Golden Trap

by Hugh Pentecost

  Marilyn’s face lighted up. “He caught her out?”

  “It’s his woman’s intuition,” I said.

  “This is all supposed to have happened two years before I met Charles—George,” Marilyn said. “Do you think I wouldn’t know if there was a trace of sadism in him? This is a tender, gentle man, Mark. No situation on earth could turn him into a subhuman animal.”

  I told her Chambrun’s notion that Jeanette Arnaud was being used by someone to get us to turn our backs on Lovelace and leave him without protection. The problem now was to find a way to prove this. I told them Chambrun was waiting for a report from Inspector Grizzard in Paris.

  “But we already know she’s close to the Martines,” Shelda said.

  “What happened to your Mr. Dark?” I asked her.

  “My Mr. Dark became Hilary Carleton’s Mr. Dark,” she said. “Some kind of diplomatic cables relating to the. unfortunate behavior of the Pakistani representative had to be coded and sent.”

  Marilyn was staring out across the room. “I can tell you some things about Jeanette Arnaud,” she said. “I batted around Paris, you know, for some time before I met—George.”

  Shelda and I were all ears.

  “You have call girls here in the hotel, don’t you, Mark?”

  “I would deny it with my last breath,” I said. “But for the sake of argument—”

  “They are pikers alongside Jeanette Arnaud,” Marilyn said. “She has been kept, for short periods of time, by the most important men in France—cabinet ministers, writers, scientists, and soldiers.”

  “But she’s a genuine talent; a real singer,” I said.

  “Her hobby is sleeping with all the important men in France—for a price. I’d like to make you a small bet, Mark.”

  “Such as?”

  “Chambrun’s Inspector Grizzard will have a vague and meaningless report on Jeanette Arnaud. She could turn the French Republic on its ear if she chose to talk about some of her past relationships. If Grizzard is really a friend of Chambrun’s, he may hint, but he won’t have anything specific to report.”

  “You’re repeating the sidewalk café gossip,” I said.

  “Wait and see,” she said.

  “She was in Spain,” I said. “She was manhandled. Lovelace was there on that very day. He admits it.”

  Marilyn shook her head stubbornly. “It’s a fortunate coincidence that anyone interested in George could know. Jeanette Arnaud will do anything for money, including you-know-what in the window of Saks Fifth Avenue.”

  “Chambrun will be glad to hear it,” I said. “He’s put his whole bankroll on George Lovelace.”

  “A safe bet,” Marilyn said. “Mark, take me to George.”

  “He’s in bed, with a solid dose of sleeping pills,” I said.

  “I’d like to be with him. I’d like to stay by him,” Marilyn said. “Oh, I know what you’re thinking, Mark. I was on George’s list of suspects. But that was before we met tonight—before we talked. While you were trying to find out what had happened to make Jeanette Arnaud run off stage, George and I let down our hair.” Her eyes were very bright. “Things are fine between George and me. When this is all over—”

  “I’m glad, Marilyn,” Shelda said. She’s really an incurable romantic under her sophisticated shell.

  “Do you know that I had the last drink I will ever have—with you, Mark? Let me help you to take care of George—because he’s my whole life. He’s so very tired, Mark. He needs someone with him who loves him; someone he can count on.”

  I was tempted, for her sake, not for his.

  “He’s too exhausted to be conscious that you’re there,” I said.

  “He’ll know tomorrow,” she said simply.

  I couldn’t say yes without Chambrun’s permission, so I excused myself and went to a house phone. Ruysdale put me through to the boss. I told him what Marilyn was asking and passed along her gossip about Jeanette Arnaud.

  “I knew all that talk,” Chambrun said, “which is one of the reasons I distrusted her.” He hesitated. “There’s no real reason Miss VanZandt shouldn’t be with Lovelace. You think he cares for her, too?”

  “I think, to disinter an old phrase, they’re stuck on each other,” I said.

  “It’s all right with me,” Chambrun said, “and it will turn you loose. I need you here, Mark. Check it out with Jerry.”

  So I called Jerry Dodd, told him I was taking Marilyn to my place and that she was going to stay there with Lovelace. I went back to the table.

  “Green light,” I said to Marilyn. “If you’ll wait here for a few minutes while I put Shelda into a taxi I’ll take you up.”

  Shelda lives about ten blocks from the Beaumont in the East Seventies. Normally, at the end of an evening, I take her home, go in for a nightcap and whatever else may be in the cards. I took her out onto the sidewalk that night, and we stood together under the green awning while Waters, the doorman, whistled us up a cab. We stood very close together, my arm around her. Shelda looked very good to me—uncomplicated in a complicated way.

  “Why don’t you get sick so I could stay with you?” she said.

  “I don’t have to get sick,” I said. “We could get married first thing in the morning.”

  She ignored that. “It’s funny, but Marilyn managed to get me all choked up,” she said. “She really loves that man.”

  “Maybe she’s just working on us so she can be alone with him and stick a shiv in his ribs,” I said, not meaning it.

  “Mark!”

  “Just my two A.M. humor, honey,” I said.

  “Mark,” she said earnestly, “take care. I have an idea the hotel is full of booby traps.”

  “You can count on it,” I said. “You know I’m a gilt-edged coward.”

  “I wish you were,” she said, and as the taxi pulled up at the curb she gave me a long, unsisterly kiss on the mouth. I slapped her behind as she got in the cab.

  “Why are we waiting?” I asked her through the cab window.

  “Waiting for what?” she asked.

  “To get married,” I said.

  “To make sure you don’t get tired of me,” she said, and closed the window.

  Marilyn was waiting for me at the velvet rope when I got back to the Blue Lagoon. She was hard to believe. She looked so straight and strong. The transformation from earlier in the day was pretty close to a miracle. Maybe it couldn’t last, but at least you could see she now had a reason for changing and for living.

  We didn’t talk on the way upstairs. We got off the elevator and walked past the brass polisher who must pretty nearly have rubbed the hallway fixtures to the bone.

  I opened the apartment door with my key and we went in. The lights were on in the living room. I called out to Lovelace, softly, but he didn’t answer. I tiptoed to the bedroom, Marilyn behind me.

  Lovelace was lying on the bed in his room. He’d taken off his jacket and then thrown himself down on the top of the bed. He was breathing steadily, deeply asleep. His right hand was resting on the butt of the gun in his shoulder holster.

  “Don’t surprise him,” I whispered to Marilyn. “He has the reputation of being pretty quick on the trigger.”

  She smiled at me. “He won’t be surprised to find me here,” she said.

  “I’ve got to see Chambrun,” I said. “If you want some coffee the makings are in the kitchenette. You’ll find some cheese and other stuff in the icebox. You haven’t had any dinner, you know.”

  The tender way she looked down at Lovelace made my heart ache a little. It’s a rare thing to see anyone so very much cared for. He must have had a lot to give her during those three months in Paris.

  “I don’t want anything except to sit here by him,” she said.

  “I’ll be back sometime,” I said. “There’s nothing to be afraid of. That guy in the hall is a security man for the hotel. He won’t let anyone get in here” …

  If Pierre Chambrun has a weakness it is a tendency toward i
mpatience. His own mind works so clearly and efficiently, and the machineries he’s set up for the Beaumont move with such precision, that when he runs into incompetence or bungling delay from people outside his own world he begins to burn. Suppliers and jobbers who do work for the Beaumont know him as a holy terror when they don’t deliver services exactly on time, or of the exact quality contracted for by him. Time is a commodity you can’t buy. When you’ve lost time it’s lost forever. Keep Chambrun waiting and you aren’t likely to come out with a whole skin.

  Inspector Grizzard’s skin was safe because he was in Paris. At the end of an hour after the first phone call Chambrun had called again.

  “But I need time, mon ami!” Grizzard had protested.

  “There is no time,” Chambrun had said. “I have a killer running loose in my hotel. I believe he’s connected in some way with Jeanette Arnaud. I need facts—a list of her men friends, women friends.”

  “My dear Chambrun, Paris is asleep! The time difference.”

  “Shall we face the truth, Grizzard? Officially you can’t tell me what I want to know, give me names. The Arnaud girl’s friends are untouchable.”

  “There may be difficulties, Pierre—”

  “I give you one name,” Chambrun said. “If you don’t answer I shall assume the answer is yes. Is Louis Martine a part of Jeanette Arnaud’s past?”

  “Absolutely not,” Grizzard said promptly. “Madame Martine—well, that is a different matter. Collette Cardone has been famous, ever since she herself retired from theatre and films, as a—how do you say?—a patroness of young talent. Whatever else Jeanette Arnaud may be, she is a gifted performer, Pierre. The lives of such people, out of the public eye, is often not what you might say—for the nursery. Collette Martine was a sponsor of the young Jeanette Arnaud—paid for voice lessons and acting lessons. A friend, yes; but no part of the behind-the-scenes life—unless, of course, she is a mother-confessor. You can forget the possibility that the Martines have any sinister connection with Arnaud’s other life.”

  “Can I indeed!” Chambrun said to me when he’d finished telling me about this conversation. I’d just arrived in his office, leaving Marilyn with Lovelace. “Grizzard is a good man, but he is not of the older generation who knew Martine and Lovelace and me in the days of the Resistance. Jeanette Arnaud was scarcely born. Grizzard may not know of Collette’s past—as a collaborator or pretended collaborator. The new generations have forgotten all about those things. I can’t wait for what may be no report at all from Grizzard.”

  “So?” I said.

  “You and I will have it out now with the Martines and Jeanette Arnaud,” he said.

  When Chambrun moves you follow, hoping you won’t be thrown out on the curves.

  The Martines’ suite was on the fourteenth floor, and Martine himself answered our ring at the door. He was wearing a wine-colored silk dressing gown, but under it were the black trousers and the white dress shirt and black tie of his evening clothes. He didn’t look pleased to see us.

  “It is very late, Pierre,” he said.

  “Not too late, I hope,” Chambrun said. “Mademoiselle Arnaud is still here?”

  “She is in no condition to talk further about this matter tonight,” Martine said.

  “An actor may be tired after playing Hamlet,” Chambrun said, “but never too tired to talk about his performance.”

  Martine stiffened. “You imply that—”

  “I am implying that I must talk to Mademoiselle Arnaud—in your and Collette’s presence, Louis.”

  Martine hesitated. “Very well,” he said, finally, and stood aside.

  We walked ahead of him into the living room. Jeanette Arnaud was stretched out on the couch, a pale blue blanket from one of the beds spread out over her. Collette Martine stood behind the couch, erect, like a fierce watch-dog.

  “This is an outrage, Monsieur Chambrun!” she said angrily.

  Jeanette Arnaud turned her head feebly, like a dying Camille. I imagined that I too could see through her as a vicious little fraud.

  “There has been more than one outrage committed in this hotel today, Madame,” Chambrun said. “It is my business to see to it that there are no more. I’m sure Mademoiselle Arnaud has wrung your heart with her pitiful story. Mine, I regret to say, is like an ice cube in my chest. I feel nothing for Mademoiselle Arnaud but contempt—and an anger I can barely control.”

  “I think that is about enough, Pierre,” Martine said in a cold voice. “Jeanette does not have to put up with—”

  “Jeanette does have to put up with,” Chambrun said. “Jeanette is an accomplished professional liar.”

  “Will you permit this to go on, Louis?” Collette Martine demanded of her husband.

  “He has no choice, Colette,” Chambrun said. For an instant his anger seemed to subside and he sounded tired. “Louis cannot, in his position, afford to be associated with a murder. Neither of you can afford to be connected with a sensational news story out of misplaced loyalty to this girl. And as I told you earlier this evening, Collette, if anything happens to George Lovelace you will be squarely in the middle of a grave situation. Lovelace killed your father; you have cursed him publicly for years; you will become a prime suspect.”

  “Lovelace is an animal!” Collette said.

  “If I did not know Louis as I do, you would both be in very great trouble right now,” Chambrun said. “I know that Louis would never use this cheap little courtesan to further a plot of his. Not just because he’s a man of honor, but because he would know that he would forever be a subject for blackmail. He wouldn’t allow you to use her for the same reason, Collette. She is using you now as protectors. But someone else has paid a high price for her services, and will continue to pay and pay, until”—and Chambrun’s black eyes fixed on Jeanette Arnaud—“until he decides he’s had enough, and polishes her off as he polished off a certain John Smith.”

  The tip of a little pink tongue moved over Jeanette Arnaud’s brightly rouged lips.

  “I couldn’t care less what happens to you, Miss Arnaud,” Chambrun said, “as long as it doesn’t happen in my hotel! But this time I think I should point out to you that you are holding fire in each of your little white hands.”

  “I don’t know what you are talking about, Monsieur,” the girl said.

  “I will be patient,” Chambrun said. “I will put it before you in detail. Your story of that night seven years ago in Madrid checks out—in part.”

  “In part?” the girl’s eyes widened.

  “Captain Santana has verified that you were apparently beaten and sexually molested—that you were attended by a police surgeon and a certain Dr. Fuentes. That much checks, Mademoiselle. But whether you were ever abducted by two men and delivered to a third man somewhere in the country is only your story.

  I don’t say it can’t be true, but only that it can’t be proved. No men have ever been identified.”

  “Tonight I identified the man who counts!” the girl cried.

  “Please, Mademoiselle, let us deal with realities at this moment and not theatricals. The story you told the Madrid police made headlines in all the newspapers, not only in Spain but in other countries. You were an artiste with a certain reputation, I suspect your story may have been true. Some fascist bully may well have decided to satisfy his perverted sexuality by indulging in a sadistic attack on a girl who had never laid eyes on him before. He may have heard you sing somewhere. All this may be true, and if it is, I express my deep sympathy. Even a girl with your moral code, Mademoiselle, should be able to choose her own degradations.”

  “Louis, I will not stand for this!” Collette Martine said, but she didn’t move, and the black-bearded man didn’t move or speak.

  “I put it to you, Mademoiselle,” Chambrun said. “I suggest this account of tonight’s adventure. You were approached by someone. You were reminded of that day—that October fourteenth, seven years ago. You were told that there would be a certain man in the hotel when
you opened in the Blue Lagoon tonight who had also been in Madrid that fourteenth of October. If you would name that man as your attacker, a price would be paid. An attractive price. All you had to do was point a shaking finger, scream, run off stage, and tell the world that George Lovelace had been your molester seven years ago. Then you would have earned your fee. Isn’t that the way it was, Mademoiselle?”

  Jeanette Arnaud sat bolt upright on the couch. Her lips drew back from her teeth. “Pig!” she shouted at Chambrun.

  “Who was the man?” Chambrun asked. “Could it have been the little German doctor? Was it Rogoff? You are his kind of woman. Could it possibly have been Hilary Carleton, who can only think of you privately as a rather disgusting slut.”

  “Pig, pig, pig!” Jeanette Arnaud screamed.

  “Oh, very nice,” Chambrun said. “A very nice performance. But you see, Mademoiselle, I am really your friend. I’m here to warn you that not one of these men will forget that you now have a powerful hold over him. Whichever one it was, may I remind you that just about twelve hours ago this man let himself into Suite Ten B and shot a man named John Smith squarely between the eyes before Smith could even open his mouth to protest? He doesn’t hesitate to kill, Mademoiselle. He won’t hesitate to kill you when you ask for the next pay-off, or when he decides he doesn’t want to risk the chance of your telling what you know about him.”

  In that moment Jeanette Arnaud gave herself away as far as I was concerned. She didn’t say “pig” again. She didn’t say anything. You could almost see the wheels turning behind her ivory-white forehead. I glanced at Louis Martine. I could see that he knew too. Collette was staring down at the girl, as if willing her to deny the charge. But the girl just sat there, calculating her next move.

  Chambrun turned to Martine. “I leave it to you and Collette, Louis,” he said. “Perhaps you can persuade her to remove herself from very great danger by naming the man. The hotel switchboard will know where to find me.” He turned and walked out of the suite with me at his heels.

  “I feel the need of fresh air,” he said when we were out in the hall. “Do you have any doubts about that girl, Mark?”