Walking Dead Man (21 page)

“Get me out of here!” Battle said.

“I’m sorry, George, but they’ll never let you go. A few answers and I’m sure they won’t hold you up long.”

Battle looked around him, trapped. His pale eyes fixed on Jerry. “How could you have been so damned stupid!” he said.

“I’m afraid Jerry was just following orders, George. I had to arrange it this way for fear you might have the President himself acting as your guide. They’ve just asked me what my theory is about how the masked man got into the penthouse. I wonder if what I think will coincide with your thinking, George? You, see, I don’t think there ever was a masked man in the penthouse.”

“I saw him, Pierre! For God sake, he shot at me!” Battle said.

“I’m afraid I don’t believe you, George,” Chambrun said. “It was a very clever gimmick, but you made your first mistake when you set it up. You wanted to have us all believe that you had been attacked. You got out of your bed, walked over the bathroom door, fired a shot at the bed’s headboard. Then you jumped back into bed and greeted Butler, who came charging in, waving at the bathroom door to indicate the imaginary assassin had escaped.”

Battle, somehow, looked stronger and younger, his eyes very bright. “You must be out of your mind, Pierre,” he said.

“You planned it cleverly, George, but two things went wrong right at the start. You fired only one shot. That was because, knowing how Butler would react, you had only a second or two to get back into bed. A genuine assassin would have emptied his gun at you. You tried to hint that perhaps the shot had been meant for me, and I think you were afraid I would guess what had happened if I had time to think about it. So you arranged to have me kidnaped. It had two purposes. I would testify that there really was a man in a stocking mask, and I would be much too concerned with my own safety to be thinking clearly about what had really happened here.”

“I’ve never known you to go off half cocked like this, Pierre,” Battle said, quite calm. “Hardy searched the penthouse from top to bottom for a gun when he thought the shot might have been fired by one of my people. There wasn’t any gun in the penthouse and a gun hadn’t been disposed of any other way.”

“There was one place Hardy didn’t search for a gun,” Chambrun said. “On you, George. He didn’t search you, naturally, because you were the apparent victim. Incidentally, one thing you counted on didn’t happen. Butler, your bodyguard, didn’t react the way you expected him to. He didn’t see anyone go into your bedroom, but clearly somebody had—if we believed your story, and we did. He didn’t understand how it could have happened, but he could have let himself off the hook by saying he’d fallen asleep. The worst that could happen would be a reprimand, you say? Not so, George. These four men who worked for you—Cobb, Allerton, Gaston, Butler—were in an interlocking trap. If one of them betrayed you, all four of them would be thrown to the wolves by you. It was what you held over their heads. Butler did some quick thinking. He had better tell the truth. No one had gone into your bedroom. That way the police wouldn’t suddenly pick on one of the others.”

I glanced at Butler. His face was the color of ashes. I saw that his right hand was slipped inside his coat, very close to the shoulder holster he wore. I wondered if Chambrun saw that. I noticed that Jerry Dodd was standing very close to Butler. He must be noticing, I thought.

“And what might be the reason for this fancy charade you’ve imagined, Pierre?” Battle asked.

“You were in danger from two sources, George,” Chambrun said. “You were in danger from the film script Cleaves had written. You had to stop that by getting control of it. But you also knew that there were only two people who could have given Cleaves the information he had in that script—Allerton or Cobb. To be safe they both had to be silenced for keeps. To be safe you had to handle it away from your villa in Cannes where an attack on them from outside was impossible. So you came here, prepared to deal with Cleaves—perhaps by buying him off, perhaps by framing him for murder. He would be, of course, a prime suspect when the police learned of his past connection with you. So there are two fake attempts on your life—first by the nonexistent man in the stocking mask, second by the letter bomb. You would make sure the bomb would get rid of one of your enemies, Cobb or Allerton. It would still appear to be an attempt to murder you. You would always have arranged to have one of them open that birthday card for you. The case against Cleaves could be pretty substantial by then.”

“An amazing invention,” Battle said.

“Not an invention, George. Just something I was very slow to see. My slowness cost Allerton and Cobb their lives. I was puzzled by little things that slowed me down; like how did someone on the outside—because you had to have someone on the outside working for you, George; the Stocking Mask who abducted me, the man who delivered the letters to the hotel—how did someone on the outside know Kranepool’s name, which was used to lure me out of my office? You told me how, George, and I didn’t pay any attention. You were so pleased with yourself that you told us you hadn’t taken the sedatives Dr. Cobb thought he had given you. For a couple of hours Cobb kept people out of your room. We assumed you were out cold. All that time you had access to an outside line. You were giving orders, just yards away from us, to your men on the yacht; your army. As Peter Potter has said more than once, George, nothing in your life is exactly what it seems.”

“You think you have evidence that could prove any part of this Arabian Nights’ adventure?” Battle asked. “I think I’ve heard enough, Pierre.”

“Not quite enough, George,” Chambrun said. “How did Shelda Mason get in trouble with you? Did she catch you emptying Dr. Cobb’s oxygen cylinder? Was that when you made it quite clear to her that if she didn’t do exactly what you told her Mark Haskell wouldn’t live out the night?”

“A very foolish little girl, but very useful in more ways than one,” Battle said. His voice had changed. “I should have known better than to try anything under your nose, Pierre. You haven’t lost your touch, it seems. So forgive me if I now become crude.” He glanced at Butler. “I think we will leave here now, Pierre, and I think you will not stand in our way unless you want Miss Mason’s death on your conscience.”

Chambrun smiled a tight, grim smile. “I’m afraid you’re a little late, George,” he said. He was looking past me, past Battle, to the door at the far end of the room. I looked and my heart jolted against my ribs. Standing in the doorway was Hardy, and with him was Shelda. Shelda!

Butler’s gun came out as though it was greased in its holster. “You better stand aside, Hardy. Come on, Mr. Battle.”

He started toward Hardy, with Battle right behind him. The room full of people seemed to be frozen. Hardy looked pained, but he, in turn, started toward Butler.

“You better put that away, Buster,” he said.

“You effing jerk!” Butler said, and his finger squeezed the trigger.

Nothing happened but a click. He tried again and again. And then, realizing that it wasn’t going to work, he swung it at the side of Hardy’s head. Hardy caught his arm and broke it across his knee, like a man breaking kindling wood. Butler screamed.

“I forgot to tell you I fixed the firing pin on that gun when I borrowed it for a ballistics test,” Hardy said. He looked at Chambrun. “Like you thought, Chambrun, the yacht was a gold mine. Here’s Miss Mason, and we found enough evidence to prove that letter bomb was put together on the boat.” He glanced at Battle. “Your crew tried their best, friend, but we were a little too good for them. We should, in time, be able to pick out Stocking Mask and your letter carrier.”

Battle gave him a mock-courteous bow, and then he turned toward Chambrun. His hands came out of the folds of his overcoat and there was a gun in one of them. The shot went through the ceiling as Jerry Dodd knocked Battle’s arm upward with his left. His right struck Battle across the Adam’s apple.

And that was that.

Except that Shelda was in my arms, laughing and crying.

I heard Chambrun say: “Any more questions, ladies and gentlemen?”

It seemed there weren’t. The ladies and gentlemen of the press were racing for telephones. All except the TV cameraman, who was still taking pictures of the wreckage of George Battle’s empire.

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

copyright © 1973 by Judson Philips

cover design by Julianna Lee

978-1-4532-6881-0

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