Stewart Sterling - Dead of Night

“Any other arguments at the table?”

“Szome talk about a fisit from Mister Lanerd’s wife — diszagreeableness, pozzibly. Nikky, the maid, she was angry about it. Miss Marino did not szeem so angry, thoughtful only. Roffis, he did not expressz opinion.” About seven, they finished. Auguste began to take tables away. After the meal, Miss Marino had gone into her bedroom with Nikky. Roffis took his time about finishing his dessert, razzed Auguste some more, went into his room.

As Auguste was clearing away, Miss Marino had come back to the living-room. Then the maid had returned, too. Both appeared to be upset. While Auguste was busy rolling the hot-table out into the hall, Roffis had re-entered the living-room. He exchanged a few words in an undertone with Miss Marino, hurried into the girl’s bedroom. This was something Auguste had not seen him do before, on any of the occasions when the waiter’d been in the suite.

When Auguste got out to the corridor, began stacking dishes on the tables, he noticed the door to Miss Marino’s bedroom was slightly open. He paid no particular attention to this. But a minute later, after he’d made another trip to the living-room and back to the corridor, a man rushed out of the bedroom, bumping into him, nearly upsetting the hot-table.

He had seized Auguste’s arm to steady himself, hurried away down the corridor before Auguste realized it wasn’t Roffis.

Auguste hadn’t seen the man’s face clearly, partly because he’d been bending over and had been rattled by the unexpected encounter, partly because Auguste, though extremely shortsighted, couldn’t wear his glasses on duty. The Plaza Royale doesn’t go for spectacled waiters.

So he couldn’t describe the man. All he had actually seen was a vague blur of a face. All he could say for sure was the man wore a light suit, cream-colored with chocolate checks, something a Londoner might possibly sport.

He couldn’t give more than the fuzziest description of the man. Medium height. Average build. Neither especially light or dark. Indeterminate age. He was certain it was a man. That was about all he was sure of.

Auguste had taken his tables along to the service elevator and thought no more about it. It was “quite pozzible, yes,” that this nondescript individual had wiped a hand on Auguste’s sleeve.

I’d gotten to the point of explaining to Auguste that in all probability he’d had his hands on a murderer — or the other way round — when there was a pounding on my door.

And Hacklin’s voice demanding admittance.

“Just a minute,” I called.

Auguste looked worried. He whispered, “Mister Fine, I haf my perzsonal reasons for not wiszhing to be infestigated. By you, I don’t mind. But not outsziders.”

I motioned him to follow me into the lost-and-found room, which opens off the opposite side of my six-by-ten cubbyhole. When I got him out there among the shelves loaded with umbrellas, slippers, girdles, bathrobes, so on, I told him to go down to the employees’ smoking-room, wait for me. I wasn’t sure whether that crack about not minding my looking into his affairs was complimentary or not.

“Thank you szo ferry much, Mister Fine.” He stepped into the corridor, around the corner and out of sight from Hacklin. I went back through my private cubicle, shut the doors, let the Prosecutor’s assistant in.

Hacklin wouldn’t take the chair I offered. After he shut the door, he planted his shoulders against it. “That Walch lad gimme a somewhat different story than you handed me about the Eberlein girl.”

“How different?”

“Says she’s a legitimate agent for chorines and models. He arranged for her to supply entertainers for Mister Lanerd’s party after the dinner tonight. Claims Mister Lanerd and his wife recommended her. Walch says he was waiting down in the bar with her to collect his commission in advance. You come in, put the pinch on the Eberlein girl, take her into the credit office. That’s the last he saw of her. He went up to the banquet room to find out where the party was supposed to take place, so he could tell the girls where to go. He don’t know anything about the key; maybe Tildy Millett did give it to her.”

“Little inaccurate in spots,” I objected. “But close enough.”

“You manage to fuggle things up, all along the line. You had this girl, you lose her. You have this waiter, he comes right up to you there in the banquet room; you know I want to put him through the hopper, still you send him away. I had Schneider down in the locker room; he found out the waiter’s name is Auguste Fessler.”

“Why don’t you run me downtown,” I laid it on with a trowel, “so I can tell your boss who’s doing the real fuggling?”

“Tell me.” Hacklin came to the desk, planted both hands on it, leaned over unpleasantly close.

“Sure. He sends a couple of his Punch and Booty boys up here to keep a tight watch on an important witness. Because they wouldn’t work with our security office, a dozen people wander in and out of the supposedly guarded suite every day. Not all Plaza Royale people, either. We lease out the valet concession, f’rinst, and the valet’s messenger boys have been up there.”

“Wasn’t a question of keeping people out — what we were after was to see those who came in.”

“Happen to see a joe wearing a loud, light-colored suit? Cream-colored, maybe? Might have had chocolate checks? He was in 21MM about the time Roffis must have been knifed.”

He squinted. “Never mind his suit. What’d he look like?”

“Auguste couldn’t describe him. Auguste can’t see a fly on the end of his nose, without glasses. Our waiters aren’t allowed to wear glasses.”

Veins in Hacklin’s forehead stood out like small purplish worms; his eyes had that old hard-boiled-egg look once more. “If he couldn’t see any better’n that, how’d he know this guy was in Miss Millett’s rooms?”

“Guy bumped into him. Coming out of the bedroom where we found your partner. Grabbed Auguste’s sleeve.”

“Yeah? An’ he just can’t tell what the fella looked like, huh? Wait’ll I get this Fessler alone for a few minutes. He’ll begin to remember things.”

“He would. He’d even make up things to remember.” I’ve known it to happen often enough. “If you wouldn’t put the arm on him, I’d help you to get hold of him so you could question him here.”

“Where is he?”

“No arrest?”

“Look.” His jaw jutted out like a comic-book detective’s. “If he confesses, I can’t—”

“If you’re still sticking to the idea he was hired by some gambling syndicate to put the dot on Roffis, you couldn’t be wronger.”

“All right.” It was a grudging concession. “Where is he?” Hacklin didn’t like the deal much.

Neither did I, but it was the best I could do, off the cuff. “Waiters’ smoking-room. Basement.”

On the way down in the service car, Hacklin told me they were all balled up now because they couldn’t locate Lanerd.

“Thought he was at the studio.”

“He wasn’t. Never went there. Charley talked to the producer of the Stack O’ Jack thing, fella name MacGregory. MacGregory talked to Lanerd on the phone after the show but hadn’t seen his boss at all. I called Mrs. Lanerd — he has a place out at Manhasset — but he hadn’t gone home; she hadn’t heard from him, seemed kinda worried about him.”

“Everybody’s worried about him,” I said. “His wife, his secretary.”

“Worried? I think she’s crazy about him.”

“No!”

“Yuh.” He didn’t take kindly to sarcasm. “She acts more upset than a secretary would, simply because he doesn’t call her up to let her know what’s cooking.”