Murder Round the Clock

by Hugh Pentecost

  "Once, when I was a small boy," Chambrun said in a detached voice, "I turned up missing in a hotel my father was managing at the time." It was a complete invention. "I was missing for hours. They finally found me asleep in a broom closet. I take it that eleven o'clock was well past Bobbie's normal bedtime, Mr. Cook?"

  Cliff Cook hadn't heard a word he said. But Anne Cook had—she was hearing everything.

  "Once in a while she was allowed to stay up to see a special TV show, Mr. Chambrun. Normally she goes to bed about nine. You think she may—?"

  "There are a thousand places a child might get into in this hotel, Mrs. Cook—places interesting to a child. I mentioned broom closets. There are hundreds of them. There are special banquet rooms and conference rooms. There are offices. Bobbie could have got into any one of these places, sat down to look at something, and just popped off to sleep." He turned to Dodd. "Jerry, we'll just have to begin systematically and go from bottom to top. Start the wheels."

  "Right," Dodd said, and hurried out.

  Chambrun turned to Alison. "I'd appreciate it if you'd go down to the telephone office, Alison, and explain the situation to Mrs. Kiley, the chief night operator. I want her to call every occupied room in the hotel. The child may have wandered in somewhere and told some imaginative story. People told that her parents were at a nightclub may have been amused by her a 1 id kept her with them, talking. There'll be squawks—but start the phoning, Alison."

  Alison went off without a word.

  "Miss Hillhouse," Chambrun said, "I don't think there's anything more you can do here. I suggest you go home and get some rest. Take a sleeping pill if you've got one. As soon as Bobbie turns up, we'll let you know. I'll call you myself."

  "No!" Cliff Cook said in a harsh voice. He turned on Chambrun and his face was gray as a death mask. "You're not going to find her in any broom closet or banquet room."

  "Cliff!" Anne said in a frightened voice.

  There was murder in Cook's sunken eyes. "You had a key to this suite, Miss Hillhouse," he said. "What happened? Did you call a confederate or your employer and turn the key over to him?"

  The woman stared at him, swaying like an axed tree.

  "How much were you paid?" Cook shouted at her. "Did you ever really call her during the evening? We only have your word for it."

  "Just a minute," Chambrun said sharply. "She called Bobbie every half hour, and Bobbie answered the phone. My telephone staff can vouch for that. Until ten-thirty Bobbie was in this room."

  Cook waved a long arm. "So she wasn't taken till after ten-thirty. You did that to cover yourself, didn't you, Miss Hill-house? So help me God, if Bobbie is harmed I will personally—"

  Miss Hillhouse screamed.

  "I want you to go, Miss Hillhouse!" Chambrun said. Cook was a head taller than Chambrun but something in Cham-brun's suddenly-hard eyes kept him from interfering. Miss Hillhouse literally ran out of the room.

  "Now, Mr. Cook, let's make some sense. Forget about Miss Hillhouse. She followed what I must say were rather unusual instructions from you. You're wasting energy and time considering her a part of any kidnapping plot. Because you think it is a kidnapping, don't you?"

  Cook, his legs suddenly buckling under him, sank down in an upholstered armchair, his body slumped forward. Anne was instantly on her knees beside him, holding his face in her hands, whispering his name. "Don't blame yourself, darling," Chambrun heard her say. "How could you dream—?" Her words were suddenly cut off by a deep, choking sob from the man.

  "I'll call them, Anne. I'll have her back in no time. You'll see," Cook said. He raised his head as though it weighed a ton. "Thank you for everything, Mr. Chambrun, but we'd appreciate being left alone."

  Chambrun didn't move. His eyes were almost hidden by his heavy, hooded lids. He was tapping an Egyptian cigarette on the back of his hand.

  "You suspect that Hobbs Enterprises are behind this, Mr. Cook?" he asked quietly.

  Cook stared at him, his mouth sagging open.

  "It occurred to me somewhat earlier," Chambrun said, as if he were discussing the weather. "Is there something in your business relationship with Hobbs that would make him want to put great pressure on you?"

  Cook rose very slowly from his chair, his arm around his wife as if he needed her support. "What do you know about this, Mr. Chambrun?"

  "I can only tell you that a series of events today led me to wonder if Hobbs might desperately want you to do something you had refused to do. I use the word 'desperate' because kidnapping is a desperate business, Mr. Cook."

  Cook shook his head, trying to clear it. "I've refused to sell them certain patents they need," he said. "If that's the price for Bobbie, then of course I'll sell them." He turned to his wife. "I promise you I will, darling."

  "I'd like to tell you two things, Mr. Cook," Chambrun said. "For reasons not connected with Bobbie, I've had Hobbs under surveillance all evening—he and Webber and young Stanton. I know where they are now, and I know exactly where they've been since eight o'clock. None of those three has had anything personally to do with removing Bobbie from this suite. That, of course, doesn't mean that they're not responsible for hiring someone to do the job. But it's almost as though they'd deliberately set up an alibi for themselves for the entire evening."

  "So tell me where they are, and I'll go and make the deal with them right now," Cook said.

  "They're giving a party in the Blue Lagoon. But before you go to them, Mr. Cook, please keep listening. You're never going to pin this thing on Hobbs or on any of his associates. Maybe Bobbie will reappear after you sign away your patents, and maybe she wont. But if what happened to her will in any way point to Hobbs, I tell you she won't appear."

  "Oh, my God!" Anne said.

  "Our best chance, Mrs. Cook, is to find her and find her quickly," Chambrun went on. "If they haven't got her out of the hotel, we have a good chance of finding her alive."

  "You don't believe that," Anne said.

  Chambrun glanced at his watch. "She's been gone just under two hours. But we started looking for her only an hour and twenty minutes ago. Unless they got her out of the hotel in the first half hour, she's still here somewhere. What I'm getting at, my friends, is that you can't go to Hobbs and say, 'Return Bobbie and I'll sell you my patents.' If you say it publicly, he'll sue you for defamation; if you say it to him privately, he'll treat you as if you were out of your mind, comfort you, offer to help."

  "I can't risk not going to him," Cook said. "Suppose I go now to the Blue Lagoon. I won't mention what's happened. I'll tell him I'm ready to sign and want to do it tonight, so that I can—can start home early in the morning."

  "Then what?" Chambrun asked.

  "They'll send her back!" Cook cried.

  "If they can afford to," Chambrun said. "When were you scheduled to see Hobbs again?"

  "Tomorrow morning. He asked me to think about it overnight—damn him, I told him another day wouldn't change things. All the time they had this frightful thing up their sleeves to use against me."

  "Give me time," Chambrun said.

  "I can't," Cook said. "The only thing that matters now is getting Bobbie back, don't you understand? So I'll do what they want me to do."

  Chambrun glanced at his watch. "The Blue Lagoon closes at three, Mr. Cook—a little more than two hours from now Unless I miss my guess, Hobbs's party will ride it out there till closing time. Give me until three. We'll have covered every inch of space in the hotel by then. As soon as our search is complete, I won't ask you to hold back. There's still an outside chance she wandered off and fell asleep somewhere."

  "No!" Cook said. "I knew what had happened the minute you called us at the Latin Quarter."

  "I find it hard to understand how," Chambrun said, his voice hard, "if you suspected trouble from Hobbs, you went off and left your daughter here under these odd circumstances."

  "I anticipated trouble from Hobbs," Cook said, his body twisting with pain, "but not this kind of trouble. A busi
ness war, yes—that's what I expected, and I was ready to try to fight him. It never occurred to me for a moment they'd attack this way. A war on my credit, yes! A war on my sources of supply, yes. But a war on my child? It never even crossed my mind."

  "I'm willing to give Mr. Chambrun his chance, Cliff," Anne said in a low voice.

  "They still don't know which way you're going to jump, so they don't know which way they should jump," Chambrun said. "They probably don't know that you're back from your evening on the town. They don't know that you realize anything has happened. They think the baby-sitter has reported the child missing and that we're looking for her. But they have no reason to think we suspect a kidnapping. Let them stew a little while we hunt."

  "I don't know," Cook said, shaking his head from side to side.

  "I can guess what will happen tomorrow," Chambrun said. "Just before you go to your meeting with Hobbs, you'll get a ransom note. It will demand a sum in cash you can't possibly raise. You'll be expected to sign away your patents in return

  for a cash advance—" A sour smile moved Chambrun's lips. "Say, fifty thousand dollars."

  "I'll go along with you for a while—if Anne agrees," Cook said.

  "Of course I agree, darling," Anne said.

  Pierre Chambrun walked determinedly to the telephone. His dark eyes were flashing. In less than one minute the full force of the Beaumont's organization, under Chambrun's steel grip and velvet-gloved direction, would be unleashed. . . .

  Certain areas of the search for Bobbie Cook were covered quickly and efficiently; other areas were maddeningly slow to take their place in the jigsaw puzzle. Half of the living space in the Hotel Beaumont was made up of cooperative apartments, owned by the tenants. It wasn't possible to walk in and out of these apartments by a passkey. Only some kind of emergency, such as fire, a plumbing leak, some service failure, would justify entry by a member of the hotel staff.

  On the transient floors things could be handled more rapidly. The night maid could simply tap on the door with her key, and if no one answered she could let herself in, provided the door wasn't chain locked on the inside. There was always the excuse of fresh towels, or making certain that beds had been turned down. But all of this was tragically slow.

  The night engineer, Mr. McNab, and one of the bellboys dressed in coveralls began covering the co-ops from the fifteenth floor up, telling each tenant they found at home that there was a bad water leak on the floor below and entering those apartments where they got no answer and could effect entry. But, at best, it was a long and tedious business.

  From the first floor, which was actually above the mezzanine, to the fourteenth, every public room, broom closet, and linen storage cupboard was covered quickly by the night maids on each floor.

  No results.

  The subbasements, engine rooms, kitchens, pantries, refrigeration rooms, public dining rooms, bars, offices, conference rooms, locker rooms for the staff, powder rooms, men's rooms, smart shops in the lobby—all these were covered.

  No results.

  In the telephone offices on the third floor, Alison stood beside the bony, grim-faced Mrs. Kiley, who was the night chief, watching the switchboard operators trying to handle the regular service and, in between, methodically calling room after room and apartment after apartment to inquire if anyone had seen Bobbie Cook.

  Alison felt angry and a little sick to her stomach as she listened. An unpleasantly large percentage of the people questioned by the operators were annoyed at the interruption and angry at being asked the question. If a stray child was there, wouldn't they have reported it? Mr. Chambrun would hear about this in the morning!

  There was a running fire of comment from the operators that would have amused Alison under different circumstances.

  "Come on, Mrs. P. Get that bandage off your jowls and answer!"

  "Now for old poop face!"

  "Here goes a year's tips from that old fanny pincher in 906."

  Alison had heard Mr. Chambrun quote figures on one occasion. Eighty percent of the male residents were cheating on their wives. Fifty percent of the wives were indulging themselves with outside lovers. In the telephone office there was a cynical and acid awareness of the ins and outs of hundreds of private lives. Far too many of the guests considered these telephone inquiries an outrageous intrusion, and these guests voiced their resentment and objections without a drop of pity for the missing child. Alison could hardly believe what she saw and heard.

  And out of it all came only one discouraging fact: no one had seen Bobbie Cook.

  At least, no one would admit having seen her.

  Chambrun had established himself in his own office. The Cooks were with him. He had persuaded them there was nothing they could do to help the search. The presence of anyone but a member of the hotel staff in a guest's room would be questioned. The instant there was any news, Chambrun would have it here in his office.

  Jerry Dodd, who knew his job, produced a moment's interest. He had routed out the room service waiter who had served Bobbie's dinner. The man, who lived in the Bronx, had gone home at eleven. It had taken him some time to get back to the hotel.

  "Edward Hutchins, who served the kid's dinner," Jerry told Chambrun.

  Hutchins was trembling with anxiety. Like most innocent people, he saw himself walking up the steps to the gallows to be hanged on a false charge of kidnapping.

  Chambrun gave him a reassuring smile, telling him they simply wanted information about the service he'd performed.

  A flood of words poured out of the perspiring waiter.

  "Please. Take it easy," Chambrun said. "The little girl's parents are anxious to understand."

  Hutchins had kids of his own. "She's a fine little girl," he said. "She'll be all right. You'll see."

  "Tell em what you told me, Hutchins," Jerry said.

  "I got the check in the service kitchen," he said. "Service for two."

  "Two?" Chambrun said.

  Hutchins nodded. "Two. Double order of everything. Two shrimp cocktails. Two filet mignon—both rare. Two baked potatoes. Two green salads. Two ice creams. One milk and one coffee."

  Chambrun glanced at Anne Cook and raised an eyebrow. Anne's eyes were filled with tears.

  "Her imaginary friend," she said. "It's a boy named Hilary.

  She and Hilary—" Anne's voice broke—"she and Hilary are going to be married. He owns a large estate in England, and she's going there to live."

  Chambrun nodded slowly. "So you served for two, Hutch-ins?"

  The waiter nodded. "But only the little girl was there."

  "She was all right?" Anne asked eagerly.

  "She was fine," Hutchins said. "I looked around for maybe a sitter or nursemaid or some member of the family, but there was no one. I asked the little girl if I could come back for the table in an hour. She said fine. Just knock on the door, she told me."

  "And you came back in an hour?"

  "Sure. They finished okay."

  "They?"

  Hutchins shrugged. "Both dinners were finished. Both people were hungry. They cleaned up everything on the plates."

  "Both dinners were completely eaten?"

  "Yes. But I still didn't see any other person."

  "If she ate two dinners," Chambrun said to Anne, "our hope that she may be asleep somewhere looks even better. Two filet mignons! Two baked potatoes!"

  "Go on, Hutchins," Jerry said. The Beaumont's house officer still had something up his sleeve.

  "You don't blame me for being curious, Mr. Chambrun?" the waiter asked hesitantly.

  "I approve of it," Chambrun said drily.

  "I was interested in the person I didn't see," Hutchins said. "And I found out one thing. It was a grownup."

  "How did you figure that out?"

  "Ashtray?" Hutchins said, beaming at Chambrun..

  "What about the ashtray?"

  "On my table. Five, six butts."

  "Smoked cigarette stubs?"

  "Yes, butts, and smok
ed right down to the end."

  "Of course you didn't save them?"

  "Why?" Hutchins spread his hands.

  Chambrun turned to look at Anne. "Does Hilary smoke?" His voice was tinged with humor.

  "I don't know," Anne said.

  "Plain or filter tip, Hutchins?" Chambrun asked.

  "Filter. Smoked right down. Brown filter—like Winstons."

  Chambrun looked at the Cooks again. They appeared oddly disturbed. "What brands do you smoke?" he asked.

  Anne moistened her lips. "Neither of us smokes cigarettes," she said. "Cliff smokes a pipe occasionally."

  "Did you have any guests in the suite who might have left a pack around?" Chambrun asked.

  "No. There's been no one in our rooms at all, Mr. Chambrun—except the maids, the room service waiters, and a bellboy once or twice."

  "Could Bobbie have bought the cigarettes for—for Hilary?"

  "An eight-year-old child!" Cook said.

  "You're wondering if we'd sell them to her downstairs? I think so. The girl at the counter would assume she was buying them for her parents. Besides, there are cigarette machines all over the place."

  "You think an eight-year-old child smoked six cigarettes right down to the filter?" Jerry asked. "And ate two man-sized dinners?"

  Chambrun didn't answer, but he was frowning. "When did you serve the dinner, Hutchins?"

  "Maybe a quarter to eight. The slip will show," the waiter said. "I picked up the table just after nine. I know because the little girl opened the door for me and then ran back to the TV set. I recognized the show that was on."

  "And you never saw a sign of anyone but the child?"

  "Sign? Two dinners were gone. Wasn't that a sign? Cigarettes were smoked. Wasn't that a sign?"

  "But nothing else? No hat? No coat? No handbag?"

  "I didn't look," Hutchins said. "I didn't know anything was wrong then."

  Chambrun was silent for a moment. "Thank you, Hutchins. Stop at the cashier's window tomorrow. There'll be a bonus for you for your trouble."