The Case of the Golden Mesa Jackpot

0:00 A Scorched Hearth Rug

0:04 Watson: It was the scorching July of nineteen eighty-five, and London had forgotten how to be cool. That Tuesday evening, the nineteenth, we had thrown the sash up as far as it would go, and the smell of soft tar rose from Baker Street. Holmes lay full length on the settee, idle a fortnight, while I read Mrs Hudson's bill aloud.

0:26 Watson: Laundry, the usual. Milk, the usual. And here: replacement of hearth rug, scorched.

0:35 Holmes: Scorched is a harsh word for an experiment. Watson: You set fire to it, Holmes. With a spirit lamp.

0:43 Holmes: I improved it. That rug was a crime against the eye. Watson: You can tell her so. I'm paying my half and not a penny of yours.

0:53 Holmes: Hah. Coward. A cab that doesn't leave, Watson. Someone means to be quick.

1:00 Zamora: Inspector Zamora, Las Vegas Metropolitan Police. Which of you is Holmes? I have twenty minutes.

1:06 Mrs Hudson: Mr Holmes, I did ask the gentleman to wait. Holmes: The one lying down, Inspector. Thank you, Mrs Hudson.

1:14 Mrs Hudson: I'll be on the landing. With the bill. Zamora: I flew in from Las Vegas this afternoon to take you to the Golden Mesa casino. Saturday a slot paid forty-two thousand it shouldn't have, and the mechanic they blame asked for you by name. My plane leaves tonight.

1:32 Holmes: You are the police, Inspector, and every casino keeps its own detectives. I'll not cross an ocean in July to referee a gambling house's quarrel with its luck. Zamora: Heh. Didn't figure you'd say yes on the first roll.

1:46 Watson: I'm bound to agree, Inspector. I've patients on Thursday, and a desert in July would roast us both. Holmes: Watson agrees with me. Rare enough to frame.

1:57 Watson: Holmes, come and look at his cab. The suitcase is still on the back seat. Holmes: Meaning what?

2:03 Watson: Meaning he never took a room. Straight from the airport, straight back tonight. He's staked the whole crossing on a single throw, and the throw is you.

2:13 Zamora: Doctor's got good eyes. Holmes: A man who bets an ocean on one card. Inspector Zamora, does your driver know the road to Heathrow?

2:22 Zamora: He's been told twice. Meter's running. Holmes: Then the rug can wait. Your hat, Watson.

2:28 Watson: I tucked Mrs Hudson's bill into my pocket and followed him down.

2:32 Glass Doors at the Golden Mesa

2:37 Watson: The Golden Mesa rose out of the desert dark like a lit wedding cake; at its glass doors the slot manager met Holmes and me, with Ray Tully, the suspended mechanic, beside her. Colette: Mr Holmes. I'm Colette, slot manager. The owners say you may walk my floor.

2:54 Holmes: Thank you. Mr Tully will show me his machines. Colette: Ray Tully stays out here, sugar. Suspended, pending the police.

3:03 Tully: Miss Colette, twenty years I've kept those machines singing. Five years of it before you ever came. Colette: And last month I docked you two days' pay for cursing me on the floor.

3:15 Watson: Surely the man can stand at Holmes's elbow? He's hardly going to rob the place with us watching. Colette: That's exactly what a man would say, Doctor, just before he robbed it.

3:26 Holmes: Pending the police, you said, not pending you. The suspension came from above you, Miss Colette, and you'd have chosen something harsher. Colette: Hah. Harsher? I'd have fired him Sunday morning and saved everybody your airfare.

3:41 Tully: I asked the inspector for one thing. Fetch Sherlock Holmes. And you'd have had me gone before he landed.

3:49 Colette: This way, Mr Holmes. Tully: You'll pay for this, Colette. Every penny you docked and every word you've said.

3:57 Watson: Holmes has gone in with her. I'll stay a minute, Tully. Tully: Listen, Doctor. That's the Liberty row paying out, the third one. Tired spring. I'd know her blindfold.

4:08 Watson: Through the glass? Tully: Through a wall. Twenty years, and I'm stood out here listening to them.

4:16 A Stool at the Casino Bar

4:21 Watson: Holmes chose the stool beside a sunburnt woman at the casino bar, within sight of the slot floor, and I sat close enough to hear the ice in her glass. Voss: Harlan Voss, gentlemen, I tend this bar. Abigail here drinks on the house tonight, so you're in good company.

4:36 Abigail: Abigail, from Dayton, Ohio. He's only being sweet because he feels sorry for me. Holmes: You drove here from Dayton. The burn is on your left arm alone, where the car window sits.

4:49 Abigail: Hah. Flew, honey. I fell asleep at the pool with a paperback over the other arm.

4:55 Holmes: Then the paperback deserves the credit. Soda water, Mr Voss. Voss: Coming up. You're the man Ray sent for? Good. Ray Tully's a good man, whatever they're saying upstairs.

5:06 Watson: And what are they saying upstairs? Voss: Heh. That he cooked the machine. Ray? He talks to those machines like they're his kids. Knows every one by its cough.

5:18 Abigail: The English fella who opened it up after? He went white as a sheet. Holmes: White before he looked inside, or after?

5:26 Abigail: After. He put his head in that machine and his face just dropped. Watson: Surely the casino pays you once the police are satisfied.

5:35 Abigail: That's what they told me Sunday, mister. Now it's Wednesday, and I'm drinking their bourbon. Voss: Another on me, Abigail. Ray would want it.

5:45 Abigail: Hm. Forty-two thousand dollars, sitting in their safe, and I can't touch a dime.

5:53 The Slot Shop Behind the Floor

5:58 Watson: The slot shop behind the floor was a cramped den of oil and solder; Colette waited at a steel key cabinet when Inspector Zamora strode in, evidence bag in hand. Zamora: Evening, Ms Colette. I'll be taking that key register—

6:11 Holmes: One moment, Inspector Zamora. Before it goes into your bag, I'd like it read aloud. Zamora: Read away. Saves my eyes.

6:19 Colette: Mm. It's a short night, Mr Holmes. Saturday, ten at night. Machine key number one, signed out to R. Tully. No time in.

6:30 Zamora: No time in, because I took it off him at the machine. Holmes: And keys two to six? Colette: On their hooks all night, and the cabinet key never left my wrist. I promise you, only Tully carried a key on that floor.

6:46 Holmes: So I see. Hook one is worn bright, and the other five are furred with dust. His key is the only one anybody uses.

6:55 Colette: The spares are for a sick mechanic. Ray's never sick. Ray never misses a night.

7:01 Watson: Then that rather settles it, Holmes. One key, one man... Zamora: It settles who was holding it, Doctor. I'll take the book.

7:12 Colette: And while you're writing, Inspector, write down whose pay I docked last month. A man chews on that through a long shift.

7:21 A Machine in a Wire Cage

7:20 Zamora: Noted.

7:26 Watson: Downstairs at police headquarters the machine sat in a wire cage under hard white light, and Zamora brought Tully down to it, with Holmes and me behind. Zamora: Sealed since Sunday, Tully. Read Mr Holmes your service book.

7:41 Tully: Machine forty-one. Door sticks. Door sticks, catch wants replacing. Door sticks, again. Page after page.

7:49 Watson: How long has it stuck? Tully: Since Easter, Doctor. I put in for a new catch four times. Colette never signed for it.

7:57 Holmes: Your last entry is pressed so hard the pen went through the paper. You wrote it in a rage, Mr Tully. Tully: Shaking, not rage. Bells going, the whole floor clapping, and me opening her up to check the win.

8:11 Zamora: And? Tully: I found bright fresh scratches on the catch, and I wrote it down. Pry bar. Question mark.

8:19 Holmes: You took it for force. Tully: What else would I take it for? Some villain's had a go at her with a bar.

8:26 Zamora: Bar or no bar, somebody's been inside her. Tully: Not me. I never had her open till the bells.

8:34 Zamora: Your book, your machine, your key. So you tell me, Tully. Who opened that machine before the bells, if not you?

8:46 A Brass Catch Under the Glass

8:50 Watson: In a bare room across the corridor, Zamora tipped the brass catch out of its bag onto the table and slid a magnifying glass towards Tully; Holmes and I sat opposite. Zamora: Unscrewed it from the door myself. Take your time, Tully.

9:06 Tully: Hah. That's no pry bar. A bar chews. It leaves a bite either side.

9:11 Holmes: And this? Tully: Lines all one way, fine as hair. Somebody's filed her smooth. A key-cutter's file did that, Mr Holmes, nothing else cuts so fine.

9:22 Zamora: Huh. Watson: Then it wasn't a thief at all. Somebody was— good heavens, somebody was mending the wretched thing.

9:31 Holmes: Filing takes minutes, not seconds. Whoever stood at that door had time, and nobody asking him why. Zamora: Time, and a door he'd cursed for months. Sounds like a mechanic's itch to me.

9:45 Tully: You think I'd file my own catch, then write it up as a pry bar, and— Zamora: I think a smart man might. Ray Tully, I'm holding you on suspicion. Nevada gives me two days to charge you or turn you loose.

9:59 Tully: You can't— Watson: Holmes, say something. Holmes: You're owed a telephone call, Mr Tully. Whom will you ring?

10:06 Tully: Who? Every soul I know in this town works at the Mesa. I'll ring nobody. Nobody. And give her nothing.

10:15 Zamora: Then no calls, and no visitors but these two. Suits me fine. Tully: Five thousand miles, and I begged you to come, Mr Holmes. I begged you...

10:26 The Morning After at the Casino

10:31 Watson: By nine the next morning the casino had the stale hush of a ballroom after the dance, and Colette stood at her podium above the machines as Zamora, Holmes and I crossed the carpet to her. Colette: Inspector. Mr Holmes. Doctor. You're up early for Vegas.

10:48 Holmes: Saturday night, Miss Colette. Where were you while machine forty-one paid out? Colette: Right here, sugar. I watched the floor all night, same as every Saturday.

10:59 Holmes: From up here you'd see forty-one plain. That pillar hides only the cashier's cage. Colette: Every inch. That's why they built the podium high.

11:09 Watson: Then you saw who stood at that machine before the— Colette: I saw Ray Tully everywhere, Doctor. That's what a mechanic does. He walks.

11:16 Holmes: Then the ceiling tape will bear you out. There's a smoked dome over every row, and one sits right above forty-one. Colette: That tape belongs to the owners. It isn't mine to—

11:27 Zamora: I asked the owners on Monday. Colette: Mm. And their lawyer told you not today. You don't need tape, Inspector. You've got his key, his book, his grudge. Charge the man and let my floor breathe.

11:42 Watson: She has a point, Holmes. The key alone— Holmes: The key alone hangs nobody. A tape might hang somebody else.

11:50 Colette: Then it'll hang Ray twice. But it stays upstairs. Zamora: I'll have that tape, Ms Colette, warrant or not.

11:58 A Bench Under One Bare Bulb

12:03 Watson: An hour later Zamora sent the day mechanic out of the workshop and led Holmes and me to a bench under one bare bulb. Zamora: Ray Tully's toolbox. Nobody sees me open it, and nobody hears what comes out of it.

12:19 Zamora: There. A key-cutter's file, and the teeth are packed with yellow dust. Holmes: Brass, Inspector, and still bright. Brass dust dulls fast in this air. That file was used within the week.

12:33 Watson: Saturday's within the week. I'm sorry, Holmes, but that's how a jury will hear it. Holmes: A toolbox without a padlock, in a shop half the staff may walk into.

12:44 Zamora: Half the staff didn't hold the only key that night. Tully did. This morning's Desert Courier. "Slot raider used pry bar." I gave the press office pry bar last night, and pry bar is all they'll get.

13:00 Watson: You fed the newspapers a fib? Zamora: I kept a fact back. Filed smooth stays with Tully, you two and me. Nobody else.

13:09 Holmes: And Tully has kept it? Zamora: He turned down his phone call again at breakfast. He's said nothing to a soul but my jailer.

13:18 Holmes: You have until tomorrow evening to charge him or let him go. Charge him now. Watson: Holmes!

13:24 Holmes: Charged, he stays in your cells and out of everyone's reach. That suits me better than turning him loose on this floor. Zamora: Raymond Tully. Fraud upon a licensed casino. There. It's signed.

13:41 Cold Coffee and Menthol

13:45 Watson: Colette's office was a windowless box over the cashier's cage, smelling of cold coffee and menthol, and she shut its door on the noise before she said a word. Colette: You've seen the key register, Mr Holmes. You heard him threaten me at my own door. What more does a man need?

14:02 Holmes: Your roster, on that wall. Every Saturday has one name on it, and it's not your writing. He put himself down.

14:10 Colette: Every Saturday since spring. He asked for them, sugar. No second mechanic looking over his shoulder.

14:17 Watson: Some men simply like a quiet shift. Colette: Quiet, on a Saturday? Doctor, a man wants Saturday alone for one reason. Nobody sees what he does.

14:30 Holmes: Or nobody docks him for a word on the floor. Colette: Everybody pities Ray. He's so lonesome on those nights that even Voss asked me which ones, to stand him a drink after his shift. Pity doesn't open machines.

14:44 Holmes: And on those Saturdays you're at your podium from first bell to last? Colette: I told you that downstairs. Holmes: You told me you watched the floor. You never said whether you left it.

14:55 Colette: Mr Holmes, the owners want this over by Friday. So do I.

15:00 Neon Over the Strip

15:05 Watson: Our hotel room on the Strip was cold as a larder, the air conditioner roaring; Holmes stood at the window over the neon while I sat on the bed with my notebook. Let me lay it out, Holmes, and stop me where I'm wrong. One key out that night, and it was Tully's.

15:21 Holmes: Go on. Watson: A key-cutter's file in his own toolbox, with brass in its teeth. And at those glass doors he swore Colette would pay for every penny.

15:31 Holmes: You've left nothing out. Watson: Hm. He sets the jackpot to ruin her, files that sticking catch out of pure habit, then writes "pry bar" to cover himself. I'm sorry for the man, but there it is.

15:45 Holmes: I agree with every link of it, Watson. That is what troubles me. Watson: Agreement troubles you?

15:52 Holmes: Colette has her guilty mechanic, charged and caged. A woman in her place should be dragging us to that tape by the sleeve. Watson: Owners' property, she said.

16:02 Holmes: She said it twice, and quickly both times. That tape shows something she fears, and it isn't Ray Tully. Watson: Then we wait on Zamora.

16:13 Holmes: The warrant comes at dawn. Tonight, Watson, a drink at the bar.

16:18 Close to Midnight

16:22 Watson: Close to midnight Voss was polishing glasses in a half-empty bar, Abigail sat on the stool where we had found her before, and Holmes settled at her elbow with me beyond him. Voss: Mr Holmes, Doctor. Soda water, and what for you, sir?

16:38 Watson: A whisky, thank you. A small one. Voss: Coming up. Any news of Ray?

16:44 Holmes: Tully was charged this afternoon. That's all I'm at liberty to say. Voss: Charged. Twenty years— twenty years on that floor, and they charge him.

16:55 Abigail: Does that mean I get paid? Somebody tell me straight. I've been in this town since last Thursday.

17:02 Holmes: Not tomorrow, I fear. The casino won't pay out on a machine sitting in a police cage. Voss: Months Ray cursed that door. Every shift, this lousy catch, this lousy catch. Now somebody's filed that catch smooth, and poor Ray—

17:16 Abigail: Never mind poor Ray, honey. What about my money? Watson: It's safe in their vault, surely.

17:24 Abigail: Hah. Safe from me, you mean. Holmes: Your sunburn has peeled since last night and not coloured again. You haven't been near that pool. You've spent the days in here, waiting.

17:35 Abigail: Where else would I wait? My hotel's paid through Sunday, and after that... well, after that I'm sleeping by the pool for real. Voss: Another, Abigail? On the house.

17:47 Abigail: Oh, why not. To forty-two thousand dollars, wherever it's sleeping tonight. Voss: Drink up. Plenty more where that came from.

17:58 The Surveillance Room

18:02 Watson: At eight the following morning, the warrant served, Zamora fed a cassette into the recorder in the surveillance room, and Holmes and I bent beside him to a flickering grey monitor. Zamora: Saturday night, camera nine, straight above forty-one. Watch the clock in the corner.

18:20 Watson: Who are those three? Zamora: Backs, Doctor. That's all a ceiling ever gets. Three of them, shoulder to shoulder, and you can't see the machine for them.

18:30 Holmes: And not one of them feeds it a coin. Nobody stands at a slot machine that long without playing it. Zamora: Four minutes by that clock. Now two of them drift off. The woman in the middle stays. She pulls the handle.

18:47 Watson: Good Lord. The winner was one of the three. Zamora: Camera four now, same clock. Across the floor, the Liberty row.

18:56 Watson: That's Tully at the third machine. He told me she had a tired spring. Zamora: Door open, his key in another machine, the whole four minutes and more. He never goes near forty-one till the bells.

19:11 Holmes: So the only key on that floor was busy elsewhere while forty-one stood hidden. Zamora: I signed that charge myself. Holmes: We have charged an innocent man, Inspector.

19:22 A Call from Colette's Office

19:27 Watson: We carried the cassette up the back stair to Colette's office, and Zamora reached past her menthol ashtray for the telephone before anyone sat down.

19:43 Zamora: Zamora. Drop the charge on Raymond Tully and bring him up from the cells. Colette: Drop it? You charged that man yesterday, Inspector Zamora, you can't just—

19:54 Zamora: This morning I watched your tape. Holmes: You told us only Tully carried a key, and so he did. An issued key. Whoever opened forty-one had cut his own.

20:05 Colette: Heh. Cut his own? Out of what, sugar, thin air?

20:09 Zamora: Camera one hangs over your podium. For an hour that night it shows nobody, and the jackpot falls inside that hour. Colette: That camera's meant for the cashiers—

20:20 Holmes: Yet you stood on that podium and told us, I watched the floor all night. Colette: I was— a church hall off Maryland Parkway. Folding chairs, bad coffee, and a dozen folks who used to lose their rent.

20:36 Watson: Good heavens. Gamblers Anonymous? Colette: Six years without a bet. But a Saturday, with the whole floor singing... that's when the itch is worst.

20:46 Holmes: A manager who once fed the machines herself. No wonder you fought that tape harder than you ever fought Tully. Zamora: That tape's police evidence now, ma'am.

20:56 Colette: Then I'm begging you. Whatever else that tape tells, the owners can't— they must never know where I went.

21:04 Machine Forty-One Unlocked

21:09 Watson: Tully came along from the cells unshaven, a free man by twenty minutes, and Zamora unlocked the cage where forty-one waited while Holmes and I looked on. Tully: Hello, old girl. Mr Holmes, Inspector Zamora, I owe you both.

21:24 Holmes: Pay us with your eyes, Mr Tully. You alone looked inside her that night. Tully: When I checked her at the bells, those bright fresh scratches on the catch were shining like new pennies. Brass goes dull in a day out here. She was filed that night.

21:38 Zamora: Your toolbox held a key-cutter's file with brass in the teeth. Tully: Course it did. I cut a brass shim for the Liberty row last Friday. Every slot shop in Vegas owns a key-cutter's file.

21:50 Holmes: Then to the glass. You told us a key-cutter's file did that. Was it yours?

21:56 Tully: Look. Mine's a coarse cut, fat lines. That catch has lines fine as hair. Every file scratches its own way, and that's not mine.

22:05 Holmes: A finer file, then. Just the sort a man would choose to cut a key by hand. Zamora: A dealer out on Boulder Highway sold a used Mesa model this spring, for a fat roll of ones and fives. No name.

22:20 Watson: Who on earth buys a whole slot machine for its lock? Tully: A man who means to strip it, Doctor. Read the pins, then file a key to match.

22:29 Zamora: Then somewhere in this town is a homemade key.

22:34 The Black Window

22:38 Watson: Back above the Strip, Holmes had turned his armchair to the black window, and I stood behind him rattling the ice in my glass. Holmes: Three sentences, Watson, side by side. First, Zamora at Tully's bench: the word filed was kept back, and four men knew it.

22:55 Watson: Tully in his cell, Zamora, and the pair of us. Holmes: Second, my own, at the bar last night. Tully is charged, I said, and not a syllable more.

23:07 Watson: I heard you. You gave Voss nothing. Holmes: Third, Voss himself, glass in hand: somebody had taken a file to that catch.

23:16 Watson: Bar gossip, Holmes. Tully might easily have let it slip to— Holmes: Tully, who wouldn't so much as take his telephone call?

23:24 Watson: Then Voss read it in the newspaper, like everyone else in this town. Holmes: Watson, what did the morning papers call it?

23:32 A Quiet Hour Before Closing

23:36 Watson: Voss was slicing limes when Holmes took the stool in front of him, Zamora and I at his shoulders; two stools down, Abigail sat over her bourbon. Voss: Mr Holmes, and Inspector Zamora. Soda water? Something stronger for the badge?

23:52 Holmes: A word only, Mr Voss. Last night you told us somebody had filed that catch smooth. Who told you filed?

24:00 Voss: Who tells me anything? It's a bar. Everybody talks to the barman.

24:05 Holmes: Then name me one of them. Voss: Ray, maybe. Ray says something, and it gets passed around.

24:12 Zamora: Ray sat in my cells from Wednesday till this morning, and you said it last night. He turned down his phone call twice and talked to nobody but my jailer. Voss: Then it was in the Sun. It's been all over the paper.

24:27 Zamora: The Sun printed pry bar, because pry bar's what I gave them. Filed never left four men, Mr Holmes, and one sat in my cells. The other three are you two and me.

24:40 Watson: And now a fifth, it seems, slicing limes. Abigail: Harlan, honey? Just tell them where you heard it.

24:48 Voss: I don't remember, Abigail. Holmes: You remember it exactly. You heard that file go across the brass yourself.

24:56 Zamora: Harlan Voss, put your hands flat on the bar. Abigail: Take your bourbon back, Harlan. I haven't touched it, and I don't want it now.

25:05 The Slot Floor at Night

25:10 Watson: Later that night forty-one stood on the slot floor again with a new brass catch, ringed by Voss in handcuffs, Zamora, Colette, Abigail, Tully, Holmes and me. From the first step, Holmes. How was it done?

25:24 Holmes: At the key cabinet Colette read us one key out, Tully's. In the surveillance room Zamora's camera four showed Tully across the floor, his key in another machine, while three backs hid forty-one. Watson: So whoever opened her brought a key of his own. Holmes: Cut by hand. At headquarters Tully showed us that a finer file than his had filed the catch. And Zamora found a Mesa machine bought with small bills.

25:49 Watson: A barman's tips, I suppose. Rather thin, Holmes, if that's all you've— Holmes: Thin, yes, until he spoke. Filed was known to four men, and Mr Voss said it across his own bar.

26:02 Colette: And in my office I told you even Voss asked me which nights Ray worked alone. I took it for kindness. Voss: Kindness, Colette? Ray knows every machine on this floor by heart. Any other mechanic opens forty-one and sees a jackpot. Ray sees the catch.

26:21 Tully: So you— you gave me the jackpot to check. Voss: On your own Saturday, with the only key. You'd hang, and the one man who could catch me would be gone.

26:31 Tully: Twenty years, Harlan. You stood me drinks... Voss: Since nineteen seventy-four, nearly seven million dollars, and not one lock in this town kept me out. Only your door fought back.

26:44 Holmes: So you filed it smooth, with a file of your own. A lockpick's pride, Inspector. It couldn't leave a sticking door alone.

26:53 Voss: Mine's in my locker, with the key. I never touched Ray's box. Zamora: Harlan Voss, you're charged with fraud upon a licensed casino. And you, Abigail, the middle back on camera nine. You pulled the handle, and you're held with him.

27:10 Abigail: It was meant to be... forty-two thousand dollars and a plane home to Dayton. Colette: Ray, the owners want you back tonight. I signed for your new catch this afternoon.

27:22 Tully: Well. I'll be. Holmes: Four requests since Easter, Mr Tully, and all it took was a felony.

27:30 Tully: Hear that, Doctor? Not a squeak. She doesn't stick.

27:35 Rain at Baker Street

27:40 Watson: A week later London's heat had broken, and Baker Street smelled of rain. One thing still puzzles me, Holmes. Why have poor Tully charged?

27:51 Holmes: To shut every mouth but one. The Sun said pry bar; four of us knew filed. With Tully silent in a cell, that word could only come from the man who held the file. I sat at his bar and let his pride say it. And the rug, Watson, charge to the Golden Mesa. Their first honest payout.