Time of Terror

by Hugh Pentecost

  “Has anything been taken from your room?” Hardy asked.

  “There was nothing to take, Lieutenant. I had nothing here except this robe I bought, a comb and brush, a toothbrush and paste in the bathroom. Everything I own is upstairs in the room I had on Fifteen.”

  “Handbag?”

  “There on the bureau.”

  “May I look at the contents, Miss Blodgett?”

  “Yes. There’s nothing in it—a lipstick, an American Express credit card, some tissues, about six dollars in bills and some change, the door keys to this room and my room on Fifteen.”

  Hardy opened the bag and looked at what he held. “Nothing missing,” he said.

  “Can’t this wait, Hardy, until Miss Blodgett has had a chance to get on some clothes and pull herself together a little?” Chambrun asked.

  Hardy, a handkerchief wrapped around his hand, picked up the telephone on the bedside table. “I’ll join you as soon as my people get here,” he said.

  I gathered up Martha’s meager belongings and we headed for the elevators. She walked, barefoot, between Chambrun and me, hanging on to each of us for support.

  When we got to Chambrun’s office, Betsy Ruysdale was there. I’ll never know how Ruysdale manages it. No matter what the time of day or night, if there is a situation where Chambrun needs her, she manages to be on tap.

  There is a little dressing room and bath off Chambrun’s office. He uses it for normal needs and for an occasional forty winks in the course of a busy day. He actually lives in a penthouse on the roof. Ruysdale took Martha’s things from me, and without any questions led her away.

  In the office Chambrun went to his desk and the phone. He called the security office and talked to Bill Plante, Jerry Dodd’s chief of staff. “I want a report on Terrence Cleaves,” he said, “from the moment he left Mark’s apartment at a little after two o’clock this morning.” Plante’s report was brief, and Chambrun thanked him and put down the phone. “Cleaves went directly to his room, 805, and hasn’t left it since.”

  “You thought—?”

  “He had a motive,” Chambrun said. “Andrews was out to get him. Did Mrs. Cleaves tell you anything?”

  I tried to make Connie’s story sound sensible. About all it did was verify the fact that Terrence Cleaves had something serious to hide, just as Colin Andrews had told us.

  “Something about it doesn’t add up,” Chambrun said, scowling at the end of his cigarette. “She has something on Cleaves, something big. It would seem she could get custody of her children and walk out on him. But she stays with him, even though they ‘loathe’ each other, she told you.”

  “It’s hard to figure,” I said.

  “I am also bothered by an echo,” Chambrun said. “Andrews told you that Cleaves found his wife in bed with a young man in the foreign service, beat him half to death. Tonight someone finds Miss Blodgett in bed with Andrews and does beat him to death. Miss Blodgett indicated to you that Cleaves had been after her. What was it she said about her track shoes being worn out? You’d say Cleaves doesn’t like other men to fool around with women he considers belong to him. But unless Bill Plante slipped up, it could have been Cleaves who broke into 1014.”

  “He could have slipped up,” I said.

  “I almost wish I thought so,” Chambrun said. “It would make it so simple.”

  Ruysdale emerged from the dressing room at that point. She is a woman who rarely shows any sort of deep feeling, but she looked a little done in this time.

  “That’s a very gutsy girl,” she said to Chambrun. “Go easy with her, Pierre. She’s hanging on by an eyelash.”

  I can’t remember ever having heard her call him by his first name before.

  “Will you call Bill Plante,” Chambrun said. “He says Cleaves has been covered every minute of the time since he left Mark’s apartment. I want the details of that coverage, minute by minute. If there is the tiniest gap in it, I want to know.”

  While he was talking, Jerry Dodd came into the office.

  “You think Cleaves got away from us?” he asked.

  Chambrun told him why he was wondering.

  “I followed him from Mark’s apartment,” Jerry said. “Your orders. I saw him go into 805. I called Bill Plante on the hall phone. The door to 805 was never out of my sight. Bill sent up two men—that’s how important I thought it was after looking at Mrs. Cleaves! Not for any reason were those two guys to leave their post together. If they did, God help them.”

  “Anything new in 1014?” Chambrun asked.

  Jerry’s mouth twisted down at the corners. “Some kind of a maniac,” he said. “That poor bastard was slugged fifteen or twenty times—long after he was dead of it. It’s a wonder the girl was left alive, in case she saw him.”

  “He obviously wasn’t interested in the girl, except to keep her from identifying him. Weapon?”

  “Nothing in the room. The killer took it away with him. And he must have walked down the tenth-floor corridor spattered with blood. No way he could have avoided getting it all over him.”

  “And nobody saw him,” Chambrun said.

  “Four-thirty—quarter to five in the morning. Not many people up and around. We’re not covering the fire stairs except from Fourteen to Sixteen.”

  “Have you checked whether anybody has come or gone from Coriander’s party?”

  “We were told to let people come and go at will,” Jerry said. “But my men have orders to report to me any movement up or down from Fifteen, with descriptions of who. The only people since early morning to move in and out of Fifteen are the room service waiters and Mark. They seem to be sitting very tight up there.”

  “So we take all your reports at face value, Jerry, and the killer in 1014 wasn’t Cleaves and wasn’t anyone from Coriander’s army of occupation.”

  “Could be someone working for him on the outside.”

  “Why?” Chambrun asked.

  “You got me.”

  “It could have no connection with our big troubles,” Chambrun said. He glanced toward the door of the dressing room. “See if Miss Blodgett can join us, Mark.”

  I went over and knocked on the door. “Can we talk to you now, Martha?” I called out.

  “In a minute.”

  I went across the office to Ruysdale’s quarters. She was just putting down her phone.

  “I’d appreciate it if you could look in on Mrs. Cleaves,” I said. “She doesn’t know why I’ve left her alone.”

  “Any connection between her beating and this new horror?” Ruysdale asked.

  “Not one we’ve been able to make,” I said. “If you could find a pair of dark glasses for her; she’ll want to hide her eyes.”

  “You’re a nice boy, Mark,” Ruysdale said.

  Nobody had called me a boy for a very long time.

  I got back into Chambrun’s office just as Martha Blodgett came out of the dressing room. “Gutsy,” Ruysdale had called her. She looked fresh and in control. A Band-Aid was visible under her hairline, but otherwise she was perfectly put together.

  “Some coffee or a drink?” Chambrun asked her.

  “Some coffee with just a little bourbon in it,” Martha said.

  Jerry Dodd went to the sideboard to get it for her. There’s always coffee there, Turkish for Chambrun and in an American percolator for the more civilized. Martha sat down in a Windsor chair near Chambrun’s desk.

  “There’s one thing I want to say to you, Mr. Chambrun, before you ask me questions,” she said.

  “You have the floor,” Chambrun said. His bright eyes were squinted against the smoke from his cigarette.

  “I’m not ashamed of what I did tonight,” Martha said. “I’m not ashamed that I went to bed with Colin and that we made love together for a long, lovely time.”

  “Why should you be?” Chambrun asked.

  “We belong to different generations, Mr. Chambrun. Your generation has different sexual morals from mine. There’s nothing in my code that makes going
to bed with a man on your first date with him a sin.”

  A small smile moved Chambrun’s lips. “I think the only difference between your time and mine, Miss Blodgett, is that we talked a very good game of strict behavior, but we paid no attention to what we pretended to believe. I suspect that first dates wound up in lovemaking just as often as they do now. You are open and frank about it, which I think is a little healthier than we were. Perhaps, sometime, we can discuss the matter a little more fully and under pleasanter circumstances. But right now we need help from you. You say this was your first date with Andrews?”

  She held her head very high. “The first date that could have ended in bed,” she said. “I knew him. He bought me lunch a couple of times. He was working on a story about Terrence Cleaves, my boss. At first I resented his thinking that I might leak some information to him. I had no use for Cleaves as a human being. I told you he kept me busy ducking—and every other girl on the staff. But he was brilliant at his job and I owed him loyalty. But Colin told me things that made me wonder about Cleaves. Colin asked me to watch for any contacts or special meetings he might have with Far Eastern people—Chinese, Cambodians, Laotians, Thais. Colin was certain he had sold out to someone who might have Communist leanings. And so I watched for him—and we lunched again a few times. Then tonight—” She stopped to sip her coffee and brandy.

  “Someone later is going to ask you the right questions about Cleaves, what you found out and passed on to Andrews. But right now I’m concerned only about tonight.”

  She nodded. “As you know, Mr. Chambrun, we were locked out of our rooms on the fifteenth floor. The management found us other rooms. Mine was 1014. We weren’t all together any more, the staff. We were scattered around. The story was out, the kidnapping, the demands. Cleaves had naturally left the United Nations and come flying back here. I came with him in case he had orders for me. It turned out there was nothing I could do. I just waited around, in the restaurants and the bars, trying to gather what news I could. Everybody had a story, a new piece of gossip about what was being done or not done to rescue the children and Katherine Horn. In the middle of the evening I ran into Colin in the Trapeze Bar. We sat and talked, as well as we could in all the noise, and he told me his theory: that Cleaves had kidnapped his own children in order to raise a fortune for himself.”

  “Did you buy it?” Chambrun asked.

  “Let me say I thought Cleaves was capable of it—at least of thinking of it. I knew he couldn’t be the Coriander Mark was said to have seen. I was with Cleaves when that was going on. I couldn’t believe he was head of this fantastic Army For Justice. I think I thought he might play along with them for a solid share of the profits.”

  “Did you tell Andrews that?”

  “I didn’t really have a chance. Maybe I hadn’t thought it through then. Anyway, Mark joined us then and he invited us to his apartment for a drink, where we could talk and hear ourselves think. Mark was concerned about Connie Cleaves, who was missing. We never got back to talking about Colin’s theory. You called to say that Mr. Ames was on his way, and we left Mark.” She stopped, her lips quivering slightly. Chambrun waited for her to go on. “Colin had tried to get a room in the hotel so he could be near the center of action. There were no rooms. And so—and so—”

  “You invited him to share yours.”

  “I knew what would happen if he said yes,” Martha said, her voice growing unsteady. “I wanted it to happen. He smiled at me and said he’d be glad to accept my hospitality. There—there wasn’t anything to talk about. He didn’t have to romance me. We went up to my room—and I went into the bathroom. I—I undressed and put on the robe I’d bought at the boutique earlier in the day. When I came back into the room, Colin was in my bed and we—we came together. It—it was marvelous, the best I’ve ever had in a sort of hit-and-miss sex life. We slept a little, and then we made love again, and then Colin screamed and rolled away from me. All—all I saw was a dark shadow and then something smashed down on my head and I blacked out.” She drew a long breath. “When I—revived—I found Colin—the way you saw him—and called Mark.”

  After a moment Chambrun asked: “Did you talk any further about Andrews’ Cleaves theory?”

  “My dear Mr. Chambrun, we talked about nothing except how marvelous it was to be a man and a woman—together.”

  “You never had any sexual dealings with Cleaves?” Chambrun asked.

  “My God, no.”

  “Is there some other man who might care so much for you he would kill any man he found in your bed?”

  “In a way I wish I could say ‘yes’ to that. I mean—well, I’ve never been that important to anyone—unfortunately.”

  “When you were assigned to 1014 you were given a key at the desk, or by the bellboy who took you upstairs. Did you lose that key? Or leave it inside your room and have to ask the desk for another?”

  “No. The key was in my purse. The detective found it there, remember?”

  “I wanted to make sure that wasn’t a second key,” Chambrun said. “You see, the killer found a key to let himself in. If he didn’t steal it from you, then he had to get it from the desk.”

  “Have you thought that Terrence Cleaves must have been desperately afraid that Colin would come up with something provable about him?” Martha asked.

  “I have. But I also have to tell you that Cleaves was being watched and that he couldn’t have been the man who broke into your room.”

  She sat very still, a frown creasing her forehead. I thought she looked like a very puzzled small child. “There is a young, quite attractive Chinese man, head of some sort of trade commission, who lives here in the hotel, Mr. Chambrun. I think his name is Lu-Feng. We call him Mr. Lu. I told you Colin had asked me to keep an eye on any Far Eastern contacts Cleaves had. He saw Mr. Lu quite often, had cocktails with him here in the Lounge and in the Trapeze Bar. You know him?”

  “Lu-Feng has been staying here for about a month,” Chambrun said. He pressed the intercom button on his desk. “Ruysdale, get me the registration file on Lu-Feng, please.” He leaned back in his chair. “What interests you about Mr. Lu, Martha?”

  “Well—only that if Colin was right, and Cleaves sold out to someone, then the person he sold out to would be in trouble too, wouldn’t he? He’d want Colin out of the way just as badly as Cleaves might, wouldn’t he?”

  “Possibly. Did you find anything in investigating for Andrews that made you think Mr. Lu might be the man Andrews was after?”

  “No. Just that he is a Chinese, a Communist, and that Cleaves saw a good deal of him. Mr. Chambrun?”

  “Yes?”

  “Do you think what happened to Colin has anything to do with Coriander and the children and all that?”

  “I wish to God I knew,” Chambrun said.

  PART THREE

  Chapter 1

  IT WAS ABOUT SEVEN in the morning and I had left Chambrun’s office and gone back to my own apartment. I needed to shave and shower and get myself some clean clothes.

  Ruysdale was there when I let myself in, and she indicated, fingers to her lips, that Connie was asleep. I tiptoed into the bathroom and got my shaving gear. Clean clothes would have to wait. I went back to Chambrun’s office and asked to use his dressing room. Chambrun was attacking an almost raw breakfast steak with hot rolls, sweet butter, and honey on the side. It was a standard breakfast for him, although a little earlier than usual. He usually had this hearty breakfast about eight and didn’t eat again till dinnertime.

  He handed me a registration card as I stopped at his desk. It was a dossier on Mr. Lu-Feng. The Chinese businessman, head of a trade commission, was just thirty years old, a graduate of Southern California in business administration, unmarried, credit unlimited, no bad marks. He had played on the golf team at Southern Cal, and he had spent two years in London for his trade commission before he’d come to New York about a month ago.

  “About all it does for us,” Chambrun said, “is to tell us that he
was in London about the time Terrence Cleaves was scratching for money to save himself. If there’s anything to Andrews’ theory that Cleaves sold out, Mr. Lu could have been a buyer. No proof whatsoever, of course.”

  “How can you approach him?” I asked.

  “I can’t. But at a decent hour you might have a try at it. He may have known Andrews in London. It would be logical to ask him anything he might know about Andrews and his connections, and in the process you could get around to Cleaves. Don’t press too hard, but let me know your reactions.”

  “What do you think the next move will be from Coriander?” I asked him.

  “If he’s listening to radio or television, he knows that the President will make some sort of announcement about nine o’clock. He may buy what the President has to say. Personally, I doubt it. He’ll know it’s a stall and he’ll probably insist on some kind of quick action from us.”

  “What kind of action?”

  “Something he can believe,” Chambrun said.

  I went into the dressing room. No clean clothes, but I decided a shower after shaving would make me feel more human. The dressing room is soundproofed so that I had no way of knowing that anything was going on in Chambrun’s office until I had dressed again and walked out there.

  Chambrun was in the midst of being subjected to some high-pitched shouting by Buck Ames.

  “I’ll kill the sonofabitch!” the Buccaneer was announcing at the top of his lungs. “Lay his hands on Connie, will he? I’ll give it back to him in spades! Double spades!” He started for the door.

  “Wait!” Chambrun said sharply. When he gave an order, even Buck Ames hesitated. “You’ve only heard part of the evening’s story, Buck.” And Chambrun told him about Colin Andrews’ bloody passing.

  Some kind of juices seemed to run out of the older man. He grabbed the back of a chair for support. The fury that had driven him a moment before seemed to have evaporated.

  “He was a real square shooter, Andrews,” Buck said. “Any leads?”