Time of Terror

by Hugh Pentecost

  “With a gun at his back?” I asked

  “If he thought his best chance lay that way,” Jerry said.

  “A kidnapping?” I suggested.

  “If that’s it we can expect some kind of demands from someone presently,” Jerry said.

  Betsy Ruysdale drew a deep, shuddering breath and then straightened up in her chair. Dear Miss Efficiency! “I can see the boss walking in that door sometime from now and demanding to know what the hell is the matter with us,” she said. “There is a hotel to be run. You and I are going to have to do it, Mark, while Jerry keeps searching.” She glanced at a calendar on her desk. “He has an appointment with George Mayberry at eleven o’clock. Meanwhile there is a whole schedule of events for the day, Mark. That’s your job.”

  I nodded. There was, I knew, a fashion show starting fifteen minutes from now. Also a convention of governors from the northern states, an all-day hassle. There was a benefit ball for the Cancer Fund in the evening, a big society-type wingding. In the early hours of tomorrow morning the lobby and the Trapeze Bar were to be turned over to a film company for shooting footage for some super-spectacular directed by Claude Duval, the famous French genius. This filming had been foisted on Chambrun by his board of directors and over his dead body, God forgive the phrase. It was my business to see that everything was properly prepared for these happenings, properly executed when they began.

  Yes, there was a hotel to run, and the best thing we could do for a missing Chambrun was to see that nothing interfered with his Swiss-watch perfection of performance.

  It is difficult to describe the atmosphere in the Beaumont that morning to someone who doesn’t understand the workings of the staff, what Chambrun calls his “family.” Outwardly the hotel went its cool, smooth way. Guests smiled at staff, unaware of any problem, and staff smiled at guests, hiding an anxiety that had spread in their ranks like a plague.

  The first item in the daily routine that was ruptured by Chambrun’s absence was the morning examination of registration cards. They were on Chambrun’s desk ready for his attention when he got to his first cigarette of the day along with his first cup of Turkish coffee. Guests of the Beaumont might have been a little disturbed by how much information the management had about them. When they registered, several people made a notation on the card before it reached Chambrun. Credit ratings were supplied by Mr. Atterbury, ranging from unlimited down through A, B, and C. The cost of a stay at the Beaumont was no laughing matter. Security supplied other information. A for an alcoholic, WC for a woman chaser, XX for a man double-crossing his wife, WXX for a woman double-crossing her husband, G for gay. After Chambrun had looked at the cards, you might find his initials, P.C., in a bottom corner, which meant that Chambrun had special information about the guest which wasn’t for general consumption.

  I looked at those cards, which lay neglected on Chambrun’s desk. Part of my job was to pay special attention to guests who rated it. The movie people were the most interesting. They had checked in the night before. They all had unlimited credit. Two items were on the fascinating side. Janet Parker, the girl star, had nothing but a credit okay after her name. Robert Randle, the glamorous male star, rated a G. What would his army of women fans think if they knew it? Hell, it, was probably no secret in the film world, where people were probably laughing up their sleeves at the rumors in the gossip columns that Bob Randle and Janet Parker were “like that.” Security had nothing on Clark Herman, the producer, except a B for bachelor. Claude Duval, the maestro, the French director, had even less, except a note from Jerry Dodd saying he wanted no interviews, no photographs, no special publicity. “A loner,” Jerry had written, “with a phobia about privacy.”

  There was only about eight other cards, all people who had histories as guests of the hotel. Most of the Beaumont’s guests are repeaters. Of course Chambrun’s initials appeared on none of the cards because he hadn’t seen them.

  I made a mental note of the fact that flowers should be sent to Janet Parker’s suite in addition to the usual fresh fruit and champagne that went to every guest when they registered. I went down to the lobby. There the climate of strain was obvious to an insider.

  Johnny Thacker, the day bell captain, was helping a newly registered guest to the elevators with his luggage. I recognized a late-arriving governor for the politico’s convention. Johnny had on his best smile for an important guest, but when he turned to me the smile vanished.

  “Anything?” he asked.

  I shook my head.

  “Jesus!” Johnny said, and went back to his governor.

  Mr. Atterbury, the credit manager, gave me an imperceptible signal from the front desk.

  “News?” he asked, when I joined him.

  “Nothing,” I said.

  Atterbury gave me a feeble smile. “Maybe no news is good news,” he said.

  “Let us pray,” I said.

  The governors were beginning to gather in a small ballroom off the lobby and I went there. At the door I ran into Ralph Crowder, their press representative and an old acquaintance.

  “We’d hoped Chambrun would be here as we begin,” he said. “He’s always had a little speech of welcome for the governors, and he does it so well.”

  “Unfortunately, Mr. Chambrun is involved with an emergency,” I said.

  “I didn’t know there were ever emergencies at the Beaumont,” Crowder said.

  I tried a smile. “A leaking faucet is an emergency to Mr. Chambrun,” I said. “That’s why the Beaumont is the Beaumont.”

  “That’s good,” Crowder said. “May I quote you when I explain his absence?”

  “When you explain his absence I’ll buy you a steak dinner, which costs about twenty-five bucks in this joint,” I said.

  That went over his head.

  “Anything out of order? Anything you need?” I asked.

  “Everything is perfection as usual,” Crowder said. “When Chambrun gets a new washer in his faucet tell him we’d still like to see him. Perhaps he’d drop in at the lunch break.”

  “I’ll make a note of it,” I said.

  I called my office on the second floor. My secretary had a message for me. “When you can. Shirley.” That was the message.

  Perhaps I should take time out to repeat something I have said before. About every four months I fall in love forever. It used to be every six months. I was in love forever on that morning when Chambrun failed to appear. Her name was Shirley. Shirley Who? That isn’t a question; it’s the way her syndicated gossip column is signed. “Shirley Who?” In the beginning, when she started writing the column, the idea was to hide the identity of this female Peeping Tom. But after about five years of lifting the lid on the juiciest scandals from coast to coast it became generally known that Shirley Who was really a strikingly beautiful blonde named Shirley Thomas. A Peeping Thomas, I called her.

  My in-love-forever situation of the moment was approaching the rocks the day I met Shirley. I don’t think her interest in me amounted to much more than that. I, Mark Haskell, public relations man for the Beaumont, might be a source of items for her column. I don’t think the fact that we wound up making love that first day I met her was any sort of a bribe on her part. She enjoyed sex with any sort of male man. She was something very special, I don’t mind saying.

  I think I should deliver a short lecture at this point. Attitudes toward sex in this day and age bear no resemblance to the attitudes of my father and mother or yours. Romance is almost a forgotten ingredient. Sex is an activity, a sport. Sex magazines are all over the newsstands, revealing all there is to reveal to both men and women. Nice girls out of finishing schools talk about it in the four-letter words of the barnyard. Men have always played the field. Now women play the field without any damage to their reputations or standing.

  I was glad of that change of attitude that first evening with Shirley. She came to my apartment on the second floor of the Beaumont. I didn’t have to show her any etchings. We both knew what we wanted a
nd why she was there.

  I remember it was a Friday night because of what followed. About midnight, after a marvelous passage together, she kissed my cheek and sighed and said she had to go home.

  “I need to get some rest and freshen up for tomorrow,” she said. “I’m spending the weekend on Tex Holloway’s yacht. He’s the Texas oil man, you know.”

  I didn’t know, and I was surprised to feel a sharp stab of jealousy. I had no right to, but I felt it.

  “How is sex on a yacht?” I asked her.

  She gave me a dazzling smile. “Rather unusual,” she said, “specially if the seas are running high. Added motion you wouldn’t believe.”

  So I lay there in bed watching her dress. I felt a kind of schoolboyish anger when she kissed me on the forehead and left. She had no right to walk out on me. But of course she had every right.

  The next morning, a few minutes before nine and my daily appointment with Chambrun, my phone rang as I was coming out of the shower. It was Shirley.

  “Not on the oil man’s yacht yet?” I asked, acid dripping.

  “I’m not going, Mark.”

  “Oh?”

  “I have the feeling it matters to you,” she said. “If it does, I discover I don’t want that.”

  I could have told her not to be a damn fool and that would have been that, but I felt an unexpected surge of relief.

  “That’s the greatest speech since the Gettysburg Address,” I said.

  “Lunch?” she asked, and I thought she sounded relieved.

  “Lunch, dinner and breakfast,” I said. And then I added what may have been a fatal word. “Forever,” I said.

  “You’re a love, Mark. One o’clock?”

  That’s how it began. And now, after three months, it had become apparent to me that Shirley was not so cynical about romance as she had made me believe. This could be forever, I told myself.

  So that fills you in on Shirley Who? Her message simply meant she wanted me to call. Much as I loved her—at the moment—it was not an ideal time.

  She sounded bright and businesslike, probably working on her column.

  “How are you this morning, darling?” she asked.

  “A little harried,” I said. “Lots of goings-on.” Even Shirley couldn’t be told about Chambrun. I would trust her with my life but not with a secret.

  “Claude Duval is starting his filming there tonight, isn’t he?” she asked.

  “They’re taking shots at the Cancer Fund Ball,” I said, “and then, when the bars are legally closed, the actors will go to work with scenes shot in the lobby and the Trapeze Bar.”

  “I’ll be at the ball, of course,” she said. “But I wondered if, when Duval goes to work, you could hide me away in the woodwork somewhere. I’d like to see him work.”

  I laughed. “The price will be high,” I said.

  “Of course, luv, and I promise to pay and pay and pay.”

  “Breakfast?” I asked.

  “Naturally,” she said.

  The mills of the gods were grinding, but I didn’t know it at the time.

  Chambrun was nearly an hour and a half missing, and George Mayberry was fuming up in Ruysdale’s office. Chambrun was not late for an appointment with the chairman of the board.

  I have a simple four-letter Anglo-Saxon word to describe George Mayberry which I can’t use here. He is a big man—physically. He has a loud voice and he scowls a lot, self-importantly. He dresses expensively but conservatively. He demands and expects instant service at the snap of his heavy fingers. He meant to look and sound formidable, but I had the feeling that if you stuck a pin in him he would deflate like a pricked balloon, dissolve like the Wicked Witch of the East in The Wizard of Oz.

  Mayberry was a sort of one-man oversight committee for the board of directors. It is ironic, because he knows as much about the management of a hotel as I do about the construction of a nuclear submarine. I am of the opinion that wiser heads on the board had given this big windbag the job to get rid of him, convinced that Chambrun could make chopped liver out of him.

  Unfortunately, that morning Chambrun wasn’t there to do the job. Mayberry was steaming at Ruysdale. I suppose he thought he was confronting a “helpless woman,” the perfect target for his bullying tactics. He didn’t know he had a tiger by the tail.

  “He’s late for an appointment with me,” Mayberry was thundering as I walked into Ruysdale’s office.

  “I regret to say he didn’t show up at all for an earlier appointment,” Ruysdale told him.

  “Where is he?”

  “I’m afraid I don’t know, Mr. Mayberry.”

  “Don’t know! Aren’t you his secretary! Doesn’t he keep you informed as to where he is on a business day?”

  “Ordinarily.”

  “So what the hell is this?”

  “An unusual circumstance,” Ruysdale said quietly.

  The phone on her desk rang and she picked it up, moving very quickly. “Miss Ruysdale speaking.” Then: “Yes, Jerry. … Oh, my God! … Yes, of course you must. … I’ll tell Mark.”

  She looked at me as she put down the phone, the color drained from her face. I didn’t want to hear what she had to say. Bad news about Chambrun, I was certain.

  “There is a problem in Suite Twenty-one A,” she said.

  “What kind of problem?” Mayberry wanted to know.

  “Jerry Dodd thinks it’s a homicide.”

  “Who is Jerry Dodd?”

  The oversight chairman didn’t even know the name of the hotel’s security officer. Ruysdale didn’t answer his question.

  “Laura Kauffman,” she said. “Mrs. James Kauffman. Big wheel in the social world. The former Baroness von Holtzmann: Chairperson of the committee that’s running the Cancer Fund Ball tonight.”

  “My God,” Mayberry said. “I know Laura Kauffman well!”

  “Jerry has called Homicide,” Ruysdale said. “You’d better get up there, Mark. We’ve got to keep the press away in case the facts have leaked, at least until—”

  Until, or if, Chambrun put in an appearance.

  I headed for the door.

  “I’ll take charge here,” I heard Mayberry say.

  I didn’t pay any attention to him.

  TWO

  ANYTHING JERRY DODD DID he did thoroughly. His search for Chambrun was slow and methodical, but none of the ground would have to be covered again. Part of the process begun that morning was sending teams of two men to every guest room in the hotel. They announced themselves as maintenance men if the guest was in. Some kind of electrical emergency that couldn’t wait. The possibility of a short circuit that might in turn start a fire. Irritated or not the guests let the “maintenance men” look. Where no one answered a doorbell ring the searchers used a passkey to get in. That was how Laura Kaufman was found in Suite Twenty-one A. No answer to the doorbell and the searchers had let themselves in.

  When I arrived on the twenty-first floor I found one of Jerry’s men standing outside the door, a man named Sims.

  “I was told to let you in, Mr. Haskell,” Sims said. He had a key.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “I hope you’ve got your stomach screwed in tight,” Sims said. “It’s not pretty.”

  Sims opened the door and I went in. Twenty-one A is a typical small suite: a foyer, a living room, a bedroom, bath, and kitchenette. Suites in the Beaumont are decorated in different styles, from Louis the Fourteenth to frightening modern. Twenty-one A is early American, with a Grant Wood and a Benton decorating the paneled walls.

  Jerry Dodd turned from the windows as I came in. He nodded toward the bedroom door. “Keeping it shut till Hardy gets here,” he said. “Thank God I was able to get to him.”

  Lieutenant Hardy of Homicide is an old friend who has been involved with Chambrun during other violences in the past. He is a big blond man who looks more like a not quite bright Notre Dame fullback than a very shrewd detective.

  “What happened?” I asked.

&nbs
p; “A bloody horror,” Jerry said. A nerve twitched high up on his cheek. “Maybe twenty stab wounds. Her breasts, her stomach, other unmentionable areas. My guess is that the Medical Examiner will tell us it was a rape and a murder.”

  “My God!”

  “What do you know about Laura Kauffman, Mark?”

  “Nothing, really,” I said. “Ruysdale just said she is—was—a big wheel in the social whirl. Used to be the Baroness something-or-other. She was chairman of the Cancer Fund Ball tonight.”

  “Your girl friend,” Jerry said. “She should have a rundown on her. See what you can dig up. Hardy’s got to have some place to start.”

  As I was starting for the phone the outside door opened and Sims stuck his head in.

  “A Mr. Mayberry insists on seeing you, Jerry. He says he’s in charge.”

  Mayberry didn’t wait for an answer. He shoved Sims aside and came barging into the sitting room.

  “Now what’s going on here, Dodd?” he asked.

  Jerry, who was half Mayberry’s size, gave the board chairman a fishy look. “Out!” he said.

  “Now just who the hell do you think you are?” Mayberry shouted.

  “Oh, I know who I am,” Jerry said. “Just who the hell do you think you are?”

  Mayberry looked close to apoplexy. “Tell him!” he said to me.

  “Mr. Mayberry is chairman of the board of directors of the owners’ syndicate,” I said.

  “Well, bully for him,” Jerry said. “The message is still ‘out.’”

  “I’m a good friend of Mrs. Kauffman’s,” Mayberry said. “I demand to know—”

  “Out!” Jerry said. It was the whisper of a snake about to strike.

  “I’ll have your hide for this, Dodd!” Mayberry thundered.

  “Sims!” Jerry said.

  Sims had been pushed aside by Mayberry, but that was because he wasn’t expecting anything. He made a swift move up behind the big man, caught his arm and twisted it sharply behind his back. Mayberry made a sound that was almost a scream.

  “Do what the man says,” Sims said, sounding very polite.

  Mayberry was forced out of the room and into the hall, shouting that he would fire everybody on the staff if necessary. The closed door shut the noise of him out of the soundproof suite.