Gilded Nightmare Read online

  I was notified and I went down from my fourth-floor office to the lobby, leaving behind me a protesting Shelda.

  “Someone has to mind the store,” I told her.

  The luncheon crowd had pretty well gone back to its offices on Fifth and Madison when I got downstairs. The lobby was relatively quiet. There were, however, two rather interesting observers occupying two of the big overstuffed armchairs. Sam Culver was working on a pipe with a little pocket tool. The man named Stephen Wood was several chairs away from Sam, chain-smoking cigarettes. A waiter had brought him a whiskey on the rocks. I saw him toss half of it down in one swallow. His black eyes were fixed on the main entrance, and they looked hot and hungry.

  I walked over to Sam. “On the level, what’s with your friend Wood?” I asked him.

  Sam glanced at the dark man. “I’d say he’s been pouring it on,” he said. “Must have had half a dozen whiskies since we last saw him.”

  “Is he going to make some kind of trouble?”

  “Too bad,” Sam said. “It’s your job to prevent it, isn’t it?”

  “Sam, Chambrun’s your friend,” I said.

  He sighed. “I’ve been indulging myself in small-boy mystifying. I don’t think he’ll make any public trouble,” he said., “I think he just wants Charmian to see him.”

  “And then what happens?”

  “Presumably Charmian’s blood starts to run cold,” Sam said.

  Just then I saw Jerry Dodd across the lobby. He’s a thin, wiry little man in his late forties, with a professional smile that doesn’t hide the fact that his pale, restless eyes are always searching for a sign of anything inimicable to the Beaumont’s best interests. Chambrun trusts him without reservations, and his performance over the years as security officer has justified that trust. He’s a shrewd, tough, yet tactful operator.

  “It seems the staff is of the opinion the Baroness will do a strip tease as she comes in the revolving door,” he said when I joined him. I noticed that a great many staff people seemed to have found business in the lobby.

  “You know the guy in the corner chair—name of Stephen Wood?” I asked.

  Jerry looked. “New to me,” he said.

  “Sam’s hinting around he might try to make trouble for the lady,” I said.

  “Thanks for the tip,” Jerry said, and moved casually toward the staring Mr. Wood.

  At that moment the cavalcade from Kennedy arrived at the front entrance.

  There were three large, magnificent-looking, air-conditioned Cadillacs. Two of them carried people and the third a collection of luggage that might have been manufactured in the mint. Waters, the Beaumont’s elegant doorman, reached for the rear door of the first Cadillac, which obviously carried the queen. He was fast, but not fast enough. The door opened and out popped a man whom I identified from the newspaper clippings as John Masters, the bodyguard. He was slim, hard-faced, wearing a tightly belted trench coat, black glasses, and a black hat with the brim pulled down over his eyes. His hands were in his pockets and I visualized hair-trigger guns. He was right out of The Man from U.N.C.L.E.—pure camp.

  Masters looked quickly up and down the street, satisfied himself that Fifth Avenue was devoid of assassins, and gave a brisk nod to the occupants of the car.

  Out came another man, tall, square-shouldered, wearing a black Chesterfield with a velvet collar. He also wore black glasses, and gray hair showed under the rim of his black fedora, brim jerked downward. Helwig and Masters stood on each side of the open car door. The third passenger, however, did not appear.

  The second Cadillac, instead, started to disgorge. Out came a short, obese little man, black-coated, hatted, and glassed like the others. He carried a small, black medical bag. This was Dr. Malinkov, “physician in residence.” He moved, uncertainly, toward the revolving doors. He was followed by two women: a blond Amazon in her early fifties wearing a tweed coat with a mink collar and a little mink toque on her ash-blond hair; and a small, very pretty girl, also blond, carrying a black miniature poodle who yipped disapprovingly at Waters.

  The two women and the three men now made a sort of alley between the first Cadillac and the door. Out of the car stepped another man, also wearing black glasses. But there the black motif ended. He was hatless, and his red hair was long, mod-style. He wore a double-breasted overcoat of pale-blue tweed with a heavy fur collar that looked like what I think sable looks like. The bottoms of his trousers were tight-fitting and, so help me, bright red. His shoes were a matching red in suede. He turned and held out his hand to the last passenger in the Cadillac.

  The Baroness made her appearance, controlled but brisk. Her coat was black sable, her hat black sable. The coat was a three-quarter-length affair, and all that was visible below it was a pair of very shapely legs covered by sheer stockings that were, in effect, invisible. Her skirt was obviously fashionably short. One gloved hand held the coat together tightly at her throat. The other hand just touched the gigolo’s fingers as she came out of the car and moved, quick and lithe, across the sidewalk. Helwig, the gray-haired man, wheeled in front of her, and Masters, the bodyguard, moved in directly behind her. It was as if it had been rehearsed many times. The girl with the pet poodle and the gigolo, Peter Wynn, came next. The Amazon and the doctor brought up the rear.

  Did I mention that Charmian Zetterstrom also wore black glasses? The lights from the lobby chandeliers made them glitter as she came through the revolving door and started for the desk. She looked around, cool, self-possessed. She moved with the grace of a professional dancer. She suggested youth and a controlled vitality that were extraordinary for a woman of what I knew her age to be.

  The whole campy entrance was ludicrous but I found my impulse to laugh choked off abruptly in my throat. Charmian Zetterstrom’s hidden glance rested on me for a moment, held on me steadily. A cold wind ran along my spine. I felt like a helpless insect about to be pinned to a collector’s card.

  Then she looked away, and I realized my hands had been clenched so tightly that my fingers hurt.

  Helwig was at the desk, talking to Mr. Atterbury.

  Charmian Zetterstrom stood a few feet away, surveying the lobby with an air that wouldn’t have pleased Chambrun. She gave the impression that the Beaumont looked pretty run-down to her.

  Johnny Thacker, the day bell captain, and half a dozen bellhops came staggering through the revolving door with the gaudy luggage from the third Cadillac.

  And then it happened. Stephen Wood was standing face to face with Charmian Zetterstrom.

  “Charmian!” he said. His voice cracked like a pistol shot.

  She looked at him, apparently completely undisturbed. If the sight of him made her blood run cold, as Sam Culver had predicted it might, there was no way to tell. And there was no time for a second reaction from her.

  Masters, the bodyguard, acted so swiftly I couldn’t really follow his moves. The back of his right hand seemed to catch Wood on the Adam’s apple, like an axe blade. There was a gurgling cry from Wood as he tottered backwards. Masters’ left hand, a triphammer, then caught him on the point of the jaw and Wood went over in something approximating a back somersault, and lay still. Masters was instantly standing over him, waiting for him to move, which he didn’t.

  Jerry Dodd, caught off base for one of the few times in his career, gave Masters a shove which wasn’t expected and sent him staggering a few steps away from the prostrate Wood. Instantly there was a gun in Masters’ hand, pointed straight at Jerry. Somebody screamed. I think it was the girl with the pet poodle.

  “Put that away and get your whole goddamned army out of here,” a cold voice said.

  I turned to look at Chambrun, who was walking straight toward the gun, placing himself squarely between Masters and Jerry Dodd. I tried to move, and felt as if I had on diver’s boots. It was Masters who wavered, not Chambrun. The bodyguard slowly lowered his gun and dropped it back in the pocket of his trench coat.

  Charmian Zetterstrom was at Chambrun’s elbow
. “I apologize for Masters,” she said, her voice as cool and clear as brook water. “I have been in some danger recently and he was only doing his job. You are Mr. Chambrun?”

  Chambrun turned. “I am Pierre Chambrun.”

  “George Battle has spoken of you with the utmost regard.”

  “And he engages me to run this hotel, Baroness. I will not have this kind of horseplay.” He looked over to where Johnny Thacker and two of his boys were helping Stephen Wood to his feet. The man’s eyes were glazed, and a little trickle of blood ran from one corner of his slack mouth. “You know this man?”

  “I’ve never seen him before in my life,” Charmian Zetterstrom said, looking steadily at Wood. “His approach was so sudden, so startling, that Masters did the only thing he could do. You will concede, Mr. Chambrun, that a bodyguard can’t wait until after an attack is made to go into action. It couldn’t matter less what happens after it’s too late. You do agree, don’t you?”

  Helwig, his face expressionless, his eyes hidden by the black glasses, moved in. “Your rooms are on the nineteenth floor, Baroness. They are ready.” Chambrun might not have been there so far as Helwig was concerned. He signaled to the bellhops, the gigolo, the doctor, the Amazon, and the poodle carrier. They all started toward the elevators.

  Charmian Zetterstrom gave Chambrun a bright, questioning smile. “With your permission, Mr. Chambrun?”

  “No more gun-wavings,” he said. “No more strong-arm stuff.”

  “Unless it is absolutely necessary,” she said. She turned toward the elevators, and came face to face with Sam Culver. He was smiling too, his slow, gentle smile. She walked straight past him as though he were part of the lobby furniture. So much for having grown up with the lady in her pigtail days.

  “Now that,” Sam said to me, softly, “is the way to play a poker hand when you don’t hold any cards.”

  2

  JERRY DODD AND FRANK Williams, one of the assistant house managers, helped a still tottering Stephen Wood to the hotel infirmary, which is on the lobby floor just behind the reception desk. The day nurse, Miss Kramer, sat Wood down in a chair and proceeded to clean up his bloody mouth and chin while a call went out for Dr. Partridge, the house physician. Miss Kramer is one of those jolly professionals who insists on asking, “How are we feeling?” or “Would we like a pillow back of our head?” She’s in the infirmary all day with very little to do except, perhaps, to help someone get a chunk of soot out of an eye, or bandage a cut finger for a busboy who’s handled a steak knife injudiciously. When she has anything that looks remotely like a real case she becomes slightly more than intolerable. Wood squirmed under the touch of her square, capable fingers. He was having difficulty talking. Evidently that vicious blow at his throat had temporarily paralyzed his vocal equipment.

  Chambrun appeared on the scene before Dr. Partridge could be pried away from his backgammon game in the Spartan Bar.

  “You’ve gotten his name?” he asked Jerry Dodd.

  “He’s having difficulty speaking,” Jerry said.

  “His name is Stephen Wood,” I said.

  “How do you know?” Chambrun asked.

  “Sam Culver knows him.”

  “Is he registered here?”

  I picked up a telephone and called Atterbury at the front desk. Stephen Wood was not a guest of the Beaumont.

  “Mr. Wood,” Chambrun said, “do you want to bring assault charges against the Baroness’ bodyguard?”

  Wood shook his head, slowly, from side to side.

  “What were your intentions when you confronted the Baroness?”

  Wood just stared straight ahead.

  “He’s not armed,” Jerry Dodd said. Jerry hadn’t made any sort of formal search, but in the process of getting Wood to his feet and helping him to the infirmary he’d evidently made certain there were no weapons hidden under the tweed jacket.

  “What was your purpose?” Chambrun asked again. His voice wasn’t friendly.

  Wood moistened his lips. His voice, when he tried it, was a husky whisper. “I—I made a mistake,” he said.

  “Mistake?”

  “She—she isn’t the woman I thought she was.”

  “You called her by her first name,” I said.

  “It was a mistake,” Wood said, his eyes lowered.

  “It is a little difficult to mistake the Baroness for someone else,” Chambrun said.

  Wood swallowed painfully. “Nonetheless,” he said.

  “Who did you think she was?” Chambrun asked.

  “Someone else,” Wood said.

  “Someone else named Charmian?” Chambrun asked.

  “I tell you it was a mistake,” Wood said. “I thought she was someone else.”

  “Someone else named Charmian?”

  “For Godsake, how many times do I have to tell you it was a mistake? Please, I’d like to get out of here.”

  “Not till Dr. Partridge has checked you out,” Chambrun said. “We have possible lawsuits to consider. What is your address, Mr. Wood?”

  Wood muttered the name of a flea-bag hotel on the West Side. “There’ll be no lawsuits.”

  At that moment Doc Partridge came in, grumbling. The dice had been rolling well for him for a change and he resented being called away from a winning streak.

  “I want a full report on what you find,” Chambrun said. He turned for the door, giving me a little nod that indicated he wanted me to go with him. Out in the lobby he turned to me, exasperated.

  “What do you make of that double talk?”

  “It was no mistake,” I said. I gave him a brief account of my conversation about Wood with Sam, and how Wood had been waiting in the lobby for Charmian Zetterstrom’s arrival

  “Tell Sam Culver I want to see him in my office,” Chambrun said, and started away. He was stopped by a signal from Atterbury at the desk. We walked over. Atterbury was smiling his sphinxlike smile.

  “You are summoned into the Presence,” he said to Chambrun.

  “Be good enough to speak English,” Chambrun said.

  “You are to wait upon the Baroness at your earliest convenience. I quote. Helwig, the steward, just phoned down. Maybe she doesn’t like the wallpaper in 19-B.”

  Chambrun looked at me. “See what she wants. And get me Sam Culver.” He walked briskly away.

  Atterbury grinned at me. “Watch your step,” he said. “I understand she eats attractive young men alive.”…

  No two suites at the Beaumont look alike. Floor plans are much the same, but each one has been individually decorated to give it its own character. 19-B is a gem of eighteenth-century French delicacies. It is strictly designed to satisfy female taste; the four rooms are in different pastel shades, with gold the basic furniture color. The paintings on the walls are not reproductions, but who the artists were only Chambrun knows. A woman was supposed to squeal with delight when she first walked in. There was a huge double bed in one of the bedrooms, a single in the other. There was a small, very modern kitchenette.

  I was admitted to the suite by the blond poodle carrier after I had explained that Chambrun wasn’t available at the moment and that I was his deputy. The girl seemed doubtful until Charmian Zetterstrom’s clear, cool voice came to us from the living room.

  “Ask Mr. Haskell to come in, Heidi.”

  She sat on a gold-brocade-covered love seat, facing me as I walked in. The black glasses were gone, and she had the bluest blue eyes I can ever remember seeing. She had on a simple pale-yellow shift that ended several inches above very shapely knees. The lovely legs were tucked up under her on the love seat.

  She was, I told myself, something of a miracle. She had married Conrad Zetterstrom twenty years ago. She had to be close to forty. Without the facts you couldn’t have believed it. The dark hair had the sheen of a bird’s wing. That can be managed in a beauty shop. The yellow shift was high-necked, but her arms were bare. I looked for a little forty-year-old flabbiness near the armpits. There was none. I looked for the lines a
round those magical blue eyes and on the slender neck that Shelda had promised me would be there. They were nonexistent. If there was anything tell-tale at all, it was that the pale skin was obviously overlaid, skillfully, with some sort of pancake makeup. It had the texture of an actor’s face, which has been cold-creamed each night and twice on matinee days. Her body looked firm, and young, and exciting. The Amazon masseuse must be a genius, I thought.

  “Come in, Mr. Haskell,” she said. “Please sit down.” She gestured toward a frail-looking armchair next to the love seat. “Can I have Heidi get you a drink?”

  She was apparently completely organized after less than half an hour in her new quarters.

  I sat, feeling a little as though I’d been called on the carpet by my fourth-grade schoolteacher. I had, I may say in passing, been madly in love with that fourth-grade teacher. I declined the drink.

  “You are Mr. Chambrun’s assistant?” she asked.

  “I’m the hotel’s public relations director,” I said, “which means that I am also its number-one trouble shooter. There’s something that displeases you?”

  “On the contrary, I couldn’t be more delighted with the arrangements you’ve made for us.”

  For some idiotic reason I remembered Atterbury’s remark about musical beds. “How can I help you?” I asked.

  “I want to give a party,” she said. “Except for a short stay in London this is the first time I’ve been off Zetterstrom Island in twenty years. I want to—how do you say?—do it up brown.”

  “Fine,” I said. “Parties are our business. Anything from coming out balls to intimate dinners in a private dining room.”

  “I have something modest as to numbers in mind,” she said. “Say fifty to seventy-five people.” She leaned back a little, blue-shaded eyelids half lowered. “I want an apéritif such as no one has ever drunk before. I want hors d’oeuvres such as no one has ever seen or tasted before. I want a dinner that will make the world’s gourmets concede it tops anything they’ve ever feasted on before. I want wines from strange, exotic places that go down like liquid gold. I want music that will make the guests swoon with delight.” The eyelids rose and the blue eyes fastened on me. “Can you arrange all that, Mr. Haskell?”