About four in the morning Hardy turned up again—slow and solid Hardy.
"We've picked up a lot of fingerprints in the suite," he said. "The girl's must be among them, along with Garber's and Marcel's. If the girl's prints match something that we or the FBI have on file, fine. If not—not."
"Not, I imagine," Chambrun said.
"Marcel's story checks and double-checks," Hardy said.
"Garber—or at least someone in 14B—ordered the dinner. The veal was special—with a special wine sauce. The girl who took the order remembers that Garber was most painstaking about it, including a wish for some flowers for the table. 'I am entertaining a lady/ he told the order girl. He then asked, politely, if he could have Marcel to serve him. 'He knows my ways,' he told the girl.
"Promptly at eight Marcel delivered the dinner. Ten minutes later he reappeared in the kitchen with the word that Garber wanted the dinner held—kept warm, if possible—for half an hour. Later Marcel did call 14B, just as he said. The girl was at his elbow when he made the call. No answer. Just as he said, Garber had called in the interim and asked for a bottle of Saint Cristobel, 1957."
Chambrun's eyes opened. "Garber called?"
Hardy checked his notebook. "14B called—a man. Who else?"
"The killer who was trying to frame me," Chambrun said. "That's who else."
"At any rate, the girl located Marcel, who was puttering around the kitchen worrying about the dinner, and had him take up the wine. He came back in a sweat. Another half hour at least. The chef would have to prepare whole new servings. No answer when he called in half an hour. Something, he thought, might be wrong with the phone, so he went upstairs. That's when he heard the singing and piano playing. He came back down and told the room service girl about it.
"It was now getting late. Marcel was unhappy; he'd collected his tip, so he felt he had to wait. Eventually he went back upstairs. That's when he went to Mrs. Kniffin and explained his problem. In the end he persuaded her to open the door—and they found Garber dead and the girl gone."
I thought for a moment that Chambrun had gone to sleep while Hardy was talking, but he lifted his heavy lids to look at the lieutenant. "Is Marcel still here?"
"I asked him to stick around," Hardy said. "I've got an artist
on the way from headquarters to see if Marcel can help him sketch a likeness of the girl. That girl is about our best bet."
"If she's a regular hooker, the people in the Trapeze Bar and the Blue Lagoon Room will recognize her," I said.
"Could be," Chambrun said. "I'd like to watch the picture process. Can it be done up here?"
Hardy shrugged. "Why not?" He hauled himself to his feet. "I have to check in at headquarters. Victim a diplomat. We'll be up to our necks in State Department characters."
I don't know if you've ever seen one of these Police Department experts work up a portrait likeness of someone simply from the description of an eyewitness. This one talked to Marcel, fooling away at a sketching pad as he asked the old man questions. Small eyes? Wide eyes? Set close together or far apart? Eyebrows thin or thick? Hair worn long, short, loose, or close to the head? Mouth wide and generous or tight and thin? Ears flat or protruding, small or large?
Marcel, obviously near exhaustion and suffering some pain from his arthritis, was nevertheless eager to help. The police artist sat in a chair near the office door, with Marcel watching over his shoulder. I was circulating, taking a look every minute or two at what the artist was coming up with: a dark girl with hair worn short and shaped to her head, wide come-hither eyes, a smiling mouth. Marcel appeared satisfied with the growing likeness.
"It is truly astonishing how you do this, monsieur," he told the artist.
The girl on the drawing pad would certainly have been attractive enough to interest a man like Erich Garber.
What happened then was so sudden, so unexpected, so terrifying that I find it impossible to describe it adequately, except to say that in the crisis I froze. I was still wandering and was at the opposite end of the office from the door. Marcel, near the door, was bending over the chair where the police artist worked. Chambrun, his eyes closed, was slumped in his desk chair.
The office door opened. When I say it opened, I'm not being precise. It burst open. An unbelievable figure stood there. He had some kind of stocking mask pulled over his face, and he was holding a gun in his right hand. He aimed it directly at Chambrun—and fired.
I saw Chambrun topple out of his chair. This monster took another step into the room to fire again.
As I've said, I froze. I couldn't move. But Marcel moved. He let out a great shout and stumbled toward the masked man, clawing at him with his crippled hands. They wrestled for an instant, and then the gun went off again.
Marcel seemed to bounce, but he clung to the masked man. Now the police artist was struggling out of his chair, and I saw Chambrun, on his hands and knees, opening a desk drawer where I knew he kept a gun.
Then the masked man wrenched himself free of Marcel, turned, and ran out of the office. Marcel dropped to his knees, then toppled over onto his side. The police artist was off after the would-be assassin, and Chambrun and I reached Marcel at the same moment. The old man was clutching at his stomach and blood trickled through his fingers.
I didn't have to be told to call Dr. Partridge, our house physician. Chambrun knelt beside the old man, talking gently to him in French. I came back from the phone. Dr. Partridge was on his way.
"I thought he got you," I said to Chambrun.
"You have to be damned good or damned lucky to hit someone with a handgun at thirty feet," Chambrun said. "Except on television."
"But who in God's name—"
Chambrun turned his head, his face grim. "Someone who believes I killed Erich Garber," he said. "As good a guess as any. Get Jerry on the job, and call Hardy and have him check Garber's staff at the UN." His eyes darkened. "This old boy is pretty badly hurt."
"He saved your life," I said.
"I owe him," Chambrun said. "Check his employment card. If he has family I'm afraid they should be notified."
The masked man had made good his escape. He'd raced down from the second floor by the stairway and out onto the street before the police artist could get close enough to stop him. Dr. Partridge, looking grave, had moved Marcel to the hotel's small hospital. I had checked Marcel's employment card and found a home number for him. A sleepy and quickly frightened woman answered the phone. She turned out to be Marcel's granddaughter, and she said she would leave at once. I told her to come directly to Chambrun's office.
Marie Durant was an attractive young girl, small, slim, with long, beautiful, quite natural red hair. She was deeply concerned for her grandfather. Dr. Partridge already had the old man on the operating table, so he couldn't be seen.
"I have to warn you, Miss Durant," Chambrun said, "that the signs are not hopeful." He told her how it had happened and how deeply in debt he felt to Marcel. "It took great courage," he said. "More than that, it was the instinctive reaction of a brave man."
Marie lowered her head and wept quietly. Chambrun walked over to the sideboard and poured some brandy into a glass. He carried it back, balanced in the palm of his hand.
"It will do you good, Miss Durant, to drink this," he said.
She took it from him, gratefully. She drank it and put the glass down on the table beside her. Then Chambrun did a peculiar thing. He took the handkerchief out of his breast pocket and used it to pick up the glass and carry it back to his desk.
"I am sorry to play such a trick on you, Miss Durant," he said in a flat voice. "Your fingerprints are on that brandy glass. You and I know they will match the fingerprints the police have found in Erich Garber's apartment. Shall we talk together, without the police, before we decide what is to be done?"
I thought he was off his rocker. This girl looked no more like the portrait the police artist had drawn than I did.
"Your father was Marcel's son, was he not?" Chambrun
asked, quite gently.
She nodded.
"Your father was killed by Garber?" Chambrun asked.
Now I knew he was off his rocker. The days of the Resistance were thirty years ago. This girl couldn't be a day over twenty-one or twenty-two.
The girl had turned a deathly white. "Erich Garber was with the Gestapo in Paris in the days of the occupation," she said. "My father, I am told, was with the Resistance. Some of his friends were killed and—and marked with the X. And then—then the girl with whom my father was in love was abducted, turned over to the Gestapo swine for their pleasure, and eventually killed. My father swore he would track down the man responsible if it took his whole life.
"Five years after the war he had not succeeded. He met and married my mother. He had given up his plan for revenge, they tell me. I was born in 1952. My father had a job as a salesman for a pharmaceutical firm. He had to take a trip to Rome, and on that trip, on the train, he came face to face with Erich Garber.
"We never knew exactly what happened. My father fell—or was thrown—from the train. When they found him he was at death's door, and he muttered the name 'Garber' to the people who found him. It meant nothing to them or to the authorities, but my mother knew what it meant—and my grandfather.
"I was one year old, so it meant nothing to me. My mother died that same year. Marcel decided to come to America, and he brought me with him. I have been raised here, Mr. Chambrun, had my schooling here. I was like any other American girl, except for one thing. Every day of my life my grandfather reminded me of my father and how he had died, reminded me that someday we would find Erich Garber, someday we would even the score. And I—well, it was like a religion, Mr. Chambrun. I came to believe in it."
She drew a long shuddering breath. "Then, about a month ago, he came home in a state of great excitement. Erich Gar-ber had a suite here at the Beaumont, the very place where he, my grandfather, worked."
"Then the planning began," Chambrun murmured.
"Yes. You see, my grandfather isn't a maniac, Mr. Chambrun. He wanted to square accounts for my father, but he also wanted to go on living. He was going to commit a crime, but he meant to get away with it. Circumstances helped him. Garber entertained a good deal in his suite, and my grandfather ingratiated himself with this villain as a room service waiter. He learned a great deal about him, among other things that Garber was attracted to young girls." She shuddered. "Grandfather developed his plan. One thing was essential. He had to be sure that Garber would be in his suite when the plan was put into action."
"And that's where you came in?"
She nodded. "I spent a couple of evenings in the Trapeze Bar and just as my grandfather knew it would happen, Garber picked me up. He invited me to have dinner with him last night in his suite and so—and so there it was."
"And the plan was to frame me for the crime," Chambrun said. His eyes had a cold light in them.
"Yes and no. Don't you know, Mr. Chambrun, that you are a great hero to my grandfather? From the old days of the Resistance? To him you are a knight in shining armor."
"But he was prepared to pin a murder on me!"
The girl's eyes widened. "Who on earth would really believe you had done it, Mr. Chambrun? It would merely blur the trail, but no one would believe you guilty. If, finally, you were thought guilty, I assure you my grandfather would have stepped forward."
The red button on Chambrun's phone blinked, and he answered, listened, then put the phone down. "Your grandfather is conscious, Miss Durant. It may be for only a very short time. Unfortunately, he's not going to make it." He glanced at me. "Take Miss Durant down to the hospital, Mark."
The girl stood up. "Am I under arrest, Mr. Chambrun?"
"I am not the police," he said.
I rejoined Chambrun after I'd left Marie Durant sitting by Marcel's bedside, clinging to one of his gnarled hands. The old man seemed curiously peaceful.
Chambrun was sipping coffee. He looked very tired.
"How on earth did you guess she was the girl in Garber's suite?" I asked.
"Guess? Hardly a guess. You see, I had come to the conclusion some hours ago that Marcel was our man," he said. "The girl, whoever she was, was his accomplice. Therefore the police artist's portrait, which came out of Marcel's description, was obviously worthless. There is no such girl as the girl in the portrait."
"But why had you fixed the guilt on Marcel? His story checked at every point."
"My dear fellow, it checked at so few points," Chambrun said. "Follow along with me. Garber did order dinner, and he did ask for Marcel to serve it. That came through the order girl at room service. Check. But from there on, Mark, almost nothing checks. Marcel said he delivered the dinner. While he was setting up the table, he said, Garber had a phone call from someone he spoke to in German. It could be—but it can't be checked. We don't keep a record of incoming calls at the switchboard, as you know. There may or may not have been a call. Marcel took the dinner back to the kitchen. That checks."
"Just a minute." I said. "Marcel said that after the phone call from the German-speaking person, Garber asked the girl to go into the bedroom. And she did go. We know that— fingerprints."
"Yes, she did. She went because Marcel did not want her to witness the savage and bloody killing. If I am right, and I'm sure I am, among the things on that serving table with the dinner was the murder weapon—a carving knife. Marcel could have taken it from the kitchen without being observed. I think he killed the unsuspecting Garber in the first two or three minutes he was in the room—murdered him, marked him with the gruesome X. Then he sent his granddaughter home. Think. After that he called the room and got no answer. Naturally—there was no one there to answer."
"But there was a call from the room—for the special wine."
"Do you remember what the room service answering girl said, Mark? There was a call from 14B asking for a bottle of Saint Cristobel, 57. She had some trouble finding Marcel, she said, who was 'puttering around' in the kitchen. I suggest to you that it was Marcel himself who made the call from one of the innumerable phones on the kitchen level. His use of the phone would have drawn no attention. He had been calling 14B periodically to inquire about serving the dinner.
"The Saint Cristobel was part of this plan to point to me. So he took the wine up, let himself into the suite, and left it there with the dead man. He says Garber took it from him at the door, but that can't be checked. No one saw it happen. Again, he called asking that the maid be kept away. Mrs. Kniffin says the call came from 14B. How could she know, except that someone said, 'This is 14B. Please don't send the maid.' The call could have come from anywhere in the hotel. Again, no way to check. All very clever, Mark. His story cannot be proved, neither can it be disproved."
"Then what made you think—?"
"One mistake. Marcel made one mistake. One thing that could not have happened the way Marcel said it did."
"What, for God's sake?"
Chambrun smiled. He sang softly. "Alouette, gentil' Alouette, Alouette, je te plumerai."
"He heard them singing. A macabre business, but he said he heard them," I said.
"The song was one of my favorites in the old days," Cham-brun said. "It helped to point to me. But—how long have you worked in the Beaumont, Mark?"
"Six years." 4 "Then you know that part of Marcel's story must be a lie."
I started to say I knew no such thing, then my jaw sagged. "The rooms are soundproofed!"
"Head of the class," Chambrun said. "From the hallways, you can't hear anything that goes on inside the rooms. And one lie in Marcel's story made everything else suspect."
"What are you going to do?"
"He is going to die—having saved me from an assassin. I shall have to tell my story to Hardy in spite of that."
"And the girl? She is an accomplice."
He gave me an odd look. "Which girl, the granddaughter or the girl in the portrait?"
He was thinking, I knew, that Marcel Durant would
never kill again; that he owed Marcel something. However, he didn't have to make that decision. Marie came forward to make a full confession of her involvement and Marcel's to Lieutenant Hardy.
Chambrun's would-be assassin, the man in the stocking mask, did not escape entirely. The police did manage to track him to the West German secretariat where he hid, for a time, behind the shield of diplomatic immunity. It seemed the word of Garber's death had reached his staff, and a young man with a hero impulse, interpreting the first evidence to mean that Chambrun had killed Garber in retaliation for old horrors, had decided to take the law into his own hands. But for Marcel he might have succeeded. There would be a long wrangle between governments over what was to become of him, but from our point of view the case was closed.
"And now we have a hotel to run," Chambrun said.
king with the uncanny ability to know exactly what is going on in his domain everywhere and at all times.
Some people think Chambrun has a kind of built-in radar system of his own, but those of us who work for him know his secret: it is simply that nothing even remotely out of the ordinary is ever kept from him by any of his staff. Jerry Dodd, the wiry little security officer, was perfectly competent to handle the suggestion from Mrs. Veach that the telephone in Room 912 might be bugged, but it wouldn't have occurred to Jerry not to go to Chambrun first.
I happened to be with Chambrun when Jerry reported. I am Mark Haskell, the public relations man for the hotel and as close to Chambrun as anyone on his staff. My office is just down the corridor from his.
Chambrun listened to what Jerry had to say, then pressed a buzzer on his desk. Miss Ruysdale, his fabulous secretary, appeared in the door to the outer office.
"Card on Room 912, please," Chambrun said. He took a sip of the Turkish coffee from the cup at his elbow and lit one of his flat Egyptian cigarettes. His eyes narrowed against the smoke.
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