“It’s going on two o’clock in the morning, Doctor. Are you planning to spend the night with your patient?”
“As a matter of fact I was just about to leave,” Coughlin said. “I gave Jim Gregory something to help him sleep a few minutes before you came here the first time. I’ve been waiting to make sure it worked. I just checked on him and he’s sound asleep.”
“Can we look in on him?”
“My dear man, Jim struggles to get rest,” Coughlin said. “It would be cruel to wake him up. Why do you want to look in on him?”
Chambrun’s eyes were cold as two newly minted dimes. “I’d like to make sure that he isn’t Neil Drury.”
The doctor’s jaw dropped. Then he laughed. “You still think I might be Drury’s cosmetician?”
“There’s murder cooking, Doctor; violence. I’d be a fool if I didn’t check out on the wildest possibilities.”
Coughlin nodded, slowly. “I guess you would,” he said. “What you’ll see in the next room is the wreck of a man. He’s suffering from terminal emphysema. I give him only a few months to live. He’s dropped down from a hundred and ninety to about a hundred and forty pounds. You’ll just have to look at him to know that he can’t be your man. To start with, he’s sixty-five years old; much older than your man.”
“I’d like to see him,” Chambrun said. “In a situation like this I don’t take any man’s word for what’s behind a closed door.”
“Jim Gregory is behind that door,” Coughlin said. “I’d be deeply grateful if you’d try not to wake him.”
He moved over to the bedroom door and opened it, carefully. The room beyond was partially dark. There was a small, shaded night-light on the table beside the bed. It wasn’t part of standard equipment. It gave enough light to reveal the face of the man on the bed.
I had never seen James Gregory before, but I was shocked, as one is shocked by severe illness or death. The face was fish-belly white. The skin was drawn tight over high cheekbones. The closed eyes were sunk in deep sockets. His breathing was tortured. A sheet covered the body, but it didn’t conceal the fact that Gregory was skin and bones.
On the table beside the light was an oxygen mask. It was evidently attached to a tank I couldn’t see on the other side of the bed.
Chambrun stood staring at him for a moment or two and then he backed out of the room with the rest of us. Coughlin closed the door and faced us.
“Satisfied?” he asked. There was a touch of resentment in his voice.
“What is he doing here in the hotel?” Chambrun said. “He looks as if he could die before morning.”
Coughlin took a cigarette out of his pocket and lit it. “There is so little you can do for a man in Jim’s condition,” he said. “You have a terminal cancer case and all you can do is give him enough drugs to make the agony less acute. In this case Jim will strangle to death because he can’t get air. There is nothing I can do for him.”
“So why bring him here?”
“Jim was a writer, a journalist. He’s lived all around the world,” Coughlin said. “He’s well off, financially. His pleasure in life has been the fancy places: Paris, Rome, London, Athens, the Riviera, the best hotels, the best women. He has ups and downs in this sickness. A few days ago he was up. ‘I don’t want to sit here in your clinic, waiting to die,’ he told me. ‘I want to do the town once more.’ ” Coughlin shook his head. “There was no point in telling him that the moment he made the effort he would conk out. So I arranged for him to come here, where I could get to him in an emergency. As I foresaw, just the effort of getting here was too much for him. He hasn’t been able to leave his room since he got here.”
“Dr. Partridge is filled in on the medical facts of the case?” Chambrun asked.
“Perfectly,” Coughlin said. “I dropped in tonight as a friend. Partridge is quite capable of handling any emergency.”
“And that emergency could come any time?”
Coughlin shrugged. “Tomorrow, a month from tomorrow. Jim is a scrapper, bless him. He wants to spend one evening in the Blue Lagoon. We’re going to do our best to let him have that final spree.”
“I’m sorry to have gotten in your hair, Doctor.”
“No problem.”
“I’m concerned about that telephone call,” Chambrun said. “It wasn’t some kind of a malicious trick, a practical-joke kind of malice. There was a purpose behind it, and it can only have been to get me away from here—or at least from this area of the hotel. You may know from Partridge that Miss Malone is Drury’s former girl friend. What you don’t know is that she’s disappeared and that we’re hunting for her. That’s why the message you gave me was bound to take me away from here on the run.”
“I don’t understand why,” Coughlin said.
“Something else you don’t know,” Chambrun said, “is that Miss Malone has a room on this floor. It could be that it wasn’t just to get me away from this suite but from this floor—this part of the hotel. There’s no explanation of it in Miss Malone’s room. There’s no sign that she’s been back there or that anyone has gone through her things. That brings us back to this suite, Doctor.”
“Jigsaw puzzle with some missing pieces,” Coughlin said.
“I find myself wondering if the missing pieces could be in that bedroom,” Chambrun said, nodding toward Gregory’s door.
Coughlin’s face showed complete surprise. “Jim?” he said.
“I came up here for a special reason,” Chambrun said. “I wanted to talk to Mr. Gregory and I wanted Mr. Williams to hear him in conversation. Of course, once I’d seen Mr. Gregory I wouldn’t have needed Mr. Williams. But in the process of talking to Gregory I would probably have mentioned Drury and General Chang. He’s been an around-the-world journalist. He might have heard something, remembered some detail, that would have been helpful. Do you suppose that’s why they contrived to get me away from here?”
“ ‘They’?”
“ ‘They’ are always the enemy,” Chambrun said, with a faint smile. “If you’re a Conservative, ‘They’ are the Liberals. If you’re a Communist, ‘They’ are the capitalists. In this case ‘They’ might also be friends of Drury’s who don’t want us to get in his way. I think I’d like to talk to Mr. Gregory when he comes out of his drugged sleep—unless you have some serious objection, Doctor.”
“None whatever,” Coughlin said. “I’m sure it would interest him, and anything that interests him helps to make his last stretch of time a little more bearable.”
“Again, thanks for everything, Doctor.”
“Been a pleasure.” Coughlin grinned. “For God sake, when you drop the other shoe, let me know. Otherwise I might die of curiosity.”
Chambrun, I suspect, was keyed to a kind of total efficiency that morning at two o’clock. I was groggy, and could sense Peter’s fatigue from the way he hung onto my arm. Chambrun walked toward the elevators, brisk as a man who’d just gotten up from an eight-hour sleep. Peter and Jerry and I dragged after him. We’d all been at it for a straight sixteen hours.
It was a jigsaw puzzle all right, as far as I was concerned, with more missing pieces than I cared to think about. I suspect my trouble was that I wasn’t really concerned with anything except what had happened to Laura. I had the feeling Peter was with me on that.
Suppose Drury had managed to get a message to her? Suppose she had gone outside the hotel to meet him? She probably wouldn’t care a damn about my anxiety for her, but it seemed odd to me she wouldn’t make some effort to get in touch with Peter. She must know how uptight he would be.
I said something to that effect as we walked along the second-floor corridor to Chambrun’s office. Chambrun just looked at me and kept on walking. In the outer office we found Miss Ruysdale, looking as fresh as the boss, standing beside a table at which David Tolliver, Drury’s agent, was seated. He had a stack of cards in front of him—registration cards. He needed a shave. He looked as if he’d been pulled out from under a rock somewhere. Miss Ruy
sdale introduced him to Chambrun and Jerry.
“Grateful to you for helping,” Chambrun said.
“I wish I knew what I was supposed to be doing,” Tolliver said. He leaned back in his chair and rubbed his eyes with the knuckles of his hands. “There are hundreds of people in your hotel who would know the old Neil Drury by sight; casual acquaintances, maybe even a friend or two. But baskets full of movie fans, Mr. Chambrun. But we all know the old Neil Drury is gone; his face changed.”
“I’m not looking for people who would recognize him as he was,” Chambrun said. “I’m looking for friends who might help him stay hidden; who might be cooperating with him in some way. If he came to you and asked you for help, Mr. Tolliver, would you help him?”
“You know it.”
“Help him to commit a murder which will result in his getting killed himself?”
Tolliver lowered his hands. “I’d try to talk him out of it,” he said. “That’s why I put Mr. Haskell in touch with Peter. I thought if anyone could talk him out of it Peter could; and, of course, Laura Malone.”
“That’s why he’s staying out of sight,” Peter said. “He knows Laura and I might just convince him.” He drew a deep breath. “I keep dreaming that’s what Laura is doing right now.”
“She could persuade him if anyone can,” Tolliver said.
“So maybe they’re riding around Central Park in a hansom cab, arguing about it,” Chambrun said.
“But you don’t believe that,” Tolliver said.
“I wish I did,” Chambrun said. “Does the name Sam Schwartz mean anything to you?”
“The first card I showed him,” Miss Ruysdale said.
“Hollywood is full of guys who fit his description,” Tolliver said. “Touts, pimps, tinhorn gamblers, gofors for the big shots.”
“Gofors?”
“People who go for things for the big shots—glorified errand boys, message carriers,” Tolliver said. “Some of them make a good living just by saying ‘yes’ and ‘glad to get it for you.’ ”
“He’s hooked into this,” Chambrun said, “I suspect, with Chang. But he could be on the other side; a gofor for Drury. If you saw him would you know?”
Tolliver shrugged. “Might or might not,” he said. “Neil wasn’t the old-fashioned Hollywood big shot. He didn’t have a crew of hangers-on. He didn’t ever put on any side. He didn’t have an army of behind-kissing friends.”
“Someone phoned Schwartz when I was on my way up to see him and told him it had ‘hit the fan.’ That had to mean that someone knew he was on some list of mine. The warning could have come from someone on Chang’s payroll, or it could have been Drury or some friend of his. Will you be willing to go with Jerry and take a look at Schwartz and see if he rings any bell with you?”
“Sure,” Tolliver said.
Jerry Dodd grinned. “Brother Schwartz isn’t going to be happy to be waked up again. You may really get yourself a lawsuit, boss.”
“Help to occupy my spare time,” Chambrun said, drily. He walked on into his own office. Peter and I dragged after him. He went straight to the Turkish coffee maker. Maybe that’s what kept him so chipper. He turned to us, balancing the cup and saucer in the palm of his left hand.
“You evidently think I’m not concerning myself enough with the whereabouts of Laura Malone, Mark.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“It’s what’s on your mind,” he said. “There can be several reasons why she hasn’t gotten in touch with Peter—or with you, my moonstruck friend. First and most obvious, she can’t. She’s been picked up by Chang’s people with the idea of using her as a hostage if they don’t find Drury in a hurry. Or Ruysdale’s right, and she’s had an accident of some sort we haven’t been able to trace yet. Or she’s with Drury and he doesn’t want her to call you.”
“Or she’s dead,” Peter said, in a flat voice.
“Or she’s dead,” Chambrun said, with the same emotion he might have shown if he was discussing the price of eggs. “Second, she hasn’t gotten in touch with you or Peter or anyone else because that’s the way she wants it.”
“Why should she want deliberately to scare the hell out of us?” I asked.
“There is one thing in this whole cockeyed story that I find it hard to buy,” Chambrun said. “We’ve both heard it from Peter; you heard it from Laura. It’s the love story, friends. It has a ring of truth to it. Those two people—the girl and Drury—met in a strange way and in the space of twenty-four hours became bound together in an almost classic involvement. So tragedy struck them. Drury’s whole purpose in life was altered. Ring of truth. But then it goes off the tracks for me. He never got directly in touch again with the woman he loved. No letter. No phone call. He loved her so very much, and yet nothing.”
“He was afraid Laura would talk him out of concentrating on Chang,” Peter said.
“If he was so determined, no one could have talked him out of it,” Chambrun said.
“If he continued his relationship with Laura, she’d have been in danger,” I suggested. “Chang was looking for him. If she knew where he was, Chang might have forced her to talk.”
“But not one last visit, no phone call, not even a letter? No explanation? No swearing of eternal vows?” Chambrun took a sip of his coffee. I had no sensible answer for him, nor did Peter, it seemed. “In my judgment, either the whole love story as we’ve heard it is a phony, or he has been in touch with her.”
“So what does it matter which is true?” Peter asked. He had dropped down into one of the armchairs and covered his face with his hands.
“It matters a great deal,” Chambrun said. “For me the love story rings true, as I’ve said, therefore the story that Drury has never been in touch with his woman—not once in five years—simply doesn’t add up. So that brings us to another reason why you haven’t heard from her. She’s working with Drury. She’s always known where he was. All that talk about ‘sensing his presence’ is hogwash. She knows where he is, she knows what he looks like, she’s helping him. Nothing’s happened to her that she didn’t want to have happen. She slipped out of sight intentionally. She could expect there would be a total concentration on finding her.”
“But why?” Peter asked.
“If we’re concentrating on her, Drury will be freer to move around. It would be nice to find her, but I’m not sweating over her immediate safety. She’s with Drury. You can count on it.”
“Well, at least, then, she’s safe,” Peter said.
“Safe!” Chambrun snorted. “My dear, addlepated friend, no one close to Drury is safe. Just an innocent bystander in the line of fire between Chang and Drury is in danger. Chang is no fool. If he doesn’t have Laura Malone as a hostage, then he’s come to the same conclusion I have. She’s with Drury. Finding Drury is difficult. None of us can identify him by sight. But now Chang knows that if he can find Laura, whom he can identify, he will be very close to Drury. Safe?” His coffee cup rattled as he put it down on his desk. “There is a thorough and methodical search of the hotel going on. Our people and Wexler’s people are on the lookout for her. Unless either of you has a brain storm—?” He looked at us with his bright black eyes narrowed. “You, Peter—you and Tolliver are the good friends of Drury’s I know about. Who else in New York? Who could Drury go to, persuade to help him? Laura can be hidden away in somebody’s apartment, blocks from here. That apartment can be Drury’s headquarters and not the Beaumont. Surely you can come up with a list of people?”
Peter shook his head. “Neil didn’t have many close friends,” he said. “It started when we were adolescents. I don’t know of anyone else from that period he kept in touch with. He had hundreds of warm acquaintances, you might say—people who liked him, admired him, laughed with him. But not close. Even Tolliver isn’t close in a personal way. He and Neil had a first-class business arrangement, but it wasn’t an intimacy. I was in his confidence, and of course Laura. If there is anyone else as close as we were, I have no way of know
ing about it.” Chambrun took a deep drag on his Egyptian cigarette and let the smoke out in a long sigh. “So much for the frank and open Mr. Drury.” He put out his cigarette with a sort of angry twisting gesture in the ashtray. “I suggest to you two that you try to get a few hours’ sleep. Drury isn’t going to get to General Chang tonight. There’s simply no way to break through that twelfth-floor security. But tomorrow, when Chang decides to visit the United Nations; when he insists on looking over the Grand Ballroom for his bloody birthday party—that’s when we can anticipate action. It would be helpful if you were both in something better than a comatose condition.”
“Sleep isn’t going to come easy,” Peter said.
“Then take something!”
I was just pulling myself up, wearily, out of my chair when Miss Ruysdale came in from the outer office.
“The Madwoman of Chaillot,” she said.
Chambrun looked startled. “Here?” He glanced at his watch.
“On the phone,” Miss Ruysdale said. She was fighting a smile. “You are to present yourself immediately at Penthouse L.”
“At two-thirty in the morning?”
“The foyer outside her apartment is crowded with policemen,” Miss Ruysdale said. “The roof outside her house is crowded with policemen. Her privacy is destroyed. Unless this situation is remedied immediately she will put in a phone call to Mr. Battles in France and have your scalp.”
“Oh, God,” Chambrun said. “Hardy has men up there so that the roof doesn’t get tramped on before they have a chance in daylight to finish examining it. Since Li Sung and his killer found their way up there he has a man watching for some kind of repeat performance.”
“You must remove them,” Miss Ruysdale said, the smile getting a little better of her.
“Go up and try to explain it to her, Ruysdale,” Chambrun said.
“I am in Mrs. Haven’s black book,” Miss Ruysdale said. The Madwoman of Chaillot was Mrs. George Haven. She had lived in the Penthouse, a cooperatively owned unit, since the hotel was built. She predated Chambrun. She appeared, imperiously, in the lobby from time to time, wearing an early 1900 hat that looked like a fruit bowl, an ancient mink coat that fitted her like a tent, with a little Japanese spaniel, a mean, sneering little beast, tucked under her arm.
Birthday, Deathday Page 13
