Time of Terror

by Hugh Pentecost

  Chambrun walked casually down the hall to the door of 15 A, unlocked it with a pass key, and walked in.

  I nearly fainted when I saw him. Brand was just behind him along with two men in attack helmets waving guns. Chambrun came over to me, smiling.

  “This is going to hurt a little,” he said, and ripped the adhesive off my mouth before I realized what he was talking about.

  “Coriander phoned you so soon?”

  “No phone call,” Chambrun said, working on my wrists and ankles.

  “You took a chance on the bombs exploding?”

  “Not really a chance,” Chambrun said. “There. Stand up and stretch your legs.”

  “The children!” I said.

  We found them two rooms down the hall along with Katherine Horn. They were trussed up the same way I’d been. Chambrun and I got them free. The two girls were laughing and crying. Katherine Horn looked as if she’d lived through some kind of nightmare.

  But the big surprise happened a moment later. Two of the armed FBI agents came into the room where we were with the children, and walking between them, a stubble of red beard shadowing his face, was Douglas Horween, supposedly dead. He was wearing a sports shirt, a pair of summer-weight slacks that looked slept in, and loafers on his feet.

  “I thought you’d never come,” he said to us, “and most of the time I hoped you wouldn’t. That bastard was crazy enough to blow us all to hell. I’ve been tied up down the hall since yesterday.”

  “He told us he’d killed you,” Brand said. “We had the clothes you were wearing when you came up here posing as a waiter. Your blood was apparently on them.”

  Horween rolled back a shirt sleeve. “They carved me up to get that blood,” he said, revealing a deep cut on his arm. “He wanted you to be sure he meant business. I imagined he had another plan for me later if he came to a showdown. Have you got him?”

  We didn’t have him. We had his false face and the fright wig and the red bathrobe, all discarded in a room—1511—where the detonator was now placed. The detonator wasn’t hooked up to anything. Captain Valentine and his bomb experts were gathering up the explosive charges all along the hallway and in the rooms. Coriander was gone. The two stocking-masked men were gone. The two suitcases and the attaché case that had well over four million dollars were in 1511, empty. Horween and the two girls and Miss Horn and I had been the only people left on the fifteenth floor when Chambrun and Brand and the men from Mars had come in. Brand was in a state. Nobody had left the fifteenth floor by the fire stairs or by the elevators in the north and west wings, or by the freight elevators. But three men were gone, plus heavy luggage that couldn’t be concealed.

  Horween requested permission to go to 1507, which had been his room before Coriander took over. He’d like to get clean clothes, a shower, a shave. Brand was sorry. No one was to go into any of the rooms until the entire fifteenth floor was dusted for fingerprints from one end to the other.

  “As I recall, you have clothes in a locker in the waiters’ quarters at Room Service,” Chambrun said. “Mark or I can supply you with a shower and shaving equipment.”

  “Of course, I’d forgotten,” Horween said.

  “Coriander must have stripped you naked,” Chambrun said. “He sent us everything you were wearing as Fritz Schindler.”

  “Naked as the day I was born,” Horween said with a bitter smile. “They got me these things out of my room.”

  “After drawing blood to fool us,” Chambrun said.

  “After that, yes,” Horween said. “I—I owe you an apology, Chambrun. I damn near got myself killed by not obeying your orders.”

  “I’m sure Mr. Brand has a lot of questions to ask all of you,” Chambrun said, looking around at the girls and Katherine Horn. “I’m sure the children’s parents and their grandfather are beside themselves at this moment. I suggest we join them in my office.”

  The reunion of the children with their parents and old Buck Ames was a moving thing to watch—Connie, on her knees, hugging and kissing them both; Cleaves, standing at a distance, his face working, waiting his turn to welcome them home; Buck Ames, pounding anyone who came near him on the back, announcing this was the happiest goddam moment of his whole life. Horween retired to the boss’s dressing room after being greeted with surprise and relief. A waiter from Room Service delivered the clothes he’d left there.

  Jerry Dodd had come down from Fifteen with Chambrun. I’d gone down first with the kids and Katherine Horn. Jerry looked grimly content about something. Evidently Chambrun had told him something that none of the rest of us knew.

  Finally, just as Horween was emerging from the dressing room, shaved, wearing clean clothes, his bright red hair damp from a shower, Brand rejoined us. He was an angry man.

  “All right, Mr. Chambrun, I’ve followed your lead up to now,” he said. “Now I want explanations. Nobody left the fifteenth floor, but three men are gone. Three men, the contents of two heavy suitcases, and an attaché case.”

  “Have you counted noses?” Chambrun asked. He was sitting at his desk, the cat who’d swallowed the canary, lighting a cigarette as Miss Ruysdale brought him a cup of his beloved Turkish coffee.

  “What noses? What do you mean, counted noses?”

  “Do you know how many men you had wearing those bulky vests and attack helmets?”

  “Twenty on the north side, ten more on the west side,” Brand said.

  “I suggest that in the confusion they were augmented by at least two men, dressed exactly like them, who eventually left Fifteen without anyone questioning them. They were probably a little fatter than the others because they had four million dollars in money hidden under those bulletproof vests. Walked out, as I told you they would. You’ll find the vests and the attack helmets discarded in a broom closet somewhere.”

  “You knew it was going to happen and you let it happen right under our noses?” Brand said, his voice shaken with anger.

  “I wasn’t particularly interested in those two men,” Chambrun said. “To have tried to stop them would have cost us lives. I was only really concerned about Coriander and the money. The money had to be passed to someone who could, when the excitement is all over, carry it out in luggage. Carried out by one of Coriander’s outside contacts.”

  I found myself looking at Cleaves, the Coldstream Guardsman. God knows he had needed money.

  “I suppose you know who that outside contact is?” Brand said.

  “I’ll make a guess—a little later,” Chambrun said. He looked at Horween. “I find myself fascinated by your extraordinary red hair, Mr. Horween. As a child were you ever, by any chance, called ‘Carrot Top’?”

  Horween grinned. “My father’s pet name for me,” he said. “How did you know?”

  “I looked up the word ‘coriander’ in the dictionary,” Chambrun said. “‘A plant of the carrot family, with a strong-smelling seedlike fruit used in flavoring foods and in medications.’ Shall we stop playing games?”

  “Games?” Horween’s eyes had narrowed and his face suddenly looked marble-hard.

  “An expert at disguises,” Chambrun said, sipping at his coffee. “I don’t think you intended to run off with the money to some country from which you couldn’t be extradited. I think you meant to spend it here, in your own world, and to live happily ever after with the lady of your choice.”

  “I simply don’t know what you’re talking about,” Horween said.

  “Colonel Coriander—Carrot Top,” Chambrun said. “Interesting how we go back to childhood associations when we start to play charades.”

  “Are you suggesting,” Horween asked in a low voice, “that I am Coriander?”

  “I’m not suggesting it; I know it,” Chambrun said. “If I had been wrong, I would be dead at this moment, and so would the children and Miss Horn and you and God knows how many of Brand’s men.” He glanced at Brand. “There was no way out, my friend. You proved that to your own satisfaction. But there had to be a way out. Horween, a mast
er of disguise, becomes Fritz Schindler, a room service waiter, and disobeys our orders. He goes up with food and drink for Fifteen A. Why? Because he had to get up there to command the operation. You see, he had an alibi for when the kidnapping took place. He was with Mr. Cleaves at the United Nations. That seemed to prove he wasn’t the kidnapper. So now he must join his collaborators who are holding the children and Miss Horn. Fritz Schindler had access. Horween took his place and got where he had to be. The case of Horween is closed when we get Schindler’s bloodied clothes.”

  “But,” I said in a very small voice. “But I first talked to Coriander while Horween was still with Cleaves at the U.N.”

  “You talked to a man in a false face, with a fright wig and an empty sleeve. Ten different men could have assumed that outrageous disguise and they would have all seemed like one and the same man. The first Coriander you talked to was not Horween. The other times it was.”

  “I think I’ve had about enough of this nonsense,” Horween said. He started for the office door.

  “Not just yet, friend,” Brand said. He was blocking the way. “What made you sure Coriander was Horween, Chambrun?”

  “You have to believe what you know to be facts,” Chambrun said. “We knew that no one had gone up to Fifteen or left it except the room service waiters, Horween disguised as one of them, and Mark. No one else had come or gone. Fact. You very efficiently covered every possible avenue of escape. No way out. Fact. But there had to be a way out. So the only way was after a break-in by your men. Fact. So there wouldn’t be an explosion because Coriander was still on the fifteenth floor. So it was safe to go in. Some of the people in Coriander’s group would mingle with the attack squad. They’d know how your men would be equipped because that kind of business has been Horween’s profession. But Horween wouldn’t leave that way, because he wants to live openly and publicly in his world with a tidy fortune, even after he splits with his helpers, to provide all the luxuries of life. So, I reasoned, Coriander would be found—with a story to tell of how he, too, had been a hostage. He would walk away with us. Now he couldn’t walk out into the open unless he had an ironclad alibi for the kidnapping. So it had to be Horween. Fact. Enough fact, Mr. Brand?”

  “Not quite,” Brand said. “We have a murder that wasn’t a fake on our hands. We have an accomplice who was in this office when we gave Mark instructions before his third visit to Fifteen A. We have a lot of double talk about something Mrs. Cleaves had on her husband, and something Cleaves had on Buck Ames.”

  Chambrun smiled at him. “I would have to guess about the double talk,” he said. “Maybe the time has come for Mr. Cleaves to come clean with us. But as to the accomplice, I don’t have to guess. Jerry?”

  Jerry Dodd held out his hand. In it was a small transistor type walkie-talkie gadget. “While Mrs. Cleaves was getting her children, I took this out of her handbag,” he said.

  Connie! I couldn’t believe it. I looked at her where she was sitting with the children huddled close to her. I saw her snatch at the handbag on the table beside her and open it. The black glasses hid most of her expression except for her mouth, which had become a straight, hard slit.

  “Mrs. Cleaves also went into the dressing room at the time when someone had to have been in touch with Coriander,” Chambrun said.

  “Baby! Oh, my God,” Buck Ames said.

  What happened then was too fast and too startling for anyone to anticipate. Connie stood up and she took something out of her bag and tossed it to Horween. It was a very serviceable-looking Police Special. Horween covered us with it.

  “All right, love,” he said. “You wait for me in the outer office. Don’t move, any of you. I am a notoriously good shot with this kind of weapon, and at this distance I can make holes right between your eyes. I think to guarantee our safe departure I will take you, Miss Ruysdale, as a hostage and a shield. Everyone seems so fond of you. I’m sure Mr. Chambrun wouldn’t want you hurt. Step over in front of me, please, pausing on the way to relieve Mr. Brand of his gun.” It was Coriander’s mocking voice coming out of Horween’s mouth.

  “Stay where you are, Ruysdale,” Chambrun said. He got up from his desk and started to move toward Horween.

  “I warn you, Chambrun, one more step and the legendary host of the Beaumont will be a dead legend.”

  Chambrun kept walking, slowly, quite steadily toward Horween.

  “Don’t, Pierre!” Miss Ruysdale cried out.

  I tried to move and found I was frozen. Chambrun had a strange smile on his face. I saw Horween’s finger tighten on the trigger—and nothing but an empty click happened as he began to pull it.

  At the same instant Terrence Cleaves lunged at Horween from the side. I suspect Horween was a very tough fighter, and he was younger and physically stronger than Cleaves, but he was momentarily shocked by the failure of the gun to fire. Cleaves had him by the throat with his left hand, smashing at him with his right. They went down on the rug and I saw the gun rise and fall—twice. Cleaves had it and he was pounding at Horween’s skull with the butt. Brand and Jerry pulled Cleaves off an unconscious and bloody Horween.

  “You must be crazy, Chambrun,” Buck Ames said. “Except for the luck of the gun misfiring—”

  Jerry Dodd, still holding onto a charged-up Cleaves, grinned at the Buccaneer. “I took time to unload it when I was going through Mrs. Cleaves’s purse,” he said.

  Chambrun looked at Miss Ruysdale. “So I wasn’t as heroic as I tried to make myself look,” he said.

  And then Connie was back in the room, down on the floor beside Horween, cradling his bloody head in her lap, crooning over him.

  The rest came out in bits and pieces after the children had been taken away by Miss Horn and their grandfather, after Horween had been carried down to the Beaumont’s hospital, guarded by Jerry and a couple of Brand’s men, and after Connie had been taken away in handcuffs to God knows where.

  Lieutenant Hardy, the homicide man, appeared, sent for by Chambrun. It was Terrence Cleaves, his rigid control broken, who gave us answers, choking over the words from time to time.

  His world had fallen apart some four years ago when he found that his wife was involved in a passionate love affair with Horween—Horween, the glamorous adventurer, still working as an agent for the British government.

  “Really always an agent for himself,” Cleaves said. “Connie knew things about my work, very secret work for the government. I—I trusted her. She passed along things to Horween, and in the end Horween rigged a case against me. By then, not dreaming of what was going on, I had hired him as my executive assistant. Horween traded off information to a man named Lu-Feng, ostensibly head of a trade commission, actually a secret agent for the Red Chinese. It was made to look as if I had sold out. There were documents forged, tapes of conversations that could have double meanings. I was done for if I didn’t do what Lu-Feng and Horween told me to do. I went along with it, hoping to find a way out, a way to get them.”

  During that time he stumbled on the truth about Horween and his wife. He went a little crazy. He started chasing available women all over London. He tried to humiliate Connie by taking them home to their house. She wasn’t humiliated. She just laughed at him. There was nothing to the story that Cleaves had something on Buck Ames. But she told Buck that Cleaves had something, and Ames who, like most men, had something to hide, believed that Cleaves knew what it was.

  All the while Horween and Lu-Feng were putting the screws on Cleaves. Into the middle of this came Colin Andrews. He had wind of some kind of a sellout. The trail led to Cleaves, when the guilty person was actually Horween, Cleaves’s right-hand man.

  The deeper Andrews dug, the closer he was coming to the truth without knowing it.

  “A few more turns of the wheel and Horween’s goose might have been cooked,” Cleaves told us. “Horween and Connie were involved in this mad kidnapping scheme to raise enough money to live as they chose. I suspect they couldn’t get around Lu-Feng. They were going to h
ave to share with him. But there would be nothing for anybody if Andrews wasn’t stopped. Horween couldn’t do the job. He couldn’t leave the fifteenth floor. I think you will find that it was up to Lu-Feng.”

  “I’d better go have a talk with him,” Hardy said.

  “I advise delay,” Chambrun said. “I think Mr. Brand should tackle him first.”

  “Homicide isn’t my department,” Brand said.

  “But the ransom money is,” Chambrun said. “I think you’ll find it was delivered to Lu-Feng by the men who posed as your agents. They couldn’t risk running around in those vests stuffed with money and in those attack helmets. Someone in authority might give them orders, stop them. So I think you’ll find they delivered the money to Lu-Feng, discarded their costumes, and are probably having a drink in the Trapeze Bar, waiting for the excitement to die down. Mr. Lu will plan, I think, to stay on at the hotel for a few days, then check out with his luggage—containing the money.”

  “Let’s go get it now,”

  “One more thing, Mr. Cleaves,” Chambrun said. “You beat up your wife, held her for the good part of a day in your room. It’s not clear why.”

  Cleaves drew a deep breath. “She came to me to tell me that if I didn’t raise the ransom money she would expose my supposed treachery. She’s something of an actress, as you’ve seen. I almost believed it was out of concern for the children. But to expose me, certain forged documents, certain doctored tapes, were needed. I believed, as you did, that Horween was dead, killed by Coriander. That meant Connie had the faked evidence somewhere. I was desperate to get it.”

  Chambrun nodded slowly. Brand and Hardy took off to locate Mr. Lu-Feng.

  “I’d like to go to the children and Katherine Horn,” he said. “They’re all going to need me and I’ve got, somehow, to make them understand. I’ve got, somehow, to make up to Katherine for what she’s been through.”

  The sultry Miss Horn, I thought, meant more to him than a casual sex episode.

  Chambrun and Ruysdale and I were finally alone. I was still in a state of shock.