Golden Trap (17 page)

“I was angry with you before, Pierre,” she said quietly, “because I have nothing but hatred in my heart for your friend George Lovelace—and I believed Jeanette.” She glanced at the girl, and there was no warmth in the look. “When a man is trained to kill, as Lovelace was in the days of the Resistance, his gun, his knife, his weapon whatever it is, becomes a part of him. An extension of his arm, his hand. If you advanced on me and I was afraid of you, I might raise my arm to protect myself against attack. When a Lovelace raises his arm, instinctively, there is a gun in his hand and he uses it without thought. My father died because the use of a gun was automatic with Charles Veauclaire—Lovelace. Before my father could explain that he was not the enemy, he was dead. I have never forgiven your friend for that, nor can I ever.” The room was silent as she hesitated. “But do you know something, Pierre? I too was trained in those days to protect myself. It never happened, but I too might have killed someone without stopping to question in those days. So I understand, even though I can’t forgive. Your friend Lovelace went on for years afterward doing the same job, obeying the same instincts. Did he go on out of patriotism, or had hatred for the other side become a disease with him? Neither you nor I, Pierre, know the answer to that.”

Chambrun nodded slowly.

“If his motive was hatred, he should have been stopped,” Collette said. “And so should any other man who lives on hate. The man who now hunts your friend Lovelace is a public enemy. So I tell you, whatever my private feelings, Louis and I must help you.”

“Then tell this girl that she too must help,” Chambrun said. “I want a name from you, Mademoiselle Arnaud!”

The girl’s hands had a fierce grip on the edge of the couch. “I cannot help you,” she said in a small voice,

“You must!”

“We cannot protect you, Jeanette, if your loyalty is not to us,” Collette said quietly.

The girl rocked from side to side. “I have no choice, Madame Martine,” she said. “It would be safer for me to walk out into the hall without protection than to name a name.”

“That’s absurd,” Louis Martine said.

“Non,
Monsieur. If I walk out into the hall alone I might escape, I might hide until the danger is over. But if I name a name, there is no escape for me.”

“The man will be caught,” Chambrun said. “He will be executed for murder—perhaps two murders. He won’t be able to hurt you.”

“But his friends!” the girl cried out.

“What friends?”

“If I told you that, Monsieur, I would be naming him! For the love of God, try to understand. The only chance I have to live is to keep silent.”

It sounded almost absurdly melodramatic but I remembered Lovelace’s words again—“The relatives of people, the descendants of people, the members of organizations I helped to smash.” Whatever games Jeanette Arnaud had been playing with us before, she wasn’t acting the fear that had turned her face chalk-white.

I saw that Chambrun realized he was licked. He looked at the Martines and gave them a little Gallic shrug. “There isn’t time for me to persuade Mademoiselle where her safety really lies,” he said. “There’s much to be done if we’re to avoid more violence.”

“I would like to go with you, Pierre,” Martine said. “I would like to help. Charles Veauclaire was my friend too.”

“No, Louis. You can help me most effectively by staying here in your suite and keeping safe. There will be men stationed in the hall outside, but don’t let that lull you into too great a feeling of security” …

Chambrun’s office was like the general headquarters of an army. Miss Ruysdale was still on the job. The phones were constantly busy. Every available employee of the hotel was involved in the search for Lovelace and his enemy. Lieutenant Hardy was back on the job, and a half dozen uniformed patrolmen were stationed at the main exits. The hotel switchboard had been ordered to monitor all phone calls to and from the rooms of our list of suspects. The hallways outside their rooms were guarded.

Jerry Dodd came in person to report what seemed to make the possibility of someone we hadn’t even considered a likely thing. Every one of the people on our list was safely tucked in, according to Jerry. The Martines and Jeanette Arnaud we knew about.

“Hilary Carleton answered his door, sleepy—but unmarked,” Jerry said. “He woke up a little when I told him what was cooking. Rogoff is in his suite with three broads. He turned a little pale when he saw me. I guess he thought I’d come to put the arm on him about the girls. He turned instantly cheerful when he found out all I was interested in was murder!”

“And the doctor?” Chambrun asked.

“I had to let myself into his room with a passkey,” Jerry said. “He was there, okay. Passed out cold. I slapped him around a little trying to wake him up, but it was no use. Anyhow, the VanZandt girl could have taken that old buzzard with one arm tied behind her.”

“And no one has seen Lovelace?”

Jerry’s face was grim. “No one. And you know we had him pretty well covered early in the evening. Every key person on the staff knew him by sight.”

Chambrun made an impatient gesture. “The key people weren’t stationed on the fire stairs or at the basement exits,” he said.

“So he got out of the hotel,” Jerry said.

“You still think he may have attacked Marilyn VanZandt and run?” Chambrun asked.

“It’s possible.”

“In spite of the call for a doctor and the blanket?”

“He blew his top. When he came to and saw what he’d done he got help for the girl and took a powder,” Jerry said.

“Doesn’t the condition of Anderson’s head do anything for you, Jerry? Lovelace didn’t come off the elevator and slug Anderson from behind.”

“Then why did he leave the hotel if the guy he wants is holed up here?”

“We don’t know that,” Chambrun said. “The killer may be someone we haven’t even thought of. It’s looked so easy because there were so many handy suspects.”

This, it developed, was Lieutenant Hardy’s theory. The killer was not on our list of suspects. He was somebody not living in the hotel. Lovelace had gone after him, and evidently he knew where to look for him in the city. A general alarm was out. Radio patrol cars were alerted. We sat in Chambrun’s office and waited for news. All the barn doors were closed, but no horse. The phones quieted down. The staff had nothing new to report In a way it was like waiting for a bomb to go off.

Jerry Dodd was blaming himself for something that wasn’t really his fault. He didn’t, in fact, have an army to deploy. He’d counted on Anderson outside my apartment and on me or Marilyn inside to let him know if anyone came or went from there. He would instantly send the men he did have to a danger point. But Anderson had been had, and Marilyn had been beaten helpless while Jerry’s flying squad waited for a report that never came.

Then the little red light on Chambrun’s phone began to blink, Chambrun picked up the receiver, almost eagerly.

“Right away,” was all he said, and hung up. “We’re wanted on the fire stairs,” he told Jerry and me. “Hardy!”

We left the office and walked to the emergency exit at the end of the hall that led to the fire stairs. Hardy leaned over the stair rail from the third-floor landing.

“Up here,” he said.

We climbed the enclosed stairway to where the Lieutenant and one of his plain-clothes men were waiting.

“Stay on the right side,” Hardy called down to us, “Someone went down on the other side—leaking.”

We looked to the other side of the stairs.

“Blood!” Chambrun said.

There was a trail of it; drops on each step. Hardy’s face was grim when we got up to him. His man had a flashlight and he pointed it at the cement wall.

“Some kind of a gun battle out here,” Hardy said. “Two bullets hit the wall there. There are three other slug marks up on the fourth-floor landing. Your floor, Haskell. The way it looks there was one man here on the third floor and another up on the fourth floor. The one up above is the one who was hit. The blood spots start up there and go right down to the exit that opens out onto the side street. There’s a little pool of blood on the sidewalk. It ends at the curb, like the wounded man hailed himself a cab.

“How do you read it, Lieutenant?” Chambrun asked.

Hardy shrugged. “It’s a guess. If I’m wrong you can put it on television. The fellow who beat up Miss VanZandt was scared away from Haskell’s apartment before he finished the job he set out to do.”

“What job?” I asked.

“Kill Lovelace,” Hardy said. “The girl was a surprise. He fought with her. It must have made a hell of a lot of racket. It woke Lovelace out of a drugged sleep. Maybe Lovelace called out. This gent didn’t want to meet Lovelace face to face. Lovelace has a reputation with that pea-shooter of his. This gent wouldn’t have objected to shooting Lovelace in his sleep, but he cares for his own skin. So, he powdered.”

Chambrun nodded, his heavy-lidded eyes studying the bloody trail down the cement steps.

“He made for this emergency exit,” Hardy continued, “This killer guy. Maybe he waited to listen up there on the fourth floor. Then he heard Lovelace come out of the apartment and he started down. Lovelace caught him on this landing. They started shooting at each other ducking out of range, firing. With a handgun you don’t shoot cigarettes out of a guy’s mouth. You can’t be that good. So then the guy on the fourth floor was hit.”

“Lovelace,” Chambrun said.

“The way I read it,” Hardy said. “He was hit bad, because you can see he bled like a stuck pig. The killer boy had a minute to run, down the stairs and out onto the street. Lovelace followed, a lot slower, also out onto the street and into a cab. Maybe the first fellow took a cab or had a car and Lovelace was trying follow. Or maybe Lovelace was dragged into the other fellow’s cab—or car. So we start looking for a wounded man in a city of eight million people who may already be stuffed into an ash can or floating down the East River—if the killer boy took him outside there on the sidewalk.”

“And the only suspects we have are all neatly tucked away in bed,” Chambrun said bitterly.

I
T SEEMED THAT THE
case had moved out of the Beaumont—out of our hands. There was nothing to do but wait for Hardy and the police to come up with answers. It was then about four in the morning. I couldn’t go back to my apartment. Hardy’s fingerprint crew were going over the whole place, hoping to come up with something that would help identify the killer.

Chambrun suggested I try to get some sleep somewhere. Reporters would be swarming down on us as soon as the story broke, and handling them would be part of my job.

I could have gotten Karl Nevers, the night manager, to find me a bed somewhere, but I didn’t feel much like sleep. What I really wanted was to go over to Shelda’s place, pour myself a stiff drink, and get her to massage the kinks out of the back of my neck—it says here. I really wanted to get out of the golden trap that had come up empty for a little while.

I told Chambrun where I was going. I guess he was too tired to make the wisecrack I expected. Shelda’s was only a ten-minute walk. I could be back that fast if he needed me. I wondered if, when I was gone, the ever-present Miss Ruysdale would massage a few kinks out of the back of his neck.

It was still dark on the streets. There was a taxi in the rank outside the hotel and I decided to forget what a healthy thing walking is. Shelda’s apartment in the East Seventies is one of those little gems that are getting scarcer and scarcer in the city. It’s in a remodeled brownstone. It’s the ground-floor apartment and it has its own private entrance. Actually it’s a couple of steps below street level and had probably been the kitchen in the original private home, and there was a beautiful little garden at the back, surrounded by a high board fence, soot-stained but brave. Shelda has a bright awning out there covering a little flagstone terrace, some evergreens growing in tubs, and even some flowers in season. Inside there was a large, cool living room, a kitchenette, bedroom and bath. It was an ideal setup for a bachelor girl. Sometimes when I pressured Shelda on the subject of marriage she’d tell me the apartment was what kept her from giving in. She couldn’t bear to part with it.

I had the key to Shelda’s apartment, which might have shocked the maiden aunt from Dubuque. There were times when, in spite of my devotion to the Beaumont, it was pleasant to be able to go somewhere and put my feet up and not be available for an hour or two. I often went there when Shelda wasn’t at home; more often, I have to admit, when she was. But I was privileged to arrive at any time without a fanfare of trumpets. I needed the relaxing effects of Shelda’s oasis before the hotel was inundated by the press and photographers a little later on.

The taxi let me out and cruised away. There were no lights visible on the street side of the apartment. Shelda had probably long since hit the sack.

There are a complicated series of locks on Shelda’s front door, since it was so readily accessible from the street. You had to be like someone who has the combination to a safe to get them all open. I knew the combination. After a moment I turned the knob and pushed the door inward. It only moved a few inches. The chain was hooked—the extra chain lock. No light came from inside, which I assumed meant Shelda was at the other end of the apartment, asleep in her downy. I was irritated. She should have known I might be appearing.

And then Shelda was standing just inside the door peering out at me through the narrow opening.

“Go away, Mark,” she said.

I couldn’t believe my ears. She was wearing a dark red housecoat I’d given her for Christmas. Her eyes were very wide and strange-looking. Have I said she has violet eyes like Elizabeth Taylor?

“Come off it, baby!” I said.

“Please, Mark, I’m tired. I don’t want to see you,” she said.

“Where’s the gal who kissed me goodnight?” I asked, trying to keep it light.

“Will you please go, Mark!
I don’t want to see you!”

Her lips were trembling. For a fraction of a second I thought it was anger. She can be angry in such unexpected flashes. Then, somehow, it came over me like an icy wave that she wasn’t angry at all.