Time of Terror

by Hugh Pentecost

  He was something else again. He was a big man with shaggy gray hair, in his sixties, I guessed. His face was jowly, lined, but the lines suggested humor. He had bristling gray eyebrows and under them were almost intolerably bright blue eyes. He watched me cross the room and before I reached the desk I had the feeling he had come to very thorough conclusions about me. This one, I told myself, was a genuine powerhouse.

  “Thanks for coming, Mark,” Ruysdale said. “This is Mr. Michael Garrity, president of the owners’ syndicate.”

  Garrity raised a huge hand in a casual wave of greeting.

  “This is Clark Herman, the producer of Strategies, the film that’s being shot in the hotel,” Ruysdale said.

  Herman was a Hollywood type. Long, mod-styled dark hair, a gaudy blue and white sports jacket, a pink sports shirt, tieless, open at the throat, pale blue slacks, and sandals over pink and blue socks in a diamond pattern.

  “Hello, Haskell,” he said. They’d evidently been briefed on me before I arrived because Ruysdale hadn’t mentioned my name.

  I nodded and looked at the third man. He turned out to be one Chester Cole, public relations man for Herman Productions. He was more conventional as to clothes than his boss, wearing a dark gray business suit with a vest, white shirt and tie. A young man, slim, dark with the Hollywood touch of dark glasses in gold wire rims that hid his eyes and left him a sort of zero when it came to assessing him.

  “There seem to be some problems in connection with the filming,” Ruysdale said.

  “Before we go into that I think it would be helpful if Mr. Haskell could bring us up to date,” Garrity said. His voice was deep and strong.

  “Jerry Dodd is doing everything possible to locate Chambrun,” I said. “So far, nothing.”

  “That’s sort of skipping over things, isn’t it, Mr. Haskell?” Garrity said. “So far there is the Kauffman woman.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “The police are trying to keep things quiet as long as possible—until they get some leads.”

  Garrity gave me a disarming smile. “Have you and they forgotten about George Mayberry, Haskell? By now the whole goddamned world knows that Laura Kauffman has been murdered in the Beaumont.”

  “That’s right,” I said. “He was going to the mayor and from there to the White House.”

  Garrity laughed, and it was a deep rumbling sound. “I pity the mayor and the president,” he said.

  “Mayberry has that much clout?” I asked.

  “Mayberry has no clout at all,” the big man said. “Just an enormous capacity for noise making.”

  “I thought perhaps you were here to haul Jerry Dodd up on the carpet,” I said.

  “I’ll buy him a drink when he has time,” Garrity said. “I’d have given anything to see someone puncture George Mayberry’s pomposity. In fact, I’ve instructed Miss Ruysdale to keep that desk chair warm for Chambrun until we find him. I don’t want Mayberry sitting there, even if it’s just to have his picture taken. I am well aware, Haskell, that, while we own the real estate, the Hotel Beaumont is just another flophouse without Pierre Chambrun. So, about Mrs. Kauffman, please.”

  There wasn’t really much to tell except the unpleasant clinical details of her murder. Hardy was on the trail of her absent husband. I supposed there would be a checkup of her Cancer Fund people to find out who had seen her last and when. There had been so much gossip about a rather sensational life that it was going to be hard to separate fact from fiction.

  “Anyone who has been so delightfully scandalous in public usually has a private sector better hidden than most people’s,” I said. “There is probably a current boy friend who was about to get the gate. There may be one who had already gotten the gate and wanted to pay off Laura Kauffman.”

  “People with money, and she is loaded, acquire enemies who do not necessarily share their beds,” Garrity said. “But the husband does look like a prime suspect, doesn’t he? Down and out, broke, asked for help and got turned down. Carved her up in a drunken frenzy. It was in the papers that she was taking a suite here for a few days to supervise preparations for tonight’s ball. Story handed out on purpose so people would know where to find her.”

  “Right,” I said. “I released the story myself at the ball committee’s request.”

  “You met Mrs. Kauffman?” Garrity asked, giving me a wise look.

  “No. She was down on my calendar for a session before lunch.”

  Carl Herman, the film producer, cleared his throat “We are very much concerned,” he said. “Our camera people were to be on hand along with the press and television to film the ball. Our stars, Janet Parker and Robert Randle, were to slip in and dance with the crowd. Part of the footage for Strategies.”

  “So what worries you?” I asked.

  “It would cost us a fortune in extras and costumes to restage the ball if it were called off.”

  “I don’t think it will be called off,” I said. “If it was a private party and not a charity ball, perhaps. But there are approximately a thousand people coming who have paid at least two hundred and fifty dollars a ticket in advance. Nobody is going to return that kind of money.”

  “That’s a low estimate,” Garrity said. “I paid fifteen hundred dollars apiece for my tickets, and a hell of a lot of others spent over the minimum.”

  “That makes me feel better,” Herman said. “I know Mr. Chambrun was very much against our using the hotel for filming. Mayberry thinks he may just have gone off somewhere to sulk.”

  “Nonsense,” Miss Ruysdale said.

  “He was opposed to the filming, wasn’t he?” Garrity asked.

  “He was,” Ruysdale said. “And quite justifiably in my opinion.” She was a cool cookie.

  “Why?” Herman asked. “Shooting a film as important as Strategies here would help promote the hotel.”

  “The Beaumont doesn’t need that kind of promotion, Mr. Herman,” Ruysdale said. “The Beaumont promotes itself by being what its guests expect it to be. That means that not five minutes’ worth of service will be interrupted, that comings and goings will not be the food for your cameras—yours, Mr. Herman, or anyone else’s.”

  “It would seem,” Chester Cole said, speaking for the first time, his eyes bidden behind the black glasses, “that Mrs. Kauffman’s privacy was invaded.”

  “In private,” Ruysdale said.

  “Why were we given permission if Chambrun was so opposed?” Cole asked.

  “Because he was overruled by a stupid board of directors,” Garrity said. “It would seem that your star, Miss Parker, has George Mayberry breathing hard. He pounded at us and hammered at us to overrule Chambrun, and we finally gave in just to shut him up. I will grovel in front of Chambrun and apologize when he turns up.”

  “You have a contract with us!” Herman said, his voice rising.

  “Oh, I know, Mr. Herman. I’m just saying we should have listened to the man who knows. Mr. Haskell, keep me informed, will you?”

  “Yes, sir,” I said.

  He pulled himself up out of his chair. It was like a lion rising from sleep. He was even bigger that I’d thought.

  “Gentlemen,” he said, “I think we’d better leave these people to the rather sticky business of keeping this hotel afloat until Chambrun comes back.”

  There were murmurs of thanks and they all left. Ruysdale had risen, and when we were alone she suddenly covered her face with her hands and I saw her shoulders heave. I went to her and put my arms around her.

  “He’ll show up, Betsy,” I said. “Nothing or anyone can keep him away from here very long.”

  She was clinging to me then, crying softly. I held her until the storm passed. Then she looked up at me, dabbing at her face with a Kleenex. She gave me a crooked little smile.

  “Well, hop to it, Haskell,” she said. “We’ve got a hotel to run!”

  Chambrun had said the same thing hundreds of times.

  Chester Cole was waiting for me in the outer office when I left Ruysdal
e. He had taken off the dark glasses and was polishing them with a white linen handkerchief. His eyes were gray, pale, and suggested a kind of cynical amusement with the world. He put his glasses back on and folded the handkerchief neatly into his breast pocket, tips showing.

  “This would seem not to be an ideal time to involve you with my problems,” he said.

  “It’s my job to be of service if I can,” I said.

  “I get the feeling that the people who work for Chambrun really care for him,” Cole said.

  “We care,” I said.

  “I envy you,” Cole said. “You see, I don’t give a damn for the people I work for. Only the paycheck. That paycheck requires me to ask you to call on Claude Duval in his suite, Sixteen B, at your earliest convenience. In short, now.”

  “What does he want? Do you know?”

  Cole’s smile was sardonic. “That things run exactly his way tonight,” he said.

  I didn’t have any taste for the filming of a movie at that moment. Cole knew that, I saw.

  “Our Claude is a prime horse’s behind,” he said. “The great Duval is more important than anyone else on earth. He is a genius at what he does, but he is a sonofabitch. You’ll need to have your temper buttoned down.”

  “Sonsofbitches are nothing new to me in this job,” I said. “There is no good time to see him with things the way they are, so give him a call and ask him if now will do.”

  Claude Duval was something of a shock to me when I was ushered into his suite by a male secretary. He was a dead ringer for the actor Telly Savalas, shiny bald, fringe of hair shaved tight to his skull. He even smoked a thin, black cigarillo. The likeness dissipated when he spoke. A cultured British accent shattered it.

  “I appreciate your promptness, Mr. Haskell,” he said. “I understand this is a troubled time.”

  He was wearing a plum-colored robe with a fur collar, probably mink. He hadn’t risen from a throne-like armchair when I was presented. He waved to a small, straight-backed chair facing him. I chose to stand.

  “Time is very precious at the moment,” I said.

  “It is also precious to me,” he said, “and there are things to be rearranged. There are stipulations made by your missing manager which won’t do at all.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I can’t change any arrangements Mr. Chambrun has made without an okay from him.”

  “But you will have to, my friend,” Duval said. “If Chambrun was available, I would make it clear to him that he has no choice. Since he isn’t here, you will have to act for him.”

  I was tempted to tell him to stuff it, but I played the role of polite hotel employee. “If you would care to tell me what you want changed,” I said.

  “That is why I had you sent here,” he said.

  The secretary, a bespectacled nonentity, was suddenly at Duval’s elbow with an ashtray. The genius flipped the ash off his cigarillo without looking.

  “To begin with,” he said, “the script calls for my two stars, Miss Parker and Mr. Randle, to be dancing together at a charity ball. We will need closeups of them, which means cameras will have to be moved out onto the floor, to follow them, to take closeups. Mr. Chambrun has had the impertinence to tell us that no cameras will be allowed out on the floor, only in the gallery where the news media cameras are stationed. He has gone further, stating that his security people will remove my cameras from the floor by force if we attempt to overrule his decision.”

  “Then that’s what will be done,” I said. “Obviously he didn’t want the ball interrupted by something that isn’t connected with it.”

  “My dear young ass!” Duval said. I suppose, at sixty, I in my thirties must have seemed young to him. “Do you realize what pleasure it will give the guests at the ball to be involved in a Duval spectacular?”

  “I have no choice but to follow Chambrun’s orders,” I said.

  “You think not?” he said. His eyes were cold as two newly minted dimes. “I have expressed my wishes to Mr. Mayberry and he has graciously agreed to rescind the rules. Mrs. Kauffman and her committee are quite agreeable. If Chambrun were here, he would certainly have to change his mind.”

  “But he is not here,” I said. The casual way he’d mentioned Laura Kauffman suggested he didn’t know what had happened in Twenty-one A. Maybe it wouldn’t have made any difference to him if he did.

  “God save me from having to deal with people who have no judgments of their own,” Duval said. “Shall I have Mr. Mayberry join this conference, young man?”

  “It’s my understanding he’s on the way to the White House for reinforcements,” I said.

  There was a slight tick at the corner of Duval’s mouth. I guessed he was curbing an impulse to laugh. He must have known what an overblown phony Mayberry was.

  “Your orders will come to you from the owners,” he said. “But I will continue to tell you what they will be. The second stipulation of Mr. Chambrun’s which must be altered is that we may not use the lobby or the Trapeze Bar for filming until after four in the morning. At that time there will be no people in either place but the cleaning force. The place has to look real, as if it were functioning normally, Mr. Haskell. I repeat, no one will object to being involved in a Duval film. I want to begin filming at two thirty A.M. Not a moment later. I want to film people leaving the ball. I want to film real customers drinking in the Trapeze Bar.”

  “And Chambrun has said ‘no’?”

  “He had said ‘no,’ but Mr. Mayberry has said ‘yes.’”

  “I can’t help you, Mr. Duval,” I said.

  “Then Mr. Mayberry will give the orders,” he said.

  “The problem will be to find someone to obey them,” I said.

  He stood up. He wasn’t as tall as I’d imagined.

  “Damn your impertinence,” he said.

  I’d had enough. “I’m sorry, Mr. Duval, but nobody in this hotel takes orders from anyone but Chambrun. If he has left orders, they will be carried out. If he comes back in time and changes his mind, that’s another story. Until that happens I’m afraid you’ll have to play by his rules.”

  “You little pipsqueak bastard!” he said.

  “The best I can do is try to find Chambrun and give you a chance to persuade him,” I said. “I’d better get to that job now. Good morning, Mr. Duval.”

  THREE

  BEING SHOUTED AT BY some self-important jerk like Duval didn’t really bother me if I was sure of my ground. In this instance I hadn’t had to make any decision of my own. Chambrun would be found. He had to be found. Meanwhile his instructions were law.

  I went looking for Jerry Dodd. By now he must have come across something in the way of a lead, someone who had seen something or heard something.

  His office is on the lobby floor, directly across from the registration desk. There is an intercom system between the security office and the desk clerk and also the cashier’s window. It can be switched on from either end in case the desk clerk or the cashier want Security to overhear a conversation or Security is curious about someone.

  I found Jerry Dodd in his office with Miss Kiley, the night chief operator on our switchboard. Miss Kiley had been at that job for twenty years. She had been the last person to speak to Chambrun every night during all that time.

  Jerry looked at me with a suggestion of hope. Everyone had that look of hope this morning when they encountered someone they hadn’t seen for a few minutes. Maybe that someone had some sort of news. I had none.

  “Virginia tells me there was nothing unusual about the boss’s sign-off last night,” he said

  Virginia Kiley is a hard-faced woman whose only pleasure in life, I suspect, is her total efficiency at her job. She is proud of how she handles it and the trust placed in her by Chambrun.

  “He says exactly the same thing every night,” Kiley said. “ ‘No more calls, Miss Kiley, unless it’s an emergency.’ It could be a taped message, except it isn’t.”

  “What time did he go up to the penthouse
last night?” Jerry asked.

  Kiley consulted a report sheet she had brought with her. “He checked with us at one fifteen,” she said. “He was in the Spartan Bar. He told me he was on his way to the penthouse. Standard procedure. Seven minutes later he checked from the penthouse to tell me he was there. Nothing after that until the goodnight signal.”

  “Fifty-three minutes.” Jerry said. “Were there any calls in or out in that time?”

  “No.”

  “You could tell us from your chart exactly how he spent his evening?”

  “I come on at seven o’clock,” Kiley said. “He was in the penthouse then, according to Mrs. Veach’s chart. He’s almost always there when I come on, dressing for the evening. There were no calls until he checked with me at a quarter to nine. He told me he was on his way to his office for dinner. Six minutes later Miss Ruysdale called to say he was there.”

  Betsy Ruysdale’s working hours coincide with Chambrun’s. “Miss Ruysdale monitors his calls when she’s on the job,” Kiley said. “At quarter past nine there was a call from Mr. Mayberry. We listen, you understand, to the first few moments of all calls and then log them—who the caller was and at what time.”

  “So he talked to Mayberry at quarter past nine?”

  Kiley shook her head. “Miss Ruysdale wouldn’t put Mayberry through. He’d have to call back in an hour when Chambrun finished dinner.” Kiley gave us a tight little smile. “Mayberry blew his stack, but Miss Ruysdale wouldn’t put him through.”

  “Go on, Virginia.”

  “At precisely ten o’clock Mr. Cardoza called. Miss Ruysdale put him through so the boss evidently had finished dinner.”

  Cardoza, the captain in the Blue Lagoon, would know when Chambrun had finished dinner by checking with room service.

  “While the boss was talking to Cardoza, Mr. Mayberry called back again. I told him the boss’s line was busy. He told me to cut in and I said I couldn’t He told me he’d see to it that I was fired.”