Time of Terror (31 page)

“There’s no choice. Certainly you have to stay here,” Shirley said. She reached out a hand to Kauffman’s shoulder.

“I’d be glad to help,” he said. It was an exhausted whisper.

My presence at the Cancer Fund Ball was a requirement of my job. I usually enjoy big parties thrown at the hotel. The very rich and the famous are always on hand. The women are always spectacularly dressed and bejeweled. There were two bands for this ball and they were society’s darlings. With Shirley looking like the brightest of stars to me, it should have been a fun evening, but neither of us had any taste for it. Her concern was for Jim Kauffman, lying sedated in the hotel’s infirmary, a cop guarding the door of his room. Her concern was for him and for me. She knew that nothing that was going on around us was of any consequence to me, could in any way penetrate the thick, dark gloom that had settled over me and the other intimate members of the staff. Nothing whatever had turned up to explain Chambrun’s disappearance. Jerry Dodd was at the point of being able to say for certain that Chambrun was nowhere in the Beaumont, alive or dead. All the nonpublic areas of the hotel had been searched. The last room-by-room search of the guest accommodations was drawing to a gloomy conclusion without result.

Early in the afternoon the FBI had come into the picture. The agent in charge, one Frank Lewis, had nothing to work with. A possible kidnapping was what justified his presence, but there was only Chambrun’s unexplained absence to suggest such an answer. He had been missing for some seventeen hours when Lewis and two other agents showed up a little after seven o’clock in the evening.

I had already changed into my dinner jacket when Ruysdale called to ask me to come down the hall to Chambrun’s office. Lewis, the FBI man, was there with her. He was a slim, dark young man with cool gray eyes behind wire-rimmed glasses.

“We haven’t much to go on, Mr. Haskell,” he said. “In a routine kidnapping we should have heard something by now; demands for money, something else they want. There has been nothing. There’s no evidence of violence. Lieutenant Hardy has been over Chambrun’s penthouse. It is just as the maids left it for him, bed turned down, pajamas laid out. We know he was there at two fifteen
A.M.
He called the switchboard to say he was turning in and would accept no calls except for an emergency. There were four or five cigarette butts in ashtrays, all the Egyptian brand Chambrun smokes. No others. We know, from the switchboard again, that he’d been in the penthouse for about an hour before that last goodnight call. Nothing forced, not the door, not the windows opening onto the roof garden outside. There are some fingerprints, mostly Chambrun’s, a few identified as being the maid’s. No others.”

“Music?” Ruysdale asked, her voice husky from fatigue.

“There was a Beethoven symphony on the stereo system. Chambrun’s prints on it.”

“He—he always plays music when he’s alone,” Ruysdale said.

“So it comes down to this,” Lewis said. “He announced to the switchboard that he was going to bed, but he didn’t. He went out on his own, or he was persuaded by someone to go out in a nonviolent fashion.”

“At the point of a gun is not nonviolent,” I said.

“That’s only a supposition, Mr. Haskell. We have no way of knowing that’s so. How big a ransom would you say kidnappers might ask, Miss Ruysdale?”

“Mr. Chambrun is moderately well off,” Ruysdale said, “but the owners could go very high.”

“And would they?”

“I think,” Ruysdale said, “Mr. Chambrun is more valuable to their investment than the real estate.”

“Mr. Garrity assures me they’ve received no demand of any kind,” Lewis said.

Ruysdale and I looked at each other, helplessly. No one had received any demands.

“One last thing,” Lewis said. “There’s a private elevator leading up to the penthouse?”

“It’s one of a regular bank of elevators that goes to that wing of the hotel,” I said, “but it is only used by Chambrun, or one of us going to the penthouse to see him for some reason.”

“‘One of us’?”

“Miss Ruysdale, Jerry Dodd, the security chief, and sometimes I use it if the boss sends for me.”

“If Chambrun wanted to leave the hotel, unseen, he could take that elevator down to the basement, couldn’t he?” Lewis asked. “There must be ways of getting out to the street without encountering anyone, if you know your way around.”

“The boss certainly knows his way around,” I said.

“That elevator, according to Hardy,” Lewis said, “was found at the penthouse level. Suggesting that he didn’t use it to go down.”

“It would be simple enough for someone to make it look that way,” I said. “You ride the car down to the basement. When the doors open, you press the penthouse button, holding the doors open, and step out. The doors close, the car shoots up to the roof again. I’ve done it many times, not necessarily from the basement, you understand. I’d go to see the boss, he’d send me to see someone on one of the lower floors. I’d use the private elevator, go down to the tenth floor, say, and do what I told you; send the car back up to the penthouse so it would be there when the boss wanted it.”

“So the elevator tells us nothing,” Lewis said.

“I don’t see that it does,” I said.

Lewis shook his head, “There’s been an all points bulletin out on him since early this morning,” he said. “He’s not a movie star, but thousands of people must know him by sight. Thirty years of traffic in and out of this hotel. Not a word from anywhere that anyone has seen him.”

“He isn’t circulating where anyone would see him,” Ruysdale said, “or he would have been in touch long ago.”

Lewis nodded. “I don’t like to be a purveyor of gloom,” he said, “but there is nothing about this so far that suggests a classic kidnapping-for-ransom. An enemy? A revenge for something? Some kind of nut? A discontented dishwasher?” When neither of us commented he said: “You seem to have had enough violence here today to last for a lifetime.”

It looked as if there were a million dollars worth of flowers in the main ballroom. As I’ve said, the women looked spectacular. Shirley and I danced a little, but we weren’t enjoying it as much as we should. People kept stopping us to ask me questions about the murder. A little before midnight the drummer in the band that was playing gave with a long roll that presaged an announcement.

Out onto the bandstand came Claude Duval, his bald head glittering in the light from the crystal chandeliers. He was wearing a turtle-neck shirt, a gaudy plaid sports jacket, and black glasses. This was in marked contrast to the black and white ties, the evening gowns and jewels. Before he could speak, his name went around the room like a grass fire, and people started to applaud. Finally they were willing to listen.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, “I’m sure that most of you know that your ball committee and the hotel management have graciously permitted me to shoot a portion of my new film here, tonight.”

Applause.

“Janet Parker and Robert Randle will join the dancers on the floor followed by a movie camera. It is my hope that all of you will keep dancing, as though nothing unusual was happening. It will only interrupt your pleasure for ten or twelve minutes. In that time there will be unusually bright lights focused on the actors and on those of you on the fringe of the action. I hope you will not look startled or blink your eyes. In a few months you may be seen on screens all over the United States and Europe.” He laughed. “I’m sure you wouldn’t enjoy seeing yourselves making funny faces. Thank you for your indulgence and for taking part in this adventure.” More applause. He evidently had something more to say. “I’m happy to tell you that the producer of my film
Strategies
is making a very generous contribution to the Cancer Fund as a way of expressing his thanks to you.”

They handled it very well. The band began to play again, and after two or three minutes, the rubber-tired camera moved out onto the floor. Blinding lights focused on an area around it, and into that light came Janet Parker and Randle, dancing together. I hadn’t been aware that they’d put in an appearance until they danced into camera range. A murmur of delight swept the room and the dancing couples crowded in on them.

Duval’s voice came over some kind of loud speaker. “Please, ladies and gentlemen. Please! Don’t focus your attention so noticeably on the actors. They are just another couple at a ball. We will stop the music for just a moment and then start again.”

The music stopped. Makeup people rushed onto the floor to be certain the actors were okay. I saw a man blot at perspiration on Robert Randle’s face with tissues. The lovely Janet Parker nodded and smiled at someone she knew, and then she caught sight of me. She smiled and her lips moved. I couldn’t hear what she said but she made it quite clear. “Thanks!”

I hadn’t done anything for her. If she was thanking me for keeping Mayberry out of her hair, her thanks belonged to Chambrun, one of his last acts before he disappeared.

The music started again and Shirley and I danced, self-consciously avoiding any interest in the two actors in the camera’s eye. Eventually the music stopped and the dancers applauded the music as they would in a normal break. The two actors slipped away, surrounded by film people, and this time the applause was louder and for them. Garrity had been right. The ball guests had been delighted with the diversion.

Half an hour later Janet Parker and Randle were seated at a table in the Trapeze Bar which is located on the mezzanine above the lobby. Everybody in New York seemed to be trying to crowd into the bar which wouldn’t hold over a hundred people seated at tables. Some of Jerry’s people, pulled off the search for Chambrun, had to, physically, bar people from forcing their way in. This scene took longer to shoot, because it involved dialogue between the actors. In addition to the cameras were microphones, hung from a boom located over their heads. Duval was very much involved in this. He talked with the actors, backed off, signaled to the camera and light people. The actors would begin the scene, which was inaudible to Shirley and me, located at the far end of the room. Duval would rush forward, waving his arms. There was something wrong with the take. More talk to the actors and the camera man, more refreshing of makeup by the experts. There were at least ten takes before Duval, now the star of the evening from the onlookers’ point of view, was finally satisfied.

I remember glancing at my watch. It was after two
A.M.
Chambrun had now been missing for twenty-four hours.

Shirley and I drifted away toward my apartment. It was not a night for love. Shirley understood that love-making, even sleep, were not in the cards for me.

“I’d like to stay in your apartment in case you need me,” she said. “I brought a change of clothes when I thought something else was on the schedule.”

“It would be nice to know you’re here,” I said.

Ruysdale was on my mind. She was living in a private hell, I knew. I changed out of my evening clothes into a sports jacket and slacks, kissed Shirley, and went off down the hall to Chambrun’s office.

Ruysdale was there as I knew she would be. I was shocked by her appearance. She looked like a ghost of herself. She was sitting at Chambrun’s desk, the telephone only inches away.

“In case he calls,” she said, and I knew she no longer believed it was going to happen.

“You’ve got to get some rest,” I said. I tried to make it sound light. “There’s another day coming and we have a hotel to run.”

It was the wrong note for her. That was always Chambrun’s phrase in times of trouble—“a hotel to run.” Tears welled up into her eyes.

“The filming went well,” I told her. “I think Garrity was right. It took people’s minds off the Kauffman thing.”

“Hardy has nothing,” she said in a dull voice. “He’s traced down people who called Laura Kauffman during the evening, three or four who went to Twenty-one C to see her. All business about the ball. There were calls from outside he isn’t able to check. Mayberry went to see her, but we know that. He went to try to get her help in persuading Pierre to change his mind about the filming. Duval talked to her on the phone, same objective. Mayberry, who saw her, says she was fine, everything perfectly normal. Duval says she sounded undisturbed. He had never met her or seen her, only the phone call, so his testimony doesn’t mean much. There’s a gap between the time Mayberry left her and found Pierre waiting in the hall, and an hour and a half later when Jim Kauffman found her. No one appears to have talked to her in that time. No phone calls. Elevator operators don’t remember anyone unusual going to twenty-one. One of them remembered taking Jim Kauffman up, at about twenty to one. By the time Kauffman left two of the elevators were on self-service. He got one of those when he left. Whoever got to Laura managed it without attracting any attention.”

“Coming or going,” I said.

Ruysdale nodded. She covered her haggard face with hands that shook.

“You’ve got to get some rest,” I said. “I’ll stay here by the phone.”

“Perhaps the couch,” she said. “If you’ll stay—”

Chambrun has a dressing room and bath that opens off the office. I went there and found a topcoat hanging in his closet. I brought it back, persuaded Ruysdale to lie down on the couch, and covered her with it. Then I took up the post at the desk, the telephone at my elbow.

I watched Ruysdale and, after a few restless moments, mercifully, she slept.

I slept too, after a while, my face buried on my arms on the desk. We’d all had just a little more than we could take. I was awakened by Ruysdale pushing me roughly away from the phone. There is no bell, only a little red light that blinks. She had seen it in her sleep.

“Miss Ruysdale speaking,” she said. And then she cried out in a loud voice. “Pierre!”

I had the brains to switch on the squawk box on the desk so that I could hear the conversation.

“Ruysdale, listen to me very carefully,” Chambrun said, his voice cold and flat

“Pierre, are you all right? Where are you?”

“Listen to me, Ruysdale. There’s no time for explanations. Are you listening?”