Walking Dead Man

by Hugh Pentecost

  “The man in the stocking mask?”

  “Who else, Mr. Kranepool? Are we, by chance, talking about someone else?”

  “You slept,” Kranepool said.

  “Yes, but lightly; lightly enough, thank God, to have heard some slight movement he made—perhaps the squeak of a door, perhaps he collided with a chair or some other piece of furniture. I was suddenly wide awake, very aware that someone was in the room. I wasn’t afraid at first. I thought it must be Allerton, or perhaps Dr. Cobb, checking to see if I was all right, if I needed something. I knew Butler wouldn’t have allowed anyone else into my quarters. I reached out and turned on the bedside lamp. I was frozen with terror when I saw him.

  “You got a clear look at him?”

  “A quick look, but very clear. He was standing just inside the bathroom door. He was wearing a pale brown stocking mask that covered his head—his hair, his face. He was pointing a gun at me. I find myself surprised now that I was able to move. My thought was to dive for the floor, and I projected myself toward the edge of the bed. We’re talking about fractions of seconds, Mr. Kranepool, because as I moved he fired. The bullet struck the headboard, inches from me. I heard him cry out something—and as I turned my head, I saw him go out through the bathroom door. At the same moment Butler came bursting in through the main door there. I screamed at him and pointed to the bathroom.”

  “Just a minute,” Kranepool said. “You saw this man in the stocking mask go out through the bathroom?”

  “Of course I saw him.”

  “And at the same instant Butler came through the other door?”

  “I thought Butler could have seen him.”

  “Then Butler couldn’t have been the man in the stocking mask, doubling back?”

  “Nonsense,” Battle said.

  “Describe the gunman. Was he tall, short, fat, thin?”

  “He could have been all of those things, my dear man. It was so quick. The mask was a light tan, with holes in it for his eyes. His clothes were dark, but don’t ask me what they were—a suit, a sweater, a topcoat. I saw the mask, and I saw the gun aimed right between my eyes. Not much else registered.”

  “You say he cried out?

  “Yes. Something meaningless. He sounded surprised. And then he was gone.”

  “Do you know that Dodd, here, has a theory that the assassin was after Mr. Chambrun; that when he saw it was you, he jerked the gun away just in time?”

  Battle looked at Jerry. “How very ingenious,” he said.

  “You don’t believe it?”

  “Of course I don’t believe it. If he was after Pierre, wouldn’t the sentries have made him wonder? Wouldn’t the sleeping Butler have made him wonder? No, Pierre doesn’t live under the threat of death that I do. He doesn’t require guards. Anyone who knew him well enough—” Battle laughed—“well enough to want to kill him, would have known that something was out of key.”

  “Someone wanted him out of the way,” Jerry said. “He hasn’t disappeared by choice.”

  “My dear Dodd, of course someone wants him out of the way. Don’t you know why?”

  “Why?” Jerry said in a flat voice.

  “Because there is just one man in the world I would trust to protect me beyond a shadow of a doubt. Pierre Chambrun doesn’t make mistakes.” His brow clouded. “Perhaps, like all of us, he is growing old. Because, if what you say is true, he has allowed himself to fall into a trap. God help me if I must count on you people and the police to protect me. I came here because I could count on Pierre. Who can I depend on now?”

  I could have sworn he wasn’t afraid; he was more like some kind of game-player, delighted with a puzzle.

  Hardy came out of the bedroom, and with him was Butler, the bodyguard. Battle raised what must have been a cup of cold tea to his lips, his eyes bright over the rim.

  “Show me exactly where you were sitting,” Hardy said to Butler.

  If anyone was afraid in the room it was Butler, the tough guy, the gunslinger. Little beads of sweat stood out on his forehead. He glanced at Battle as if he was pleading for some kind of cue from his employer. Battle’s eyes were laughing at him.

  “I had that chair there, back to the door,” Butler said. He moved a Windsor armchair into place. Hardy closed the door to the bedroom. “From there I could see the front door and the doors to the bedrooms and the bathrooms down the hall.”

  “You sat in the chair,” Hardy said.

  “I sat in the chair, Lieutenant. I had taken off my shoulder holster and it was resting in my lap with my gun in it. I had a magazine.” He looked around and saw a copy of Time on the end table. “That’s it. Somebody must have moved it when they all came in here.”

  “‘They all’?” Hardy asked.

  “Dr. Cobb, Gaston, Allerton. Then one of the sentries from the roof. The sentry phoned downstairs, and Dodd and Mr. Chambrun came.”

  “Let’s not move quite so fast,” Hardy said. “You set the chair in place, you sat in it with your gun in your lap, and you read a magazine.”

  “And you fell asleep,” Battle said in a faraway voice.

  A little trickle of sweat ran down Butler’s cheek. He moistened his lips. He focused on Battle. I could sense the question he was asking: “Is that what you want me to say?” There was no indication from Battle.

  “I did not fall asleep,” Butler said, his voice shaken.

  Hardy sat down in the chair. “So you were here.” He turned his head from side to side. “You’re right. No one could have approached the bedroom or the bathroom doors without your seeing them. And you insist no one did?”

  “I didn’t see anyone,” Butler said.

  “That’s not quite the same as saying no one did.”

  “All right then, no one did!”

  “And yet someone was in the room and did shoot at Mr. Battle,” Hardy said. “How do you account for that?”

  “There is only one way to account for it,” Butler said. “The man was already in the room when I took my position here outside the door.”

  “My dear Edward,” Battle said, “you searched the apartment when we first arrived. You said it was all clear.”

  Butler lowered his head. “I must have overlooked someplace he could have been hiding.”

  “How careless,” Battle said. “Almost criminally careless, wouldn’t you say, Edward?”

  Butler looked as though he was going to cry.

  Hardy stood up and pushed the chair aside. “Let’s see what places you could have overlooked,” he said.

  Jerry and I crowded after them into the doorway, with Kranepool pushing past us to be in on it. One of the plainclothes men already in the room was dusting for fingerprints. The other was kneeling by the big queen-sized bed taking pictures of the headboard. He stood up and took a piece of folded tissue out of his pocket.

  “Here’s the bullet, Lieutenant. Slug from a thirty-eight police special, like Dodd thought it was. Trajectory places the fire place from somewhere near the bathroom door, which is the way Battle described it”

  Hardy nodded. “Get it to ballistics,” he said. He looked around the room. “How about the clothes closet?” he asked Butler.

  “I went through it. Mr. Chambrun had removed his own clothes. It was bare—just hangers—ready for Mr. Battle. No place for anyone to hide.”

  Hardy, unperturbed, walked over to the barred windows. There were two sets of heavy drapes on either side. “How about here?”

  “I looked behind them,” Butler said. “I pushed and poked at them. So help me God, there was no one in this room.”

  “You couldn’t hide under that box-spring bed,” Hardy said, sounding almost cheerful. “How about the bathroom?”

  “There’s no place there, Lieutenant. I looked in the shower. There’s a medicine cabinet. No place.”

  Hardy had moved to the bathroom door. “How about this laundry hamper?” he asked.

  “For Christ sake, Lieutenant, nobody could fit into that.”

 
; “You didn’t look in it?”

  “Why should I?”

  Hardy nodded and came back into the bedroom. “You’re right,” he said. “A man couldn’t hide there.” He looked at Butler, shaking his head slowly. “You tell an interesting story, Mr. Butler. No one was hidden in the room, no one could have come into it without your seeing him. Since you didn’t see anyone there was, by your story, no one here. And yet there is a bullet in the headboard and Mr. Battle saw his attacker go out through the bathroom.”

  “I didn’t say no one could have come but through the bathroom without my seeing him,” Butler said. He sounded desperate. “The minute I heard the shot I—”

  “You admit you heard the shot?”

  “Sure I heard it. I never said there was no shot.”

  “That’s so, you didn’t.”

  “The minute I heard the shot I jumped out of the chair, pushed it aside and came in here. Mr. Battle was sitting up in bed, covers pulled up around him. He waved and pointed at the bathroom. I ran into the bathroom and out into the hall. The man could have escaped that way without being seen. Cobb was in his room, Allerton in his, Gaston in the kitchen. He could have gotten away without being seen.”

  “But since he never got in?” Hardy asked gently.

  “If I knew the answer to that, I’d feel an effing lot better.”

  “How’s that?”

  “‘Effing’ is Edward’s way of cleaning up an old Anglo-Saxon word,” Battle said from the doorway. “Listen, Edward, I promise not to boil you in oil if you will admit that you fell asleep at your post. Human weakness is human weakness.”

  “So help me, Mr. Battle, I—”

  “So have it your way, Edward,” Battle said.

  “I’ve had just about enough of this double-talk,” Jerry Dodd said. “I’ve got a man to find. Let’s go, Mark.”

  A telephone in the living room rang. It was the outside line. There’s a difference between the outside ring and the sound you get from a switchboard call. Jerry, who had been moving out, got to it first. I heard his sharp “Yes?” I knew he was hoping it might be some word about Chambrun. He turned away from the phone.

  “It’s for Mr. Battle,” he said.

  Battle waved a “no” at him and went back to the couch.

  “Mr. Battle isn’t able to come to the phone just now,” Jerry said. Then I saw him tense. “Say that again.” He covered the mouthpiece with his hand and his eyes, bright as two newly minted dimes, were fixed on Battle. “I quote,” he said. “If you want to see your friend Chambrun alive again, you’d better come to the phone.”

  Battle, looking shocked, stood up and walked across the room, where he took the phone from Jerry. Jerry, muttering under his breath, raced for the bedroom where there was an extension to this outside line.

  “George Battle here,” Battle said. “Yes—yes—yes, I understand. There’s no way to get that kind of money in cash until after the banks open in the morning. Yes, I’m listening.” The listening occupied a full minute. Then Battle said: “It’s perfectly clear. How do I know that Chambrun is safe?—Trust you, you swine, why should I trust you?—Yes, we’ll wait for your call.” Battle put down the phone slowly. Jerry came charging in from the bedroom.

  “No time to trace the call,” he said. He looked around at us. “It would seem the boss has been kidnaped. They’re demanding a hundred grand in ransom money. They’ll call tomorrow morning—this morning—when we’ve had a chance to raise the cash in unmarked tens and twenties.” He looked at me. “You, Mark, are to be ready to deliver the money.”

  Battle was still standing by the phone, his face looking like a wax mask. “I will, of course, arrange for the money,” he said.

  “Where am I supposed to take the money?” I asked.

  “They’ll let us know in the morning.”

  “You ought to notify, the FBI,” Hardy said.

  “No!” Battle said sharply. “The money is meaningless. I want Pierre safe. They warned me specifically!”

  “They always do,” Hardy said, “and the people who listen let them get away with their crime.”

  “You risk Pierre’s safety, Lieutenant, and I’ll have you served up for dinner with an apple in your mouth!” Battle said.

  Three

  MY LEGS FELT RUBBERY under me as I walked along the second-floor corridor toward Chambrun’s office. I think, when Chambrun first turned up missing, that I had subconsciously refused to believe that he was in any real danger. For some reason that would be easily explained he had taken off without telling us where he was going or why. The phone call to George Battle had put an end to that little bit of hopeful rationalizing. Chambrun had disappeared against his will, was being held against his will, and God alone knew whether he would be returned to us unhurt and all in one piece.

  Jerry Dodd was not someone who would leave any manholes uncovered. I had supposed he would call off the search for Chambrun in the hotel. Instead he gave strict instructions that no word about the kidnaping should leak and the search should go on. His thinking was pretty grim.

  “They’d make a try for the money whether the boss is safe or not,” he said. “Knowing him, they may never have gotten him out of the hotel. He could very well have put up a fight and been clobbered. We’ll keep searching for him here until we know for certain he hasn’t been dumped somewhere, dead or dying.”

  It was left for me to tell Betsy Ruysdale what we knew. She would have to be told.

  Ruysdale and Shelda were still in Ruysdale’s office when I got there. It looked as if they’d been keeping alive on coffee and cigarettes. Ruysdale stood up as I came in, and I suspect she sensed that I had some kind of bad news.

  “We’ve had a call,” I told her. “The boss has been kidnaped. They’re asking for a hundred thousand dollars’ ransom. When we have the money in the morning, we’ll get instructions on where to deliver it. It seems I’m to be the messenger boy.”

  “Why you, Mark?” Shelda asked. She was afraid for me, which didn’t make me unhappy.

  “The answer to that is fairly simple,” Ruysdale said. “They evidently know that Mark will follow instructions to the letter. They’d choose someone they know loves Mr. Chambrun and can be counted on to do nothing that would risk his safety.” She turned toward the telephones on her desk. “We’ve got to find a way to raise the money,” she said. “George Kobler isn’t going to relish being waked up at three in the morning, but—”

  “Battle has already agreed to put up the money,” I said. “The phone call was made to him.”

  “I thought the doctor had put him to sleep?”

  “Whatever Cobb gave him didn’t hold him for long,” I said. “He’s bright as a button and full of double talk, insults, and snide side attacks. He’s a character. How the people who work for him put up with him I’ll never know.”

  “They understand him,” Shelda said.

  She’d been working for him for a year, I remembered. “Does he throw curves at you?” I asked.

  “He has almost no social life,” Shelda said. “No parties or casual guests. The only people he can play games with are the members of his household—Ed Butler, Dr. Cobb, Allerton, Gaston, me and Gloria, the other secretary.”

  “Where is Gloria, by the way?”

  “Vacation,” Shelda said. “He didn’t feel he needed her on this trip. She stayed in Cannes. He’s pretty cruel with his wisecracks a lot of the time, but when it comes to any kind of real problem, some kind of trouble you might be in, he’s kind and generous to a fault. You don’t think people like Ed Butler, and Dr. Cobb, and Allerton and Gaston would stand by him if they didn’t know that, do you? They’ve all been with him a long time. They wouldn’t put up with him if they didn’t understand him, would they?”

  “You didn’t find him hard to take?” I asked.

  She shook her head slowly. “He’s not like anyone you’ve ever met,” she said. “Eccentric, a hypochondriac, in constant fear of some kind of physical attack. And yet�
�well, I don’t quite know how to put it. I’ve never known anyone so intensely alive in terms of his interests, unless it’s Mr. Chambrun.”

  “You’re saying they’re alike?” Ruysdale asked.

  “Not at all. But Mr. Chambrun spends every waking hour concerned with the Beaumont and its operation.” I thought I detected a faint little smile, at the corners of Ruysdale’s mouth, as if she was thinking that she knew of times when that wasn’t so. “Mr. Battle has interests all over the world. He has a dozen clocks in his study in Cannes that tell him what time it is in London, New York, Moscow, Tokyo, other places. At first I didn’t know what he had a secretary to do. He handles everything by telephone. There is almost no correspondence, in or out. He seems to keep everything in his head. During the day he will call me to take notes every half hour or so. The same thing at night. I’ve never known him to sleep more than forty-five minutes at a stretch. He dictates to me, stuff about the stock markets, the price of commodities, the price of money, the production of oil wells, of mines; stuff about men in politics and in industry, about combines and mergers, about diplomatic deals and alliances and treaties. Most of it means nothing to me. I transcribe my shorthand and type up the notes, and I swear he never looks at them. There are tons of them filed away, unread, unreferred to. He’s never asked me to dig one of them out for him. It’s as if once he’d put his ideas into words they were stored away in a computer bank inside his head. He’s never asked me for a name, or a telephone number, or an address. They’re all in his head.”

  “No small talk?”

  “Only what you call his snide little side attacks,” Shelda said. “He teases Dr. Cobb about his appetite, his overindulgence in alcohol, his chain smoking when he’s seriously ill with emphysema. Gaston is an obvious homo, and Mr. Battle teases him about imaginary male lovers. Allerton, poor guy, gets quite the worst of it. He’ll be asked about the right fork to use at dinner, constantly kidded about etiquette, and the middle-class cockney family he came from, and how on earth did he come by his elegant manners. He’s teased about his job of tasting Mr. Battle’s food, warned that he may drop dead after a mouthful of it, forced to do nasty little clean-up jobs. But I suspect Allerton will be a rich man when the time comes for him to retire. Butler appears to be such a tough guy, but Mr. Battle manages to whittle him down. Sometimes I think Butler is afraid of him, that maybe Mr. Battle has something on him.”