chose ten as an escape route because she had a room there. Now, if she will help you, you will find and free her brother for her. She is to come forward and say she saw Mr. X from the Trapeze with Ballard. ITie police have spent twenty-four hours looking for him. If they do find him, he'll have an ahbi, won't he? You told Hilda this was secret CIA business, right? Then, last night, while you were wandering around from my office, you encountered her on the second floor. She invited you into Mark's apartment. There she told you she realized you were an accomplice in a murder. Do something about her brother or she'd blow the whistle on you. What did she do, start for the phone right there, when you threatened her?"
'*This is madness!" Prescott said. '*You can't prove any part of it."
*'I don't have to," Chambrun said. ''And it won't matter to you if you don't tell me where Ruysdale is. If you tell me, and she's safe, then it will be up to Lieutenant Hardy to prove out my theory. Maybe some fancy lawyer with Rhamadir's oil money behind him can get you off. But it isn't going to come to that unless I see Ruysdale alive and well. Where is she?"
Indecision is a pretty terrible thing to see on a man. Sweat was streaming down Mitch Prescott's face.
''Want to take another look down over the side, Prescott?" Jericho asked, and gave the man's arm a cruel twist.
"Wait, wait, wait!'' Prescott cried out. He was sold, I guess. He turned to Chambrun. "You're into something so involved, Pierre, so complex, you can't begin to understand it."
"I don't want to understand it," Chambrun said. "Where is Ruysdale?"
Prescott's eyes narrowed, and I could almost hear the wheels turning behind them. Jericho made a sudden move. He spun Prescott around, grabbed him below the knees, and Uterally heaved him up on his stomach on to the parapet.
"Wait!" I swear Prescott's scream could have been heard in the United Nations Building, blocks away. Jericho took his arm again and pulled him down. Prescott's face had turned the color of ashes.
Chambrun got up from his chair. "We're running out of time, Prescott." He turned to Mrs. Haven. "If you'd like to go inside, my dear, there's no reason why you should witness this.''
Mrs. Haven didn't move. "In a long life I've never watched a really bad man pay for his crimes," she said. "I think I'd like to stay."
That rather extraordinary statement from the lady made up Prescott's mind for him. Chambrun and Jericho weren't kidding.
"I think I won't choose to take a chance on whether this lunatic is serious or not," he said to Chambrun. "Take me to a telephone, and I'll do what I can to get Miss Ruysdale released."
"No chance," Chambnin said, a cutting edge to his voice. *'You call, and you can instantly let them know something is wrong. They'll make new conditions and we're back to square one."
"What do you want, then?"
"An address, a location," Chambnin said.
"You try to break in on them, and there's no way the lady will get out alive," Prescott said.
"And if we don't, and you don't get in touch with them at prearranged times, how much chance will she have?" Jericho asked. "You see. Pal, there's one chance for h^ and one chance for you."
"I believe you're serious," Prescott said.
"Believe!" Jericho said.
Prescott moistened his lips. His mouth must have been dry as a sand box. "Believe it or not," he said, "she's just about a block away; old brownstone house. A block north and half a block east.'*
"Write it down," Chambnin said. "Here, Mark, take him this notebook."
"I hope he can write left-handed," Jericho said. "I don't want to find myself chasing him around the roof."
I took the notebook and my ball-point pen over to Prescott. He bent forward. The terrible pressure Jericho was exerting on his right arm, behind his back, must have been agonizing.
"I—I can't write this way," Prescott complained.
I handed him my ball-point and held the notebook against my chest. *'Write," I said.
He scrawled awkwardly with his left hand. I was aware of the sour smell of fear on his breath. I took the notebook back to Chambrun, who glanced at it.
''Who lives in this house?" he asked Prescott.
"Retired couple own the building," Prescott said. ''They occupy the basement and the first floor. They know nothing about what's going on. Ruysdale's being held on the second floor."
"How many people guarding her?"
Prescott hesitated. "It varies. Two to four or five. Pierre?..."
"Yes?"
"Isn't there some way we can handle this sensibly? I can get Miss Ruysdale free, you can forget your theories about me. It seems like a fair trade. Nobody will get hurt."
"I can't trust you to make a fair trade," Chambrun said. "You're already responsible for two murders. From what Welch tells us, there's no way to guess how badly you've sold out your own country. All you're thinking about at the moment is how to save yourself. You would betray me as casually as you'd puff on that bloody pipe of yours."
Prescott wiped at his face with the left sleeve of his jacket. "You don't have much time, Pierre," he said. "If I don't call them at twelve noon, on the dot, they'll know something has gone wrong."
Chambrun glanced at his wristwatch. 'Tifty-three minutes," he said. 'TU remember that you gave me that much, Prescott," he said. He turned and was gone toward the roof-car canopy. Moments later we heard the car door open and close.
Jericho was still holding Prescott by the parapet. *'Can I borrow your hat, Victoria?" he asked. ''The sun is getting hot as hell out here."
Mrs. Haven took off her garden hat and handed it to me. I carried it across the terrace and gave it to Jericho. He put it on his head and gave me a grin. "How do I look?" he asked.
Mrs. Haven and I just sat there under the terrace awning, not talking, looking at Jericho in that grotesque hat, and his sweating prisoner. Time has a way of going slow and fast at the same time. Minutes seemed to drag past, and then I'd glance at my watch and they seemed to have been flying.
Fifteen minutes were gone and I heard the roof-car door open. I was on my feet, ready for anything. It was, unexpectedly, Chambrun. He came back and took over his wicker chair without speaking. Eleven-thirty—twenty minutes to twelve—two minutes to twelve. I saw Chambrun grip the arms of his chair so tightly his knuckles looked like white marbles. Somewhere in the distance we heard some sirens. It was twelve noon—on the dot!
Twelve-ten—twelve-f if teen—twelve-twenty—and then I heard the roof-car door open again. The first
person I saw was Betsy Ruysdale! She came running toward us, aimed at no one but Chambrun. A business associate? Just an efficient secretary? she was in his arms—or should I say he was in her arms?
*'It's all right, Pierre!" I heard her say softly. ''It's all right, my dear!" She was comforting him as though it was he who had been in danger, not herself.
Then I saw that the roof car had been crowded. Jerry Dodd, Mike Maggio, and Lieutenant Hardy were coming toward us. Hardy walked over to where Jericho in his comic hat was holding Prescott.
"I'll take over here," he said. ''Charges against you, Prescott, are murder, kidnapping, treason, and God knows what else that Chambrun and Larry Welch can make stand up for us. Let me read you this mumbo jumbo."
Prescott was read his rights.
Mike Maggio was grinning from ear to ear. "We did what you suggested, Mr. Chambrun," he said. "I went to the old couple who own the place, told them I was from the power company, there was a dangerous short circuit somewhere on the line. I was in. I went up to the second floor and knocked. Some guy answered from the inside. I told my story. He said he couldn't let me in just now. I argued. A second guy entered into the argument. We were yammering good and loud."
"Meanwhile I had gone up the fire escape," Jerry Dodd said. "Slipped in behind them and stuck my gun
into one guy's neck. They gave up real easy! I let Mike in and we found Betsy in another room."
''You could have phoned!" Chambrun said.
&n
bsp; "Quicker to get here—only a block away," Jerry said. "Prescott told you there could be two to five guys. We didn't want to wait to phone and possibly have company."
Chambrun managed a smile. ''Bless you, friends," he said. "And now—I have a hotel to run."
"What you need is rest, Pierre. I can handle things for you," Betsy Ruysdale said.
He gave her a smile I don't think I ever saw before. "I really believe you can, my love," he said. He glanced at me. "Tell our friend Welch we may have the last chapter for his story." He slipped his arm through Betsy Ruysdale's. "And tell him that now I'll protect him with an army if he asks for it." He led Betsy off into his penthouse. Hardy had already taken Prescott away.
"You know," Mrs. Haven said, "I don't quite understand why Pierre left it to you and Mike, Jerry. Why didn't he go with you?"
"We still don't know who is in this hotel working for Prescott's mob," Jerry Dodd said. "If Chambrun left the hotel, they'd have known something was cooking. Hard decision for the boss to make, but he made it. Turned out to be a piece of cake for Mike and me. We brought Betsy back, told Hardy what was up." Jerry laughed. "Well, there's a hotel to run," he said.
and he and Mike took off/* We'd hear it all, in full detail, over and over again later.
**Wcll, I for one could stand a good stiff drink," Mrs. Haven said. *'You, Jericho? Mark? But first-one question to you, John Jericho. Would you have done it? Would you have heaved him over that wall?'*
Jericho hesitated, smiling at her. *'If I tell you I would, you may secretly loathe me for being a monster. If I tell you I wouldn't, you may hold me in contempt for being a coward. So I'll tell you the truth. I don't know. If the moment had come—I might have, I might not. Anyway, Victoria, it was your idea. 'I'd kill him,' you said."
"Ah well, I have to tell you, you're a marvelous actor," Victoria said. ''You held me spellbound. The sad part of it all is, no portrait for me."
"My dear Victoria," Jericho said. "I'm going to paint a portrait of you that will be as famous as the Mona Lisa has been down through the centuries.'*
"And I," the old lady said, "am about to make martinis for all of us that you'll never forget. Shall we join Toto over at my place?"
Jericho took her arm. "Our pleasure," he said.
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