The Croydons’ car was a Jaguar.
Ogilvie.
He had a sudden memory of the Jaguar emerging from the garage last night. As it stopped, momentarily under a light, there had been something strange. He recalled noticing. But what? With an awful coldness he remembered: it was the fender and headlight; both were damaged. For the first time the significance of police bulletins of the past few days struck home.
“Peter,” Marsha said, “you’ve suddenly gone white.”
He scarcely heard.
It was essential to get away, to be somewhere alone where he could think. He must reason carefully, logically, unhurriedly. Above all, there must be no hasty, ready-made conclusions.
There were pieces of a puzzle. Superficially, they appeared to relate. But they must be considered, reconsidered, arranged, and rearranged. Perhaps discarded.
The idea was impossible. It was simply too fantastic to be true. And yet …
As if from a distance, he heard Marsha’s voice. “Peter! Something’s wrong. What is it?”
Sol Natchez, too, was looking at him strangely.
“Marsha,” Peter said, “I can’t tell you now. But I have to go.”
“Go where?”
“Back to the hotel. I’m sorry. I’ll try to explain later.”
Her voice showed disappointment. “I’d planned we’d have tea.”
“Please believe me! It’s important.”
“If you must go, I’ll drive you.”
“No.” Driving with Marsha would involve talking, explanations. “Please. I’ll call you later.”
He left them standing, bewildered, looking after him.
Outside, on Basin Street, he hailed a cruising cab. He had told Marsha that he was going to the hotel but, changing his mind, he gave the driver the address of his apartment.
It would be quieter there.
To think. To decide what he should do.
It was approaching late afternoon when Peter McDermott summarized his reasoning.
He told himself: When you added something twenty, thirty, forty times; when every time the conclusion you arrived at was the same; when the issue was the kind of issue you were facing now; with all of this, your own responsibility was inescapable.
Since leaving Marsha an hour and a half ago, he had remained in his apartment. He had forced himself—subduing agitation and an impulse for haste—to think rationally, carefully, unexcitedly. He had reviewed, point by point, the accumulated incidents since Monday night. He had searched for alternatives of explanation, both for single happenings and the accumulation of them all. He found none that offered either consistency or sense, save the awful conclusion he had reached so suddenly this afternoon.
Now the reasoning had ended. A decision must be made.
He contemplated placing all that he knew and conjectured before Warren Trent. Then he dismissed the idea as being cowardly, a shirking of his own responsibility. Whatever was to be done, he must do alone.
There was a sense of the fitness of things to be served. He changed quickly from his light suit to a darker one. Leaving, he took a taxi the few blocks to the hotel.
From the lobby he walked, acknowledging salutations, to his office on the main mezzanine. Flora had left for the day. There was a pile of messages on his desk which he ignored.
He sat quietly for a moment in the silent office, contemplating what he must do. Then he lifted the telephone, waited for a line, and dialed the number of the city police.
13
The persistent buzzing of a mosquito, which had somehow found its way into the Jaguar’s interior, woke Ogilvie during the afternoon. He came awake slowly and at first had difficulty remembering where he was. Then the sequence of events came back: the departure from the hotel, the drive in early morning darkness, the alarm—unfounded, his decision to wait out the day before resuming the journey north; and finally the rutted, grassy track with a cluster of trees at its end where he had concealed the car.
The hideaway had apparently been well chosen. A glance at his watch showed that he had slept, uninterrupted, for almost eight hours.
With consciousness also came intense discomfort. The car was stifling, his body stiff and aching from confinement in the cramped rear seat. His mouth was dry and tasted foully. He was thirsty and ravenously hungry.
With grunts of anguish Ogilvie eased his bulk to a sitting position and opened the car door. Immediately, he was surrounded by a dozen more mosquitoes. He brushed them away, then glanced around, taking time to reorient himself, comparing what he saw now with his impressions of the place this morning. Then it had been barely light, and cool; now the sun was high and, even under the shade of the trees, the heat intense.
Moving to the edge of the trees he could see the distant main road with heat waves shimmering above it. Early this morning there had been no traffic. Now there were several cars and trucks, moving swiftly in both directions, the sound of their motors faintly audible.
Closer at hand, apart from a steady hum of insects, there was no sign of activity. Between himself and the main road were only drowsy meadows, the quiet path and the secluded clump of trees. Beneath the latter the Jaguar remained hidden.
Ogilvie relieved himself, then opened a package he had stowed in the trunk of the car before leaving the hotel. It included a Thermos of coffee, several cans of beer, sandwiches, a salami sausage, a jar of pickles, and an apple pie. He ate voraciously, washing down the meal with copious draughts of beer and, later, coffee. The coffee had cooled since the night before but was strong and satisfying.
While eating, he listened to the car radio, waiting for a newscast from New Orleans. When it came there was only a brief reference to the hit-and-run investigation, to the effect that no new developments had been reported.
Afterward, he decided to explore. A few hundred yards away, on the crest of a knoll, was a second clump of trees, somewhat larger than the first. He crossed an open field toward it and, on the other side of the trees, found a mossy bank and a sluggish, muddy stream. Kneeling beside the stream, he made a rough toilet and afterward felt refreshed. The grass was greener and more inviting than where the car was sheltered and he lay down gratefully, using his suit coat for a pillow.
When he was comfortably settled, Ogilvie reviewed the events of the night and the prospect ahead. Reflection confirmed his earlier conclusion that the encounter with Peter McDermott outside the hotel had been accidental and could now be dismissed. It was predictable that McDermott’s reaction, on learning of the chief house officer’s absence, would be explosive. But that in itself would not reveal either Ogilvie’s destination or his reason for departure.
Of course, it was possible that through some other cause an alarm had been raised since last night, and that even now Ogilvie and the Jaguar were being actively sought. But in light of the radio report it seemed unlikely.
On the whole, the outlook appeared bright, especially when he thought of the money already in safe keeping, and the remainder he would collect tomorrow in Chicago.
Now he had only to wait for darkness.
14
The exhilarated mood of Keycase Milne persisted through the afternoon. It bolstered his confidence as, shortly after five P.M., he cautiously approached the Presidential Suite.
Once more he had used the service stairs from the eighth floor to the ninth. The duplicate key, manufactured by the Irish Channel locksmith, was in his pocket.
The corridor outside the Presidential Suite was empty. He stopped at the double leather-padded doors, listening intently, but could hear no sound.
He glanced both ways down the corridor then, with a single movement, produced the key and tried it in the lock. Beforehand he had brushed the key with powdered graphite, as a lubricant. It went in, caught momentarily, then turned. Keycase opened one of the double doors an inch. There was still no sound from inside. He closed the door carefully and removed the key.
It was not his purpose now to enter the suite. That would come later. Tonight.
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His intention had been to reconnoiter and ensure that the key was a good fit, ready for instant use whenever he chose. Later he would begin a vigil, watching for an opportunity his planning had foreseen.
For now, he returned to his room on the eighth floor and there, after setting an alarm clock, slept.
15
Outside it was growing dusk and, excusing himself, Peter McDermott got up from his desk to switch on the office lights. He returned to face, once more, the quietly spoken man in gray flannel, seated opposite. Captain Yolles of the Detective Bureau, New Orleans Police, looked less like a policeman than anyone Peter had ever seen. He continued to listen politely, as a bank manager might consider an application for a loan, to Peter’s recital of fact and surmise. Only once during the lengthy discourse had the detective interrupted, to inquire if he could make a telephone call. Informed that he could, he used an extension on the far side of the office and spoke in a voice so low that Peter heard nothing of what was said.
The absence of any measurable response had the effect of reviving Peter’s doubts. At the end, he observed, “I’m not sure all this, or even any of it, makes sense. In fact I’m already beginning to feel a little foolish.”
“If more people took a chance on that, Mr. McDermott, it would make police work a lot easier.” For the first time Captain Yolles produced pencil and notebook. “If anything should come of this, naturally we’ll need a full statement. Meanwhile, there are a couple of details I’d like to have. One is the license number of the car.”
The information was in a memo from Flora, confirming her earlier report. Peter read it aloud and the detective copied the number down.
“Thank you. The other thing is a physical description of your man Ogilvie. I know him, but I’d like to have it from you.”
For the first time Peter smiled. “That’s easy.”
As he concluded the description, the telephone rang. Peter answered, then pushed the phone across. “For you.”
This time he could hear the detective’s end of the conversation which consisted largely of repeating “yes, sir” and “I understand.”
At one point the detective looked up, his eyes appraisingly on Peter. He said into the telephone, “I’d say he’s very dependable.” A slight smile creased his face. “Worried too.”
He repeated the information concerning the car number and Ogilvie’s description, then hung up.
Peter said, “You’re right about being worried. Do you intend to contact the Duke and Duchess of Croydon?”
“Not yet. We’d like a little more to go on.” The detective regarded Peter thoughtfully. “Have you seen tonight’s paper?”
“No.”
“There’s been a rumor—the States-Item published it—that the Duke of Croydon is to be British ambassador to Washington.”
Peter whistled softly.
“It’s just been on the radio, according to my chief, that the appointment is officially confirmed.”
“Doesn’t that mean there would be some kind of diplomatic immunity?”
The detective shook his head. “Not for something that’s already happened. If it happened.”
“But a false accusation …”
“Would be serious in any case, especially so in this one. It’s why we’re moving warily, Mr. McDermott.”
Peter reflected that it would go hard both for the hotel and himself if word of the investigation leaked out, with the Croydons innocent.
“If it’ll ease your mind a bit,” Captain Yolles said, “I’ll let you in on a couple of things. Our people have done some figuring since I phoned them first. They reckon your man Ogilvie may be trying to get the car out of the state, maybe to some place north. How he ties in with the Croydons, of course, we don’t know.”
Peter said, “I couldn’t guess that either.”
“Chances are, he drove last night—after you saw him—and holed up somewhere for the day. With the car the way it is, he’d know better than to try and make a run in daylight. Tonight, if he shows, we’re ready. A twelve-state alarm is going out right now.”
“Then you do take this seriously?”
“I said there were two things.” The detective pointed to the telephone. “One reason for that last call was to tell me we’ve had a State lab report on broken glass and a trim ring our people found at the accident scene last Monday. There was some difficulty about a manufacturer’s specification change, which was why it took time. But we know now that the glass and trim ring are from a Jaguar.”
“You can really be that certain?”
“We can do even better, Mr. McDermott. If we get to the car that killed the woman and child, we’ll prove it beyond the shadow of a doubt.”
Captain Yolles rose to go, and Peter walked with him to the outer office. Peter was surprised to find Herbie Chandler waiting, then remembered his own instructions for the bell captain to report here this evening or tomorrow. After the developments of the afternoon, he was tempted to postpone what would most likely be an unpleasant session, then concluded there was nothing to be gained by putting it off.
He saw the detective and Chandler exchange glances.
“Good night, Captain,” Peter said, and took a malicious satisfaction in observing a flicker of anxiety cross Chandler’s weasel face. When the policeman had gone, Peter beckoned the bell captain into the inner office.
He unlocked a drawer of his desk and took out a folder containing the statements made yesterday by Dixon, Dumaire, and the other two youths. He handed them to Chandler.
“I believe these will interest you. In case you should get any ideas, these are copies and I have the originals.”
Chandler looked pained, then began reading. As he turned the pages, his lips tightened. Peter heard him suck in breath through his teeth. A moment later he muttered, “Bastards!”
Peter snapped, “You mean because they’ve identified you as a pimp?”
The bell captain flushed, then put down the papers. “What you gonna do?”
“What I’d like to do is fire you on the spot. Because you’ve been here so long, I intend to place the whole thing before Mr. Trent.”
There was a whine to Chandler’s voice as he asked, “Mr. Mac, could we talk around this for a bit?”
When there was no answer, he began, “Mr. Mac, there’s a lot of things go on in a place like this …”
“If you’re telling me the facts of life—about call girls and all the other rackets—I doubt if there’s much I don’t know already. But there’s something else I know, and so do you: at certain things managements draw the line. Supplying women to minors is one.”
“Mr. Mac, couldn’t you, maybe this time, not go to Mr. Trent? Couldn’t you just keep this between you and me?”
“No.”
The bell captain’s gaze moved shiftily around the room, then returned to Peter. His eyes were calculating. “Mr. Mac, if some people was to live and let live …” He stopped.
“Yes?”
“Well, sometimes it can be worth while.”
Curiosity kept Peter silent.
Chandler hesitated, then deliberately unfastened the button of a tunic pocket. Reaching inside he removed a folded envelope which he placed on the desk.
Peter said, “Let me see that.”
Chandler pushed the envelope nearer. It was unsealed and contained five one-hundred-dollar bills. Peter inspected them curiously.
“Are they real?”
Chandler smirked. “They’re real all right.”
“I was curious to know how high you thought my price came.” Peter tossed the money back. “Take it and get out.”
“Mr. Mac, if it’s a question of a little more …”
“Get out!” Peter’s voice was low. He half-rose in his chair. “Get out before I break your dirty little neck.”
As he retrieved the money and left, Herbie Chandler’s face was a mask of hatred.
When he was alone, Peter McDermott sat slumped, silently, behind his
desk. The interviews with the policeman and Chandler had exhausted and depressed him. Of the two, he thought, the second had lowered his spirits most, probably because handling the proffered bribe had left him with a feeling of being unclean.
Or had it? He thought: be honest with yourself. There had been an instant, with the money in his hands, when he was tempted to take it. Five hundred dollars was a useful sum. Peter had no illusion about his own earnings compared with those of the bell captain, who undoubtedly raked in a good deal more. If it had been anyone other than Chandler, he might possibly have succumbed. Or would he? He wished he could be sure. Either way, he would not be the first hotel manager to accept a pay-off from his staff.
The irony, of course, was that despite Peter’s insistence that the evidence against Herbie Chandler would be placed before Warren Trent, there was no guarantee that it would happen. If the hotel changed ownership abruptly, as seemed likely, Warren Trent would no longer be concerned. Nor might Peter himself be around. With the advent of new management, the records of senior staff would undoubtedly be examined and, in his own case, the old, unsavory Waldorf scandal disinterred. Had he yet, Peter wondered, lived that down? Well, there was every likelihood he would find out soon.
He returned his attention to the present.
On his desk was a printed form, which Flora had left, with a late-afternoon house count. For the first time since coming in, he studied the figures. They showed that the hotel was filling and tonight, it seemed, there was a certainty of another full house. If the St. Gregory was going down to defeat, at least it was doing so to the sound of trumpets.
As well as the house count and telephone messages, there was a fresh pile of mail and memos. Peter skimmed through them all, deciding that there was nothing which could not be left until tomorrow. Beneath the memos was a Manila folder which he opened. It was the proposed master catering plan which the sous-chef, Andre Lemieux, had given him yesterday. Peter had begun studying the plan this morning.
Glancing at his watch, he decided to continue his reading before making an evening tour of the hotel. He settled down, the precisely handwritten pages and carefully drawn charts spread out before him.