Murder Round the Clock

by Hugh Pentecost

  The waiter bowed his pleasure and started out.

  "Please," Anne said. "She looked all right? She looked happy that second time 0 '

  "She looked fine, lady. She didn't pay much attention to me because of the TV, but she was fine then."

  Chambrun broke a short silence after the waiter had gone. "Do you think she was experimenting with cigarettes, Mrs. Cook?"

  "I've never known her to," Anne said.

  "But this was a special evening—and a special party for her—and Hilary."

  "She's always pretending, always pretending to be someone else. It's possible."

  "How much has she been around the hotel by herself?" Chambrun asked.

  "Around the hotel 0

  "Has she been down in the lobby by herself to buy you a newspaper? To the drugstore for a soda? To the toy store for a present?"

  "She's been down a few times on errands for me," Anne said. "Mostly I invented the errands, because she liked to ride the elevator and watch people in the lobby and look at things in the shop windows."

  "The point I'm trying to make," Chambrun said, "is that she could have met somebody in the lobby. Would she speak to a stranger freely?"

  "She'd talk to anyone who'd even smile at her," Cook said.

  "Then it's possible she made a new friend and asked him— or her—up to 7H without mentioning it to you. Part of her big evening."

  "It's not like her," Anne said. "It's not like her to keep that kind of secret from me. But I suppose it's possible. Why, though, would the person hide from the waiter?"

  The answer to that, Chambrun thought, was unpleasantly obvious.

  "If the person made friends with Bobbie for the eventual purpose of taking her away, he'd hide from the waiter," Chambrun said. "And he'd learn from Bobbie the whole scheme of the evening. He'd stay in 7H until Miss Hillhouse made her last call at ten-thirty. He then had half an hour in which to persuade Bobbie to go somewhere with him—or to force her to go."

  "You buy that?" Jerry Dodd asked. "Because I do."

  Chambrun said grimly, "So where does it get you, chum? Any idea who we're looking for?" %L Jerry's jaw jutted out stubbornly. "No, but if she was chitchatting with someone in the lobby it may have been noticed."

  "By the day staff," Chambrun said. "What chance do we have of digging that out before morning?"

  After Jerry went off to phone some of the day staff at their homes, Chambrun decided to take a personal hand in one part of the search. He left the protesting Cooks in his office and went to the eighth floor when a phone report indicated that floor was about to be covered.

  Number 8B, a three-room suite, was occupied by Martin Hobbs. George Webber was in 803, Don Stanton in 805, Miss Garth in 807.

  A phone call to the Blue Lagoon from the housekeeper's cubbyhole on eight reassured Chambrun that Hobbs, Webber, Stanton, and Miss Garth were still whooping it up at their table there.

  Accompanied by the frightened night maid and Johnny Thacker, the night bell captain, Chambrun entered Martin Hobbs's suite with a passkey.

  Hobbs's suite was neat as a pin. A reasonably elaborate wardrobe of suits and evening clothes hung in the closet. Expensive luggage was stacked on the upper shelves. Apparently no business papers of any sort were kept here. The bathroom had the usual equipment of razor, shaving cream, tooth brush and paste, hair tonic, comb, and brushes.

  Chambrun idly opened the lid of the disposal unit. The Beaumont provided a miniature trash drop in every bathroom for old razor blades, used tissues, empty medicine bottles, and the like. The disposal unit was empty in Hobbs's bathroom.

  There was absolutely nothing in the room to indicate that Bobbie Cook had ever been there in her life.

  Miss Garths room was not so neat. She had dressed hurriedly for the evening. But there were no signs of the missing child. Chambrun puzzled the maid and Johnny Thacker by spending some time examining and sniffing at half a dozen jars and bottles of creams and lotions on Miss Garth's dressing table. Eventually he went over to the phone and called Carl Nevers on the lobby desk.

  "Do the Hobbs party keep anything in the safe down there, Carl?" he asked.

  "Several attache cases of business papers," Nevers said. "The secretary leaves them here at the end of the day and picks them up in the morning."

  That explained the absence of any notes or papers.

  Don Stanton's room was negative.

  Webber's room was negative—or almost negative. In the disposal unit in his bathroom Chambrun found a small, black screw top from some sort of bottle that had stuck in the unit.

  Chambrun took it out, sniffed it, tossed it up in the air, and caught it. He started to drop it back in the chute, then changed his mind and dropped it in his coat pocket. .

  Chambrun hadn't really expected to find anything incriminating in these rooms—he just wanted to make certain.

  A man's cracking point in a crisis is unpredictable. He may carry through until it's all over and then break apart. It may happen anywhere along the way. Cliff Cook's smashup came about fifteen minutes after Chambrun had left him and Anne in the manager's office, suffering together in a tortured silence.

  "They're not going to find her," Cook said suddenly to his wife. "Hobbs got her out of the hotel somehow."

  Anne, doubled over as if she were suffering from cramps, shook her head. "We've got to keep hoping, Cliff—until we know for sure."

  "I know for sure," Cook said. "Our one chance to get Bobbie back is for me to act before it's too late for them to be able to return her. I'll make the deal they want. I'll make any deal."

  "Cliff."

  He'd already started for the office door. "Chambrun's doing his best," he said, "but it isn't going to be enough to find Bobbie. They're too clever for that. They have the money to bribe the whole hotel staff, if necessary."

  "I'm coming with you," Anne said.

  "No. You stay here, Anne, just in case there is any word. Take it easy, darling. They want what I have to give just as badly as we want Bobbie."

  A man under less pressure, with the capacity to think coolly about his problem, would not have followed Cliff Cook's course. But Cook was thinking in a red haze of rage and terror. He would make his deal; he would get Bobbie back; and he would sell his patents to Hobbs. But then, by God, he would spend the rest of his life making sure they were punished. He wasn't thinking of any kind of delicate approach. They would make the deal on the top of the table—no double-talk, no pretenses. A cold, open-and-shut deal.

  Mr. Cardoza, the captain of the Blue Lagoon Room, saw Cook approaching the red velvet rope stretched across the entrance to the Beaumont's nightclub. Mr. Cardoza didn't know who Cook was, but he knew trouble when he saw it. Mr. Cardoza could feel the small hairs rising on the back of his neck.

  Handling belligerent drunks was an old story to Cardoza— but the look of cold, sober fury on Cook's face was something else again. Cardoza stepped outside the velvet rope and stood there, blocking Cook's way, his suave, professional smile nicely in place.

  "I'm sorry, sir," Cardoza said, "but there are no vacancies tonight."

  "I don't want a table," Cook said, looking past Cardoza into the supper room. He saw the large circular table where Hobbs, Webber, Stanton, Miss Garth, and a half a dozen others were apparently enjoying themselves. Every last ounce of color left Cook's face.

  Cardoza, smiling and smiling, made a half-hidden gesture to one of his assistants inside the velvet rope.

  "I want to talk to Mr. Hobbs," Cook said.

  "I'll ask him if he cares to come out to talk to you," Cardoza said smoothly.

  "I'm going in," Cook said.

  Cardoza snapped his fingers, and suddenly there were four white-tied waiters standing behind him. "I'll ask Mr. Hobbs if he cares to come out, sir. May I have your name?"

  "Clifford Cook. Oh, he knows me."

  Cardoza stepped inside the velvet rope and threaded his way through the crowded tables to the one occupied by Martin Hobbs. He bent down an
d whispered in the promoter's ear. "There's a gentleman at the entrance, Mr. Hobbs. He wants to see you. His name is Clifford Cook."

  "Cook!" Hobbs's voice was sharp, his face slightly flushed from drinking. Webber, sitting two or three places away, was motionlessly attentive.

  "It's none of my affair, sir," Cardoza said softly, "but he seems in a highly disturbed state."

  Hobbs looked down the table at Webber, whose head moved in an almost imperceptible nod.

  "Tell Mr. Cook well be happy to have him join us, captain."

  "Whatever you say, Mr. Hobbs."

  Cardoza moved back toward the entrance. Halfway there he made a gesture to his corps of waiters, and they made way for Cook, who came striding down the room, his eyes fixed on Hobbs.

  The young financier rose from his chair as Cook reached the table. He held out his hand in a cordial gesture of greeting. "This is a pleasant surprise, Cliff. Here, take my chair. Ill get another one."

  "I'm not sitting down," Cook said. His voice was shaking. Hobbs's smiling face was almost too much for him. "I've come to tell you that if my daughter is safely returned to me— at once —I'll sign whatever contract you want me to." The words were clear and loud. Everyone at the table heard them.

  "My dear fellow!" Hobbs said.

  Webber had risen quickly and was coming around the table to them. "What's this about your daughter?"

  "There's no reason to go into details," Cook said, fighting for shreds of control. "You know them as well as I do. Return Bobbie, and I'll do whatever you want me to."

  A dozen faces in the area of the three standing men were turned their way. Webber put his hand on Cook's arm. Cook shook it off with a kind of frightening violence.

  "You're not yourself, Cook. We'd better talk about this somewhere else," Webber said. "This way."

  He turned his back on Cook and headed toward the men's room in the far corner of the Blue Lagoon. It threw Cook off balance, and after a moment's hesitation he followed. Hobbs turned to his guests and gave them a broad wink.

  "Stoned to the gills," he said. "Excuse us for a moment." He moved quickly off in Cook's wake.

  Webber went straight into the men's room without looking back. The attendant, an elderly Sicilian, smiled and began to run hot water into one of the wash basins. Webber took a money clip from his pocket and extracted a ten-dollar bill from it. He handed it to the old man.

  "Just go outside the door and don't let anyone in for a few minutes," Webber said.

  "I not supposed to leave—"

  "I'm making it nice, dad," Webber said. "If you don't want it nice—"

  For ten dollars the old man went out, brushing against Cliff Cook, who was coming in. For ten dollars the old man watched Martin Hobbs follow Cook in. Then the old man went rapidly in search of Mr. Cardoza. For ten dollars! Not for ten dollars or a million dollars would Tony Gardella leave his post. But Webber was much too tough a customer for old Tony to handle alone.

  Webber was washing his hands in the basin, bent forward, but his eyes were on the mirror, which reflected the images of a chalk-white Cliff Cook and a visibly alarmed Martin Hobbs.

  "What's all this about your kid?" Webber asked, sampling the powdered soap.

  "So it's private here," Cook said, almost strangling on the words. "You know what I'm talking about, both of you. Bobbie's gone. She was taken out of our suite while we were at the theater. You took her—or you had her taken."

  "My dear Cliff!" Hobbs protested.

  "You're accusing us of kidnapping," Webber said, reaching for one of the small handtowels on the glass shelf in front of him. "You accused us of it in front of a dozen people out there." His tone was conversational.

  "Just bring Bobbie back, and I'll sign your contract," Cook said.

  Webber turned, discarding the towel in a wicker basket to the left of the basin. He was smiling. The white-tiled room glittered with a kind of hospital brightness.

  "Maybe it's better we didn't do any business with you," Webber said. "You're an irresponsible hysteric. Do you think people in our position would run that kind of crazy risk just to get your stinking motor?"

  "I don't want to talk. I just want action!" Cook said.

  "Oh?" A slow, unpleasant smile moved Webber's mouth. "You just want action, is that it?"

  Then his foot shot out to give Cook an agonizing kick in the shin. As Cook doubled forward with a cry of pain, Webber ripped a right to the jaw that sent Cook rolling and sliding away on the tile floor.

  "George!" Hobbs cried.

  "Shut up, Martin," Webber said. "He made a public accusation against us. It's time he was taught a lesson."

  Cook was struggling up, a trickle of blood running from the corner of his mouth. His eyes looked glazed. Webber took a step forward and yanked Cook to his feet, his left hand closed on the front of Cook's jacket. Then he punched—pile-driving blows to the stomach and again to the jaw. Cook, flailing futilely with his arms, somehow wrenched away from Webber but fell again, hard, on the glistening tile floor. There were spots of bright scarlet on the white tileS now.

  Webber, who had moved with a kind of machinelike precision up to now, seemed suddenly to explode. He sprang on the fallen Cook, pulled him to his knees, kicked him, and then with Cook's face at belt-buckle level he smashed at Cook's nose and mouth, savagely, brutally. The nose flattened out to one side. The mouth was a bloody pulp.

  "George!" Hobbs cried. "For God's sake!"

  The door to the washroom burst open, and Mr. Cardoza, followed by old Tony Gardella and three waiters, came in. Webber, his fist drawn back for another blow, turned his head quite calmly to look at Cardoza. Then he struck once more into the middle of that drooling mass of agony. He let go of Cook's jacket, and the limp Cook fell to the floor like a sack of grain.

  Cardoza spat out a single word.

  Webber turned quietly to the wash basin again. He frowned at himself in the mirror. There were several bright red spots on his white shirt front. He moistened the end of a towel and calmly began to work on the spots.

  "Get Dr. Partridge," Cardoza said sharply.

  One of the waiters ran out.

  "Before you call the police," Webber said in that cold, conversational tone, "you'd better ask Mr. Cook if he wants to prefer charges. He accused us publicly of kidnapping his child. I thought this would be more fun than suing him for every cent he has in the world. The stupid son of a—" Then he looked at Hobbs and laughed. "Shall we join the ladies, Martin?"

  Half an hour later an ambulance took Clifford Cook to the hospital.

  Dr. Partridge had diagnosed a broken jaw, broken nose, a severe concussion, if not a possible skull fracture. Anne Cook, on the horns of two horrors, had ridden to the hospital with Cook on a promise from Chambrun that he and the police would continue the search for Bobbie and that the sympathetic Alison would stay in constant touch with Anne at the hospital.

  Chambrun and Alison walked back into the lobby from the side entrance when the ambulance left. Alison was shocked by what had happened. Chambrun was in the grip of an icy anger. Cardoza had reported George Webbers words to them.

  "Could they sue Mr. Cook for making a public accusation?" Alison asked.

  "They could try. They'd have to prove that somebody believed it and that they were damaged by it."

  "You believe it, don't you?"

  "I believe it," Chambrun said. They had paused in front of one of the darkened store windows in the lobby. "The problem is that the child's life is still in the balance, Alison. I tried to keep Cook out of just such a situation because now he's made it harder, if not impossible, for them to return her."

  "You think they got Bobbie out of the hotel between Miss Hillhouse's last call at ten-thirty and eleven, when she arrived at 7H?"

  Chambrun didn't answer. He was looking thoughtfully in the store window It was a gift and toy shop. There was a display of animals, including all the characters from Winnie the Pooh. There was a beautiful French doll, lying in a satin-lined bo
x, her eyes closed. There were circus clowns and cowboys and large stuffed tigers.

  "Mr. Chambrun?"

  He turned to Alison, and his usually hooded eyes were wide open with an excited brightness Alison had never seen in them.

  "Wait here, Alison," he said. He walked across to one of the lobby phones, spoke for a minute, and then rejoined her. "Come with me," he said.

  He led the way to the bank of elevators. "Fourteen," he told the operator, and they were whisked upward.

  "What's on fourteen?" Alison asked.

  "A missing child, I hope," Chambrun said.

  "Mr. Chambrun!"

  They got out at the fourteenth floor.

  "I phoned Jerry Dodd to meet us here," Chambrun said. "He was still calling members of the day staff from the telephone office." As he spoke, another elevator door opened, and Jerry Dodd joined them.

  "What's cooking, chief?"

  Chambrun didn't answer. He walked down the corridor to the door of Fourteen B with Alison and Jerry at his heels. He knocked briskly on the door.

  There was a long wait, and then a muffled woman's voice spoke from the other side of the door. "What is it?"

  "I'm the resident manager, Miss Thomas," Chambrun said. "I've come to get Bobbie Cook."

  "Holy cow!" Jerry Dodd whispered.

  Alison's cold fingers closed on Chambrun's wrist. He stood perfectly still. She wondered if he was breathing. Then, very slowly, the door opened, and Miss Laura Thomas faced them, her glasses black circles in a dead-white face with a scarlet gash for a mouth.

  "Her parents have come home?" Miss Thomas asked in a perfectly casual voice.

  "Her parents have come home," Chambrun said. "Where is the child?"

  "In the bedroom," Miss Thomas said, standing aside.

  Chambrun walked quickly through the living room to the bedroom door. Stretched out on the bed, covered by a soft blanket, was Bobbie Cook, surrounded by a collection of dolls and toys. She was sleeping peacefully.

  A nerve twitched in Chambrun's cheek, and he let out his breath in a long sigh. He turned back into the living room, and there was a noticeable dampness on his forehead.

  "If they'd called me, Id have brought her down," Miss Thomas said blandly.