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Authors: Hugh Pentecost
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a dinner jacket,” Hardy said. “As soon as I have a report from ballistics that Lovelace is in the clear and he’s gone down your guest list for old friends—or enemies—you can turn him loose” …
It was nearly five o’clock when I got back to my office on the fourth floor. My gal Shelda was putting the place to bed for the night. Shelda is disconcerting because she is so damned beautiful. She belongs on a magazine cover and not shut away in a fourth-floor office. She is highly efficient, but she disrupts my life because she knows how to make me constantly unsure that she really belongs to me.
I should have tried to explain about the lipstick smear on my collar long before this, but there hadn’t been time. She gave me a hostile look as I came in.
“Closing up pretty promptly, aren’t you?” I said.
“You have had three telephone calls from Marilyn VanZandt,” she said.
“About that lipstick smear—” I said.
“She’s reserved a table in the Blue Lagoon for dinner. You’re to be sure to check in with her. I have a date with Curtis Dark in the Trapeze in ten minutes—unless there is an emergency.”
“There is no emergency involving you,” I said. “I wouldn’t dream of making you late for a date with Dark. As for the lipstick, it isn’t really important you should know—”
“You bastard!” she said.
“The woman was crying—right in the lobby,” I said. “She put her head on my shoulder and her mouth came off on my collar. I brought her up here to get over the weeps!”
“Who cares about your collar?” she said. “What’s going on in this place, Mark? Half the police force has been coming and going. Who’s the man in your apartment?”
“It’s too complicated to tell you in ten minutes,” I said, suddenly enjoying myself. “I wouldn’t have you keep Mr. Dark waiting.”
“Damn Mr. Dark!” she said.
“You threw him at me,” I said.
“Oh, Mark, don’t be a miserable jealous jerk! I did tell Curtis we’d have a drink with him, but—”
“We?”
“You and I, you stinker. You always take the wrong things seriously.”
“Like you—the lipstick on my collar?”
“All right!” She took her bag out of the desk drawer and slammed it shut.
“Let’s start over again,” I said. “I come into your office after an exhausting day and I say, ‘Hi, darling!’ And you say—”
“Hi, darling,” she said meekly.
“And I say, ‘Come into my office, my sweet, and I’ll you about a murder.’”
So we went into my office, and after a while I told her about the murder…
Hardy’s routine with the Beaumont’s guest list struck gold of a kind. I was still telling Shelda, between moments of delightful intimacy, about the murder of John Smith and Lovelace’s problems, when I got a call from Ruysdale asking me to go to my apartment on the double. Shelda went off to keep her date with young Dark, but that was no longer a source of worry to me.
I found Chambrun and Hardy with Lovelace, who seemed almost glassy-eyed with fatigue. He was coat-less, his tie loosened, and the ashtray on my living-room table was spilling over. He’d been going through a massive card-index file that I recognized as the property of Atterbury. It was the constantly changing list of hotel guests. A stack of some fifteen or twenty cards had been removed from the box. Lovelace’s blank eyes stared at me as if I was a complete stranger.
“There are twenty-two people registered in the hotel whom George knows,” Chambrun said. “Five of them may deserve our special attention.” He took the top five cards off the little stack and handed them to me.
There is a code system used by the Beaumont on these cards which tells a great deal more than the name, address, and banking references of the customer. The code-letter A means that the subject is an alcoholic; W on a man’s card means that he is a woman-chaser, possibly a customer for the expensive call girls who appear from time to time
It was nearly five o’clock when I got back to my office on the fourth floor. My gal Shelda was putting the place to bed for the night. Shelda is disconcerting because she is so damned beautiful. She belongs on a magazine cover and not shut away in a fourth-floor office. She is highly efficient, but she disrupts my life because she knows how to make me constantly unsure that she really belongs to me.
I should have tried to explain about the lipstick smear on my collar long before this, but there hadn’t been time. She gave me a hostile look as I came in.
“Closing up pretty promptly, aren’t you?” I said.
“You have had three telephone calls from Marilyn VanZandt,” she said.
“About that lipstick smear—” I said.
“She’s reserved a table in the Blue Lagoon for dinner. You’re to be sure to check in with her. I have a date with Curtis Dark in the Trapeze in ten minutes—unless there is an emergency.”
“There is no emergency involving you,” I said. “I wouldn’t dream of making you late for a date with Dark. As for the lipstick, it isn’t really important you should know—”
“You bastard!” she said.
“The woman was crying—right in the lobby,” I said. “She put her head on my shoulder and her mouth came off on my collar. I brought her up here to get over the weeps!”
“Who cares about your collar?” she said. “What’s going on in this place, Mark? Half the police force has been coming and going. Who’s the man in your apartment?”
“It’s too complicated to tell you in ten minutes,” I said, suddenly enjoying myself. “I wouldn’t have you keep Mr. Dark waiting.”
“Damn Mr. Dark!” she said.
“You threw him at me,” I said.
“Oh, Mark, don’t be a miserable jealous jerk! I did tell Curtis we’d have a drink with him, but—”
“We?”
“You and I, you stinker. You always take the wrong things seriously.”
“Like you—the lipstick on my collar?”
“All right!” She took her bag out of the desk drawer and slammed it shut.
“Let’s start over again,” I said. “I come into your office after an exhausting day and I say, ‘Hi, darling!’ And you say—”
“Hi, darling,” she said meekly.
“And I say, ‘Come into my office, my sweet, and I’ll you about a murder.’”
So we went into my office, and after a while I told her about the murder…
Hardy’s routine with the Beaumont’s guest list struck gold of a kind. I was still telling Shelda, between moments of delightful intimacy, about the murder of John Smith and Lovelace’s problems, when I got a call from Ruysdale asking me to go to my apartment on the double. Shelda went off to keep her date with young Dark, but that was no longer a source of worry to me.
I found Chambrun and Hardy with Lovelace, who seemed almost glassy-eyed with fatigue. He was coat-less, his tie loosened, and the ashtray on my living-room table was spilling over. He’d been going through a massive card-index file that I recognized as the property of Atterbury. It was the constantly changing list of hotel guests. A stack of some fifteen or twenty cards had been removed from the box. Lovelace’s blank eyes stared at me as if I was a complete stranger.
“There are twenty-two people registered in the hotel whom George knows,” Chambrun said. “Five of them may deserve our special attention.” He took the top five cards off the little stack and handed them to me.
There is a code system used by the Beaumont on these cards which tells a great deal more than the name, address, and banking references of the customer. The code-letter A means that the subject is an alcoholic; W on a man’s card means that he is a woman-chaser, possibly a customer for the expensive call girls who appear from time to time
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