Murder Round the Clock

by Hugh Pentecost

  "Southern Comfort," he said, nodding. "Did you notice the half-smoked cigar in the ashtray? Adler is a chain cigarette smoker. Pamela doesn't smoke at all. He wasn't in the bedroom."

  "He?"

  "Eddie's man from the Mafia," Chambrun said. "Tell Jerry I want this room watched. If this Max Wentzel shows up, I want him covered every second."

  "Right."

  "Pamela will go to her dressing room about seven o'clock to prepare for the dinner show," Chambrun said. "I want you there. Let Cardoza take care of the VIPs. I don't want you to let Pamela out of your sight till she goes on stage. I could swear that girl isn't afraid to sing. It's something else."

  "What?"

  "I wish I knew," Chambrun said.

  "Where will you be?"

  "Around," Chambrun said.

  I checked with Jerry Dodd, the security officer, about quarter to seven. There had been no sign of Max Wentzel. I waited in Pamela's flower-filled room. At three minutes after seven she and Duke Adler arrived. He had changed into a dinner jacket, but he still wore the dark glasses, and the ever-present cigarette drooped from the corner of his mouth. He frowned at me. "The lady has to dress," he said. I gave him what I hoped was a fatuous grin. "I'm the watchdog to keep out eager autograph hunters and old friends with good wishes—till after the first show."

  Adler shrugged. "I'll be back. Want to check the exact position of the piano." He went out.

  The minute he was gone, Pamela swung around, steadying herself with her hands on my shoulders. I was aware of a subtle, alluring fragrance when she stood so close. "Please, Mr. Haskell, for the love of God, don't make me do it."

  "You're going to be just great," I said. "And whatever else is bothering you, Chambrun and I and the whole staff are standing by. Care to tell me what it is?"

  "Oh, God," she said, and turned away toward her dressing table.

  Whatever we could have dreamed of in the way of a distinguished audience to welcome Pamela back came to the Blue Lagoon that night for the dinner show. Her dressing room was flooded with goodwill telegrams. It should have been a night of nights for her, but something was tearing her to pieces. I thought at last, when the call boy rapped on her door with a "Ten minutes, Miss Powers," that she was going to collapse. Duke Adler returned and literally dragged her to her feet and shook her.

  "Damn you, pull yourself together!" he shouted at her. It was like slapping an hysteric.

  She got out into the wings off the little stage. The lights dimmed. The buzz of voices subsided. Cardoza's well-trained waiters avoided even the tiniest click of china or silverware. The curtain parted, and Duke Adler walked out to the piano. There was warm but moderate applause.

  Adler sat down and began to play a soft and plaintive melody. And then I heard a choked sob beside me. An ice-cold hand touched mine, as if searching for warmth and courage, and then Pamela Powers walked unsteadily out into the spotlight.

  I thought they were going to tear the Blue Lagoon apart. They stood and cheered and shouted. Adler had to play the introduction three times. Then they were silent, with a kind of breathless silence. They were all wondering—could she do it?

  The clear small voice began:

  "A girl I know,

  she is partly mad,

  Yet beyond that smile

  she is partly sad.

  She is partly calm,

  she is partly wild.

  But she is mostly woman—

  No,

  She is mostly child."

  When she came to the end, the first ovation was tremendous. She had it—all the old magic, all her old skill. I felt myself choking up like a sentimental old-timer. At last they subsided, eager for the next number, and Adler began to vamp the introduction. But Pamela stepped out of the spotlight and down toward the front of the stage.

  "Ladies and gentlemen—"

  Adler's head jerked up. The lighting man was surprised, but quickly readjusted his spotlight so that it beamed on her. Adler struck a jarring chord and played the introduction louder—completely out of mood with the moment.

  "Ladies and gentlemen," Pamela said again, holding up her hands for silence. "Your welcome, your applause, is overwhelming. After all these years—"

  They let go again with clapping and cheering, but she begged for silence with her hands. Once more Adler tried the introductory music, but she paid no attention.

  "A comeback is a dangerous thing," Pamela said, "but not nearly so dangerous as my real reason for being here. I am here to betray myself, and to betray all the things decent people believe in. I am here to—"

  There was the clear sharp crack of a gunshot. I stood rooted in the wings. I saw that Pamela still stood there, apparently unhurt, on the apron of the stage. Pandemonium had broken loose in the Blue Lagoon. At that moment Adler sprang up from the piano bench and started to race toward where I was standing in the wings.

  Did I ever mention that I played football on the defensive team at my midwestern college? Instinctively I threw a block into Adler that knocked him flat on his back. Then I was on him. From that somewhat awkward position, I saw Chambrun climbing up from the audience onto the stage to stand beside Pamela. His arm went round her, and he held her very close. He held up his hand for silence.

  "Ladies and gentlemen, any cause for alarm is over."

  I jerked Adler to his feet. He was still gasping for breath. I twisted his arm behind him and dragged him out onto the stage. At the back of the room I saw Jerry Dodd and two of his men. Mr. Max Wentzel, held between them, looked as if he'd had something of a going-over.

  "I want to tell you a story," Chambrun said to the audience, still holding Pamela close. "I tried to persuade Pamela to stage this miraculous comeback, but she was reluctant. She didn't know how you would receive her. It meant so much. She finally refused. And then she changed her mind. I thought it was courage. I was to discover that it was terror.

  "It cannot hurt Pamela now for me to remind you that her brilliant career ended when she began to drink—and became a drug addict. She was caught in the horror of both these sicknesses for many years, and then, by her own courage and will, she freed herself. But behind her lay something—I don't yet know what—a crime of some sort. Drug addicts turn to crime when they desperately need money.

  "What happened to Pamela during her stay at the Beaumont is quite a story. After she had refused my offer she was approached by the criminal syndicate that handles the distribution of drugs and was blackmailed into accepting my offer of an engagement here. The purpose?" He turned to Pamela. "I think she was about to tell you when an attempt was made on her life. The syndicate had given orders to silence her. Fortunately my staff and I were waiting for just such a move. Would you care to go on, Pamela? You're quite safe now."

  "In my second number of each show," Pamela said, her voice low and trembling, "I was to alter the lyrics in a certain way. This was a code that would tell the pushers of drugs exactly where their receiving point was to be and when. I would have to go through with it—or go to jail. I—I've made my choice."

  They gave her another full-throated ovation. Chambrun let them go on, then signaled for silence.

  "Unfortunately one of the conspirators in this plot is Pamela's accompanist, so she won't be able to go on with her show as planned. But if she will permit me, I could play some of the old songs that made her famous. Would you like that?"

  Would they like it!

  Chambrun walked across to the piano and sat down. I just couldn't believe it! His strong, square fingers moved through the opening bars of "Bill," the song that made Helen Morgan famous years ago and that Pamela used to include in her repertoire.

  Would you believe that incredible boss of mine was just plain great at the piano?

  you here." His handshake was firm but not meant to impress. He saw that I was puzzled. "You don't have the faintest idea who I am, do you?"

  "Something stirs, but bells don't ring," I said.

  "Norbert Gellernacht," he said. "Lit
tle Norbert Gellernacht."

  An image came sharply into focus. Norbert Gellernacht had been an eager sophomore in my senior year. He'd worn thick glasses in those days, and he was trying desperately to gain a measure of popularity by writing an allegedly witty column for the college daily. I had thought of him as a pleasant nothing who was never going to make it because he tried too hard. My philosophy professor might have called that a non se-quitur.

  "Norbert!" I said, unable to think of anything else to say.

  "I saw your name on the hotel card in my room," he said. "Public relations director. Boy, was I glad, because I need a friend in city hall."

  "Sit down," I said. It obviously wasn't going to be a pitch for the alumni fund.

  He sat down in the armchair by my desk and lit a cigarette. His hands weren't too steady. "I changed my name after I sold my first piece of magazine fiction," he said. "Nobody would ever remember 'Norbert Gellernacht."

  "So you've become a professional writer," I said. "You always wanted to, didn't you?" I thought he must be doing pretty well if he could afford the Hotel Beaumont's prices.

  "I used to think so," he said, "until about three weeks ago. I now know that I am just a high-priced salami slicer."

  "Oh?"

  "Television," he explained.

  "That's where the money is, no?"

  "This road, paved with gold, leads straight to the alcohol tank or the loony bin," he said, grinning at me. "That's why I need your help, Mark."

  "Oh," I said. I was full of "ohs" that morning.

  "I am writing a pilot script for a new TV series to be called 'The Masked Crusader,'" he said. "It will star the great Robert Saville, who is, as I daresay you know, a guest in this mink-lined hostelry of yours."

  That was one thing I did know—that Robert Saville was a guest at the Beaumont—a suite on the nineteenth floor with half a dozen surrounding rooms for secretaries, valets, and other minions, including a doll who looked as though she did nothing at all efficient with her clothes on. Robert Saville is the current answer to filling the gap left when Clark Gable shuffled off this mortal coil. The difference between Gable and Saville is, I suspect, that Gable was a very decent guy, and Saville is a prize phony. He had already produced one headache for me. His secretary, a sensible-looking girl named Sally Bevans, had come to my office the day Saville checked in.

  "It is to be clearly understood, Mr. Haskell," she said to me, "that Mr. Saville's presence at the Beaumont is to be a deep, dark secret. He's here to work with the producers, director, and writer on a film script. Let the word out that he's here, and he'll be swamped."

  "By the common people?" I said.

  Her smile was amiable. A wise young owl, I thought. "We are only talking to vice-presidents this week," she said.

  The next day it was in all the newspapers—plus a couple of TV interviews—Robert Saville was in town, staying at the Beaumont. Our lobby suddenly looked like Grand Central Station at commuter time. I had to assume that Saville's Hollywood-studio promotion man had blown the story.

  I ran into the unruffled and chic-looking Sally Bevans in the center of a swarm of screaming female teenagers in. the lobby that afternoon.

  "Don't blame me!" I shouted at her over the din.

  "Title of a popular song," she said.

  "Who did blow it?"

  "The Master," she said.

  "Saville himself?"

  "He couldn't stand the loneliness," she said. "He's surrounded by a mere two dozen vice-presidents, and he couldn't stand the loneliness. ..."

  Norman Geller was grinning at me. "Interesting thing about Saville," he said. "Whenever you mention him, people always go into a kind of trance. If you were a girl, I'd know what you were remembering."

  "So I'm not a girl, Norman," I said. "What can I do for you?"

  "As I told you, I'm writing 'The Masked Crusader,'" Norman said. "It was my idea. I got paid money for it. I got paid money for what is called a treatment. I was then hired to write the shooting script, which means more money and royalties on the original run and all the reruns. Until about ten days ago I had dollar signs in place of eye pupils. Then things got rough. I am on the nineteenth rewrite now You know why?"

  "Why, Norman?"

  "Because about fifty people have to get into the act. There's Saville, who has his own personal image about the Masked Crusader. There's the director, who thinks there should be a 'message.' There's the network vice-president for programming, and the network vice-president for development. There's Rachel Stanton, the leading lady, who has her image, and there is Walter Cameron, another writer waiting in the wings. And there is T. James Carson."

  I knew that Thomas James Carson was the big wheel at the network. Just the other day the papers had reported he'd exercised a stock option that had netted him a million and a half.

  "I get three-quarters of the way through the script," Norman said, "and there is suddenly mass hysteria. Hector Cross, VP for programming, thinks the last scene should come first. Paul Drott, VP for development, says the tease should be incorporated in the body of the script and I should think up a new tease. Karl Richter, the director, just looks at me, fish-eyed, and says, 'Where's the message, Norman? I mean you aren't saying anything, cookie.'

  "Then Saville takes the version over to T. James Carson and insists on reading it aloud to him. Saville is worth so much money to the network and the movie studio that Carson has to listen. But he hates Saville for making him listen, and so he hates the script. Interesting, but it needs work—a lot of work.' 'Yes. sir, T.J. What kind of work?' T.J. will make notes when he has a free moment. Of course he doesn't have a free moment. And we're supposed to start shooting next Monday.

  "Well, here's my situation, Mark. It's never going to be finished, see? They won't let me finish it. If I don't finish it, I lose a major portion of my rights in it. But I can't finish it. They hang around me like vultures. They snatch each page as it comes out of the typewriter. They come back with suggestions. 'This version is going to be it?' I ask them. Yes. Norman,' they say, 'this is it. You're a great guy. Norman, a wonderful guy, Norman, a genius, Norman. This will be it' But they won't let me finish it."

  "Sounds wild."

  "I've got to finish it—and then they can go fly!" Norman said.

  "So finish it."

  "I need a hideout," Norman said. "That's why I came to you. I need a room here in the hotel that nobody knows about. I mustn't be registered. No phone calls. I want to stay hidden from five thousand vice-presidents and their five thousand private detectives."

  "I think something could be arranged," I said.

  "Bless you!" Norman said. "I need two uninterrupted days to finish the script—just two days."

  I have an apartment down the hall from my office—living room, bedroom, kitchenette. I spend some time there and some time at a nice little garden apartment three blocks from the hotel occupied by my secretary, Shelda Mason. Shelda and I are "like that." Norman could have my apartment for two days without registering. I explained the setup to him, and he was delighted.

  "Can I go there now?" he asked. "You could send someone to my room for my typewriter, the script, my razor, my slippers, and a clean shirt."

  "It's a deal. You really don't want anyone to be able to reach you?"

  "No one! I've been out on the town all night. There are four million messages for me in my mailbox. If there's anything really important, I'll call back. But no one is to reach me."

  "Right. They'll call your room. There'll be no answer. You don't answer the phone in my room because it will be for me."

  "Mark, you're a doll!"

  I took Norman down the hall to my apartment. I fixed him up with a card table he could put his typewriter on. There was stuff in the kitchenette so that he could make coffee and eggs and a variety of sandwiches, so he wouldn't have to call room service. He was almost psychotic about being seen by anyone—word would get back to Saville and the vice-presidents . . .

  I was g
etting some papers together for my morning session with the big boss when my telephone rang. I heard the calm voice of Sally Bevans, Robert Saville's secretary.

  "I have to ask you a favor, Mr. Haskell," she said.

  "Any time, any place, lady," I said.

  "I know that joke," she said.

  "I apologize. Just a figure of speech meant to imply a secret passion for you, Miss Bevans."

  "This is serious," she said. "We've lost a writer."

  "Well, well."

  "His name is Norman Geller, registered in Room 1927. He's not there."

  "How do you know?"

  "Doesn't answer his phone. Hasn't picked up dozens of messages left at the desk for him. He's supposed to be working—matter of life and death, you might say. We have to have a shooting script by Monday. Mr. Saville became alarmed last night and got the housekeeper to open Room 1927 with a passkey. He wasn't there. The page in the typewriter is the same page he was writing late yesterday."

  I'd forgotten to ask Norman how he'd spent his time "on the town."

  "So he went out," I said.

  "Going out is against the rules," Sally Bevans said, a slightly wry note in her voice. "I'm instructed to ask you to have the hotel security officer search the premises. Mr. Saville thinks Mr. Geller may have had a nervous breakdown. He fears suicide."

  "And you?"

  "I think he just couldn't take it anymore," Sally said. "The point is, if he doesn't finish the script, he's out more thousands of dollars than I can estimate. He may be dead drunk somewhere in the hotel."

  "I'll turn the mice loose," I said. "If they come up with anything, I'll have Jerry Dodd call you. He's our security officer."

  "Thank you, Mr. Haskell."

  "Thank you, Miss Bevans. Would a very dry vodka martini in the Trapeze Bar about one o'clock interest you at all? Over a progress report?"

  "It would interest me," she said, "but I'm afraid I'm chained to the chariot wheels."

  I called Jerry Dodd and explained things. Norman was to be left unmolested. If Jerry was called by a vice-president or Miss Bevans or the great Saville or even T James Carson, he was to say he was still looking.