Golden Trap (2 page)

The moment the hall door closed on Johnny Thacker the tall man put his letter down on the foyer table and began, slowly and methodically, to pull off his chamois gloves and stuff them in the pocket of the Burberry. Then he slipped out of the coat and hung it along with his soft brown hat in the foyer closet. Through all of this he seemed never to take his eyes off the envelope, almost as if it had a sort of hypnotic hold on him. He closed the closet door and took the one step back to the foyer table. He stood, scowling down at the envelope, long sensitive fingers producing a cigarette and a silver lighter from the pockets of his brown tweed jacket. At last, as though he had prolonged an anticipated pleasure or a dreaded pain as long as he could, he picked up the envelope and ripped it open. The cigarette hung from a corner of his mouth; his eyes were squinted against the curl of blue smoke.

Inside the envelope was an envelope. It was addressed to Michael O’Hanlon.

Lovelace’s fingers were quite steady as he opened the second envelope. Inside it was another, slightly smaller envelope addressed to Gregor Bodanzky. Inside that was another addressed to Karl Kessler, and inside that another to Charles Veauclaire, and inside that, one addressed to John Smith. This final one was small, like the envelope for a visiting card.

An ash fell off the cigarette, unnoticed, and dribbled down the front of Lovelace’s jacket. The slim fingers moved slowly but quite steadily as he opened this last envelope. There was a plain card inside with a message written on it in small, very precise script.

One of you—Lovelace, or O’Hanlon, or Bodanzky, or Kessler, or Veauclaire, or Smith—is much closer to the final pay-off than even you can measure.

The man who had registered as George Lovelace looked down at the little collection of envelopes on the table top. He drew cigarette smoke deep down into his lungs and exhaled it in a long sigh. The little droop of his broad shoulders suggested a bone-deep fatigue. He picked up the envelopes, made a little packet of them, and slipped them into his pocket. Then he crossed the room to the telephone on the desk.

“Please connect me with Mr. Pierre Chambrun,” he said.

A courteous but impersonal woman’s voice answered the ring. “Mr. Chambrun’s office, Miss Ruysdale speaking.”

“Is Mr. Chambrun there?”

“I’m his private secretary,” Miss Ruysdale said. “Can I help you?”

“My name is George Lovelace. It is a personal and rather urgent matter.”

“Just a moment, please—”

There was a dead silence and then a brisk and cordial voice came through to Lovelace. “My dear George! I hadn’t expected you till later in the day.”

“How are you, Pierre?”

“Come down here and see for yourself,” Chambrun said. “How about a drink—say five this afternoon?”

Lovelace’s hand tightened on the telephone receiver. “It’s rather important that I see you now. I’m in rather a hell of a lot of trouble, Pierre.”

“Second floor. Turn left as you get off the elevator. My office suite is at the end of the hall.” There was a faint hesitation. “Would you like to have the hotel security officer make the trip downstairs with you, George?”

Lovelace’s laugh was bitter. “Not all the king’s horses or all the king’s men would help—if this is the moment, Pierre…”

Pierre Chambrun is a small, dark man, stockily built, with heavy pouches under bright black eyes that can turn so hard your blood freezes if you’re guilty of a mistake, or unexpectedly twinkle with humor. He’s been in the hotel business for all of his adult life. French by birth, he came to this country as a small boy and he thinks, now, like an American. But his training in the hotel business has often taken him back to Europe. He can adopt a Continental manner to suit a queen; he is a linguist. He is the sole operating boss of the Beaumont, handling his job without interference from the owner, Mr. George Battle, who spends his life on the French Riviera, presumably counting an inexhaustible supply of money.

I think Chambrun’s genius as an executive lies in his ability to delegate authority, while at the same time always being close at hand to take full responsibility for touchy decisions. Every employee of the hotel is aware that by some unexplained magic Chambrun knows exactly what’s going on in thirty-five different places at the same time. Despite its reputation as the top luxury hotel in America, the Beaumont is confronted with the same problems as lesser establishments. There are always the drunks, the dead beats, the call girls—most expensive in New York but nonetheless call girls—the endless cantankerous guests, the suicides, the heart attacks suffered by elderly gentlemen in the rooms of young ladies not their wives, the erotic whims of the faded ladies whose men have left them for greener fields and fresher flowers, the endless protocols involving the many dignitaries from the United Nations who tend to make the Beaumont a base of operations in New York. Chambrun’s instinct for handling all people on all levels, from the lowest kitchen helper to a visiting royalty, is not something you can learn from a course in hotel management at Cornell University.

If there is an indispensable member of Chambrun’s staff, it is Miss Betsy Ruysdale, his personal secretary. Miss Ruysdale is hard to describe. Chambrun has many requirements in a personal secretary. She must be efficient beyond any announced specifications. She must be prepared to forget the eight-hour day or any regularity of working hours. She must be chic, but not disturbing. Chambrun doesn’t want any of the male members of his staff mooning over some doll in his outer office, but he doesn’t want to be offended by anyone unattractive. She must be prepared eternally to anticipate his needs without waiting for orders. Miss Ruysdale, by some miracle, managed to meet all these requirements. Her clothes are quiet, but smart and expensive. Her manner toward the staff is friendly, touched by a nice humor, but she manages to draw an invisible line over which no one steps. She is clearly all woman, but if she belongs to some man his identity is a secret no one has penetrated. We all tell ourselves it can’t be Chambrun. Or is it? He neuters her by calling her “Ruysdale”—never Miss Ruysdale or Betsy. Her devotion to him is obviously total, but questionably romantic.

Ruysdale arrives each morning half an hour before Chambrun appears to breakfast in his office. Chambrun’s private office is not furnished like an office. The Oriental rug is priceless, a gift from an Indian maharaja who had been saved from some romantic embarrassment by Chambrun. The flat-topped desk is Florentine, exquisitely carved. The chairs are from the same locale, high-backed, beautiful to look at, and surprisingly comfortable. There is a sideboard by a far wall on which rests the paraphernalia of a coffee service and a Turkish coffee-maker. There is no sign of office, no files, no visible safe; only the little intercom box on his desk which connects with the one on Ruysdale’s desk in the outer room, and two telephones, one a private line with an unlisted number and one connected to the hotel switchboard. Each morning Ruysdale checks the lacquered box on the desk to make certain there is an ample supply of the Egyptian cigarettes Chambrun chain smokes each day. Each morning she starts the first pot of Turkish coffee brewing. There will be half a dozen others made before the day has ended. Chambrun never reaches for anything he wants without finding it exactly where he expects it to be…

It was just a few minutes past one, the busiest time of the day at the Beaumont, when George Lovelace walked into Miss Ruysdale’s office. Part of everyone’s job at the hotel is to make a quick assessment of each guest he encounters. Handling people and keeping them happy begins with the doorman and spreads through all the channels, from the busboy who puts ice in your water glass in the main dining room to Chambrun himself. Ruysdale is an expert. One cool glance at a customer, particularly one who penetrates to Chambrun’s office, and Ruysdale has him neatly categorized in her mental filing system.

Ruysdale’s estimate of George Lovelace was not what we call cold turkey. She had the advantage of a brief word over the intercom from Chambrun.

“A Mr. George Lovelace will be dropping by in a moment, Ruysdale. I’ll see him at once, and I want no interruptions while he’s here. He’s an old friend in some kind of trouble.”

There are thousands of people who called Chambrun friend, but the number of people whom the great man called friend is infinitesimal by comparison. It meant to Ruysdale that this tall, weary-looking man who faced her across her desk had somehow managed to earn not only Pierre Chambrun’s respect but also his affection. Her eye took in the well-tailored tweed jacket and slacks, the custom-made cowhide shoes, the plain white shirt and conservative blue tie. I would have said that here was a man who had once had money and had splurged on clothes. He wore a jacket that was ten years old, so the suggestion was that he no longer had that kind of money. Ruysdale came to quite another conclusion. He wore an old jacket because it pleased him and he felt relaxed and comfortable in it. She judged him a man who was not and had never been rich but who saved to buy the very best when he bought. She marked him down as a man who could not afford fifty dollars a day every day for a suite at the Beaumont, but having reserved one at that price the money had been set aside for it. There are two kinds of top credit ratings at the Beaumont; those whose bank accounts are public knowledge, and those whose integrity is beyond question. Ruysdale put George Lovelace in this second group and she was, as always, correct. She sensed something else about him. Some terrible anxiety was gnawing away at him, but it produced not fear, only exhaustion in him. He was resigned to something that he could no longer fight. She wondered, incorrectly, if it might be an illness for which there was no cure. She had seen brave men face the medical sentence of death with this same kind of weary courage. “Miss Ruysdale?” Lovelace asked. She gave him the rare smile reserved for the specially anointed. “Mr. Chambrun’s expecting you, Mr. Lovelace. You’re to go straight in.”

His walk was slow, measured, as if it took some control not to look back over his shoulder. He went through the door into Chambrun’s office and closed it behind him.

“Hello, Pierre,” he said quietly.

Chambrun glanced up from the papers on his desk and was instantly on his feet. They met halfway across the thick Oriental rug and for an instant the tall man and the short man indulged in a warm Gallic embrace. Chambrun took a step back to look up at the lined face. His eyes, bright with pleasure, clouded.

“Your trouble is bad, my friend,” he said. “Come, sit down. Can I offer you a drink or some coffee?”

Lovelace’s mouth moved in a smile. His eyes had spotted the coffee-maker on the sideboard. “Still hooked on that incredible Turkish mud?”

“You were never noted for a sophisticated palate,” Chambrun said. “Here, take this chair. Ashtray there beside you on the desk.”

Lovelace sat down and lit a cigarette. Chambrun resumed his place, frowning now. He was concerned by his friend’s appearance.

“Tell it your own way, George,” he said.

Lovelace closed his eyes for an instant as he inhaled on his cigarette. Then he opened them and looked straight at Chambrun.

“Would you be very distressed, Pierre, if I chose this golden hostelry of yours as the stage setting for my murder?”

Chambrun’s black eyes went hard and cold, but his face was expressionless.

“I’m forty-eight years old, Pierre,” Lovelace said. “In the last twenty-five years I’ve lived in a dozen countries and traveled to every place on the globe. In all that time there have been just three people I have ever called friend and believed myself when I said it. Two women, one man. One of the women is dead and the other might as well be. That leaves you, Pierre.

I’ve never been a sentimentalist, but about a month ago, when I knew I was going to have to die, I suddenly wanted to be near the one person I knew might care when I was found with my head blown off or my throat cut.”

“Melodrama,” Chambrun said.

“Unpleasant truth,” Lovelace said. “Who is gunning for you?” Chambrun asked.

“I wish to God I knew,” Lovelace said. He took the Chinese box of letters from his jacket pocket and slid them across the desk to Chambrun, who glanced quickly through them to the final message on the small white card.

“It is someone who knows my past well,” Lovelace said. “Someone who knows that in New York I was John Smith, in Berlin Karl Kessler, in London Michael O’Hanlon, in Budapest Gregor Bodanzky, in France, where you knew me, Charles Veauclaire. But who is it who wants me dead? A Frenchman, a Roumanian, a Britisher, a German, an American? I have no clue as to where to look. There are a thousand people who might wish me dead, people who have never seen me in the flesh and whom I have never seen. I can’t fight shadows, Pierre, and I’m exhausted from running.”

“You’ve left out one possibility,” Chambrun said. “Oh?”

“Is there someone who might want George Lovelace dead?”

Lovelace laughed, a small, bitter sound. “Until a year ago I’d forgotten who George Lovelace was,” he said. “A green college boy full of patriotic enthusiasms who became a half dozen other people and didn’t return to his own identity for twenty-five years. George Lovelace is no one; a disguise for a series of disguises. I had hoped George Lovelace would hide me from the past, but he hasn’t, as you can see.” He gestured to the envelopes on Chambrun’s desk. “Can I stay here, Pierre? Will you let me die here in your special little world?”

“I’m damned if I do,” Chambrun said.

Lovelace pushed himself up to his feet. “Sorry I bothered you,” he said.

“Don’t be an idiot,” Chambrun said impatiently. “I meant I’m damned if I let you die here. Perhaps we can turn what you called this ‘golden hostelry’ into a golden trap for a killer.”

“It’s hopeless, Pierre.”

“I don’t like the quitting sound of you,” Chambrun said.

W
HILE ALL THIS WAS
going on I was still dealing with a shattered Marilyn VanZandt.

As Lovelace disappeared in the direction of the elevators she whispered to me.