Gilded Nightmare

by Hugh Pentecost

“Been impersonating her mother for more than a year,” I said. “All that jazz about Malinkov’s magic is just that—jazz.”

  “You say she sent that warning note to me?”

  “We don’t know—just a guess. One of the women left it on a room-service tray. A waiter delivered it to the desk.”

  “But why should I be in danger?” Sam asked. “I don’t get it. If she isn’t my Charmian Brown none of these people has any conceivable reason for wanting to harm me.”

  “Ask Masters,” I said. The coffee tasted good.

  “A clever, clever kid,” Masters said. “It’s going to be a pleasure if I get the chance, Haskell.” He aimed his gun at a point I imagined was directly between my eyes. Then he laughed and lowered it.

  There was nothing to do but wait. For what? I asked myself. …

  Things were happening in other places that I only learned about later.

  First of all, Salinger, the absent watchdog on the nineteenth floor, was discovered in a linen closet a few doors down the hall from 19-B. He had been brutally slugged on the back of the head. A gun butt was Hardy’s guess as the weapon. Salinger was out cold and the hospital offered nothing very hopeful as to when he might come to and tell his story. The guess was that one of the men, probably Helwig, had come out the door of 19-B and been promptly stopped by Salinger. While they argued, Masters had slipped out of one of the rooms down the line, sneaked up behind the detective, and let him have it. They’d dragged him into the linen closet and left him there—to die, for all they knew. Salinger’s honor, if not his skull, was intact.

  Our “pouter pigeon”—I’ll never forget that one—was still working in high gear. Jerry Dodd told me later about that next fifteen minutes.

  Mike Maggio had been traipsing all over the joint with the file cards Chambrun wanted. He finally caught up with the boss in the infirmary where they’d taken Salinger. Chambrun took the cards, went into Jerry Dodd’s office with them, and proceeded to examine them. When he put them down his unshaven face was grim.

  “I want a cop along with you, Jerry,” he said. “Room 1922 is occupied by a man named Robin Miller. You know him?”

  Jerry nodded. “Big wheel in airlines,” he said. “Comes in about three times a year. Big spender. Something of a lush. We’ve escorted him politely out of the Grill and several other of the bars when he’s gotten too noisy and obnoxious. He plays the call-girl routine quite a bit. I’m surprised we find space for him year after year.”

  Chambrun flipped the file card toward him. The letters A and W were on the card, indicating “alcoholic” and “woman-chaser.” There was also a single sentence which read: “Recommended by G.B.” G.B. were the initials of George Battle, who owns the Beaumont. That explained why Mr. Robin Miller had been allowed to return as a guest though his reputation with the staff was unsavory.

  “What about him?” Jerry asked the boss.

  “I want to get into his room.”

  “If he’s out, a passkey will do it,” Jerry said. “If he’s in, ask and ye shall receive.”

  “I doubt it,” Chambrun said. “How do you get past a chain-lock?”

  “Quick or slow?” Jerry asked.

  “Quick.”

  “Leave it to me,” Jerry said.

  I found out afterwards they have some kind of acid that eats right through the chain. Makes you wonder about the people all over town who count on chain-locks to keep out unwanted callers.

  Jerry told me he got what was needed to obliterate the chain, and he and Chambrun and one of Hardy’s cops went up to the nineteenth floor. Chambrun never once hinted at what he was up to.

  Room 1922 had a “Do Not Disturb” sign hung on the knob. They knocked on the door. No answer. Jerry tried the passkey and the door opened just as far as the chain-lock would allow. An angry voice bellowed at them.

  “What the hell’s the matter with you? Can’t you read? Bring your clean towels back some other time.”

  “It’s not a maid,” Chambrun said. “I’m the manager. I want to talk to you.”

  “For Godsake, it’s not nine o’clock in the morning!” Miller said. “Come back some time when I’m awake.”

  “Now,” Chambrun said.

  “Knock it off,” Miller said.

  Chambrun gestured to Jerry. Ten seconds later they were in the room.

  Jerry has seen some pretty peculiar things in the hotel. There was the Eastern potentate who tied his mistress to the bedpost each night and beat her with a rawhide whip. There would have been no trouble about it, because I guess the lady liked it, but the gentleman got in trouble when he tried to force a reasonably attractive chambermaid to submit to the same treatment. The girl screamed so loudly she could be heard through the soundproofed walls. There have been many equally dizzy ones. But Jerry wasn’t prepared for what they found in Room 1922.

  Mr. Robin Miller, friend of the owner, stood in the center of the room, stark naked. Cowering in a far corner, her dress half torn off, sporting a beautiful shiner, and holding a shiny steak knife like a dagger in her right hand, was Charmian Zetterstrom. A room-service dinner tray, which should have been removed long before, indicated where she’d acquired the knife.

  Only Chambrun seemed completely unsurprised. He picked up an extra coverlet from the bed and handed it to Charmian. He didn’t ask her anything.

  “Put this around you, Miss Zetterstrom,” he said. He turned to the cop. “Take the lady down to my office and have Miss Ruysdale attend to her. If anyone tries to stop you, use your gun. And stay on guard.”

  Charmian, Jerry said later, seemed to be in a state of shock. She didn’t protest. She didn’t say a word. She let Chambrun put the coverlet around her naked shoulders. She let the cop take her by the hand and lead her to the door. While all this was going on, Miller had picked up a terrycloth robe from a chair and covered his nakedness with it.

  “Let’s not have a lot of crap about this,” he said, playing the big bluff for all it was worth. “The little tart came into my room uninvited and then she turned noble on me. I think you know I’m a friend of George Battle.”

  Parenthetically, I might say our owner, sitting on his golden beach on the Riviera, had some pretty strange friends, including Mr. Robin Miller and the Zetterstrom crew.

  “What the hell brought you here? She didn’t make a sound,” Miller said, when Chambrun just stared at him out of narrow slits. “She was like some kind of zombie, but fought like a tiger.”

  “I came here because our records showed what kind of man you are, Mr. Miller. May I ask you, Mr. Miller, do most of your women come through the window from the ledge outside?”

  “I don’t know how she got in,” Miller said. “I was asleep. I woke up suddenly and there she was, creeping toward the door. I figured her for some kind of hotel thief and I thought she might as well pay a good price for breaking into my room.” He turned his head. “What the hell do you mean—window? It’s nineteen floors straight down to the street. What kind of a nut would walk along that ledge?”

  Chambrun, Jerry knew, was controlling white-hot anger.

  “You will be out of this hotel in ten minutes, Mr. Miller,” he said, “unless you want to face an attempted rape charge.”

  “The little bitch tried to cut me up with that steak knife she grabbed off the tray. I’m the aggrieved party, Chambrun. My room has been illegally entered. I—”

  “Ten minutes,” Chambrun said. “If you are not paying your bill at the desk by then you’ll be placed under arrest.”

  “George Battle will hear about this!” Miller said.

  “You can bet your life he will, Mr. Miller,” Chambrun said, and left the room. …

  In Sam Culver’s apartment, we waited.

  Sam sat at his desk, involved with his second pipe. Every once in a while I could hear him whistle soundlessly between his teeth. I have said that Sam is a man who’s kept in wonderful physical shape for his years. I wouldn’t want to tangle with him, even with a ten-year bulge in age. I
wouldn’t want to tangle with him or anyone else, to tell the truth. I take my action excitement out of the late-late movies. I’m like a million other guys around town; after your teens there isn’t one chance in a million you’ll ever have to tangle. You wouldn’t know how. I was too young for the Korean war, too old for Vietnam.

  Sam was something else again. He’d had a year’s active duty in World War II and another solid hunk in Korea. He’d know how to fight for keeps, I thought, and it was certain that in Helwig and Masters we were up against two guys who would play it right out to the end of the line. I wondered if Sam was measuring the distance between himself and Masters. I wondered if he was cooking up some scheme; if he’d figured just the right moment to take a long-odds chance. I hoped I’d know how to fall in line if he started something.

  The phone on his desk rang.

  Helwig was instantly in the bedroom door. “You’ll answer, Mr. Culver,” he said. “You’ll discourage anyone but Charmian who may be calling you. I’ll be on the bedroom extension. Remember—play it your way and Masters and I have nothing to lose. We don’t like being crossed.” He disappeared back into the bedroom.

  The phone kept ringing.

  Sam, moving like an automaton, reached for the receiver. “Yes?” he said.

  I know now that it was Chambrun, and I know now what he said.

  “What’s the matter with you, Sam? Hasn’t Mark explained things? I want you down here.”

  “Let’s say I don’t feel like it,” Sam said, in a flat voice.

  “Perhaps you’ll feel more like it when I tell you that we’ve found Charmian Zetterstrom.”

  “Oh,” Sam said, as if it were a matter of no consequence to him.

  “Aren’t you at all interested to know what the plan was for murdering you, Sam? Aren’t you at all interested in why the great impersonation—Charmian Two for Charmian One?”

  “You have all those answers?” Sam asked.

  “I have them, and I want you down here,” Chambrun said.

  Helwig was in the room, moving quickly toward Sam at the desk. “I’ll take that phone,” he said. “You and Haskell—over there against the wall.”

  I glanced at Masters. He wasn’t fooling now about his aim. His hungry smile had widened into a frozen white gap in his face. Sam and I moved over against the wall of bookcases. Sam’s eyes were cold and bright, but he made no offer to disobey.

  Helwig picked up the phone. “Marcus Helwig here, Mr. Chambrun,” he said. “Yes, we have been waiting here in the hope that Charmian would go to Mr. Culver.”

  “It’s all over, Helwig,” Chambrun said, on the other end.

  I know now there was a good-sized gathering in the great man’s office—Hardy, Jerry Dodd, Miss Ruysdale, who’d managed to get Charmian pinned together and a stiff brandy down her gullet. When Helwig identified himself Chambrun put his hand over the phone’s mouthpiece and said the one word “Helwig.” Hardy started for the door but Chambrun stopped him with a sharp “Wait!”

  “The next step is just beginning, Mr. Chambrun,” Helwig said. “I want you to listen quite carefully, because I don’t have time to repeat my instructions twice.”

  “You have instructions for me?” Chambrun asked, his voice completely colorless.

  “First, I would like to suggest that you don’t assume that by keeping me talking on the phone you have time to get someone up here. If someone knocks on the door or tries to get in some other way I promise you that either Mr. Culver or Mr. Haskell will be instantly dead.”

  “I have just stopped Lieutenant Hardy from leaving the room,” Chambrun said. Our pouter pigeon had realized from the instant he heard Helwig’s voice the nature of the next move.

  “Second,” Helwig said, “I would like you to put Charmian on the line for just long enough for me to make certain you weren’t fooling Mr. Culver.”

  In the downstairs sanctum Chambrun held out the phone to Charmian. She came forward, reluctant, her blue eyes wide with fright.

  “Speak to him,” Chambrun said. “He wants to be sure you’re here.”

  She took the phone, her hand shaking, but her voice was cool and clear. “I’m here, Marcus,” she said. “I’ve told Mr. Chambrun and the lieutenant the whole story.”

  “I believe they taught you to pray in the convent, Charmian,” Helwig said. His voice frightened me as I heard him speak. “I suggest that you start praying now that you never have the misfortune to encounter us again. Be good enough to put Mr. Chambrun back on the line.”

  Chambrun took back the phone. The others in his office watched and listened, as frozen as Sam and I were at the other end.

  “We have one thing to gain, Mr. Chambrun—our freedom. We have nothing to lose by compounding our crime. So what happens next depends entirely on how much you care about the life spans of Mr. Haskell and Mr. Culver.”

  “I’m listening,” Chambrun said.

  “You will be good enough,” Helwig said, “to send for a rented limousine. When it is at the door you will call this room and tell us so. Then we will come out with Mr. Haskell and Mr. Culver. I will be walking behind one of them with a gun at his back, and Masters will be behind the other. We will go down in an elevator. We will walk across the lobby and out to the rented car. If there is one move, even a slightly suspicious move, to stop us, Mr. Haskell and Mr. Culver will fall dead in front of your eyes—and as many more as we can manage before the police shoot us down. When we get in the car you will not follow us. If we even imagine we are being followed your two friends will be shot to death where they sit. Is that all quite clear?”

  “Quite clear,” Chambrun said.

  “You will send for the rented limousine?”

  “After I have spoken to Mr. Haskell,” Chambrun said.

  “How long will it take to get the car here?”

  “Fifteen minutes—after I have spoken to Mr. Haskell.”

  “Remember, if there is any attempt to get to us in this apartment, any attempt to stop us on the way out, it’s all over.”

  “I’ll remember,” Chambrun said.

  “Put on Mr. Haskell.”

  “You,” Helwig said to me, and held out the phone.

  I took it. “Hi,” I said, sounding like a ten-year-old.

  “Mark, I’m sorry. I have no choice,” Chambrun said.

  “Yeah, yeah,” I said. “Nice to have known you.”

  “In close quarters we might have a better chance,” he said.

  “Whatever that means.”

  “Tell Sam I’m sorry.”

  “Sure.”

  “You can inform Helwig I’ll phone for his limousine now.”

  “You may ride in the front carriage,” I said, feeling very sorry for myself. That limousine was likely to be our hearse.

  The phone clicked off.

  “You’ve heard enough to understand the plan,” Helwig said to us. He had a gun now, and it looked as though he knew how to use it. “I want you to disabuse yourselves of the idea that when we leave here and find ourselves in the corridor, in the lobby, that you’ll have a chance to run for it. One quick step away from us and you’ve had it.”

  “And we will have had it when you come to the end of your limousine ride,” Sam said.

  Helwig didn’t answer. He moved over and sat on the edge of the desk by the phone, waiting for the word that the limousine had arrived. I looked at Sam. His face told me nothing. I found myself thinking about Shelda. I wish I’d thought to give Chambrun a message for her instead of my feeble attempts to crack wise. The silly little bitch, I loved her.

  There was a clock on the mantel and I swear to God the second hand was racing like a mad thing. Fifteen minutes had never gone so fast in my whole life. While we waited, Masters had opened the coat closet by the front door and taken out Sam’s raincoat and a topcoat.

  And the phone rang.

  “Yes,” Helwig said. “Thank you.”

  Chambrun had delivered right on the button.

  Masters took
the raincoat and draped it over his right arm so that the gun in his hand was hidden. He stepped over behind Sam. Helwig imitated with the topcoat, and was behind me. I could feel his gun pressed hard in the middle of my back, which was now wet with sweat.

  “Remember, gentlemen, one false move—” Helwig said. He didn’t have to amplify. “Now, march.”

  Sam opened the door and he and Masters went out. I felt Helwig’s gun jam into my back and I followed. I thought I was going to faint as I saw a maid coming down the hall toward us. Would they think she was some kind of Chambrun trick? But they smiled and nodded at her and she smiled and nodded back. Oh, baby, if you only knew, I thought.

  We reached the elevators and I realized that my legs weren’t going to take me across the lobby when we got there. The elevator door opened. It was a self-service car. Sam and I walked in and the others stood directly behind us. Masters, I think, pressed the down button.

  I could feel my stomach coming up into my throat as the car plummeted down. And then it stopped. Someone else was coming aboard at a lower floor.

  “One false move—” Helwig whispered.

  We were going to look like damn fools, facing to the rear. I wondered if the passenger coming aboard would be someone I knew.

  The elevator door didn’t open.

  “What’s wrong?” Helwig said, sharply. “Press the down button again.”

  Out of the corner of my eye I could see Masters half turn to fumble with the button panel. Nothing happened. The car remained stationary. I turned my head to look at Sam. He was standing rigidly facing the rear wall, a little trickle of sweat running down his cheek. He was whistling tunelessly between his teeth.

  Masters swore. “Damn thing doesn’t want to move,” he said.

  Helwig’s gun jammed hard into my back. “You know how this thing works, Haskell?”

  “I can try,” I said. “There’s an emergency button.”

  “Get to it!”

  It involved a curious shuffling of positions. Four of us seemed suddenly to crowd the car. I got turned around to face the control panel. Masters maneuvered Sam so that he was also facing front. I pressed the emergency button, but nothing happened. I jammed my finger against the down and up buttons. The car remained motionless.