Deadly Joke (2 page)

Maxwell had forgotten to put on his trousers!

He stood there, smiling at the cameras and the reporters. His dress coat was beautifully tailored, his white tie perfectly knotted, a diamond stud glittering in his shirt front. Below that was a pair of rather gaudy red and white striped under-drawers, knobby knees, socks with garters, and shiny patent leather shoes.

Shock was replaced by laughter—Gargantuan laughter.

Maxwell seemed completely unperturbed. He smiled and waved graciously. I was standing close to one of the
TV
cameras and I could hear the news announcer choking on his laughter as he tried to report what the whole country was seeing.

I heard Mickly say: “It’s not possible!” He wasn’t laughing.

And then it happened. Maxwell’s charming smile was replaced by a look of bewildered shock—and then of terror. He clutched at his shirt front, and blood dribbled through his fingers. Then he pitched sideways onto the marble floor.

I know I hadn’t heard a shot. The laughter had been so loud, so unrestrainedly joyous. Yet I knew that he had been shot. I heard a sobbing sound from Mickly.

“Oh, dear God!”

Mickly and I reached Maxwell together with Jerry Dodd and three or four men in rented tails. For just one instant Maxwell’s wide-open eyes met mine. In those eyes was disbelief and a pleading for help. Then they glazed over and went blank.

“God almighty, he’s had it!” Jerry Dodd said. He turned to his men. “Who saw anything?”

It appeared nobody had seen anything. The sound track on that
TV
broadcast must have been weird. The lobby had been rocking with laughter at a comic mistake, a slapstick joke. Suddenly there were screams and a kind of moaning. “Oh, no! Oh,
no!”

“Somebody get a doctor!” Mickly shouted.

Jerry Dodd looked at me, his eyes cold as two newly minted dimes. “Help them get him into the first-aid room, Mark.”

I bent down, half dazed, and started to make an effort to lift Maxwell. That’s when I got the blood on my shirt cuff. Then two of the big men in rented tails pushed me aside and lifted Maxwell between them.

“Show us the way,” one of them said.

The stunned crowd in the lobby opened a path for us. Women were crying openly; men shouted angrily and insisted that somebody “do something!”

I had one disjointed thought as I led the way past the reception desk and opened the door to the first-aid room. Where the hell was Stewart Shaw, who should have been there to protect Maxwell?

The two plainclothes men put Maxwell down on the examination table in the first-aid room. I was at the phone in the corner. I intended to get Dr. Partridge, the house physician. Mrs. Kiley, the night chief on the switchboard, told me in a shaken voice that Jerry Dodd had already located the doctor, who was on his way.

“He’s stone dead,” one of the plainclothes men said. “All a doctor can do is close his eyes.”

Jack Mickly was looking down at his dead employer, tears streaming down his cheeks. One of his hands rested on the dead man’s shoulder, as if to comfort him even now. I mention this because it shows how close Mickly was to the dead man, and he certainly hadn’t a doubt in the world that his patron and friend was lying dead under his hand.

Neither did I. I had seen and talked to Maxwell a dozen times and there wasn’t a shadow of doubt in my mind that the man on the table was Maxwell.

That may explain the total shock I felt twenty minutes later when Maxwell walked into Chambrun’s office, alive and unharmed.

“I
F YOU DON’T MIND
, Pierre, I think I’d like a drink,” Maxwell said.

Chambrun still stood behind his desk, as stunned as Mickly and I were. He waved, vaguely, toward the sideboard. We watched Maxwell go to the small bar and pour himself a heavy slug of Jack Daniels on the rocks.

We say of Chambrun that no matter where he is he will know within thirty seconds if anything of consequence happens in the Beaumont. He has said that when the day comes that he doesn’t know what’s happening in his hotel,
when it’s happening,
he’ll retire. It’s not any kind of magic, it’s staff training. Karl Nevers, the chief clerk on the reception desk at night, had seen the shooting. At least he had seen the man we all thought was Maxwell fall, clutching at his bloodied shirt front. He might have done a dozen different things, but he was trained. He picked up the desk phone and called Chambrun’s office. Mickly and I didn’t bring Chambrun news.

“I have seen Watty Clarke,” Maxwell said. “The guests in the banquet hall know that the dead man isn’t me, and that I’ll presently join them.”

“But, my God, sir,” Mickly said. “I saw you—him—I—I touched him!”

“And you had no doubt that it was me?”

“None whatever, sir. I simply don’t understand.”

“I had no doubts either, Mr. Maxwell,” I said. “I would have sworn this was your blood.” I showed him my shirt cuff.

Maxwell took a deep swallow of his drink. “I haven’t seen him,” he said, “but it has to be my cousin, Charles Sewall. Poor Charlie. One of his practical jokes finally caught up with him.”

Chambrun sat down in his high-backed chair. “I think you’d better explain this to us, Douglas, and quickly,” he said. His voice was flat, cold.

Maxwell’s hands weren’t quite steady as he lit a cigarette. “Charlie and I are—were—look-alikes,” he said. “His mother and mine were twin sisters. They never had twins of their own, but Charlie and I were, in looks, alike as two peas in a pod, to coin a cliché I think we weren’t at all alike as people. But as kids, and as young men, we used to play jokes on people, particularly girls. Charlie would make a date and I would keep it—and vice versa. Charlie was fond of elaborate practical jokes. I lost my taste for them early when I realized they were apt to hurt people. Charlie evidently meant to pull one on me tonight. It appears he arrived just ahead of me—without his pants. No matter how carefully it was explained afterwards, half the country would go on believing that I was the one who had appeared before the television cameras in my shorts. I understand the laughter could have been heard in Chicago.”

“The fact is, Douglas, that he was murdered by someone who thought he was you,” Chambrun said, in that flat voice. “And in my hotel!”

I chopped off a laugh. That would be at the forefront of the Great Man’s thinking. His hotel had been desecrated.

Maxwell missed the humor of it. “We had expected there might be trouble, but not murder,” he said. “Stew Shaw and I talked to your man Dodd in the lobby. They don’t seem to know yet where the shot came from. Nobody they’ve talked to so far saw anyone with a gun. Your Dr. Partridge and a homicide detective are trying to figure out the angle of the shot. Everyone was so concentrated on poor old Charlie’s red and white striped shorts that his killer might as well have been invisible.”

“Your killer,” Chambrun said. “Don’t forget that for a minute, Douglas. You were meant to die, not your cousin Charlie.”

“Stew Shaw was with you all the time, Mr. Maxwell?” I asked.

“Where else? That’s his job,” Maxwell said. “We were being particularly cautious tonight because of those pickets out front and the threats we’ve had from the black militants. We were due here at seven-thirty. We walked into the middle of a madhouse in the lobby. It took us a few minutes in which people stared at me as if I was some kind of a ghost to find out what had happened. Then Stew Shaw whisked me up here.”

“Where is he now?” Chambrun said.

“Standing guard outside the door to your suite of offices.”

“And you’re going on to the dinner?”

Maxwell gave his shoulders a weary shrug. “What else, Pierre?” His lips moved in a wry smile. “If there were ever any doubts about raising the money we needed, Charlie has fixed that. This attack meant for me will get us twice as much as we hoped for.”

Chambrun reached for the phone on his desk. “Get me Jerry Dodd,” he told the operator. He put down the phone. “What about the police? Have they questioned you?”

“The man in charge, a Lieutenant Hardy, told me not to leave the hotel until he talked with me. Right now they’re trying to find where the shot was fired from and someone who may have seen the killer fire it.”

Maxwell turned as the office door opened. I caught a glimpse of Shaw, the bodyguard, and then he stood aside. Watson Clarke came into the room with a woman leaning heavily on his arm. I recognized her from newspaper pictures as Grace Maxwell. I suppose she is at least fifty. She and Maxwell went to college together thirty years ago. She is still an extraordinarily beautiful woman, if a little weathered. She is slim—and built. The dark red hair is probably not natural, but there is nothing painted or put-on about her. Her bare shoulders, revealed by a pale blue evening gown, are still youthful.

She took a step toward her husband and away from Clarke. She seemed to sway like a tree in the wind. Shock, I thought.

“Doug!” she said, in a sort of slurred, husky voice. “Oh, Doug!” She took another uncertain step toward Maxwell.

Maxwell and Clarke moved simultaneously. Maxwell took her in his arms. The two men exchanged a sort of secret glance and Clarke’s big shoulders moved in a helpless little shrug.

Grace Maxwell, I realized, was stoned, plastered, drunk.

Chambrun had risen. “Hello, Grace,” he said. He gestured toward the visitor’s armchair beside his desk. Maxwell eased his wife into it. She took a deep, sobbing breath. Maxwell knelt beside her and took her hands in his.

“It’s all right, darling,” he said. “It’s all right.”

She made a tremendous effort to control herself. “You’re not going down there—to the banquet,” she said.

“I have to, darling.”

“I can’t go back there,” Grace Maxwell said. “I just can’t go back there, Doug.”

“You don’t have to, darling. I’m sure they’ll understand.”

Chambrun came around from behind his desk. “He’s not going anywhere, Grace, without an army to protect him,” he said. “He’ll be quite safe here in the hotel, I promise you. I think the police are going to keep you pretty busy, Doug. I suggest you let me provide you with a suite here, at least for the night. Is there someone at your house who can bring you other clothes and whatever you may need for an overnight stay?”

Maxwell nodded.

“We can provide someone to take Grace home if she wishes.”

“No!” the woman said, her voice shrill. “I couldn’t bear to be alone.”

“I’ll be glad to stay with Mrs. Maxwell,” a voice said from the doorway. It was Miss Betsy Ruysdale, Chambrun’s incredible secretary. Someday someone will write a book about this woman. She is always where she ought to be—whether or not she ought to be. She had left for the day hours ago, yet here she was. I supposed Mrs. Kiley, the night switchboard chief, had phoned her. Chambrun would need her.

“Thank you, Ruysdale,” Chambrun said. He turned to me. “Have Nevers prepare the house suite for the Maxwells,” he said. “And find Jerry Dodd. Tell him I want him and a half dozen men to take Douglas down to the Grand Ballroom. And keep me posted on anything and everything.”

He didn’t need to tell me that.

The lobby was still bedlam when I got down there. The cops had moved out the
TV
cameras, but reporters and press photographers still swarmed.

We were lucky in one respect. The Homicide man in charge was Lieutenant Hardy, an old friend. He’d been involved with us on several occasions. He knew us and we knew him. Hardy looks more like a blond, slightly bewildered Notre Dame line backer than a highly trained crime expert. He’s not inspirational in his approach, but he is thorough almost beyond belief. He doesn’t ruffle, and he has a genuine respect for Chambrun’s gift in crisis.

We might have been meeting, casually, on a street corner.

“Hi, Mark,” Hardy said.

“Hi,” I said.

We were in the first-aid room. Charlie Sewall’s body was still on the examination table, but covered with a sheet.

“Damndest thing,” Hardy said. He pulled back the sheet and looked at Charlie Sewall’s dead face. It was the damndest thing. The likeness was just not believable. Charlie’s mouth was less firm than Maxwell’s, but the slackness could have come with death.

“There were a couple of hundred people in the lobby, but so far we haven’t found a soul who admits to seeing anything. Or hearing anything, for that matter. No one heard the shot.”

“I was there,” I said. “I didn’t hear anything. He just collapsed. If you get the
TV
people to play back their tapes, you’ll understand.”

“I’ve seen and heard the tapes,” Hardy said. “Instant replay. I’ve also impounded every camera in the place. Someone may have gotten a picture he didn’t know he was getting. Take some time for films to be developed.” He recovered Charlie Sewall’s face. “Maxwell insists on at least putting in an appearance at his banquet?”

“Half the guests, no matter what they’ve been told, still probably think Maxwell’s the one who was shot. And there are millions of dollars involved.” I explained that Maxwell and his wife had been given a suite in the hotel.

“Maxwell’s a friend of the Great Man’s?”

“Chambrun’s very fond of him,” I said.

“He’s one of the good guys?”

“If you go by Chambrun,” I said.

Hardy took a long, thin cigar out of his breast pocket and lit it as carefully as if it was a scientific problem. “I’d like to know more about him before I talk to him,” he said. “It would help me to make sense.” His eyes turned toward the sheet-covered body. “You were in the lobby when this one arrived?”

“With Jack Mickly, Maxwell’s
PR
man.”

“You saw this one come in from the front entrance? He had two friends with him, I understand.”

I had forgotten about the two men who had preceded the trouserless Charlie Sewall into the lobby.

“There were two guys in full evening dress,” I said.

“You know them?”

I shook my head. “It all happened so fast,” I said. “They came in very briskly. Then the two men stood aside and we saw the man we thought was Maxwell standing there in his shorts. You wouldn’t believe the laughter. It couldn’t have been more than ten or fifteen seconds later that the bullet hit Sewall. I don’t know what happened to his friends.”