Walking Dead Man (10 page)

“I had that chair there, back to the door,” Butler said. He moved a Windsor armchair into place. Hardy closed the door to the bedroom. “From there I could see the front door and the doors to the bedrooms and the bathrooms down the hall.”

“You sat in the chair,” Hardy said.

“I sat in the chair, Lieutenant. I had taken off my shoulder holster and it was resting in my lap with my gun in it. I had a magazine.” He looked around and saw a copy of
Time
on the end table. “That’s it. Somebody must have moved it when they all came in here.”

“‘They all’?” Hardy asked.

“Dr. Cobb, Gaston, Allerton. Then one of the sentries from the roof. The sentry phoned downstairs, and Dodd and Mr. Chambrun came.”

“Let’s not move quite so fast,” Hardy said. “You set the chair in place, you sat in it with your gun in your lap, and you read a magazine.”

“And you fell asleep,” Battle said in a faraway voice.

A little trickle of sweat ran down Butler’s cheek. He moistened his lips. He focused on Battle. I could sense the question he was asking: “Is that what you want me to say?” There was no indication from Battle.

“I did not fall asleep,” Butler said, his voice shaken.

Hardy sat down in the chair. “So you were here.” He turned his head from side to side. “You’re right. No one could have approached the bedroom or the bathroom doors without your seeing them. And you insist no one did?”

“I didn’t see anyone,” Butler said.

“That’s not quite the same as saying no one did.”

“All right then, no one did!”

“And yet someone was in the room and did shoot at Mr. Battle,” Hardy said. “How do you account for that?”

“There is only one way to account for it,” Butler said. “The man was already in the room when I took my position here outside the door.”

“My dear Edward,” Battle said, “you searched the apartment when we first arrived. You said it was all clear.”

Butler lowered his head. “I must have overlooked someplace he could have been hiding.”

“How careless,” Battle said. “Almost criminally careless, wouldn’t you say, Edward?”

Butler looked as though he was going to cry.

Hardy stood up and pushed the chair aside. “Let’s see what places you could have overlooked,” he said.

Jerry and I crowded after them into the doorway, with Kranepool pushing past us to be in on it. One of the plainclothes men already in the room was dusting for fingerprints. The other was kneeling by the big queen-sized bed taking pictures of the headboard. He stood up and took a piece of folded tissue out of his pocket.

“Here’s the bullet, Lieutenant. Slug from a thirty-eight police special, like Dodd thought it was. Trajectory places the fire place from somewhere near the bathroom door, which is the way Battle described it”

Hardy nodded. “Get it to ballistics,” he said. He looked around the room. “How about the clothes closet?” he asked Butler.

“I went through it. Mr. Chambrun had removed his own clothes. It was bare—just hangers—ready for Mr. Battle. No place for anyone to hide.”

Hardy, unperturbed, walked over to the barred windows. There were two sets of heavy drapes on either side. “How about here?”

“I looked behind them,” Butler said. “I pushed and poked at them. So help me God, there was no one in this room.”

“You couldn’t hide under that box-spring bed,” Hardy said, sounding almost cheerful. “How about the bathroom?”

“There’s no place there, Lieutenant. I looked in the shower. There’s a medicine cabinet. No place.”

Hardy had moved to the bathroom door. “How about this laundry hamper?” he asked.

“For Christ sake, Lieutenant, nobody could fit into that.”

“You didn’t look in it?”

“Why should I?”

Hardy nodded and came back into the bedroom. “You’re right,” he said. “A man couldn’t hide there.” He looked at Butler, shaking his head slowly. “You tell an interesting story, Mr. Butler. No one was hidden in the room, no one could have come into it without your seeing him. Since you didn’t see anyone there was, by your story, no one here. And yet there is a bullet in the headboard and Mr. Battle saw his attacker go out through the bathroom.”

“I didn’t say no one could have come but through the bathroom without my seeing him,” Butler said. He sounded desperate. “The minute I heard the shot I—”

“You admit you heard the shot?”

“Sure I heard it. I never said there was no shot.”

“That’s so, you didn’t.”

“The minute I heard the shot I jumped out of the chair, pushed it aside and came in here. Mr. Battle was sitting up in bed, covers pulled up around him. He waved and pointed at the bathroom. I ran into the bathroom and out into the hall. The man could have escaped that way without being seen. Cobb was in his room, Allerton in his, Gaston in the kitchen. He could have gotten away without being seen.”

“But since he never got in?” Hardy asked gently.

“If I knew the answer to that, I’d feel an effing lot better.”

“How’s that?”

“‘Effing’ is Edward’s way of cleaning up an old Anglo-Saxon word,” Battle said from the doorway. “Listen, Edward, I promise not to boil you in oil if you will admit that you fell asleep at your post. Human weakness is human weakness.”

“So help me, Mr. Battle, I—”

“So have it your way, Edward,” Battle said.

“I’ve had just about enough of this double-talk,” Jerry Dodd said. “I’ve got a man to find. Let’s go, Mark.”

A telephone in the living room rang. It was the outside line. There’s a difference between the outside ring and the sound you get from a switchboard call. Jerry, who had been moving out, got to it first. I heard his sharp “Yes?” I knew he was hoping it might be some word about Chambrun. He turned away from the phone.

“It’s for Mr. Battle,” he said.

Battle waved a “no” at him and went back to the couch.

“Mr. Battle isn’t able to come to the phone just now,” Jerry said. Then I saw him tense. “Say that again.” He covered the mouthpiece with his hand and his eyes, bright as two newly minted dimes, were fixed on Battle. “I quote,” he said. “If you want to see your friend Chambrun alive again, you’d better come to the phone.”

Battle, looking shocked, stood up and walked across the room, where he took the phone from Jerry. Jerry, muttering under his breath, raced for the bedroom where there was an extension to this outside line.

“George Battle here,” Battle said. “Yes—yes—yes, I understand. There’s no way to get that kind of money in cash until after the banks open in the morning. Yes, I’m listening.” The listening occupied a full minute. Then Battle said: “It’s perfectly clear. How do I know that Chambrun is safe?—Trust you, you swine, why should I trust you?—Yes, we’ll wait for your call.” Battle put down the phone slowly. Jerry came charging in from the bedroom.

“No time to trace the call,” he said. He looked around at us. “It would seem the boss has been kidnaped. They’re demanding a hundred grand in ransom money. They’ll call tomorrow morning—this morning—when we’ve had a chance to raise the cash in unmarked tens and twenties.” He looked at me. “You, Mark, are to be ready to deliver the money.”

Battle was still standing by the phone, his face looking like a wax mask. “I will, of course, arrange for the money,” he said.

“Where am I supposed to take the money?” I asked.

“They’ll let us know in the morning.”

“You ought to notify, the
FBI
,” Hardy said.

“No!” Battle said sharply. “The money is meaningless. I want Pierre safe. They warned me specifically!”

“They always do,” Hardy said, “and the people who listen let them get away with their crime.”

“You risk Pierre’s safety, Lieutenant, and I’ll have you served up for dinner with an apple in your mouth!” Battle said.

M
Y LEGS FELT RUBBERY
under me as I walked along the second-floor corridor toward Chambrun’s office. I think, when Chambrun first turned up missing, that I had subconsciously refused to believe that he was in any real danger. For some reason that would be easily explained he had taken off without telling us where he was going or why. The phone call to George Battle had put an end to that little bit of hopeful rationalizing. Chambrun had disappeared against his will, was being held against his will, and God alone knew whether he would be returned to us unhurt and all in one piece.

Jerry Dodd was not someone who would leave any manholes uncovered. I had supposed he would call off the search for Chambrun in the hotel. Instead he gave strict instructions that no word about the kidnaping should leak and the search should go on. His thinking was pretty grim.

“They’d make a try for the money whether the boss is safe or not,” he said. “Knowing him, they may never have gotten him out of the hotel. He could very well have put up a fight and been clobbered. We’ll keep searching for him here until we know for certain he hasn’t been dumped somewhere, dead or dying.”

It was left for me to tell Betsy Ruysdale what we knew. She would have to be told.

Ruysdale and Shelda were still in Ruysdale’s office when I got there. It looked as if they’d been keeping alive on coffee and cigarettes. Ruysdale stood up as I came in, and I suspect she sensed that I had some kind of bad news.

“We’ve had a call,” I told her. “The boss has been kidnaped. They’re asking for a hundred thousand dollars’ ransom. When we have the money in the morning, we’ll get instructions on where to deliver it. It seems I’m to be the messenger boy.”

“Why you, Mark?” Shelda asked. She was afraid for me, which didn’t make me unhappy.

“The answer to that is fairly simple,” Ruysdale said. “They evidently know that Mark will follow instructions to the letter. They’d choose someone they know loves Mr. Chambrun and can be counted on to do nothing that would risk his safety.” She turned toward the telephones on her desk. “We’ve got to find a way to raise the money,” she said. “George Kobler isn’t going to relish being waked up at three in the morning, but—”

“Battle has already agreed to put up the money,” I said. “The phone call was made to him.”

“I thought the doctor had put him to sleep?”

“Whatever Cobb gave him didn’t hold him for long,” I said. “He’s bright as a button and full of double talk, insults, and snide side attacks. He’s a character. How the people who work for him put up with him I’ll never know.”

“They understand him,” Shelda said.

She’d been working for him for a year, I remembered. “Does he throw curves at you?” I asked.

“He has almost no social life,” Shelda said. “No parties or casual guests. The only people he can play games with are the members of his household—Ed Butler, Dr. Cobb, Allerton, Gaston, me and Gloria, the other secretary.”

“Where is Gloria, by the way?”

“Vacation,” Shelda said. “He didn’t feel he needed her on this trip. She stayed in Cannes. He’s pretty cruel with his wisecracks a lot of the time, but when it comes to any kind of real problem, some kind of trouble you might be in, he’s kind and generous to a fault. You don’t think people like Ed Butler, and Dr. Cobb, and Allerton and Gaston would stand by him if they didn’t know that, do you? They’ve all been with him a long time. They wouldn’t put up with him if they didn’t understand him, would they?”

“You didn’t find him hard to take?” I asked.

She shook her head slowly. “He’s not like anyone you’ve ever met,” she said. “Eccentric, a hypochondriac, in constant fear of some kind of physical attack. And yet—well, I don’t quite know how to put it. I’ve never known anyone so intensely alive in terms of his interests, unless it’s Mr. Chambrun.”

“You’re saying they’re alike?” Ruysdale asked.

“Not at all. But Mr. Chambrun spends every waking hour concerned with the Beaumont and its operation.” I thought I detected a faint little smile, at the corners of Ruysdale’s mouth, as if she was thinking that she knew of times when that wasn’t so. “Mr. Battle has interests all over the world. He has a dozen clocks in his study in Cannes that tell him what time it is in London, New York, Moscow, Tokyo, other places. At first I didn’t know what he had a secretary to do. He handles everything by telephone. There is almost no correspondence, in or out. He seems to keep everything in his head. During the day he will call me to take notes every half hour or so. The same thing at night. I’ve never known him to sleep more than forty-five minutes at a stretch. He dictates to me, stuff about the stock markets, the price of commodities, the price of money, the production of oil wells, of mines; stuff about men in politics and in industry, about combines and mergers, about diplomatic deals and alliances and treaties. Most of it means nothing to me. I transcribe my shorthand and type up the notes, and I swear he never looks at them. There are tons of them filed away, unread, unreferred to. He’s never asked me to dig one of them out for him. It’s as if once he’d put his ideas into words they were stored away in a computer bank inside his head. He’s never asked me for a name, or a telephone number, or an address. They’re all in his head.”

“No small talk?”

“Only what you call his snide little side attacks,” Shelda said. “He teases Dr. Cobb about his appetite, his overindulgence in alcohol, his chain smoking when he’s seriously ill with emphysema. Gaston is an obvious homo, and Mr. Battle teases him about imaginary male lovers. Allerton, poor guy, gets quite the worst of it. He’ll be asked about the right fork to use at dinner, constantly kidded about etiquette, and the middle-class cockney family he came from, and how on earth did he come by his elegant manners. He’s teased about his job of tasting Mr. Battle’s food, warned that he may drop dead after a mouthful of it, forced to do nasty little clean-up jobs. But I suspect Allerton will be a rich man when the time comes for him to retire. Butler appears to be such a tough guy, but Mr. Battle manages to whittle him down. Sometimes I think Butler is afraid of him, that maybe Mr. Battle has something on him.”

“And how did he tease you?” I asked.

A faint color rose in Shelda’s cheeks. “He seemed to know about you and me, Mark. He kept asking me if I was saving myself for you—when I had evenings off. If I was, I was wasting my youth.”