Maxwell turned away. “Get him out of here,” he said.
When the door closed on Cloud and Hardy, I felt as if a balloon had been deflated. Maxwell went over to the bar and poured himself a drink. He turned back, finally, to Diana, as if the drink had given him strength.
“I know you came to see your mother,” he said. He was dismissing her.
“Where is she?” Diana asked. It was a death struggle between these two, I thought, with Maxwell seeming the more vulnerable.
Maxwell nodded toward the door to the bedrooms and turned away again. It developed that Diana was going to have to walk through, around, or over Chambrun to make it. He stood directly in front of the door, rocking gently on his heels.
“What is this ‘frame-up’ gibberish?” he asked.
“Please, I’d like to go to Mother,” Diana said.
“Let’s not play games, Diana,” Chambrun said. “I’ve known you since you were a baby. I was at your christening. I’ve watched this feud grow between you and your father, and I’ve stayed out of it. None of my business—until tonight. Tonight my hotel has been used as a stage for murder. It has been used as a stage for a bad-taste practical joke. Would you believe that I may be more offended by that than the shooting? Cloud tells us that he knew what Charlie Sewall was planning. Charlie had to have an audience ready to laugh. Cloud was Charlie’s friend and he’s your friend. So I suspect you knew what Charlie was planning for tonight. Am I right?”
Some of the color had drained from Diana’s face, and she faced Chambrun, rigid, her hands curled into small fists.
“Yes, I knew,” she said.
“Oh, God!” Maxwell said, under his breath.
“You went along with it because you wanted your father hurt,” Chambrun said. “Which brings us back to this frame-up talk. I know what it’s about in part. You think your father had drugs and a gun planted in Barry Tennant’s apartment. Why?”
“He hates Barry,” Diana said.
“That’s not good enough,” Chambrun said. “Your father may hate Barry, but he’s a man of character, integrity, honor.”
“Then why were the police sent to pick up Barry?”
“Because he headed an activist group which had threatened your father over the Barstow riots. Other kids were checked out, weren’t they?”
“Yes,” Diana said, still rigid. “But I wasn’t sleeping with other kids.”
“Diana!” It was a whisper from Maxwell.
“Was your father with the police when they raided Tennant’s apartment?”
“No.”
“Then you don’t think he planted the gun personally—and the marijuana?”
“Nobody planted the pot,” Diana said. “Barry never denied that he had experimented with pot. He didn’t go for it, and he simply forgot to get rid of it. But the gun—”
“So your father corrupted the New York City police force?”
“Of course not.”
“That’s the best word I’ve heard for the police in months,” Chambrun said dryly. “So who did plant the gun?”
“The police took Stew Shaw along with them to identify Barry,” Diana said. “He was the college security chief then. He was then, and is now, Father’s boy.”
Chambrun’s narrowed black eyes turned on Maxwell. “What about that, Douglas?”
Maxwell spread his hands. “It simply isn’t true,” he said.
“You mean you never told Shaw to plant a gun on Barry Tennant?”
“Never.”
“But that doesn’t mean Shaw couldn’t have done it, thinking it would please you. He is your boy, as Diana put it.”
Maxwell moistened his lips. “I would bet my life that Stew never did such a thing.”
“Don’t be too free with your bets, Douglas. Your life is already at stake. Someone may be down the corridor now, waiting to take it. Where is Shaw?”
“He went back to the house to get some things I need,” Maxwell said. “It seemed safe enough, with your men and the police to protect me.”
“Can I go in to Mother now?” Diana asked. She hadn’t once looked at her father.
Chambrun shrugged and turned away. I watched Diana go. Maxwell returned to the bar. He was taking on quite a load himself, I thought.
Chambrun and I left the unhappy Maxwell family to themselves, with Miss Ruysdale somewhere in the background. We went down to Chambrun’s office on the second floor. He had been out of touch too long. He had to know what was going on in the private world of the Beaumont. He flipped the switch on the box communicator on his desk so that I could hear what was going on.
Lieutenant Hardy had just called 14B to reach him and was on the way up to the office now.
The Banquet Department reported that the last of the guests had left the Grand Ballroom and the cleaning crew was already on the job.
All quiet in the lobby. The reporters and the camera people had disappeared.
The pickets were still outside the hotel, chanting obscenities, aimed about evenly at Maxwell and the cops.
Business as usual in the Blue Lagoon, which is the hotel’s night club.
The telephone switchboard was swamped with calls of inquiry about Maxwell. Was he dead? Was he hurt?
Finally Chambrun switched off the box and leaned back in his chair. “I think I could do with a brandy, Mark,” he said. I went to the sideboard and brought him a brandy and a cup of Turkish coffee, which is always brewing there. He cupped the brandy glass in both hands for a moment, savoring its aroma. Then he sipped and put it down.
“I believe in Maxwell,” he said. “I don’t believe he framed young Tennant, no matter how much he hated him for what he’s done with Diana. Did you meet Tennant?”
“See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil,” I said.
“I know you promised Grace,” he said. “But obviously you went to get Diana for her. Which means that she knows where Diana lives and has kept it a secret from her husband. Did you meet Tennant?”
“Let’s say I have met him,” I said.
“Do you think he was here in the hotel tonight?”
“I don’t think either of them were,” I said.
“But they knew what was going to happen—Charlie Sewall’s joke?”
“Diana told you that.”
“Did you bring them news?” he asked.
“How do you mean?”
“Did they know that Sewall had been shot?”
“It seemed to be news,” I said. “They were shocked, I think.”
“If they knew it was Charlie, and Charlie was their friend, then we have to count them out,” Chambrun said. “Unless—” His eyes narrowed.
“Unless what?”
“Unless it was meant to be Charlie,” he said. “Unless it wasn’t a mistake.”
“But Diana and her boy wanted Charlie to pull off his joke,” I said.
“So they say.”
We weren’t able to go on with it because Hardy arrived. He looked beat. He was carrying a manila folder which he put down on Chambrun’s desk.
“May be some help,” he said. He opened the folder. On top of a stack of papers was a photograph. I moved around to get a look at it. It was a picture of Charlie Sewall in the lobby, without his pants, smiling. Flanking him were two men in white tie and tails. One of them was totally obscured by a folding opera hat which he was holding up to his face, obviously to avoid the cameras. The other was turned back to look at Sewall, so that all we had was his profile. It was a youngish face, contorted by laughter.
“Either of you know him?” Hardy asked.
I didn’t.
Chambrun shook his head. “There isn’t enough of the face,” he said. “Only the jaw line, dark hair.”
Hardy pushed the photograph aside. “We have a preliminary report from ballistics,” he said. “The medical examiner got the bullet out of Sewall’s chest. They guess it’s a foreign-made gun, probably a 6.5 millimeter Walthers, German make. Same kind of gun some people think was used to as
sassinate Bobby Kennedy.”
“Hard to come by?” Chambrun asked.
“No. I could name you a dozen gunshops where they can be bought. It’s a handgun, very accurate if you know how to use it.”
“You need to find the gun before you can match the bullet to it,” Chambrun said.
Hardy made a sour face. “The ability to match a fired bullet to a gun is considerably exaggerated,” he said. “Sometimes you can, sometimes not. More often not—not well enough to have it stand up in court as evidence. It would be happy coincidence if we found the owner of a P-38 Walthers, but we might not make it stick as the one.”
“And it was fired from the mezzanine balcony?”
“No question.”
“Which means the killer had a key to the locked doors.”
“Or a magical lock-pick,” Hardy said.
“Which doesn’t exist,” Chambrun said.
“Right.”
The red light blinked on Chambrun’s phone. He switched on the squawk box again.
“Chambrun here.”
“Karl Nevers here,” a tense voice said. “The pickets have broken through the police lines, sir. Like hundreds of them. They’re tearing the place apart, Mr. Chambrun.”
It was bedlam downstairs. Hundreds of kids, boys and girls, were churning about, screaming and yelling. I could hear glass smashing. It seems that some of them had charged the front entrance and the cops had concentrated there. It was a decoy, because the main force had come in the side entrance, charging down the corridor of shops, breaking glass windows, looting furs and jewelry, and clothes. The cops were caught between the two forces. Frightened guests were in the center of a whirlpool of violence. Some of the kids had clubs and baseball bats. They swung at everything in sight—people, chandeliers, furniture. Here and there a cop, snowed under by the raiders, had been able to draw a gun and was firing wildly into a solidly packed mass of people. Above it all was a chanting.
“We want Maxwell! We want Maxwell!”
As Chambrun, Hardy, and I came out of the elevators into this madhouse, we were almost trampled to death by kids crowding into the car we had vacated. I heard a girl shouting hysterically.
“Fourteen B! It’s Fourteen B!”
They knew where Maxwell was.
We swung around and got into the next car. Hardy blocked a group of charging kids. He swung his fist like a sledge hammer, knocking one boy back into the group and scattering them like ninepins. I got the elevator door closed and we went up. Chambrun’s face was a study in cold rage.
We stumbled out at 14. The hallway was packed with kids, yelling and screaming. But they weren’t moving forward. The situation was a little different here. The space was narrow. There was no way to encircle the people outside the door of 14B. I managed to climb up on a radiator cover to have a look. Jerry Dodd and two of his men were there, guns drawn, and with them was Watson Clarke, his clothes torn, his white shirt front smeared with blood. I saw a kid with a club make a rush at them. It was Clarke, a big man, who stopped him, picked him up in the air, and literally threw him back in the crowd.
Then I heard Jerry Dodd’s voice, clear, and cold. “I’m warning you!” he shouted at the crowd. “Come one step closer and we open fire. There’ll be a dozen of you dead before you can reach us. Add it up!”
And then, unbelievably, straight through the center of that jammed crowd Chambrun, short and square, forced his way. It took both strength and determination. When he reached Jerry, he turned and faced them. He looked carved out of rock.
“Listen!” he said. His voice was so low they had to quiet to hear him. Something about him held them back. “Let us examine the facts. There are three men here, each with six bullets in a gun. There are two of us unarmed who will fight you until we are dead.” He glanced at the bloodied Clarke. “These guns will become clubs when they are empty. So the first two dozen of you will die. Behind you is one armed man, a police lieutenant. In seconds there will be a score more. You’re caught both ways. If you overpower us, you’d need a tank to break down this door. At the far end of the hall is a window. Outside it is a fourteen-story drop to the sidewalk. You can’t get Maxwell and you can’t get away. If you overpower us and kill us—because you will have to overpower us—you will all of you spend the rest of your lives in prison. Those are the facts, my friends.”
A girl just in front of me shouted: “We want Maxwell!” It didn’t sound very bloodthirsty; more like a college cheerleader trying to start a crowd response. I heard elevator doors open behind me. Half a dozen cops with drawn guns piled out. The ball game was over—I hoped.
Somebody shouted: “There’s a fire exit down the hall.”
They turned, as though they were one, and tried to stampede. Three or four of them got by the unprepared cops and I saw them get through the fire door to the inside staircase. Then the cops had the hall blocked.
“Let them go one by one, after you’ve searched them,” Hardy ordered. “Confiscate all weapons, clubs, anything they can use to raise hell.”
The resistance had cracked. I wedged my way to the front and joined the defenders.
“I’m always in the nick of time,” I said.
Chambrun ignored me. I turned to Jerry Dodd. “Would you have fired on them, pal?” I asked.
“Right through the eye sockets,” he said.
“I was never so glad to see anyone in my life,” I heard Clarke say to Chambrun. “I was in the Trapeze Bar when it started. I had to fight off half a dozen of them to get into an elevator and get up here. Damn near tore my clothes off. Can we see how they are inside?”
It was Miss Ruysdale who opened the door to us. She looked as unruffled as if she had just modeled her trim black dress for a fashion show.
“How bad is it?” she asked Chambrun.
“It’s bad,” he said. “They’ve wrecked the main lobby.”
In the living room of the suite Maxwell was standing beside his wife, who was sitting rigidly straight on the lounge. Maxwell’s hand rested gently on her shoulder. She looked in shock. Maxwell looked angry, not scared.
Against the wall near the door to the bedrooms Diana stood. Her hands were spread out against the wall as if she needed its support. I tried to guess what she was thinking. She claimed allegiance to those rioting kids, but I had a feeling she was horrified at how out of hand it had all become. A few more minutes and her family might have been wiped out in front of her eyes.
“What in God’s name happened to you, Watty?” Maxwell asked Clarke.
“I had a little trouble getting here,” Clarke said. He glanced at Diana. “Your friends are on the rough side when they get out of hand, Diana.”
“They’re maniacs!” Maxwell exploded.
“Watson Clarke turned to Chambrun. “I’ve wondered how they knew they’d find Doug in this particular suite,” he said. “I’d assumed they wouldn’t get it from the switchboard. I mean, you were taking special precautions, weren’t you, Mr. Chambrun?”
“We were,” Chambrun said. His voice was almost unrecognizably cold. “Someone on the inside either sold out or was frightened into telling.”
God help whoever it was, I thought.
“Wouldn’t it be advisable to move Doug and Grace somewhere else?” Clarke asked.
“This will be quite safe,” Chambrun said. “I assure you.”
“I think perhaps we owe Pierre an apology,” Maxwell said. “Our dinner party has made a shambles of his hotel.”
Chambrun ignored the apology. He stepped over to Diana.
“You could save us a lot of time if you’d tell us who the leaders of that mob are,” he said.
She looked past him as though he wasn’t there; like someone in a trance.
“You’re not saving anyone, Diana,” Chambrun said. “The police will have taken in dozens of those kids. Not all of them will have your kind of misplaced courage. Somewhere in that crowd may be the person who tried to murder your father earlier tonight. In the state of mind
they were in just now that someone may have tried again. Save us time, Diana.”
She turned completely around and pressed her forehead against the wall.
Maxwell whispered her name, pleading. Grace Maxwell didn’t move or speak.
The door buzzer sounded. Miss Ruysdale went to it and moved the little peephole shutter so that she could see who it was. Then she opened the door and Jerry Dodd came in.
“See you outside for a minute?” he asked Chambrun.
Chambrun nodded to me and I went out into the hall with him. Complete order had been restored out there. The two guards stood on either side of the door. The rioters and the cops were gone.
“We’ve had it again,” Jerry said. The skin on his thin face looked stretched tight over the bones.
“More rioting downstairs?” Chambrun asked.
Jerry shook his head. “Murder,” he said. “Somebody beat Stewart Shaw to death and shoved him in the linen closet down the hall.”
Part Two
1
STEWART SHAW WAS A pretty ugly sight. One of the floor maids had gone to the linen closet after the rioters had been cleared away to get some fresh towels for someone. It’s called a closet, but it’s really a small room lined with shelves for sheets, towels, extra blankets. The maid had opened the door and found a man with half a head sitting on the floor facing her. He was tilted against one of the rows of shelves which had kept him from falling over. His skull had been beaten in like an eggshell.
“Girl kept her head,” Jerry said. “Closed the door and called the front desk.”
We were standing just outside the door, looking in. I turned away. I thought I was going to be sick at my stomach. Shaw had been a dark, glowering sort of man. His ugly face was streaked by blood from the awful wounds on his head.
“I’m only guessing, but I don’t think it was those kids,” Jerry said. “They came in a mob and they all headed for Fourteen B. Shaw wasn’t there with us. Also, the blood has already started to dry. Seems like it happened a little while ago, even before the kids broke into the hotel.”
“Where’s Hardy?” Chambrun asked.
“God knows,” Jerry said. “I sent word downstairs. He’s questioning kids somewhere, I imagine.” Jerry took a handkerchief out of his pocket and blotted at the beads of perspiration on his forehead. “I thought I’d better report to you out here, boss. The Maxwells have had about all you could expect them to take for one night. How come Shaw wasn’t in Fourteen B acting like a bodyguard?”
Deadly Joke Page 6
