Deadly Joke (8 page)

We stumbled out at 14. The hallway was packed with kids, yelling and screaming. But they weren’t moving forward. The situation was a little different here. The space was narrow. There was no way to encircle the people outside the door of
14B
. I managed to climb up on a radiator cover to have a look. Jerry Dodd and two of his men were there, guns drawn, and with them was Watson Clarke, his clothes torn, his white shirt front smeared with blood. I saw a kid with a club make a rush at them. It was Clarke, a big man, who stopped him, picked him up in the air, and literally threw him back in the crowd.

Then I heard Jerry Dodd’s voice, clear, and cold. “I’m warning you!” he shouted at the crowd. “Come one step closer and we open fire. There’ll be a dozen of you dead before you can reach us. Add it up!”

And then, unbelievably, straight through the center of that jammed crowd Chambrun, short and square, forced his way. It took both strength and determination. When he reached Jerry, he turned and faced them. He looked carved out of rock.

“Listen!” he said. His voice was so low they had to quiet to hear him. Something about him held them back. “Let us examine the facts. There are three men here, each with six bullets in a gun. There are two of us unarmed who will fight you until we are dead.” He glanced at the bloodied Clarke. “These guns will become clubs when they are empty. So the first two dozen of you will die. Behind you is one armed man, a police lieutenant. In seconds there will be a score more. You’re caught both ways. If you overpower us, you’d need a tank to break down this door. At the far end of the hall is a window. Outside it is a fourteen-story drop to the sidewalk. You can’t get Maxwell and you can’t get away. If you overpower us and kill us—because you will have to overpower us—you will all of you spend the rest of your lives in prison. Those are the facts, my friends.”

A girl just in front of me shouted: “We want Maxwell!” It didn’t sound very bloodthirsty; more like a college cheerleader trying to start a crowd response. I heard elevator doors open behind me. Half a dozen cops with drawn guns piled out. The ball game was over—I hoped.

Somebody shouted: “There’s a fire exit down the hall.”

They turned, as though they were one, and tried to stampede. Three or four of them got by the unprepared cops and I saw them get through the fire door to the inside staircase. Then the cops had the hall blocked.

“Let them go one by one, after you’ve searched them,” Hardy ordered. “Confiscate all weapons, clubs, anything they can use to raise hell.”

The resistance had cracked. I wedged my way to the front and joined the defenders.

“I’m always in the nick of time,” I said.

Chambrun ignored me. I turned to Jerry Dodd. “Would you have fired on them, pal?” I asked.

“Right through the eye sockets,” he said.

“I was never so glad to see anyone in my life,” I heard Clarke say to Chambrun. “I was in the Trapeze Bar when it started. I had to fight off half a dozen of them to get into an elevator and get up here. Damn near tore my clothes off. Can we see how they are inside?”

It was Miss Ruysdale who opened the door to us. She looked as unruffled as if she had just modeled her trim black dress for a fashion show.

“How bad is it?” she asked Chambrun.

“It’s bad,” he said. “They’ve wrecked the main lobby.”

In the living room of the suite Maxwell was standing beside his wife, who was sitting rigidly straight on the lounge. Maxwell’s hand rested gently on her shoulder. She looked in shock. Maxwell looked angry, not scared.

Against the wall near the door to the bedrooms Diana stood. Her hands were spread out against the wall as if she needed its support. I tried to guess what she was thinking. She claimed allegiance to those rioting kids, but I had a feeling she was horrified at how out of hand it had all become. A few more minutes and her family might have been wiped out in front of her eyes.

“What in God’s name happened to you, Watty?” Maxwell asked Clarke.

“I had a little trouble getting here,” Clarke said. He glanced at Diana. “Your friends are on the rough side when they get out of hand, Diana.”

“They’re maniacs!” Maxwell exploded.

“Watson Clarke turned to Chambrun. “I’ve wondered how they knew they’d find Doug in this particular suite,” he said. “I’d assumed they wouldn’t get it from the switchboard. I mean, you were taking special precautions, weren’t you, Mr. Chambrun?”

“We were,” Chambrun said. His voice was almost unrecognizably cold. “Someone on the inside either sold out or was frightened into telling.”

God help whoever it was, I thought.

“Wouldn’t it be advisable to move Doug and Grace somewhere else?” Clarke asked.

“This will be quite safe,” Chambrun said. “I assure you.”

“I think perhaps we owe Pierre an apology,” Maxwell said. “Our dinner party has made a shambles of his hotel.”

Chambrun ignored the apology. He stepped over to Diana.

“You could save us a lot of time if you’d tell us who the leaders of that mob are,” he said.

She looked past him as though he wasn’t there; like someone in a trance.

“You’re not saving anyone, Diana,” Chambrun said. “The police will have taken in dozens of those kids. Not all of them will have your kind of misplaced courage. Somewhere in that crowd may be the person who tried to murder your father earlier tonight. In the state of mind they were in just now that someone may have tried again. Save us time, Diana.”

She turned completely around and pressed her forehead against the wall.

Maxwell whispered her name, pleading. Grace Maxwell didn’t move or speak.

The door buzzer sounded. Miss Ruysdale went to it and moved the little peephole shutter so that she could see who it was. Then she opened the door and Jerry Dodd came in.

“See you outside for a minute?” he asked Chambrun.

Chambrun nodded to me and I went out into the hall with him. Complete order had been restored out there. The two guards stood on either side of the door. The rioters and the cops were gone.

“We’ve had it again,” Jerry said. The skin on his thin face looked stretched tight over the bones.

“More rioting downstairs?” Chambrun asked.

Jerry shook his head. “Murder,” he said. “Somebody beat Stewart Shaw to death and shoved him in the linen closet down the hall.”

S
TEWART SHAW WAS A
pretty ugly sight. One of the floor maids had gone to the linen closet after the rioters had been cleared away to get some fresh towels for someone. It’s called a closet, but it’s really a small room lined with shelves for sheets, towels, extra blankets. The maid had opened the door and found a man with half a head sitting on the floor facing her. He was tilted against one of the rows of shelves which had kept him from falling over. His skull had been beaten in like an eggshell.

“Girl kept her head,” Jerry said. “Closed the door and called the front desk.”

We were standing just outside the door, looking in. I turned away. I thought I was going to be sick at my stomach. Shaw had been a dark, glowering sort of man. His ugly face was streaked by blood from the awful wounds on his head.

“I’m only guessing, but I don’t think it was those kids,” Jerry said. “They came in a mob and they all headed for Fourteen B. Shaw wasn’t there with us. Also, the blood has already started to dry. Seems like it happened a little while ago, even before the kids broke into the hotel.”

“Where’s Hardy?” Chambrun asked.

“God knows,” Jerry said. “I sent word downstairs. He’s questioning kids somewhere, I imagine.” Jerry took a handkerchief out of his pocket and blotted at the beads of perspiration on his forehead. “I thought I’d better report to you out here, boss. The Maxwells have had about all you could expect them to take for one night. How come Shaw wasn’t in Fourteen B acting like a bodyguard?”

“Maxwell sent him back to his house to get something he says he needed,” Chambrun said.

“He’s sitting on a briefcase,” Jerry said. “I didn’t want to move him till Hardy got here.”

“Weapon?” Chambrun asked. “That wasn’t done with anyone’s fists.”

“Unless he’s sitting on something beside the briefcase, no weapon,” Jerry said. “Odd thing. He’s wearing a shoulder holster with a police special in it. It looks like he never got it out to protect himself.”

“Your men outside Fourteen B didn’t hear anything?” Chambrun asked. “Nothing.”

I should explain the lay of the land. The elevators were at the south end of the building. There were five cars which opened into a sort of foyer on each floor. In the daytime a receptionist sat at a desk on each floor, opposite the elevators. You either turned right or left and then down a corridor. Suite
14B
was down the right-hand corridor. This linen room was down the left-hand corridor. Between the two corridors were suites of rooms, back to back, all soundproofed. You couldn’t have heard a bomb go off in one corridor in the other.

“Shaw wasn’t headed for Fourteen B down this corridor,” Chambrun said. “Where do you think it happened, Jerry?”

“He was probably dragged here from somewhere,” Jerry said. “Maybe some distance, maybe just a few feet.” He looked down at the dark green carpeting. “Those damned kids trampled all over everything. Maybe when we get down to it we can find some traces of blood.”

“God knows he bled,” Chambrun said. He turned to me. “See if you can get Watson Clarke out here,” he said. “Somebody’s got to break the news to Maxwell.”

I went back around the corner to
14B
. Miss Ruysdale answered my ring and I put in a request for Clarke. I told her what had happened. She went away, her face expressionless. Clarke joined me.

“What’s up?” he asked.

I told him. He looked at me as if I was out of my mind.

“Stew Shaw?” he said.

“In what was once the flesh,” I said.

“My God!” he said. “Do they know who?”

“Not yet,” I said.

We rounded the corner to where Chambrun and Jerry had been joined by Hardy and one of his men. Clarke looked into the closet and his breath whistled through his teeth.

“It is the bodyguard, Mr. Clarke?” Hardy asked.

“No question,” Clarke said. “Doug told me he’d gone up to the Maxwells’ house to get some papers for him. Somebody must have ambushed him when he came back. But why, Lieutenant? There were other guards. Getting rid of Stew wouldn’t leave Doug open to attack. Dodd’s men were there, outside the door, and Dodd himself.”

“I arrived just about when you did, Mr. Clarke,” Jerry said. “After the kids had started to run wild downstairs. My first thought was Maxwell. They were screaming they wanted him.”

Clarke nodded. “We heard that in the Trapeze, which is what brought me up here.” He shook his head. “God almighty.”

“I think you’ll have to take Douglas aside and tell him what’s happened,” Chambrun said. “I don’t know how much more the women can take.”

“Of course.” Clarke touched a darkening bruise on his cheek. “How can you guarantee Douglas’s safety, Lieutenant? Until you locate this lunatic he can be anywhere, waiting to take another shot at Douglas.”

“In all this confusion I suggest he stay put here till sometime tomorrow,” Hardy said. “As long as he stays in his suite here, he’s safe. That I can guarantee. We’ll go through his house on 69
^th
Street tomorrow, make sure we don’t have a stowaway waiting for him there. Then he can go home and we’ll provide him with a police guard until we’ve got the killer locked up.”

Clarke nodded. “I’d like to go to my apartment and get a change of clothes,” he said. “Then, if Mr. Chambrun can find me a room, I’d like to stay here in the hotel as long as the Maxwells do.”

“Go ahead,” Hardy said. “But be as quick as you can about it. I’m going to need you; to go over your list of guests; to find out everything you know about Maxwell’s potential enemies.”

“Doug has no enemies except these crazy kids.”

“Maybe when we go over the list of your dinner guests something may occur to you,” Hardy said.

“I’ll have a room for you,” Chambrun said. “But before you go home, bring Douglas up to date.” He turned to me. “Let’s see how bad it is downstairs, Mark.”

Jerry Dodd walked to the elevators with us. “You want my hide, you can have it, boss,” he said.

“Don’t be absurd,” Chambrun said.

“I’m not talking about the kids,” Jerry said. “I overlooked the danger from the balcony in the lobby. I thought locking the doors was good enough. It wasn’t.”

“You had no reason to expect anyone would try to kill Maxwell,” Chambrun said.

“Sure I did,” Jerry said. “It was my job to protect him against any possibility. I thought of it, but I thought of some kook in the lobby crowd.” He smiled, a tight, bitter smile. “You know who my first suspect was when I knew the shot came from the balcony?”

“You have a suspect?”

Jerry shook his head. “That bullet went straight through Sewall’s heart,” he said. “That’s damn good shooting from that balcony. Who do you know of who’s that good with a gun?”

“Buffalo Bill,” Chambrun said, trying to lighten things.

“That gent we’ve just been talking to,” Jerry said.

“Watson Clarke?”

“Big game hunter,” Jerry said. “Collects guns.”

Chambrun stared at him.

“But I’ve talked to at least ten of our people who swear that Clarke never left the Grand Ballroom from six-thirty on. He was in charge of the seating arrangements. He didn’t even know what had happened in the lobby till somebody came and told him five minutes or so after Sewall was dead. His alibi is perfect.”

“And he’s Maxwell’s best friend,” Chambrun said.

“I don’t go by the labels on the bottle,” Jerry said. “But Clarke is one person who never went out on that balcony. So I’m a detective with bright ideas that don’t work.”

The elevator doors opened and we got in and I pressed the lobby button. We started down.

“What next, Jerry?” Chambrun asked.

“Somebody got hold of the keys to those balcony doors. That’s what’s next,” Jerry said.

Chambrun jiggled the coins in his pocket. “Does Hardy know you wondered about Watson Clarke?” he asked.