Stewart Sterling - Dead of Night

“Yesz.” He smiled wanly. “I truszt you, Mister Fine.”

Last I saw of him, they were shouldering him out through the employees’ exit. A fall guy. Yair. A poor, old helpless — no, he wasn’t going to be helpless. Auguste was my responsibility.

When I got back to my office, things were really popping. Reidy was there, solemn and uncomfortable. He was relaying word from the hotel’s high command. Evidently Hacklin had burned up the phone lines talking to the D.A.; Reidy was instructed to inform me that I was to co-operate fully with the Prosecutor’s droll legmen, that otherwise I was to be summarily suspended, without pay continuance or pension rights. Reidy was glum.

“Think nothing of it.” I gave him the carefree grin. “I’m practically a member of the D.A.’s crew. Everything’s going fine. Except we don’t know where Tildy M. is. Or Dow Lanerd. They’ve just carted Auguste to the hoosegow. And this Gowriss goon may be prowling the stairs right now.”

Reidy said dourly, “Sooner or later the murder is going to break in the papers; that’s the part I’m not looking forward to.” He tossed an envelope on my desk. “That was in the 21MM box. I told them to switch any calls to you and send all her messages up here.”

I opened it. On a sheet of crested Plaza Royale stationery, suite quality, was lettered in neat capitals:

T.M.:—SEVEN FOR A SECRET

BUT NEVER FORGET FOUR

“Is there a cryptographer in the house?” I read it again, getting the same result as the first time. Absolute zero.

“Does read like code,” Reidy admitted. “Guess we better pass it on to the DAides.”

“Let me mull it over.” I put it in my pocket. “I’m a fair-to-middling muller, if I have plenty of time.” The phone rang. It was Fran Lane.

“Nothing important, Mister V. Only a pair of that Eberlein dizzy’s mannequins — isn’t that a sweet name for ’em — are up to no good.”

“Where?”

“They went up to the twenty-first. I went with ’em. After I keyed myself into an empty, they trotted down the stairs to twenty. I listened around. They’re in 2010-12.”

“Who’s the gay dog?”

“Gentleman from Philadelphia. Roy T. Yaker.”

“Well, well. He’s the poll expert. Probably feeling their pulses, Fran. I’ll take care of it.”

Now and again I meet some youngster who learns I’m a chief security officer. Usually he’s cram-full of notions about the fine points of sleuthing as reported by the ingenious gents who write up crime stories in the lurid mags with Real and Official and Inside in their titles. The kid’s usually very disappointed in me.

I can’t do any of the incredible things those clever cusses find so simple. According to their modest self-revelations, at any rate. One of ’em finds it easy to read a murderer’s lips fifty feet across a gloomy, smoke-shrouded barroom, thus “overhearing” details of some gory mayhem. Another has no difficulty searching a criminal’s eyes until he discovers the crook’s innermost secrets, turns him over to the stern hand of judge and jury. One expert claims to have broken a tough case by “mentalizing” a suspect’s mind. Whatever that is.

Many’s the time I’ve been disappointed in myself at not being able to put on such a performance. But it wouldn’t do to read guests’ minds. Not around the Plaza Royale.

My limitations force me to use the old-fashioned or garden variety of detection. When necessary to get the low-down on a party, I try to get close enough to hear what they’re saying. Or doing. As f’rexamp, outside the 2010 door of Mister Roy Yaker.

I didn’t have to lay my face against the panel. Or kneel to put my ear to the bottom of the door. I just lit a cigarette, leaned against the wall, and listened.

“Don’t rush me, dahrrling. I’m the shy type hates to be hurried.” The voice belonged to a honey in her late ’teens. Not shrill but penetrating, considering that hotel doors are purposely never soundproofed. “Where’s your biggie boy fren, dahrrling? You said he’d be here.”

Another more subdued feminine chime-in: “Yes, Mister Yaker, when’s Dow Lanerd coming? Or are we going somewhere to meet him? I’m just dying to meet that man. What is it they call him in the papers? Mister Giveaway? When is he—”

“Dow’s not going to be able to make it, kiddies.” Yaker, trying to quiet them. “We’ll have just as much fun—”

They put up a protest. “I wouldn’t have come if I’d known Mister Lanerd wasn’t going to be here; that’s absolutely the only reason I—”

“Edie promised we’d meet Mister Giveaway; I’d counted on asking him some very important questions. Now you call him up, Roy boy, tell him we’re seething with—”

“He can’t come.” Yaker, again. “I just did talk to him on the phone.”

“You did not, either.”

“You don’t even know Dow Lanerd, betcha.”

“That was just a come-on.” They really went after Crew Cut.

“He’s home and he’s going to stay home. He’s not feeling up to par—”

“That old gag!” The second girl was contemptuous.

“It’s the truth.” Yaker giggled. “He’s suffering from an ingrowing wife. No fooling. That’s on the level. Call up his house in Manhasset, you don’t believe me.”

They mewed unhappily. The first girl had a suggestion.

“Maybe if I talk to him” — she put the old oomph into her voice to illustrate how she would lure him — “he’d change his mind.”

“He probably would,” Yaker agreed. “But you wouldn’t change Mrs. Lanerd’s mind. He got in some kind of girl jam just recently; she’s keeping a pretty close watch on him. He doesn’t even want his secretary to know he’s home. Now, I’ll tell you what — there’s a friend of mine, one of the most important statisticians in the country—”

I left while he was still selling it. It would be easy enough to get the girls out of the hotel without incurring the guest’s animosity; I wasn’t too much concerned about his amorous tendencies: those kids weren’t schoolgirl innocents; nothing more would happen than what they’d bargained for. But I was interested in what he’d said about Dow Lanerd’s being at home.

Yaker knew Lanerd; the girls had been arranged for with Lanerd; from what little I knew of Mister Giveaway, he wouldn’t pass up a party like that without letting Yaker know he wouldn’t be there. That remark about Lanerd’s having spouse trouble fitted in with what Ruth Moore had said. Maybe the head man of the Stack O’ Jack show had gone home without notifying Hacklin in order to avoid any further hassle with Mrs. Lanerd about being in Tildy’s suite. Or maybe he wanted to talk to his lawyers before he had a second session with Hacklin & Company.

One thing seemed clear enough. If anybody would know where the skating star had decamped to, he’d be the one. He’d have to know, or his television show would blow up in his face.

I had to get hold of Tildy Millett to clear Auguste, to knock down that inside-job obsession of Hacklin’s. I had to reach her before Hacklin did, too. Or they’d stop her from saying so much as hello to me.

Fran was down in the lobby, keeping an eye out for more of Edie’s sugarplums. I complimented her on tracing the first pair to Yaker’s room, told her to get Morry, send him up with that one-two punch: Guests in the adjoining room are being disturbed, sir, and, if that didn’t send the cuties scampering, five minutes later: There’s a man down in the lobby claiming his sister is up here in your suite, sir. We’re trying to keep him from coming up, but—