“Just what I was thinking, Doc,” Chambrun said. “You take charge of it, Doc. Get someone here to check it out.” He glanced toward the door to the living room. “For now, just between us. Right?”
Doc took the cylinder and went out. Chambrun and Hardy and I stood looking down at the dead Cobb.
“You trying to make something out of nothing?” Hardy asked.
“I hope so,” Chambrun said. He turned to me. “I haven’t seen Shelda around.”
“She’s gone,” I said.
“Gone?”
“Home. To beautiful downtown Topeka, Kansas,” I said.
“What are you talking, about?”
“Her family,” I said. “She hasn’t seen them for more than a year. This all got a little too rough for her. Battle gave her some free time, so she took off.”
“When?” Chambrun sounded sharper than the subject required.
I glanced at my watch. “Her plane must have left LaGuardia sometime in the last half hour,” I said.
“You know the flight number?”
“No.”
“Find out.”
“How?”
“The chances are ten to one she made her reservation through the travel service downstairs. Find out what it is.”
“Why are you so interested? I don’t get it,” I said.
“That’s because you are an idiot,” Chambrun said, and sounded like he meant it. “Just what did she tell you? You did see her?”
“Sure I saw her. In the Trapeze. She was pretty badly shaken up. She felt somehow responsible for what happened to Allerton. If he hadn’t taken the letters in for her—Nonsense, of course. So she wanted to get out.”
His eyes were, those narrowed slits that told of anger. “Find out the number of her flight if you can,” he said. “And then check at the airport to see if she actually took it.”
“Of course she took it,” I said.
“Listen,” Chambrun said. “That girl is in love with you. She wouldn’t take off to see her family when you haven’t had ten minutes together. She wouldn’t be shaken up by what’s happened. She has the guts of a burglar. You don’t know your own woman. Just find out about the flight and if she took it. If she didn’t, God help her.”
“Would you mind telling me what you’re hinting at?” I asked, feeling a knot tightening in my stomach.
“I’m not hinting,” he said. “I’m telling you she may be in serious trouble. There isn’t time to draw you pictures. Find out what we have to know, and don’t stop on the way to pass the time of day with anyone.”
It wasn’t like him to be mysterious. His concern for Shelda just didn’t make any sense. Yet he always made sense. I tried to remember everything she’d said, exactly how she’d looked. There wasn’t anything, except that she had certainly cracked up.
Chambrun was right about the travel service. They had made the reservation for Shelda. Flight 074 to Topeka, leaving LaGuardia at 7:10 P.M. I called the airport. Shelda hadn’t picked up the reservation. I felt a sudden chill running along my spine as I headed back upstairs to find Chambrun.
He and Hardy had left 17B when I got there. Jerry Dodd, who was still standing guard, didn’t know where they’d gone.
“Battle has given orders for his yachts to be ready to take him back to France by midnight,” Jerry said. “Hardy has told him he couldn’t go while he was needed here as a material witness. Would you believe there has been a direct call to the State Department and that Hardy has been advised not to be sticky?”
“Our Mr. Battle has friends in high places,” I said. “Would you have any idea what’s bugging Chambrun about Shelda?”
He grinned at me. “Shelda who?” he said.
I wasn’t in the mood for jokes, but I didn’t have the chance to tell Jerry so because Battle came out of the bedroom.
“I’m glad I have a chance to talk to you, Haskell,” he said. He walked over to the big armchair and sat down. Almost instantly Gaston, the chef, appeared carrying a tray with two cups and a pot of tea. He went through the same routine I’d seen Allerton handle up in the penthouse. He poured tea into both cups, took one himself, tasted, waited a moment till it cooled a little, drank more heartily. Then he handed the second cup to Battle.
“Thank you, Gaston,” Battle said. He sipped his tea with apparent relish. Then he remembered me. “I know you have done what you can, Haskell, to keep the buzzards of the press off my back. I appreciate your efforts.”
“My job,” I said.
“There will be a little more to it,” he said. “In spite of the objections of your police lieutenant I will be setting out for the marina where my yachts are anchored a little after eleven o’clock. It’s going to be very difficult to get out of the hotel without being swamped by those reporters, in spite of what Pierre and his people can do.”
“They’re hungry to talk to you,” I said. I wanted out. I wanted to find Chambrun with my news about Shelda.
“I would like you to call a formal press conference for eleven o’clock in one of your special reception rooms downstairs,” Battle said. “I will give you a statement for them.”
“And while I’m talking to them, you slip out of the hotel,” I said.
He smiled that smile that must have been so attractive years ago. “Exactly right,” he said.
“And then I had better look for a job in another field,” I said. “The minute I play tricks on the reporters my usefulness as a public relations man for the hotel is finished.”
“Your first loyalty is to Pierre,” he said. “I’m sure he will approve.”
“When he says so, I’ll arrange it,” I said.
The phone rang and Jerry answered it. “For you,” he said to me. “Message for you. The boss wants you in his office.”
“Then you can arrange things with Pierre at once,” Battle said, “and let the press know that you’ll have a statement from me for them at eleven o’clock.”
“If Mr. Chambrun says so.”
Battle’s smile widened. “You can count on it that he will.”
Chambrun, Hardy, and Miss Ruysdale were in the boss’s office when I got there. I sensed a kind of special tension between them that I didn’t understand. Chambrun turned on me, sounding angry.
“I told you not to hang around talking to people,” he said.
“Not people,” I said. “The Great Man himself. In a way I work for him, you know.”
“You work for me,” Chambrun said, “and don’t forget it, Mark. What did George want?”
“I’m to call a fake press conference while he and his army slip out of the hotel and head for his yacht, or yachts. You, he says, will authorize it.”
Chambrun and Hardy exchanged glances.
“For what time?” Chambrun asked.
“Eleven o’clock, on the button.”
The corner of Chambrun’s mouth twitched. “I authorize it,” he said. He turned to Miss Ruysdale. “Will you get word to the reporters downstairs that Mark will have a statement for them at eleven? In the Crystal Dining Room.” Ruysdale took off for her office and Chambrun was back at me. “Shelda?” he asked.
“She didn’t make the plane or didn’t take it,” I said. “The reservation was made by our people, but she didn’t pick it up.”
“Jesus!” Hardy said, under his breath.
Something exploded inside me. “Will you tell me what this Shelda business is about?” I shouted at Chambrun. “Do you have to treat me like some goddam retarded child?”
I might as well not have spoken. “Did the taxi Shelda took come out of the line waiting in front of the hotel, or did you flag down a cruiser?” Chambrun asked.
“It came out of the line—I think,” I said. Mike Maggio had her bags and the cab slid up to us the minute he appeared.”
“I don’t suppose you recognized the driver?” He reached out and picked up his house phone on the desk. “Get Mike Maggio, but quick,” he said. Then back to me. “I don’t suppose you did anything inte
lligent like taking down his license number?”
“I’ve had just about enough of this,” I shouted at him again. “Why the hell should I take down his license number? What is this, Mr. Chambrun? So help me God, I—”
He made an impatient silencing gesture. He spoke into the phone. “Mike? You put Shelda Mason into a cab an hour or so ago. Yes. Yes, I know Mark was with you. Was the driver one of the regular ones in the line? You know him? Good boy. Mike, I’ve got to find that guy just as fast as it can possibly be done. Tell him there’s a hundred dollar bill in it for him if he makes it here by ten forty-five. Thanks, Mike. It’s really important.” Chambrun put down the phone and he looked, suddenly, very tried. “I’m sorry, Mark,” he said, all the edge gone off his voice. “I had to get you to answer questions quickly, yes or no. I’m not angry at you. I’m angry at myself for having been so stupidly slow!”
“About Shelda,” I said, trying to hold onto myself.
“I told you, Mark, you don’t know her as well as you should. She doesn’t crack up in crisis. Try to remember back to the time she worked here and was tested. I think Shelda heard something, found out something. Before she could get to us with it, she was caught.”
“Caught? By whom?”
“I’m not dead sure,” Chambrun said. “But whoever it was scared her into leaving the hotel.”
“But she was perfectly free to go or not,” I said.
“She was free to tell you she was going home to her parents,” Chambrun said, “which we now know she hasn’t done.”
“We were alone in the Trapeze,” I said. “She could have told me.”
“I think not,” Chambrun said. “You wouldn’t have let her go.”
“She wouldn’t scare that easily,” I said. “You’ve said so yourself.”
“She might,” Chambrun said. “If the threat was aimed at someone else, she might. You, Mark. She does what she’s told to do or you get it. The girl loves you, Mark. She’d play any kind of game to keep you out of danger. I could kick myself around the block because I figured some kind of a play of this sort. I expected it to come later. I thought it might be Ruysdale they’d aim at. Whatever Shelda stumbled on made them move faster than I think they’d planned.”
“You keep saying ‘they,’” I said.
“Figure of speech,” Chambrun said. “Surely you must see there’s been more than one body involved in this from the start. The man in the stocking mask who fired at George; the man in the stocking mask who kidnaped me; the man who delivered the letters; the man who emptied Dr. Cobb’s oxygen cylinder so that he died for want of it.”
“You know that?”
Chambrun nodded. “The cylinder wasn’t faulty. Someone emptied it while Cobb was down here talking to us.”
“No fingerprints on it except Cobb’s, Doc Partridge’s, and Mr. Chambrun’s,” Hardy said, answering a question before I could ask it.
“Is that what Shelda found out? She caught someone emptying the cylinder?” I asked.
“It’s possible,” Chambrun said. “Or she overheard a conversation. Or she came across something in her notes that told her something.”
“It had to be somebody up in Seventeen B,” I said. “Butler? Gaston? Battle himself?”
Chambrun hesitated, taking time to light a cigarette. “There have been two forces operating here from the start, Mark. George Battle broke the habits of two decades to come here to nail down Richard Cleaves. He had to stop that film being made, and I know why now. I’ve had a brief look at the novel and the script. There were at least two other people who knew why. Allerton and Dr. Cobb.”
“Both dead!”
“Yes, Mark, but I’m still alive.” I think he meant to go on, but Ruysdale appeared in the doorway.
“The reporters have been alerted,” she said. “And your two guests are here.”
“Have them brought in. And take notes, Ruysdale.”
Ruysdale stepped aside and Richard Cleaves and Peter Potter came into the office, accompanied by two of Hardy’s plainclothes men. The little dwarf was smiling his bright smile. He gestured toward the two cops.
“Are we being protected, or are you being protected, Chambrun?” he asked. He perched on the arm of a chair, his short legs dangling. Cleaves stood very straight and still, expressionless behind the black glasses.
“There are a great many things I’d like to say to you two,” Chambrun said, moving around behind his desk, “but I only have time for one of them. You are a pair of cold-blooded liars.”
Potter giggled. “You’ve read the script,” he said.
Cleaves stood still as a statue.
“I’ve glanced at the script,” Chambrun said. “May I remind you that my association with George Battle goes back more than twenty years. I go farther back than our two dead friends, Allerton and Cobb.”
That jarred Cleaves. “Dr. Cobb is dead?”
“Expired from lack of oxygen,” Chambrun said. “Just before he died, he tried to ask for you.”
I didn’t remember any such thing and I gave Chambrun a puzzled look.
“Doc Partridge thought he said something about ‘sleeves,’” Chambrun said. “Of course what he said was ‘Cleaves!’ He wanted to warn you, Mr. Cleaves, or get your help. The lack of oxygen, by the way, was a practical fact. Somebody emptied his cylinder. Had someone guessed that Cobb was collaborating with you, Cleaves?”
“That’s a shot in the dark,” Cleaves said in his flat, hard voice.
“Look here, Mr. Cleaves, I suspect your novel, read at leisure, would be quite fascinating. But George Battle referred to the first fifty pages as being of concern to him. I found there the story of an assassination, apparently arranged by political enemies. In the script, Mr. Cleaves, you have changed your motives somewhat. In the script your mastermind is someone interested in a fabulous oil contract. In your script a second man is killed trying to protect the victim. But I don’t have to tell you about your changes. No wonder George Battle wants it stopped. Twenty-two years ago he engineered just such a coup. And twenty-two years ago, Cleaves, the real victim’s trusted bodyguard—you made him a brother in your story—wasn’t on hand to protect him. He was in the hay with a beautiful girl planted by the mastermind. That isn’t in your novel.”
“It’s just a sex scene to make the film more salable,” Potter said.
“Nonsense. It’s a factual detail that was part of the real life story. Somebody fed you these details, Cleaves. You were happy to use them because your source made it clear to you that when the film appeared George Battle would be revealed to enemies who would almost certainly find a way to kill him. Was it Cobb, or Allerton, or both? They had been with him long enough to know or guess at the true story. Or was it you, Potter? Had Cobb, in some drunken moment while you were working for George, let it slip?”
“A complete pipe dream, Mr. Chambrun,” Potter said.
“I ask you one more question, and God help you if you don’t answer it honestly, Cleaves. Have you already tipped off the people who would want to kill Battle? You have dreamed for a lifetime of getting revenge. This would be an ideal way, leaving you completely innocent.”
Cleaves stood straight and silent.
“There isn’t time for games,” Chambrun said. “If I’ve made a right guess then you know that Shelda Mason is in mortal danger, and I promise you that if anything happens to her I will personally see to it that you go just as colorfully as your father went.”
“You sonofabitch,” Cleaves said tonelessly.
“Last chance for some truth,” Chambrun said.
A little trickle of sweat ran down Cleaves’ cheek. “I think you just told me that Cobb was murdered,” he said.
“That’s what I told you.”
“And someone is threatening the Mason girl?”
“Yes.”
Potter laughed. “Uncle George Battle is an original. He won’t stop at anything, will he?”
“I’m sick of games and I haven’t got time fo
r them,” Chambrun said. “Someone took a shot at George; someone tried to kill him with a letter bomb; I, his friend, was kidnaped and held for ransom; his two most trusted employees are dead. I suggest Dr. Cobb revealed these new facts to you, Cleaves, after he’d read your book. I suggest you took them, happily, added them to the film script, and passed along what you knew to people who were ready and willing to wipe him out when they heard the truth.”
Cleaves shook his head slowly. “You’re half right,” he said. “Only half right, Mr. Chambrun.”
“Which half?”
Cleaves took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “My book was pure invention,” he said. “Not too many suspense novels reach the best seller lists. Mine did. Maxie Zorn made me an immediate offer for it—an extremely good deal contingent upon his getting the financing for it.”
“In other words, he took an option on it?”
“Yes. A generous option. Getting financing didn’t seem to be a difficult matter, particularly after Maxie got David Loring to agree to star in it. It happened almost at once George Battle offered to put up the money under certain conditions. We were to go to France to discuss those conditions.”
“You can imagine my state of mind. Maxie knew nothing about my past, my personal feelings about George Battle. I didn’t want Battle involved, but, on the other hand, I was curious. I wondered if Battle knew who I was. For fifteen years I’d been trying to get to him, and now I was invited to his house, for God sake. So we flew to France and went to the villa in Cannes.
“The beginning of that session was reasonable enough. Battle would put up the money, seven million dollars, provided he was satisfied with the film script. He wanted at least a scene-by-scene outline of what the film would be. And he wanted the right to disapprove anything he didn’t like.”
“Not unreasonable if you’re putting up seven million dollars,” Chambrun said.
“Perhaps not, But I wasn’t having any. George Battle, my enemy, wasn’t going to control my work. I said so, and I told him who I was—Richard St. Germaine. He really blew his stack on that. Ordered me out of the house. Told me I would never be readmitted. I left, supposing the deal was off, satisfied that I’d jarred him a little. Maxie, not understanding, stayed on to plead with him. To my surprise, Battle didn’t back away. His dislike of me, he told Maxie, was personal. He would still put up the money if he got an outline of the script. Maxie caught up with me at the hotel in town where we were staying. He asked me to do an outline. I told him to go to hell. I went out on the town to get thoroughly drunk. That’s when I met Dr. Cobb. I’d seen him, briefly, at the villa. I didn’t realize, at first, that he’d come looking for me. I’ll try to boil down his story.”
Walking Dead Man Page 15