Walking Dead Man (17 page)

Chambrun was looking at him steadily. “Peter Potter,” he said.

Cobb’s eyebrows shot upward. “You mean you also thought of it, Mr. Chambrun? Now how do you like that!”

“The dwarf!” Hardy said. “He could have fitted in that damned thing!”

“He could have, but he didn’t,” Chambrun said. “George and you, Dr. Cobb, and the rest of your entourage arrived at the Beaumont almost simultaneously with David Loring and the other film people. You went through the ballroom and up the service elevator to avoid them. While you were doing that Peter Potter was in the lobby with the film people. There must be over a hundred witnesses to that. So he couldn’t have been hiding in the laundry hamper in advance.”

“I was so amused with the idea,” Cobb said, “that I couldn’t resist saying I had the answer—to Mr. Haskell who was standing right beside me. Then I realized that Peter couldn’t have fooled George, so I suggested to Mr. Haskell that he forget what I’d said.”

“How do you mean, couldn’t have fooled Battle?”’ Hardy asked.

“A stocking mask wouldn’t disguise Peter from George,” Cobb said. “He’s just under four feet tall. George saw the gunman.”

“You thought that Potter could have hidden in that laundry hamper,” Chambrun said. “It must have been coupled with another thought; that Potter had a motive.”

“My, my, Mr. Chambrun, it’s pleasant to talk to someone whose mind isn’t treacle thick. Yes, I thought Peter had a motive. Not a usual one, but a motive. I knew Peter quite well. He worked for George for about a year some time back. Was in and out of the villa fairly often. I relished his company. He has wit. He is also extremely sensitive about his deformity. He pretends to laugh at it, but it’s a deep, bleeding wound in him.”

“I know the story about his messenger service for George,” Chambrun said.

Cobb nodded. “You and I might be annoyed at discovering we’d been acting as a dummy messenger for George,” he said. “But in Peter it was a festering wound.”

“Festering enough to drive him to murder five years later?”

“The whole thing was a momentary fantasy,” Cobb said. He lit a fresh cigarette from the stub of the first one. “At the time the idea amused me that he could have been hiding in the hamper and no one had bothered to look.”

“You’ve worked for Mr. Battle for twenty years?” Hardy asked.

Cobb nodded slowly. “I have been his personal doctor for twenty years,” he said, frowning.

“As we find you now, Doctor, without any outside practice?” Hardy asked.

“Yes.” The doctor took a deep drag on his cigarette and choked. He had a hell of a time getting his breathing organized after that. Hardy waited for him.

“I’m guessing you’re about seventy, Doctor.”

“How flattering,” Cobb said.

“Please tell us how you happened to give up medicine except for caring for Mr. Battle.”

“It paid well,” Cobb said.

“How did it begin?” Chambrun asked.

Cobb hesitated. “My practice was in the village of Cannes, in France,” he said.

“But you are an American, Dr. Cobb.”

“I was a medic in the army in France when the war ended,” Cobb said. “I was discharged abroad and I decided to stay in France. I liked the climate in the south and I liked the people. I’d seen enough medical horrors to last a man a lifetime in the army. I was satisfied to settle down to prescribing a few pills, painting a few throats, slapping a few babies on the behind. One day I got a call from the villa. George’s regular doctor was on a holiday and he needed a doctor in a hurry. I went up there to see him. He was in pretty bad shape when I saw him that first time. I diagnosed it as mononucleosis. He needed rest and attention. He asked me if I’d stay there till he pulled through it. The fee he suggested was irresistible.

Chambrun smiled. “George can be irresistible when he starts talking money,” he said. “I know.”

Cobb nodded, “And I was lazy, and I like good food and good drink.” His eyes wandered toward the sideboard. Chambrun gave me an almost imperceptible signal and I went over and poured the doctor a slug. I remembered his taste was bourbon.

“Bless you,” Cobb said when I made delivery. He took a long swig. I kept thinking this old guy was hurrying the undertaker. “I stayed on with George a week—two weeks.”

“And your practice?”

“It wasn’t large enough for me to be badly missed.” Cobb’s smile was bitter. “I was the one they called when all the other doctors were too busy, or when they didn’t have money to pay. Long before George was back on his feet, he asked me how I’d like a permanent job taking care of him. There’s nothing basically the matter with him, you understand. His heart is good, blood pressure good, he’s always afraid of getting sick, but he never does. Unlike most hypochondriacs, he doesn’t have imaginary symptoms. He just wants to be prepared ‘in case.’ So because I like luxury, I agreed to stay.”

“Yet you were ready to prescribe sleeping pills, sedatives and that sort of thing,” Chambrun said.

Cobb raised his eyes to look at the boss. “Are you suggesting that George used me as a means of supporting a narcotics habit?” he asked.

“Does he have such a habit?”

“No” Cobb finished his drink in a second long swallow. He put the glass down on the table beside his chair. “I long ago gave up trying to get him to sleep in any kind of decent stretches. Some people don’t need eight—ten hours of sleep. George is one. He works twenty hours a day, taking catnaps along the way. I had a feeling that someday he would crack up. I came to understand that constant work is what keeps him going. When he dies, it will be because he has nothing to do.”

“Or somebody blows him up with a greeting card,” Hardy said. “After twenty years, Doctor, you must know a good deal about his private life, his friends, women.”

“Women?” Cobb laughed, and choked again. “To George women are like a handsome decoration might be to you.” He glanced up at the blue period Picasso on the wall. “Like that painting. He’s had a string of very lovely girls acting as secretaries in my time. Not a homely one in the lot. But”—and he looked at me and grinned—“cheer up, Mr. Haskell. They are simply decorative, pleasant to look at. George’s enormous energies are not channeled into sex. As for friends, Lieutenant, I have never heard George refer to anyone as a friend except Mr. Chambrun. Friends require an expenditure of time, social time. George hasn’t any to give. Perhaps that’s why he thinks of you as a friend, Chambrun, because you don’t require anything from him, and because you live three thousand miles away.”

Chambrun’s face was masklike. “Maybe I have something on him,” he said. “Because that’s the way he operates, isn’t it, Doctor? The people he trusts are people he’s got something on. What does he have on you, Dr. Cobb?”

The doctor choked and struggled for breath. “I find that an offensive suggestion,” he said.

“I’m trying to save a man’s life, Doctor.”

“You know we have reason to wonder about the people close to him,” Hardy said.

The doctor was leaning forward, gasping for air. “At last Allerton is beyond suspicion,” he said. “And unless I get back to my oxygen supply, you may be able to write me off, too.” He struggled to his feet. “I’m sorry, gentlemen, but I’m afraid this is an emergency.”

We watched him totter out of the room. He certainly wasn’t faking being a very sick man.

When he had gone, Hardy stood up. “We don’t seem to get anywhere fast,” he said. “I’d better find out if Carlson’s got anything new.”

“Ask yourself a couple of questions on the way up,” Chambrun said, squinting through the haze of his cigarette smoke. “Ask yourself why, when Stocking Mask missed Battle with that first shot, he didn’t fire again? And ask yourself why, if the letter bomb was designed by people on the inside—Cobb, Butler, Allerton, or Gaston—the wrong person was allowed to open it?”

I didn’t have time to think much about Chambrun’s two questions. As Hardy was leaving, Miss Ruysdale came in to say that Shelda had just called and asked if I could meet her for a drink in the Trapeze Bar. I didn’t want to meet her in the Trapeze Bar, which would be crowded with people for the cocktail hour, but I went there anyway, wondering why she’d chosen this place for a get-together. There was my apartment and her room. I figured maybe she’d gotten herself tied up with the movie people and wasn’t alone.

She was alone. Mr. Del Greco had put her at a little corner table. The bar was full, as I’d anticipated. Half a dozen people waved a greeting at me as I made my way between tables to Shelda The moment I was within a yard or two of her, I knew something was wrong. Her face was chalk white. She was gripping the edge of the table, not touching the drink Del Greco had brought her. She looked up at me and I knew she’d been crying.

“Darling, what’s wrong?” I asked as I slipped into the chair opposite her.

“I—I guess the whole thing has been a little too much for me, Mark,” she said. “I k-keep feeling I’m responsible for what happened to Allerton.”

“That’s nonsense, Shelda.”

“I—I’m going home,” she said. “I haven’t seen my family for more than a year.”

“When?” I asked, feeling empty.

She glanced at her watch. “My plane leaves LaGuardia in about an hour and twenty minutes. So we haven’t much time.”

“Why tonight? Why not tomorrow? We haven’t had a moment together. There’s so much I want to talk about, Shelda.”

“I can’t stick it here any longer,” she said, not looking at me. “Mr. Battle was very nice about it. He told me to take as long with my folks as I want to.”

“That’s swell,” I said. “If you can get time off, you could spend it with me. Your parents can wait a few days. We have a couple of lives to decide about.”

“I’m sorry, Mark. I’ve wired my mother. I can’t disappoint her.”

I don’t know why, but I was suddenly certain she wasn’t telling me the truth. Whatever, it was tearing her to pieces. Her lips were quivering and she was fighting back tears.

“What is this really all about?” I asked her.

“Just what I said, Mark.” She was bright and brittle. “I feel like a child not being able to take it like the rest of you. Allerton’s been part of my daily life for a year. Maybe that’s the reason. He was such a sweet old character.”

“That’s not it, Shelda. What is it? You don’t have to cry over me if you’ve changed your mind. I gave up hoping a long time ago. I can survive one day’s reversion to type.”

“Please, Mark, it’s not that. Will you take me to a taxi?”

“I’ll go to the airport with you.”

“No!” She stood up so abruptly she managed to knock over her untouched drink.

“Whatever you say.” I was beginning to feel adolescent again.

We walked down to the lobby. Mike Maggio, the bell captain, saw us and came over carrying Shelda’s two bags. She was certainly going somewhere. Mike chattered about ‘good flying weather’ and a lot of other crap. He opened the door of a waiting taxi. Shelda started to get in, and then she turned back to me and was suddenly clinging to me. Her whole body was shaking as if she had a chill.

“Mark, please, please!” she whispered.

“What is it, baby?”

“Take care of yourself,” she said. “Please take care of yourself.”

And then she was in the cab and it was disappearing down Fifth Avenue, I don’t mind saying I felt bewildered.

I remember I went upstairs to the second floor to my own office after Shelda had split down the Avenue, headed for her parents’ home in Kansas. I had their address and phone number stashed away in my office and I thought I’d copy it down so that I could call her later—much later.

I hadn’t been at my desk since noon the day before. My secretary had gone home, but she had left a stack of mail for me and some notations about urgent phone calls. The chairman for a political dinner was screaming for an interview with Mr. Amato, our banquet manager. A famous couturier wanted to know when they could have a full dress rehearsal, with models, for an exhibition of his new line which was supposed to take place in the ballroom next week. The
P.R.
man for a famous Hollywood star wanted to buy me lunch and talk about his client who was due to check in at the Beaumont next Thursday. My secretary had handled what she could, but there were a dozen personal calls I should have answered. They’d all have to wait till tomorrow, I told myself.

I heard the outer door of my office open and close. I’d neglected to lock it when I came in, and I looked up to see Maxie Zorn, the movie tycoon, standing in the inner office door.

“Thank God there’s somebody alive in this place,” he said. “Can I come in?”

I waved him to a chair beside my desk.

“I can’t get in touch with anyone,” he said. “Switchboard won’t put me through to Battle. What in Christ’s world is going on around here, Haskell?”

“Murder and attempted murder,” I said. “The cops get awfully touchy about that, and Mr. Chambrun is even worse when it happens in his hotel.”

“Can you tell me what the hell is going on?”

“Someone sent Battle an exploding letter,” I said. “It got the valet by mistake. The cops and the hotel have Battle covered like a tent. That’s why you can’t get to him.”

“Do you have any idea what’s going on in my life?” Maxie asked. He sounded anguished.

“You’re waiting for seven million bucks to get close enough for you to grab,” I said. “It must be nerve-racking.”

“I’m going to lose a star if I don’t get answers quick.” Maxie said. “David Loring always has more offers than he can handle. He’s waited for a final answer from me about as long as he can and will. If I lose him, the whole thing falls apart. A picture with David in it makes money even if it’s lousy. Without him—!” He made a helpless gesture with nervous hands.

“About the best I can do is offer you a drink,” I said. I wondered if it would be a kindness to tell him that I knew Battle was just playing games with him in order to prevent Cleaves’ novel from being filmed.

“I don’t drink,” Maxie said. “Can you get a message to Battle for me?”

“I could try,” I said.

“It’s simple enough,” he said. “Let him know that if I don’t nave an answer by after breakfast tomorrow, we’ll lose David. And what about your girl friend? Is she going to play ball or not?”