Authors: Hugh Pentecost
“You get to thinking that if anything had happened on a certain day, the Teagues may be responsible,” Shelda said.
“You sound like a television writer,” I said.
“And then they’re all coming here,” Shelda said. “Teague and his friends, and Veronica Trask who was Norman Terry’s friend. And Doris is already here. And Slade was here. I mean, it is a sort of coincidence, Mark.”
I didn’t enjoy my mutton chop as much as I’d anticipated.
Quiller had just served us brandy and coffee when the waiter brought a telephone to the table and plugged it into the wall jack.
It was Chambrun.
“Will you convey my apologies to Miss Mason for dragging you away, and then come up to my office?” he asked. He sounded coldly formal.
“I’ll meet you in the Blue Lagoon a little before eleven if you can make it,” Shelda said. “I wouldn’t miss Emlyn Teague’s arrival for anything.”
Miss Ruysdale was still in Chambrun’s outer office, wearing the day’s working clothes.
“If your head comes off,” she said, with a tight little smile, “bear in mind that he has troubles.”
I had never seen Chambrun as he was at that moment. He’d changed into a dinner jacket and he was at his usual cup of Turkish coffee, but his eyes were as cold as two newly minted dimes.
“I expected you to report back on your conversation with Miss Standing,” he said. I could almost feel the ice of his anger.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I was late for a dinner date. It was a long life story without anything new relating to Slade.”
“Anything she says is of interest. I’d like you not to use your own judgment about what’s important or not important.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, a little sore myself. “It won’t happen again. Would you like a rundown on it now?”
“No!” he said.
“Is there something else?” I said. It was the first time he’d ever been less than pleasantly genial with me.
“Ask Ruysdale to come in here,” he said. “And come back with her.”
I went to the door and beckoned to Miss Ruysdale. She came in and we stood facing Chambrun like two bad children in the headmaster’s office.
Then Chambrun laughed, and the rock-hard contours of his face broke down into something more like their customary good-humored outlines.
“Just before you came in here, Mark, I told Ruysdale she was an incompetent bitch,” he said. “That must give you an idea of how far out in space I am at the moment. I apologize to you both. Can we start over again?”
“Will you have some brandy to go into your coffee?” Miss Ruysdale asked, unruffled.
“No thanks, Ruysdale.” Chambrun took a cigarette from his silver case and lit it. “I’ve worked in this hotel for thirty-five years,” he said. “I have been its resident manager for twenty-five. Due to the owner’s preference for the French Riviera, I have been, in effect, the sole boss of this operation. Not once, in all that time, has Mr. Battle chosen to override a decision of mine. Until tonight. I have just finished tearing up my resignation, which I intended to cable to Mr. Battle. I think I’ve passed that time in life when I’m entitled to be childish.”
“What’s the problem?” I asked.
His good humor began to fade again. The lines at the corners of his mouth deepened. “Mr. Battle has asked me to make accommodations available to Emlyn Teague and four friends of his who are arriving tonight. I brought Mr. Battle up to date on what had happened today. That was, he told me, the reason for it. He holds Doris Standing and Teague in—his phrase was—‘affectionate regard.’ Doris needs her friends to be around her, to comfort and help her. I told him I wouldn’t have Teague in the hotel. ‘I am conveying an order, Chambrun,’ he said. And, believe it or not, he hung up on me. He may be the richest man in the world, but he’s very frugal when it comes to telephone bills.”
To most of us on the staff at the Beaumont, Mr. George Battle was apocryphal. Chambrun was the Beaumont; Battle was a coupon clipper. Suddenly, Ruysdale and I were made aware that there was someone with more power than God.
“I could ignore the order and face the consequences,” Chambrun said, squinting at us through the smoke from his cigarette. “But it occurs to me that I’m suddenly in the center of one of Emlyn Teague’s maneuvers. Teague knows I wouldn’t have him in the hotel, so obviously he made contact with the Great Man. Teague and Company will ride into the Beaumont in triumph, laughing at me. There must be a happy way for me to overturn the conqueror’s chariot and I propose to do so.” He inhaled deeply on his cigarette. “And outside the realm of childishness, we have a murder on our hands, and I have the solid feeling that it is all part of one of Teague’s vicious elaborations. It may actually be to our advantage to have them all under one roof.” He walked over to his desk and picked up a sheet of paper. “I’ve worked this out with Nevers,” he said: “Five single rooms, all on different floors.” He smiled. “I couldn’t do better for them if I wanted to. They will complain, and demand that they all be put together somewhere. That’s where you come in, Mark. You will be at the reception desk when they arrive about eleven. You will be excessively polite—and immovable. We have had to inconvenience other customers in order to accommodate them at all. If they insist on seeing me, which they will, you will tell them I’m closeted with the police in the matter of the death of their friend and I’m not available.”
“Right,” I said.
“And one other thing, Mark, in case I should forget in the morning.”
As if he ever forgot anything of importance to the Beaumont!
“Sometime tomorrow morning, Miss Veronica Trask and her secretary are arriving from the coast for a stay with us.”
“I know,” I said.
Chambrun’s face softened. “In the old days she was a regular guest of the Beaumont’s. She had a very special kind of glamour that we’ve come to miss.”
I grinned. “I just told Shelda that I’ve been in love with her for twenty-five years,” I said.
Chambrun gave me an odd little smile. “I
was
in love with her,” he said. “If by any chance, because of this other uproar, I’m not able to greet her and Miss Miller, the secretary, myself, I want you on hand, Mark. The treatment should be warm, cordial, and, at the same time, royal.”
It was then I told him about Shelda’s ‘coincidence’—Norman Terry’s suicide on the same day that Doris had called Gary Craig from somewhere to say that she was in bad trouble. Chambrun never brushes anything off without giving it a proper evaluation.
“I know what your Miss Mason felt,” he said. “Whenever tragedy and Teague are even remotely connected, you wonder. Let us say I think it would be a good idea not to push the possibility under the rug. When Veronica gets here, I’ll ask her about Terry. She’ll know more about his death than has appeared in the press. Tell your Miss Mason I bow to her intuitive gifts.”
At five minutes to eleven that night, I was waiting in the main lobby, near the reception desk, for the arrival of the “army.” I’d heard so much about Teague in the last twelve hours that I must confess I felt a kind of excitement as I waited. There had been a telephone call from Kennedy Airport at about twenty minutes to eleven. The jet from Los Angeles had arrived on the button and Emlyn Teague and his four friends had disembarked in full view of Lieutenant Hardy’s watching detective. That seemed to eliminate one possibility. None of them could have been in this part of the world when Jeremy Slade had been shot. That piece of information didn’t do anything to improve Doris Standing’s position.
At two minutes past eleven, five people whom I’ll never forget swept into the lobby, followed by the doorman and two bellboys loaded down with hand baggage. There was no possibility of missing Emlyn Teague, as Craig had told me.
He was wearing a fawn-colored camel’s-hair coat, and an olive-green Alpine hat with a bright-red feather in it. There was a white carnation in the lapel of his coat, and a white silk scarf, worn Ascot fashion, at his throat.
Beside him was a girl—who had to be Barbara Towers—wearing an unbelievable sable coat and a small sable toque on her ash-blond head.
Behind them, like gangsters out of a Warner Brothers’ movie of the thirties, were three men, all in dark coats, dark hats, wearing black shirts with white foulard ties.
Teague walked straight to the desk, and he was smiling. There was a kind of malicious delight in it.
“I am Emlyn Teague,” he said to Karl Nevers. “I believe you have accommodations for me.”
“Of course, Mr. Teague,” Nevers said. He consulted a slip of paper. “You are in 1204. Miss Towers is in 1612. Mr. Maxwell in 609. Mr. Delaney in 1421. Mr. Jerningham in 1019.”
“That, of course, will not do at all,” Teague said. “We want to be all together on the same floor.”
I moved in beside him, wearing my best smile. “We’re glad to have you with us, Mr. Teague,” I said. “Unfortunately these arrangements are the only ones we can make. Your reservations came in so late. Of course, your party can shift around in those rooms anyway you choose.”
“Who are you?” he asked. His eyes were a curious pale-amber color. I kept looking at him in spite of the almost overwhelming erotic perfume that emanated from the girl in waves.
“I’m Mark Haskell, in charge of public relations,” I said.
“I’ll talk to Chambrun, please,” Teague said.
“I’m afraid that’s out of the question,” I said. “Mr. Chambrun is with the police. Perhaps I should express our regret over the tragic death of your friend, Mr. Slade.”
“Where is Doris?” Teague demanded, no vestige of a smile left.
“Under house arrest,” I said.
“I want to see her at once,” Teague said.
“You’ll have to consult with the police officer in charge,” I said.
He seemed to balance easily on the balls of his feet, like a trained fighter or dancer.
“Let him alone, Emlyn,” the girl said. “He’s cute.”
I had to look at Barbara Towers then. She might have been very pretty without the almost exaggerated stage makeup—a scarlet gash of a mouth, heavy blue-black eye shadow, eyelashes that almost certainly had to be false. She was laughing at me silently.
“I’m all too familiar with the stupidities of the police,” Teague said. “We’re here to protect Doris and to see to it that an eye is given up for an eye. We’ll straighten things out with the police in the morning. I want a message sent to Miss Standing.”
“I’ll do my best,” I said. “It’ll have to pass through the police.”
“Tell her I’m here,” Teague said. “To stop worrying; that all our resources, financial and legal, are at her disposal.”
“Ill try to get it to her,” I said.
“I made a reservation in the Blue Lagoon for eleven o’clock. It will take us fifteen minutes to dress. Make certain our table is ready for us.”
“It will be ready.”
The yellowish eyes narrowed. “You may tell Chambrun that I’m displeased with his arrangements and that I know what to do about my displeasure.”
Mike Maggio and a crew of bellhops moved toward the elevators with the baggage. Miss Towers gave me a broad wink as she turned away to follow Teague and the three dark men toward the elevator.
Karl Nevers looked at me gravely, made a pistol out of his right hand, and went “
Ah-ah-ah-ah ah-ah
.”
It was a good hour before Teague and his friends appeared behind the velvet rope stretched across the entrance to the Blue Lagoon. Cardoza had found a small table in a corner for Shelda and me. To our left, I saw Gary Craig seated at the bar, turning a highball slowly around in his strong hands, a pipe gripped between his teeth. A kind of group sigh had risen over the music being played by a guitarist on the bandstand. It told us all that something unusual had appeared in the door.
“Holy Christmas!” I heard Shelda whisper.
Teague was consulting with an obsequious Cardoza. He was something to look at. His dinner jacket was a chartreuse green. His dress shirt had soft, lacy pleats, and the cuffs, billowing out, were period lace. There was a pale-yellow flower in his buttonhole, the size of a saucer. His dress tie matched the chartreuse jacket, tucked under the tabs of a widespread collar.
Teague was certainly eye-catching, but it was the Towers girl who had brought the soft, gasping sigh from the audience. She had appeared wrapped in a sable cape, little flecks of silver dust in her hair, and dangling earrings studded with diamonds. The eye makeup had been exaggerated so that she looked almost oriental in spite of her blondness. Then, while Teague discussed something with Cardoza, she nonchalantly slipped off the sable cape and draped it over one arm. She had on a strapless black evening gown which fitted like a glove down to her knees and then flared out gracefully. A luscious figure seemed in immediate danger of popping out of the dress, in full view of New York’s most prominent night-life livers.
“Shut your eyes and count to ten!” Shelda hissed at me. “Just bear in mind she’s a circus, not a woman.”
Teague, it developed later, was dissatisfied with the table Cardoza had reserved for him. I suspect this was a continuous act with him. Had Cardoza been willing to change the table, the parade would have been longer and more attention getting.
Have I mentioned the three men who brought up the rear? They were there, dinner-jacketed in the conventional style except for their cummerbunds. These were of the same chartreuse material as Teague’s jacket. This may be the point to distinguish them, because they were to play a big part in the next forty-eight hours of life at the Beaumont. The tall one with the frosting of gray at the temples, the neatly trimmed black mustache, and the elegant manner of man-of-distinction in a liquor ad, was Ivor Jerningham, giving the guests of the Blue Lagoon a supercilious smile. I have a dossier on him on my desk as I write this. On that evening he had just passed his forty-eighth birthday. He was English-born and had been expelled from several good public schools—as they call private schools in England—and just missed being booted out of Cambridge University by enlisting in the Royal Air Force in 1939. The good part of his record came after that You have to be more than lucky to survive six years of combat missions over enemy territory and rise to the rank of colonel. When peace came, Jerningham wasn’t trained for anything in that kind of world. All he knew was flying, and he wasn’t receptive to the rigid disciplines demanded by airline managements. He was charged with the attempted rape of a distinguished diplomat’s wife in Cairo. He got out of that bind with the help of one Emlyn Teague. There were hints of jury-bribing and the general corrupting of Egyptian officials. From there on, Jerningham was inseparably linked with Teague. He was, I learned later, the one who took the big risks.