Authors: Hugh Pentecost
The one who stood directly behind the astonishing Miss Towers, was a giant of a man, physically, with a shock of carrot-colored hair. This was Van Delaney, said to be an artist, son of a wild Irish poet and a Dutch mother. He was much younger than Teague or Jerningham, about thirty, I judged. His record was a one-way street of brawling and debauchery and simple-minded violence. I was to learn that he was a very dangerous man because he hadn’t enough imagination to understand fear.
The third man would have passed unnoticed in any other company, unless his physical ugliness attracted your attention. He was short, with a hint of deformity in stooped, round shoulders. His hair was black, worn long so that it went down over the back of his collar in an unkempt fringe. He wore black, shell-rimmed glasses, and his nose was large and beaked. His lips were thick and sagged to one side as if he might have suffered a slight stroke at some time. I never saw him without a cigarette drooping from that sagging corner of his mouth. You might get the mistaken impression that he was at death’s door from boredom. This was Oscar Maxwell, court jester, the master planner of Teague’s mischiefs.
When you got over the first visual shock of seeing them all together—the flamboyance of Teague, the erotic sensuousness of Bobby Towers, you felt a little chill of fear. At least I did. It was the kind of fear you feel for uncontrollable mobs—and for madmen.
Shelda’s hand was closed so tightly over mine, her knuckles were chalk white. “Let’s go away from here, Mark!” she whispered.
I was looking at Gary Craig. He hadn’t moved from his bar stool, and he hadn’t taken his eyes off Teague and the others since their arrival. He looked to be smiling, but it was just the baring of teeth as they bit down on his pipe stem. I had a vision of what Doris Standing must have added to that group when she was with them—a kind of high-powered drive, the more frightening because it would have appeared young, exuberant, and healthy. She would have put you off guard, made you relax, and left you wide open to the mortal thrust from the others. They needed her to appear less obviously sinister.
The suave Cardoza was not to be bullied, and eventually Teague and the Towers girl followed him to the table that had all along been reserved for them. They were only just seated and giving their order to a waiter, when the lights began to dim. The guitarist had left the bandstand, finished with his interim job between floor-shows. We were about to hear The Frightwigs, a trio in the Beatle tradition, Mac Williams, a stand-up comic with a wicked ad-lib, topped by the lovely Diane Davis, for my money the best girl singer of the day.
The Teagues were almost blotted out of sight by the darkness, but a spill from one of the spotlights focused on The Frightwigs made the silver dust in Bobby Towers’ hair sparkle like small stars.
“I thought there’d be something funny about them—amusing,” Shelda said. “People always talk about their wild jokes. But—”
“There’s nothing very funny about the last one they pulled here—the deliberate destruction of Julie Frazer.”
“Put me in a cab and send me home, Mark,” she said. “I don’t want them to see me when the lights come up. I don’t want them to know I’m alive.”
“You really are shattered, baby.”
“I thought Doris Standing was pulling your leg. I thought it was an act,” Shelda said. “My God, can you imagine being caught by them against your will?”
“Look, honey, nothing is going to happen here in front of three hundred people,” I said.
Famous last words!
And so Shelda stayed, and she saw what was to come.
I don’t buy The Frightwigs and their a-go-go beat, but Mac Williams is amusing. I’d seen the show a dozen times but his material is strictly topical and it changes every night. Diane Davis bombs me. She’s a thin, almost ethereal-looking girl, with a flame inside that burns white hot. She can sing with a clear, bell-like quality, and she can belt out a torch song that’ll have you on your feet clapping and yelling when she finishes. She can wrap an audience around her little finger, play on them as though they were an instrument she owned, and leave everyone in love with her. No audience ever has enough of her. She’s generous with her time and talent, but she knows enough to leave them hungry for more. The applause for her that night was thunderous and demanding. When she finally left the little stage for the last time and the lights came up, there was a swell of voices, as if everyone in the room had to talk about her at the same time.
“Mark!” Once more Shelda’s hand closed over mine. She was staring at Teague’s table.
I felt my heart give a little thump against my ribs. Sometime during the dimout, Gary Craig had left his place at the bar. He was standing by Teague’s table and you could see he was talking to Teague. Of course, I couldn’t hear any of it, but instinct told me we should get on our horses.
“Excuse me for a minute, honey,” I said to Shelda. I stood up, looking around for Cardoza. He was over by the velvet rope, regretfully telling would-be customers that there was no room in the Blue Lagoon. I edged my way between tables to get to him. Craig was still talking to Emlyn Teague.
I had to turn my back on that scene to get to Cardoza. Just before I reached the captain, I heard a woman scream, and the voices in the room rose in a murmur of excitement. I turned around quickly.
Van Delaney, the wild Irishman, was on his feet and, standing behind Craig, he was twisting the writers arm behind his back. I saw Craig writhe in pain. At the same moment, the elegant Ivor Jerningham stood up, facing Gary. He struck the helpless writer a vicious backhanded blow across the mouth—and then another and another.
“Come on!” Cardoza said at my elbow.
I saw Teague, coolly smiling. I saw Bobby Towers, her lips slightly parted, as if she was watching an exciting movie. Oscar Maxwell was slumped in his chair, cigarette glowing red, the lights turning his spectacles into two shining windowpanes.
Cardoza has some pretty good boys working for him in the Blue Lagoon. Two burly waiters reached the battlefield before Cardoza and I did. Instantly Jerningham stepped back from Craig, and Delaney let go Craig’s arm. Gary’s legs buckled like rubber and he went down on his knees. His face looked like raw hamburger.
“He insulted the lady,” I heard Jerningham say, coolly. The front of his dress shirt was spattered with Craig’s blood.
“I hardly expected to be subjected to a waterfront brawl at the Beaumont,” Teague said, as Cardoza came up to him. “Get this fellow out of here and see that he doesn’t bother us again.”
I was kneeling beside Gary, one arm around him.
“I’m all right,” he muttered thickly. “I asked for it.”
I helped him to his feet. For a moment he stood looking at the Teagues, a façade of blandness, and then he staggered around and started for the door. I went with him, steadying him with a hand under his elbow. With his free hand, he was blotting at his cut mouth with a handkerchief. The so-called sophisticated guests of the Beaumont gawked at him like a Coney Island crowd outside the freak show.
I started to steer Craig toward the elevators, with the idea of getting him up to my quarters, but he wasn’t having any.
“Walk it off,” he muttered.
“Better get cleaned up first,” I said. “There’s blood all over your shirt.”
“Let me alone, will you, Mark? I’ve got to get away from here or I’ll go back in there and kill him!” His voice shook.
“How did it start?” I asked.
“I told him to lay off Doris,” Craig said. “I told him he wasn’t to try to see her. God help me, it was infantile. He said I should go peddle my papers, and didn’t I know when a lady said ‘no,’ she meant ‘no.’ Then, I guess I boiled over. I said if he tried to turn Doris into a public whore like that Powers bitch, I’d cut his heart out.” He shook his head, trying to clear it. “I—I suppose that gave them the right to chop me down.”
“You’ve got to have live ammunition to fight that mob,” I said.
“I need air,” Craig said. “Thanks for standing by.”
I watched him cross the lobby and head out onto Fifth Avenue through the revolving door.
Then I turned back toward the Blue Lagoon and came face to face with Ivor Jerningham, emerging from the trouble area. He gave me an amiable smile.
“Sorry for the uproar,” he said. “Got to get on a clean shirt.” He indicated the bloodstains on his starched front. “He was calling the lady names in a loud voice that could be heard at half a dozen tables. We couldn’t let him get away with that.”
“How are you when somebody isn’t holding the guy you’re hitting?” I asked, feeling reckless.
His dark eyes narrowed, but his smile was fixed. “Is that an invitation to the next waltz?” he asked.
“I think I can assure you that a repetition of that kind of thing and you’ll find yourself out on the sidewalk, George Battle or no George Battle,” I said.
“It would almost be worth it—just to see,” he said. “Friendly warning, Haskell. Don’t over-estimate yourself.”
He gave me an ironic bow and moved off toward the elevators.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen Mr. Cardoza uncertain of himself. The Blue Lagoon’s captain was waiting for me by the velvet rope.
“I ought to kick the lot of them out on their ear,” he said, “but your friend did insult the lady in no uncertain terms. People at the next tables back them up. I also understand they have special drag.”
“The situation, to make the understatement of the year, is delicate,” I said.
“I wish you’d report exactly what happened to Mr. Chambrun,” Cardoza said. “I haven’t been able to reach him on the house phone. If he has any special orders—”
“Will do,” I said. “First, I’ve got to get Miss Mason home.”
Shelda lives about ten blocks from the Beaumont, in the East Seventies. Normally, I’d have taken her home, stopped off for a drink and whatever else might be in the cards. Tonight I couldn’t leave the Beaumont. There was no telling what the next turn of the wheel would bring. I did go out onto the street with her to put her into a cab. Standing under the green awning, while Waters, the doorman, whistled us up a taxi, Shelda looked very good to me—normal, healthy, uncomplicated in a complicated way.
“Please be careful, Mark,” she said.
I gave her a somewhat attenuated brotherly kiss on her very unsisterly mouth. “I love you,” I said. “I’m not running any kind of risks that would give you the excuse to look somewhere else.”
“Try to persuade Gary Craig he’s got to be smart, not physical,” she said.
“See you in the morning,” I said, and I gave her behind a little slap as she got into the cab.
Then I went looking for Chambrun. I was puzzled by his failure to appear on the scene before this. The Beaumont’s staff will swear he has a private radar system that keeps him in touch with everything and results in his being suddenly on the spot, wherever crisis exists.
Chambrun’s office was locked, which probably meant Miss Ruysdale had finally gone home after her usual seventeen-hour day. I went to the house phone in the hallway and tried to reach him in his penthouse. There wasn’t any answer. Mrs. Kiley, the night chief operator at the switchboard, usually knows exactly where to reach him.
“He was in the penthouse five minutes ago,” she said. “He hadn’t told me anyplace else to reach him. He’s probably on the prowl. He’ll check in with me when he lights somewhere.”
On an impulse I asked her to connect me with 9F.
“Room’s empty,” Mrs. Kiley said, after a moment’s delay. “Check out.”
“Doris Standing?”
“Dorothy Smith checked out about a half an hour ago,” Mrs. Kiley said.
So Hardy and Naylor had finally preferred charges, I thought.
“When Mr. Chambrun checks in with you, Mrs. Kiley, tell him I’m looking for him, urgently.”
“Sure, Mr. Haskell.”
I hung up the phone and turned down the hall. There was Chambrun, unlocking his office door.
“I’ve been looking for you,” I said.
“Come in, Mark,” he said. He sounded unusually tired.
We walked through Miss Ruysdale’s domain to the private office. Chambrun headed straight for the little Turkish coffee maker on the sideboard. A lifted eyebrow asked me to join him. When I refused, he poured a little in his own cup and topped it with a slug of brandy, a rare procedure for him.
“From what Mrs. Kiley tells me, I take it they’ve arrested Doris,” I said.
“On the contrary, she’s been turned loose,” he said. He sat down wearily in the high-backed armchair behind his desk. “Madison is no dummy. He stood up very solidly to Hardy and Naylor, and they finally threw in the towel. She’s not to leave town, and all that.”
“Where did she go? You know what happened downstairs?”
He nodded.
“The first thing Teague asked when he registered was where he could find Doris,” I said. “I told him the police—”
Chambrun held up a silencing hand, as though it tired him to have me chatter on about things he already knew. “She’s checked out, if Teague asks. But since I don’t have any secrets from you, Mark, she’s in my penthouse—as my guest, not a guest of the hotel.” He paused to light a cigarette. “My thoughts on any given situation are usually pretty clear,” he said. “I can be wrong, but I know what I think. In this case—” He spread his hands in an expressive little shrug.
“The Slade case, you mean?”
“Doris Standing’s connection with it,” he said. “Like you, I’m inclined to believe the blackout story. If I believe that, I suppose I should believe the rest of her tale. She’s afraid of Teague and Company. So she was afraid of Jeremy Slade. She could have shot him in self-defense and be afraid to admit it. That’s one possibility. It’s also possible she was really in touch with your friend Craig. Maybe it was Craig who came to 9F and was admitted by Slade. If Craig killed Slade, Doris would cover for him with the last ounce of strength she has. She’s in love with him. That’s a second possibility.”
“One thing is certain,” I said. “It wasn’t one of the Teagues who killed him. They all arrived on the jet at Kennedy, so they were all in California at the time. Hardy has checked that, hasn’t he?”
“It checks,” Chambrun said. “Where’s your friend Craig now?”