, and hands him a lot of bunk. Caulkins swallows the story. He calls you.
“First he tells you that Tolland is with him. That’s part of the game. Then he brings in Double Z. That’s great. Verbal statement as a new development on the note stuff. Then, when Caulkins begins to give away who Double Z is — maybe the guy was crazy enough to actually tell him — bang! Curtains for your reporter.”
“And this note?”
“Left there to make it look like Caulkins was threatened previously by Double Z. That guy would never take back a note once he sent it. Looks like he just left it there, after Caulkins had brought it out to show him, thinking he was really Judge Tolland.”
“A great story,” declared Ward, his journalistic instinct coming to the fore.
“All right,” agreed Cardona, “if you leave out the Judge Tolland part.”
“Why?”
“Because we want to keep Double Z from thinking we’ve got everything. He doesn’t know how much was really heard or understood at your end of the phone. He wants to bring in a lot of mystery about Judge Tolland. I think his game is to make people believe that Judge Tolland has gone berserk and is Double Z.”