Hotel
Page 43Opening the car door on the driver's side, he turned the headlight switch to "on." Both headlights worked.
He gave a grunt of relief. At the same instant, from below, came the sharp staccato of a horn and the roar of an accelerating car. Ogilvie froze. The motor roared nearer, its sound magnified by concrete walls and low ceilings. Then, abruptly, headlights flashed by, sweeping up the ramp to the floor above. There was a squeal of tires, the motor stopped, a car door slammed. Ogilvie relaxed. The car jockey, he knew, would use the manlift to return below.
When he heard footsteps receding, he put the tools and supplies back into the paper bag, along with a few larger fragments of the original headlight. He put the bag aside to take with him later.
On the way up he had observed a cleaners' closet on the floor below.
Using the downward ramp, he walked to it now.
As he had hoped, there was cleaning equipment inside and he selected a broom, dustpan, and a bucket. He partly filled the bucket with warm water and added a washcloth. Listening cautiously for sounds from below, he waited until two cars had passed, then hurried back to the Jaguar on the floor above.
With the broom and dustpan, Ogilvie swept carefully around the car. There must be no identifiable glass fragments left for police to compare with those from the accident scene.
There was little time left. The cars coming in to be parked were increasing in number. Twice during the sweeping he had stopped for fear of being seen, holding his breath as one car swung into a stall on the same floor, a few yards only from the Jaguar.
Luckily, the car jockey had not bothered to look around, but it was a warning to hurry. If a jock observed him and came across, it would mean curiosity and questions, which would be repeated downstairs. The explanation for his presence which Ogilvie had given the night checker would seem unconvincing. Not only that, the chances of an undetected run north depended on leaving as scant a trail as possible behind.
One more thing remained. Taking the warm water and cloth, he carefully wiped the damaged portion of the Jaguar's fender and the area around it.
As he wrung out the cloth, the water, which had been clear, became brown.
He inspected his handiwork carefully, then grunted approval. Now, whatever else might happen, there was no dried blood on the car.
Ten minutes later, sweating from his exertions, he was back in the main building of the hotel. He went directly to his office where he intended to snatch an hour's sleep before setting out on the long drive to Chicago. He checked the time. It was 11: 15 p.m.
"I might be able to help more," Royall Edwards observed pointedly, "if someone told me what this is all about."
The St. Gregory's comptroller addressed himself to the two men facing him across the long, accounting office table. Between them, ledgers and files were spread open and the entire office, normally shrouded in darkness at this time of night, was brightly lit. Edwards himself had switched on the lights an hour ago on bringing the two visitors here, directly from Warren Trent's fifteenth-floor suite.
The hotel proprietor's instructions had been explicit. "These gentlemen will examine our books. They will probably work through until tomorrow morning. I'd like you to stay with them. Give them everything they ask for. Hold no information back."
In issuing the instructions, Royall Edwards reflected, his employer had seemed more cheerful than for a long time. The cheerfulness, however, did not appease the comptroller, already piqued at being summoned from his home where he had been working on his stamp collection, and further irritated by not being taken into confidence concerning whatever was afoot. He also resented - as one of the hotel's most consistent nine-to-fivers - the idea of working all night.
The comptroller knew, of course, about the mortgage deadline of Friday and the presence of Curtis O'Keefe in the hotel, with its obvious implications. Presumably this latest visitation was related to both, though in what way was hard to guess. A possible clue was luggage tags on both visitors' bags, indicating they had flown to New Orleans from Washington, D.C. Yet instinct told him that the two accountants - which obviously they were - had no connection with government. Well, he would probably know all the answers eventually. Meanwhile it was annoying to be treated like some minor clerk.
There had been no response to his remark that he might be able to help more if better informed, and he repeated it.
The older of the two visitors, a heavy-set middle-aged man with an immobile face, lifted the coffee cup beside him and drained it. "One thing I always say, Mr. Edwards, there's nothing quite like a good cup of coffee. Now you take most hotels, they just don't brew coffee the right way. This one does. So I reckon there can't be much wrong with a hotel that serves coffee like that. What do you say, Frank?"
"I'd say if we're to get through this job by morning, we'd better have less chit-chat." The second man answered dourly, without looking up from a trial balance sheet he was studying intently.
The first made a placating gesture with his hands. "You see how it is, Mr. Edwards? I guess Frank's right; he often is. So, much as I'd like to explain the whole thing, maybe we'd better keep right on."
Aware of being rebuffed, Royall Edwards said stiffly, "Very well."
"Thank you, Mr. Edwards. Now I'd like to go over your inventory system - purchasing, card control, present stocks, your last supply check, all the rest. Say, that was good coffee. Could we have some more?"
The comptroller said, "I'll telephone down." He observed dispiritedly that it was already close to midnight. Obviously they were going to be here for hours more.
1
If he expected to be alert for a new day's work, Peter McDermott supposed he had better head home and get some sleep.
It was a half hour past midnight. He had walked, he thought, for a couple of hours, perhaps longer. He felt refreshed and agreeably tired.
Walking at length was an old habit, especially when he had something on his mind or a problem which defied solution.
Earlier tonight, after leaving Marsha, he had returned to his downtown apartment. But he had been restless in the cramped quarters and disinclined for sleep, so he had gone out walking, toward the river. He had strolled the length of the Poydras and Julia Street Wharves, past moored ships, some dimly lighted and silent, others active and preparing for departure. Then he had taken the Canal Street ferry across the Mississippi and on the far side walked the lonely levees, watching the city lights against the darkness of the river. Returning, he made his way to the Vieux Carre and now sat, sipping cafe-au-lait, in the old French market.
A few minutes earlier, remembering hotel affairs for the first time in several hours, he had telephoned the St. Gregory. He inquired if there was any more news concerning the threatened walkout of the Congress of American Dentistry convention. Yes, the night assistant manager informed him, a message had been left shortly before midnight by the convention floor head waiter. So far as the head waiter could learn, the dentists' executive board, after a six-hour session, had reached no firm conclusion. However, an emergency general meeting of all convention delegates was to be held at 9:30 a.m. in the Dauphine Salon. About three hundred were expected to attend. The meeting would he in camera, with elaborate security precautions, and the hotel had been asked to assist in assuring privacy.
Peter left instructions that whatever was asked should be done, and put the matter from his mind until the morning.
Apart from this brief diversion, most of his thoughts had been of Marsha and the night's events. Questions buzzed in his head like pertinacious bees. How to handle the situation with fairness, yet not clumsily or hurting Marsha in doing so? One thing, of course, was clear: her proposal was impossible. And yet it would be the worst kind of churlishness to dismiss offhandedly an honest declaration. He had told her: "If more people were honest like you ...
There was something else - and why be afraid of it if honesty was to be served both ways? He had been drawn to Marsha tonight, not as a young girl but as a woman. If he closed his eyes he could see her as she had been. The effect was still like heady wine.
But he had tasted heady wine before, and the taste had turned to bitterness he had vowed would never come his way again. Did that kind of experience temper judgment, make a man wiser in his choice of women? He doubted it.
And yet he was a man, breathing, feeling. No selfimposed seclusion could, or should, last forever. The question: When and how to end it?
In any case, what next? Would he see Marsha again? He supposed - unless he severed their connection decisively, at once - it was inevitable he should.
Marsha was nineteen. He was thirty-two. The gap between seemed wide, yet was it? Certainly if they were both ten years older, an affair - or marriage - would not be thought of as extraordinary. Also, he doubted very much if Marsha would find close rapport with a boy her own age. The questions were endless. But a decision as to whether, and in what circumstances, he would see Marsha again had yet to be made.
In all his reasoning, too, there remained the thought of Christine.
Within the space of a few days he and Christine seemed to have drawn closer together than at any time before. He remembered that his last thought before leaving for the Preyscott house last evening had been of Christine. Even now, he found himself anticipating keenly the sight and sound of her again.
Strange, he reflected, that he, who a week ago had been resolutely unattached, should feel torn at this moment between two women! Peter grinned ruefully as he paid for the coffee and rose to go home.
The St. Gregory was more or less on the way and instinctively his footsteps took him past it. When he reached the hotel it was a few minutes after one a.m..
There was still activity, he could see, within the lobby. Outside, St. Charles Avenue was quiet, with only a cruising cab and a pedestrian or two in sight. He crossed the street to take a short cut around the rear of the hotel. Here it was quieter still. He was about to pass the entry to the hotel garage when he halted, warned by the sound of a motor and the reflection of headlight beam approaching down the inside ramp. A moment later a low-slung black car swung into sight. It was moving fast and braked sharply, tires squealing, at the street. As the car stopped it was directly in a pool of light. It was a Jaguar, Peter noticed, and it looked as if a fender had been dented; on the same side there was something odd about the headlight too. He hoped the damage had not occurred through negligence in the hotel garage. If it had, he would hear about it soon enough.
Automatically he glanced toward the driver. He was startled to see it was Ogilvie. The chief house officer, meeting Peter's eyes, seemed equally surprised. Then abruptly the car pulled out of the garage and continued on.
Peter wondered why and where Ogilvie was driving; and why a Jaguar instead of the house officer's usual battered Chevrolet? Then, deciding that what employees did away from the hotel was their own business, Peter continued on to his apartment.
Later, he slept soundly.
2
Unlike Peter McDermott, Keycase Milne did not sleep well.
The speed and efficiency with which he obtained precise details of the Presidential Suite key had not been followed by equal success in having a duplicate made for his own use. The connections which Keycase established on arriving in New Orleans had proved less helpful than he expected. Eventually a locksmith on a slum street near the Irish Channel - whom Keycase was assured could be trusted - agreed to do the job, though grumbling at having to follow specifications instead of copying an existing key. But the new key would not be ready until midday Thursday, and the price demanded was exorbitant.