The lobby was averagely busy, with no sign of unusual activity. Keycase paid his bill and received a friendly smile from the girl cashier. “Is the room vacant now, sir?”
He returned the smile. “It will be in a few minutes. I have to collect my bags, that’s all.”
Satisfied, he went back upstairs.
In 830 he took a last careful look around the room. He had left nothing; no scrap of paper, no unconsidered trifle such as a match cover, no clue whatever to his true identity. With a damp towel, Keycase wiped the obvious surfaces which might have retained finger prints. Then, picking up both suitcases, he left.
His watch showed ten past twelve.
He held the larger suitcase tightly. At the prospect of walking through the lobby and out of the hotel, Keycase’s pulse quickened, his hands grew clammy.
On the eighth-floor landing he rang for an elevator. Waiting, he heard one coming down. It stopped at the floor above, started downward once more, then stopped again. In front of Keycase, the door of number four elevator slid open.
At the front of the car was the Duke of Croydon.
For a horror-filled instant, Keycase had an impulse to turn and run. He mastered it. In the same split second, sanity told him that the encounter was accidental. Swift glances confirmed it. The Duke was alone. He had not even noticed Keycase. From the Duke’s expression, his thoughts were far away.
The elevator operator, an elderly man, said, “Going down!”
Alongside the operator was the hotel bell captain, whom Keycase recognized from having seen him in the lobby. Nodding to the two bags, the bell captain inquired, “Shall I take those, sir?” Keycase shook his head.
As he stepped into the elevator, the Duke of Croydon and a beautiful blond girl eased nearer the rear to make room.
The gates closed. The operator, Cy Lewin, pushed the selector handle to “descend.” As he did, with a scream of tortured metal, the elevator car plunged downward, out of control.
11
He owed it to Warren Trent, Peter McDermott decided, to explain personally what had occurred concerning the Duke and Duchess of Croydon.
Peter found the hotel proprietor in his main mezzanine office. The others who had been at the meeting had left. Aloysius Royce was with his employer, helping assemble personal possessions, which he was packing into cardboard containers.
“I thought I might as well get on with this,” Warren Trent told Peter. “I won’t need this office any more. I suppose it will be yours.” There was no rancor in the older man’s voice, despite their altercation less than half an hour ago.
Aloysius Royce continued to work quietly as the other two talked.
Warren Trent listened attentively to the description of events since Peter’s hasty departure from St. Louis cemetery yesterday afternoon, concluding with the telephone calls, a few minutes ago, to the Duchess of Croydon and the New Orleans police.
“If the Croydons did what you say,” Warren Trent pronounced, “I’ve no sympathy for them. You’ve handled it well.” He growled an afterthought. “At least we’ll be rid of those damn dogs.”
“I’m afraid Ogilvie is involved pretty deeply.”
The older man nodded. “This time he’s gone too far. He’ll take the consequences, whatever they are, and he’s finished here.” Warren Trent paused. He seemed to be weighing something in his mind. At length he said, “I suppose you wonder why I’ve always been lenient with Ogilvie.”
“Yes,” Peter said, “I have.”
“He was my wife’s nephew. I’m not proud of the fact, and I assure you that my wife and Ogilvie had nothing in common. But many years ago she asked me to give him a job here, and I did. Afterward, when she was worried about him once, I promised to keep him employed. I’ve never, really, wanted to undo that.”
How did you explain, Warren Trent wondered, that while the link with Hester had been defective and tenuous, it was the only one he had.
“I’m sorry,” Peter said. “I didn’t know …”
“That I was ever married?” The older man smiled. “Not many do. My wife came with me to this hotel. We were both young. She died soon after. It all seems a long time ago.”
It was a reminder, Warren Trent thought, of the loneliness he had endured across the years, and of the greater loneliness soon to come.
Peter said, “Is there anything I can …”
Without warning, the door from the outer office flew open. Christine stumbled in. She had been running, and had lost a shoe. She was breathless, her hair awry. She barely got the words out.
“There’s been … terrible accident! One of the elevators. I was in the lobby … It’s horrible! People are trapped … They’re screaming.”
At the doorway, already on the run, Peter McDermott brushed her aside. Aloysius Royce was close behind.
12
Three things should have saved number four elevator from disaster.
One was an overspeed governor on the elevator car. It was set to trip when the car’s speed exceeded a prescribed safety limit. On number four—though the defect had not been noticed—the governor was operating late.
A second device comprised four safety clamps. Immediately the governor tripped, these should have seized the elevator guide rails, halting the car. In fact, on one side of the car two clamps held. But on the other side—due to delayed response of the governor, and because the machinery was old and weakened—the clamps failed.
Even then, prompt operation of an emergency control inside the elevator car might have averted tragedy. This was a single red button. Its purpose, when depressed, was to cut off all electric power, freezing the car. In modern elevators the emergency button was located high, and plainly in view. In the St. Gregory’s cars, and many others, it was positioned low. Cy Lewin reached down, fumbling awkwardly to reach it. He was a second too late.
As one set of clamps held and the other failed, the car twisted and buckled. With a thunder of wrenching, tearing metal, impelled by its own weight and speed, plus the heavy load inside, the car split open. Rivets sheared, paneling splintered, metal sheeting separated. On one side—lower than the other because the floor was now tilted at a steep angle—a gap several feet high appeared between floor and wall. Screaming, clutching wildly at each other, the passengers slid toward it.
Cy Lewin, the elderly operator, who was nearest, was first to fall through. His single scream as he fell nine floors was cut off when his body hit the sub-basement concrete. An elderly couple from Salt Lake City fell next, clasping each other. Like Cy Lewin, they died as their bodies smashed against the ground. The Duke of Croydon fell awkwardly, striking an iron bar on the side of the shaft, which impaled him. The bar broke off, and he continued to fall. He was dead before his body reached the ground.
Somehow, others held on. While they did, the remaining two safety clamps gave way, sending the wrecked car plummeting the remaining distance down the shaft. Part way, a youngish conventioneer dentist slipped through the gap, his arms flailing. He was to survive the accident, but die three days later of internal injuries.
Herbie Chandler was more fortunate. He fell when the car was near the end of its descent. Tumbling into the adjoining shaft, he sustained head injuries from which he would recover, and sheared and fractured vertebrae which would make him a paraplegic, never walking again for the remainder of his life.
A middle-aged New Orleans woman lay, with a fractured tibia and a shattered jaw, on the elevator floor.
As the car hit bottom, Dodo was last to fall. An arm was broken and her skull cracked hard against a guide rail. She lay unconscious, close to death, as blood gushed from a massive head wound.
Three others—a Gold Crown Cola conventioneer, his wife, and Keycase Milne—were miraculously unhurt.
Beneath the wrecked elevator car, Billyboi Noble, the maintenance worker who, some ten minutes earlier, had lowered himself into the elevator pit, lay with legs and pelvis crushed, conscious, bleeding, and screaming.
1
3
Running with a speed he had never used in the hotel before, Peter McDermott raced down the mezzanine stairs.
The lobby, when he reached it, was a scene of pandemonium. Screams resounded through the elevator doors and from several women nearby. There was confused shouting. In front of a milling crowd, a white-faced assistant manager and a bellboy were attempting to pry open the metal doors to number four elevator shaft. Cashiers, room clerks, and office workers were pouring out from behind counters and desks. Restaurants and bars were emptying into the lobby, waiters and bartenders following their customers. In the main dining room, lunchtime music had stopped, the musicians joining the exodus. A line of kitchen workers was streaming out through a service doorway. An excited babel of questions greeted Peter.
As loudly as he could, he shouted above the uproar, “Quiet!”
There was a momentary silence in which he called out again, “Please stand back and we will do everything we can.” He caught a room clerk’s eye. “Has someone called the Fire Department?”
“I’m not sure, sir. I thought …”
Peter snapped, “Do it now!” He instructed another, “Get onto the police. Tell them we need ambulances, doctors, someone to control the crowd.”
Both men disappeared, running.
A tall, lean man in a tweed jacket and drill trousers stepped forward. “I’m a Marine officer. Tell me what you want.”
Peter said gratefully, “The center of the lobby must be kept clear. Use hotel staff to form a cordon. Keep a passageway open to the main entrance. Fold back the revolving doors.”
“Right!”
The tall man turned away and began cracking commands. As if appreciative of leadership, others obeyed. Soon, a line of waiters, cooks, clerks, bellboys, musicians, some conscripted guests, extended across the lobby and to the St. Charles Avenue door.
Aloysius Royce had joined the assistant manager and bellboy attempting to force the elevator doors. He turned, calling to Peter. “We’ll never do this without tools. We have to break in somewhere else.”
A coveralled maintenance worker ran into the lobby. He appealed to Peter. “We need help at the bottom of the shaft. There’s a guy trapped under the car. We can’t get him out or get at the others.”
Peter snapped, “Let’s get down there!” He sprinted for the lower service stairs, Aloysius Royce a pace behind.
A gray brick tunnel, dimly lighted, led to the elevator shaft. Here, the cries they had heard above were audible again, but now with greater closeness and more eerily. The shattered elevator car was directly in front, but the way to it barred by twisted, distorted metal from the car itself and installations it had hit on impact. Near the front, maintenance workers were struggling with pry bars. Others stood helplessly behind. Screams, confused shouts, the rumble of nearby machinery, combined with a steady moaning from the car’s interior.
Peter shouted to the men not occupied, “Get more lights in here!” Several hurried away down the tunnel.
He instructed the man in coveralls who had come to the lobby, “Get back upstairs. Guide the firemen down.”
Aloysius Royce, on his knees beside the debris, shouted, “And send a doctor—now!”
“Yes,” Peter said, “take someone to show him the way. Have an announcement made. There are several doctors staying in the hotel.”
The man nodded and ran back the way they had come.
More people were arriving in the corridor, beginning to block it. The chief engineer, Doc Vickery, shouldered his way through.
“My God!” The chief stood staring at the scene before him. “My God!—I told them. I warned if we didn’t spend money, something like this …” He seized Peter’s arm. “You heard me, laddie. You’ve heard me enough times …”
“Later, chief.” Peter released his arm. “What can you do to get those people out?”
The chief shook his head helplessly. “We’d need heavy equipment—jacks, cutting tools …”
It was evident that the chief was in no condition to take charge. Peter instructed him, “Check on the other elevators. Stop all service if you have to. Don’t take chances of a repetition.” The older man nodded dumbly. Bowed and broken, he moved away.
Peter grasped the shoulder of a gray-haired stationary engineer whom he recognized. “Your job is to keep this area clear. Everyone is to move out of here who is not directly concerned.”
The engineer nodded. As he began to order others back, the tunnel cleared.
Peter returned to the elevator shaft. Aloysius Royce, by kneeling and crawling, had eased himself under part of the debris and was holding the shoulders of the injured, screaming maintenance man. In the dim light it was clear that a mass of wreckage rested on his legs and lower abdomen.
“Billyboi,” Royce was urging, “you’ll be all right. I promise you. We’ll get you out.”
The answer was another tortured scream.
Peter took one of the injured man’s hands. “He’s right. We’re here now. Help is coming.”
Distantly, high above, he could hear a growing wail of sirens.
14
The room clerk’s telephone summons reached the Fire Alarm Office in City Hall. His message had not concluded when two high-pitched beeps—a major alarm alert—sounded in every city fire hall. On radio, a dispatcher’s calm voice followed.
“Striking box zero zero zero eight for alarm at St. Gregory Hotel, Carondelet and Common.”
Automatically, four fire halls responded—Central on Decatur, Tulane, South Rampart, and Dumaine. In three of the four, non-duty-watch men were at lunch. At Central, lunch was almost ready. The fare was meatballs and spaghetti. A fireman, taking his turn as cook, sighed as he turned off the gas and ran with the rest. Of all the godforsaken times for a midtown, high property alarm!
Clothing and longboots were on the trucks. Men kicked off shoes, climbing aboard while rigs were rolling. Within less than a minute of the double beeps, five engine companies, two hook and ladders, a hose tender, emergency, rescue and salvage units, a deputy chief and two district chiefs were on the way to the St. Gregory, their drivers fighting busy midday traffic.
A hotel alert rated everything in the book.
At other fire halls, sixteen more engine companies and two hook and ladders stood by for a second alarm.
The Police Complaint Department in the Criminal Justice Courts received its warning two ways—from the Fire Alarm Office and directly from the hotel.
Under a notice, “Be Patient With Your Caller,” two women communications clerks wrote the information on message blanks, a moment later handed them to a radio dispatcher. The message went out: All ambulances—Police and Charity Hospital—to the St. Gregory Hotel.
15
Three floors below the St. Gregory lobby, in the tunnel to the elevator shaft, the noise, hasty commands, moans and cries continued. Now, penetrating them, were crisp, swift footsteps. A man in a seersucker suit hurried in. A young man. With a medical bag.
“Doctor!” Peter called urgently. “Over here!”
Crouching, crawling, the newcomer joined Peter and Aloysius Royce. Behind them, extra lights, hastily strung were coming on. Billyboi Noble screamed again. His face turned to the doctor, eyes pleading, features agony-contorted. “Oh, God! Oh, God! Please give me something …”
The doctor nodded, scrabbling in his bag. He produced a syrette. Peter pushed back Billyboi’s coverall sleeve, holding an arm exposed. The doctor swabbed hastily, jabbed the needle home. Within seconds the morphine had taken hold. Billyboi’s head fell back. His eyes closed.
The doctor had a stethoscope to Billyboi’s chest. “I haven’t much with me. I came off the street. How quickly can you get him out?”
“As soon as we’ve help. It’s coming.”
More running footsteps. This time, a heavy pounding of many feet. Helmeted firemen streaming in. With them, bright lanterns, heavy equipment—axes, power jacks, cutting tools, lever bars. Little talk. Short, staccato words. Gru
nts, sharp orders. “Over here! A jack under there. Get this heavy stuff moving!”
From above, a tattoo of ax blows crashing home. The sound of yielding metal. A stream of light as shaft doors opened at the lobby level. A cry, “Ladders! We need ladders here!” Long ladders coming down.
The young doctor’s command: “I must have this man out!”
Two firemen struggling to position a jack. Extended, it would take the weight from Billyboi. The firemen groping, swearing, maneuvering to find clearance. The jack too large by several inches. “We need a smaller jack! Get a smaller jack to start, to get the big one placed.” The demand repeated on’ a walkie-talkie. “Bring the small jack from the rescue truck!”
The doctor’s voice again, insistently. “I must have this man out!”
Peter’s voice. “That bar there! The one higher. If we move it, it will lift the lower, leave clearance for the jack.”
A fireman cautioning. “Twenty tons up there. Shift something, it can all come down. When we start, we’ll take it slow.”
“Let’s try!” Aloysius Royce.
Royce and Peter, shoulders together, backs under the higher bar, arms interlocked. Strain upward! Nothing. Strain harder again! Still harder! Lungs bursting, blood surging, senses swimming. The bar moving, but barely. Even harder! Do the impossible! Consciousness slipping. Sight diminishing. A red mist only. Straining. Moving. A shout, “The jack is in!” The straining ended. Down. Pulled free. The jack turning, lifting. Debris rising. “We can get him out!”
The doctor’s voice, quietly. “Take your time. He just died.”
The dead and injured were brought upward by the ladder one by one. The lobby became a clearing station, with hasty aid for those still living, a place of pronouncement for the dead. Furniture was pushed clear. Stretchers filled the central area. Behind the cordon, the crowd—silent now—pressed tightly. Women were crying. Some men had turned away.
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