fourteen days! This morning I had an appointment to discuss a script with a TV producer. It was the first morning I didn’t call here. I’d decided the only thing I could do was go on with my own life and wait for her to call me.
“I wound up having lunch with my TV man and I didn’t get back to my apartment till about three-thirty this afternoon. Five minutes after I’d walked in my door, the phone rang. It was Jeremy Slade.”
“You knew him?”
“Sure, I know the whole crowd. I was shown off to them at the end of last summer when I went to visit Doris in Beverly Hills.” He sounded bitter. “Slade told me Doris was at the Beaumont as Dorothy Smith and that she needed me.” He shook his head. “You have to know these people to know that you can’t believe anything they say. I came up here, on guard. If Doris had called me, I’d have gone straight to her. He’d told me Suite 9F. But since the call came from Slade I was prepared for some kind of burlesque joke. I got here a little after four, scouted around a bit, and then went up to the ninth floor without announcing myself. I was just getting out of the elevator when the car in the opposite bank opened up and out came cops, a plainclothesman, a photographer. They went straight to 9F. I pretended to be elevator-waiting. A few seconds after that, you came out of 9F. I followed you, meaning to ask you what was going on. You went to the public relations office on the fourth floor. I could hear you talking to your secretary and I got the whole pitch.”
“Then there’s nothing I can tell you,” I said. I was a little burned with myself. I remembered talking to Shelda in her reception-room office and, I guess, in the excitement, we hadn’t bothered to close the hall door.
“What about this amnesia thing?” Craig asked.
“You heard,” I said.
“They believe her?”
“Do you?”
“I would if she told it to me,” Craig said. He turned his glass round and round in his fingers. The lines at the corners of his mouth had deepened. “The fact that I didn’t hear from her for two weeks, after a cry for help—Oh, hell!” He sat there, chewing on the stem of his cold pipe.
I began to wonder about this tweedy gent. He must have followed me, as he said, or he wouldn’t have known about my conversation with Shelda. But Hardy would certainly be interested in knowing whether that was his first visit to the ninth floor.
“You’re wondering if I could have killed Jeremy Slade,” he said. “God knows I haven’t any love for him or the rest of that rotten crew.” He looked down at his big strong hands. “I might have strangled him, but I don’t own a gun, Haskell.”
“You seem to be a bit of a mind reader,” I said. “If you did hear my conversation with my secretary, you must know the next question I’d like to ask you.”
“About February twenty-fifth? I haven’t the foggiest. I hadn’t heard from Doris for about a month before her call to me on the twenty-eighth. The twenty-fifth was—was just Wednesday.”
“Everywhere,” I said.
He was silent.
“I’m going to tell you something that perhaps I shouldn’t,” I said. “Pierre Chambrun, the resident manager of this palace and my boss, has a very complete book on Doris and her army. The minute she checked in here, at five o’clock this morning, we were all alerted to be on the lookout. Before the murder. Before anything at all. It was Chambrun’s guess we could expect the rest of them to congregate. Well, Slade came. And Emlyn Teague has reserved a table for five in the Blue Lagoon Room tonight. Would you guess they were coming to help Doris, or to hunt down the killer of their chum Slade, or to set off more bombs under our noses?”
“To guess about Teague and Company is to wish a disaster on yourself,” Craig said. “And while I’m being pontifical, remind your friend, Chambrun, that it was Plutarch who said: ‘The pilot cannot mitigate the billows or calm the winds.’
“I wound up having lunch with my TV man and I didn’t get back to my apartment till about three-thirty this afternoon. Five minutes after I’d walked in my door, the phone rang. It was Jeremy Slade.”
“You knew him?”
“Sure, I know the whole crowd. I was shown off to them at the end of last summer when I went to visit Doris in Beverly Hills.” He sounded bitter. “Slade told me Doris was at the Beaumont as Dorothy Smith and that she needed me.” He shook his head. “You have to know these people to know that you can’t believe anything they say. I came up here, on guard. If Doris had called me, I’d have gone straight to her. He’d told me Suite 9F. But since the call came from Slade I was prepared for some kind of burlesque joke. I got here a little after four, scouted around a bit, and then went up to the ninth floor without announcing myself. I was just getting out of the elevator when the car in the opposite bank opened up and out came cops, a plainclothesman, a photographer. They went straight to 9F. I pretended to be elevator-waiting. A few seconds after that, you came out of 9F. I followed you, meaning to ask you what was going on. You went to the public relations office on the fourth floor. I could hear you talking to your secretary and I got the whole pitch.”
“Then there’s nothing I can tell you,” I said. I was a little burned with myself. I remembered talking to Shelda in her reception-room office and, I guess, in the excitement, we hadn’t bothered to close the hall door.
“What about this amnesia thing?” Craig asked.
“You heard,” I said.
“They believe her?”
“Do you?”
“I would if she told it to me,” Craig said. He turned his glass round and round in his fingers. The lines at the corners of his mouth had deepened. “The fact that I didn’t hear from her for two weeks, after a cry for help—Oh, hell!” He sat there, chewing on the stem of his cold pipe.
I began to wonder about this tweedy gent. He must have followed me, as he said, or he wouldn’t have known about my conversation with Shelda. But Hardy would certainly be interested in knowing whether that was his first visit to the ninth floor.
“You’re wondering if I could have killed Jeremy Slade,” he said. “God knows I haven’t any love for him or the rest of that rotten crew.” He looked down at his big strong hands. “I might have strangled him, but I don’t own a gun, Haskell.”
“You seem to be a bit of a mind reader,” I said. “If you did hear my conversation with my secretary, you must know the next question I’d like to ask you.”
“About February twenty-fifth? I haven’t the foggiest. I hadn’t heard from Doris for about a month before her call to me on the twenty-eighth. The twenty-fifth was—was just Wednesday.”
“Everywhere,” I said.
He was silent.
“I’m going to tell you something that perhaps I shouldn’t,” I said. “Pierre Chambrun, the resident manager of this palace and my boss, has a very complete book on Doris and her army. The minute she checked in here, at five o’clock this morning, we were all alerted to be on the lookout. Before the murder. Before anything at all. It was Chambrun’s guess we could expect the rest of them to congregate. Well, Slade came. And Emlyn Teague has reserved a table for five in the Blue Lagoon Room tonight. Would you guess they were coming to help Doris, or to hunt down the killer of their chum Slade, or to set off more bombs under our noses?”
“To guess about Teague and Company is to wish a disaster on yourself,” Craig said. “And while I’m being pontifical, remind your friend, Chambrun, that it was Plutarch who said: ‘The pilot cannot mitigate the billows or calm the winds.’
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