“I once neglected to say good morning to Toto,” Miss Ruysdale said. “He had bitten my finger the last time I spoke to him.” She looked at me. “The old gal is much more likely to be conned by a young and attractive male. I suggest Mark would be ideal.”
“Go talk to the old girl and explain we’re trying to protect her, Mark,” Chambrun said. “Two-thirty in the morning!”
I took Peter down the hall to my place. I had some seconal tablets in my bathroom and I gave him a couple to help him sleep. Then I headed for the upper reaches.
At almost any other time I would have been glad of the chance to get into Penthouse L. I had heard rumors about its extraordinary disarray. Tonight I was dead on my feet.
The elevator opened right into the outside foyer of Penthouse L. As I stepped out I found myself facing one of Hardy’s men whom I knew from the past, a detective named Penzner. He grinned at me.
“A diplomatic messenger?” he asked. He took his hand off the butt of the gun he was wearing in a holster.
“Never send a boy to do a man’s work, I always say,” I said. “But the boss is busy.”
“The old lady is a volcano about to erupt,” Penzner said. “She won’t listen to my explanations. Good luck.”
I rang the doorbell, and the door was instantly opened by Mrs. Haven herself, wearing an incredible lace-bedecked housecoat that looked like something children had gotten together for a masquerade. Her mouth was open, ready to deliver a blast at Chambrun. Instead, she spoke in a reasonable tone for her.
“Oh, it’s you, Haskell. Come in.” She had the booming voice of a nineteenth-century character actress playing the Queen Mother in Hamlet. She didn’t wait for me. She just set sail for the interior.
I had never seen anything like the room I found myself in. It looked like a glorified junk shop. There was twice as much furniture as it could properly hold, most of it Victorian. Heavy red velvet curtains blotted out the windows. Bookcases overflowed into stacks and piles of volumes on the floor. Sunday papers from the last six months were scattered about. The disorder was colossal, and yet I noticed there wasn’t a speck of dust in the place. What was disorder to me was obviously order to Mrs. Haven. I had a feeling that if I asked for it she could probably put her fingers on the editorial page from the Times of last winter.
“Will you have some tea, Haskell?”
“No, thank you, ma’am. I just came up because—”
“I insist,” she said. She sailed out and left me alone—I thought.
I looked around, aware that the place was stiflingly hot, and that there was the sweet, sickening odor of some kind of incense burning. The walls, I saw, were a solid mass of photographs, most of them personally autographed to “Constance Haven” with affectionate salutes. The old lady had really known some people in her day. There were three presidents—Teddy Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, and Warren G. Harding. There was an enormous blown-up portrait of Theda Bara, the old silent-movie vamp. There were famous actors and actresses, writers, painters, figures in high society of another time. There was a picture of a quite beautiful and young Mrs. Haven riding on the box of a coach and four, driven by an elegant gentleman in a gray topper. The writing had faded, but the driver was evidently an early Vanderbilt.
I moved around, looking for faces I knew. I came on one without an inscription. It was a young, solid-looking man, with a pleasant, smiling face. I was certain I’d seen him some place before, but I couldn’t recall who he was or where I’d seen him. I was trying to dredge it up when Mrs. Haven trumpeted at me.
“Your tea, Haskell.”
The tea was in a delicate little china cup. It tasted perfumed. I sat down in a chair I was sure would collapse but it didn’t. I waved at the pictures.
“You’ve had a very rich life in terms of friends, Mrs. Haven,” I said.
“Now tell me what all this police nonsense is about,” she said, ignoring my comment.
She knew about the murder of Li Sung, of course. She’d been questioned by Hardy, and Wexler, and Larch, and God knows who else.
“We don’t know what the dead man was doing on the roof, Mrs. Haven,” I said, trying to sip the tea without making a face. “You are aware that there’s a threat of violence in the hotel surrounding General Chang.”
“If a man lives by violence, he can expect to die violently,” Mrs. Haven said, as if she was quoting from some childhood maxim.
“We want to prevent it,” I said. “As for the men on the roof, the police didn’t get here until after dark. They don’t want the place messed up until they can give it a thorough examination by daylight.”
“And that idiot outside my front door?”
“They don’t want anyone getting to you, Mrs. Haven, who shouldn’t. They don’t want anyone getting out on the roof from the foyer.”
“I sent a message to Chambrun,” she said, “but he was evidently too pigeon-livered to come up here himself. I don’t blame you, Haskell, but Chambrun is going to hear from the powers that be. When I ask him for something, I expect the courtesy of personal attention.”
“He sent his abject apology to you, Mrs. Haven,” I said. So I was a diplomat. “He is involved with the efforts to prevent a violence. And he has no authority to order these policemen away from the roof, or from outside your door.”
“Those miserable creatures on the roof are probably waiting for a chance to peep at me when I disrobe for the night!”
I thought that back in the days when she’d ridden on a coach and four with a Vanderbilt she would probably have been right.
“There have been quite a few Peeping Toms in my life,” she said.
“I can well believe that, Mrs. Haven,” I said.
She smiled at me and I guessed that before her face had withered the smile had been pretty devastating. “It’s nice to know that chivalry is not entirely dead, Haskell.” She stood up. I was about to be dismissed. “Since nothing can be done about the men, I suppose I am helpless. Nonetheless, I want to talk to Chambrun as early as possible in the morning—if he can disengage himself from that fancy secretary of his. I will not have these men camping out here forever. I used to know the Mayor when he was a small boy and I will get him here tomorrow to put an end to this if I have to.”
“I’ll tell Mr. Chambrun,” I said.
I started for the door.
“I see you didn’t enjoy the tea, Haskell. You should have asked for whiskey.”
I was sorry, in a way, to leave her. I imagined she would be a fascinating person to talk to about the past when she wasn’t worried about Peeping Toms. Maybe part of the trouble was she knew she had no reason to worry any more.
I was too tired to get any further than my room. I tiptoed through to the bedroom, not wanting to wake Peter, who was sound asleep on the bed-sofa. Evidently the seconal had worked. I called Miss Ruysdale on my bedside phone and told her Mrs. Haven would at least hold her fire till morning.
“She wants to see Chambrun then,” I said, “if—and I quote—‘he can—disengage himself from that fancy secretary of his.’ ”
“Dirty old woman,” Miss Ruysdale said. “Incidentally, if you care, there is no news.”
“Goodnight, Ruysdale.”
I undressed and crawled, naked, under a sheet. I turned off the bed lamp, and it could only have been seconds before I went to sleep. It wasn’t a restful sleep. It was full of dreams—dreams about Laura in the nightmare clutches of a grinning Chang; dreams of a young Constance Haven without any clothes on, surrounded by an army of leering men. Suddenly I was sitting bolt upright in bed, wide-awake.
I knew who the man was in the picture that had bothered me. I had seen another picture of him when he was older than the version on Mrs. Haven’s wall.
He was Walter Drury, Neil Drury’s father.
CHAPTER 4
I’D SEEN THE SENIOR Drury’s picture in the clippings Tolliver had in his office. I guessed the one on Mrs. Haven’s wall had been taken twenty years earlier than the cl
ipping, which dated back only some five years to the time of the Drury family’s arrival in Buenos Aires. But the pose was the same, the smile the same. Have you noticed how often men in public life will adopt the same pose when they’re confronted by photographers? I scrambled out of bed, very wide-awake now, and got into some clothes. I was tempted to wake Peter, but he was so deep in sleep that he didn’t even stir as I flurried about.
Down the hall in Chambrun’s outer office Miss Ruysdale was just putting the cover on her typewriter. Three-thirty in the morning is a late quitting time, and I thought I saw the nearest thing to a slightly hostile look in her eyes as I barged in.
“You said you’d prepared a set of clippings for me on the Drury business,” I said. “I never saw them because I’d already seen Tolliver’s set and I had Peter in tow.”
“I have them here,” Miss Ruysdale said. She handed me a manila folder from the wire basket on her desk. There it was, right on the top—a duplicate of the picture I’d seen in Tolliver’s office. It showed Drury, his wife and daughter, on their arrival in South America.
My ringer shook a little as I pointed to the ambassador’s picture. “There’s a photograph of this man hanging on the wall of Mrs. Haven’s living room.” I swallowed hard. “It was taken a number of years before this one, but it’s the same guy.” I told her how I’d seen it, hadn’t been able to place it, and waked up out of a sound sleep with the answer ready.
“Mr. Chambrun promised he’d catch himself a nap, but I guess I’d better call him,” she said.
There’s a small room opening off Chambrun’s office where he has a cot which he rarely uses. He was lying there on his back, but with his eyes open when Miss Ruysdale and I went in. He listened, then sat up and tightened his tie, took his coat off the back of a chair and put it on.
“Let’s you and I go have a look at it,” he said.
“Shall I tell her you’re coming?” Ruysdale asked. “She’s probably bedded down by now.”
“The odds are about eight to five that she’s expecting us,” Chambrun said.
“How come?”
“She saw you looking at the photograph, didn’t she, Mark?”
We took the long trip to the roof in an elevator now on self-service. Detective Penzner looked surprised to see us.
“Anyone come or go since Haskell was here a while ago?” Chambrun asked.
“One of the boys on the roof went down to get some coffee. Came back,” Penzner said.
“No one for Mrs. Haven?”
“No, sir.”
Chambrun rang the doorbell. Mrs. Haven couldn’t have been in bed. She was still wearing that absurd housecoat as she opened the door.
“Well, Pierre,” she said, “you do choose the oddest times.”
“I’m sorry, Constance,” he said.
I stared at them. The exchange of first names was a complete surprise and told a story I hadn’t dreamed of. All her screaming at and about him, all his shuddering at the prospect of having to see her, was a fraud. These two, at a rock-bottom level I hadn’t seen before, had a relationship that was at least on the warm side.
“Haskell conveyed your apology,” Mrs. Haven said. “It wasn’t necessary for you to come tonight.”
“I think you know I haven’t come to apologize,” Chambrun said.
“For whatever reason, come in,” she said. “Both of you.”
We walked into the living room. There was only one change. My tea cup had gone from the coffee table and a bottle of bonded bourbon had taken its place. There was a half-empty shot glass beside it.
“You will help me ease my conscience,” Mrs. Haven said. “I don’t normally drink alone. You care for ice, gentlemen, or will you take it neat?”
“Neat will be fine,” Chambrun said.
The old lady swept out of the room. I went over to the wall and pointed to Walter Drury’s photograph. Mrs. Haven came back with two glasses while we were looking at it.
“If I had been young enough, I’d have twisted that young man around my little finger,” she said.
“You know who he is?”
She laughed. “I don’t have pictures of strangers on my wall, Pierre. Of course I know who he is. Walter Drury.”
“I meant do you know who he is in relation to what’s been going on in this hotel for the last day and a half?” Chambrun said.
“Of course I do. He was the father of a man you’re looking for, Neil Drury.”
“Well, at least we don’t have to play the game of tomato surprise,” Chambrun said. He didn’t seem to be in a hurry. I guess he knew his woman. She poured us each a three-ounce slug of bourbon, refilled her own glass, and sat down.
“Well, get on with it, Pierre,” she said.
“How well do you know Neil Drury,” Chambrun said.
“Not well at all,” Mrs. Haven said. “When he was a very small boy—three, four years old—I visited the Drurys for a week at their place in the Berkshires. He was like any little boy; in and out; not in one’s hair, if you know what I mean; nice-mannered.”
“That would be more than thirty years ago, Constance. How well did you get to know him between then and now?”
“Not at all, really,” the old lady said. “At a debutante party when he was in college. I was not coming out, you understand. I was a chaperone. Some years later I was invited to an open-house at The Players—actors’ club, you know. It was founded by Edwin Booth back in—”
“I know about The Players, Constance,” Chambrun said, pressing just a little.
“Well, I met Neil there, quite by accident, on that open-house evening. We reminded each other that we knew each other. I inquired into the state of health of his parents, particularly my dear old friend Walter, and that was that.”
“And the next time you saw him?
“I don’t think I have ever seen him since that night.”
“You ‘don’t think’?”
She took a generous swallow of her whiskey neat. “My dear Pierre, let us not quibble. I read the papers. I hear a great deal of gossip from your blabber-mouthed staff. If you knew the dirt I get on people from the maids and the housekeeper, you’d be shocked I know that Neil has had his face changed by some sort of operation. So I can only say what is true, Pierre, I ‘don’t think’ I have seen him since that night some years ago at The Players. If he’s in the hotel, if he’s been here for the last few days or weeks, I haven’t been aware of it. But of course, with a changed face, how can I be certain. Therefore I tell you I ‘don’t think’ I’ve seen him.”
“You’re telling me that he’s not been in touch with you, Constance?”
“You didn’t ask me if he’d been in touch with me.”
“My dear Constance, I am a very tired man. I am a man enmeshed in very severe tensions. I am trying to prevent a man or men from being murdered. I don’t want to play parlor games with you, or be forced to make certain that the questions I ask you are phrased exactly to your liking. May I start over?”
“Be my guest, Pierre,” the old lady said. She made it sound light, but her faded blue eyes looked deeply troubled. She sipped her whiskey and then dabbed at her rouged lips with a lace-edged handkerchief.
Chambrun looked very directly at her. “Is Neil Drury here in your apartment, Constance?”
“Of course not,” she said, promptly. “I told you that to my knowledge I haven’t seen him for some years. And there are no strange men hiding away here either, Pierre, more’s the pity.” She tried to make it sound gay.
“Fine. I believe you,” Chambrun said. “But forgive me if I stop beating around the bush. Is Laura Malone here?”
The old lady put her empty shot glass down hard on the table. “Damn you, Pierre!” she said.
“Will you tell her it’s very necessary for me to talk to her now, at once,” Chambrun said.
“Before I do, Pierre, may I ask you a question or two?”
I was on my feet. Laura was here!
Chambrun sighed. “Quick
questions, Constance.”
“Is there any legal reason why Laura shouldn’t be here in my apartment?” Mrs. Haven asked.
“None that I know of,” Chambrun said in a tired voice.
“Is she wanted by the police? Is there a warrant out for her?”
“No.”
“She is in no way connected with the murder that took place on my roof. She was actually Wexler’s man, on her way here, when it happened.”
“I believe she was.”
“Then what do you want to see her for?”
“I believe you and she are helping Neil Drury to get himself killed,” Chambrun said. “And if you are helping him you are helping to plan the assassination of General Chang, which is a criminal offense, whether Neil Drury pulls it off or not.”
“Thanks for trying, Mrs. Haven,” Laura’s voice said from behind me.
I spun around and saw her standing in the doorway. She stood very straight, her head high. I saw that her hands were clenched in two fists at her side.
“I’m sorry, my dear,” Mrs. Haven said. “I cannot lie to Pierre. I can evade him, but I cannot lie to him.”
“I understand, Mrs. Haven,” Laura said in that low, husky voice.
“Do you know what you’ve put us through?” I said, my anger showing.
“Do be quiet, Haskell,” Mrs. Haven said. I heard the clink of the whiskey bottle against the rim of her glass.
Chambrun’s face had that rock-hard look to it I knew so well. “Where is Neil Drury?” he asked, dangerously quiet.
“I’m sorry,” Laura said.
He turned his head slightly. “Where is he, Constance?”
“I don’t have the faintest idea, Pierre. I have asked not to be told anything I couldn’t repeat to you.”
“But you know that he’s close by somewhere and that he’s planning to kill a man?”
“Everybody knows that, Pierre,” Mrs. Haven said. “You know it, the government knows it, General Chang knows it, even the newspapers know it. Is there something sinister about my knowing it?”
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