James Chase - This Way for a Shroud

“If you’re satisfied, then I’m sure I will be,” he said. “But it worries me sometimes when I think how much depends on this girl’s evidence. This is the first time since Maurer got into the saddle that we’ve had the ghost of a chance of bringing him to trial.”

Conrad followed the direction Forest was looking in, and he, too, idly stared at the laundry van as it turned the bend in the drive and disappeared around to the back of the hotel.

“We’re taking a hell of a time to catch him, aren’t we?” he said. “So long as he’s at large, we’ll have to keep Frances here.”

“Every ship at sea is on the look-out for him,” Forest returned. “The sea’s a big place in which to hide, Paul. But sooner or later he’ll have to put in somewhere for provisions, and then we’ll have him.” He stood up. “Well, let’s look your defences over, Paul. I’ll see if I can pick a hole in them.”

Conrad got to his feet, and together the two men walked towards the hotel.

Around six-thirty the passages, kitchens and still rooms of the Ocean Hotel were noisy with bustling activity as the staff prepared dinner for over five hundred guests.

Unlike the glittering, luxurious restaurant, the staff quarters were dark, damp and cramped. The kitchen staff, already sweating from the heat of the ovens, cursed the long line of laundry hampers that were stacked along the wall, narrowing the passage to and from the kitchens to the preparation room.

The hampers wouldn’t be moved until the following morning when they would be unpacked and the laundry sorted and taken upstairs; in the meantime they were unwelcomed obstructions.

Vito Ferrari lay curled up in one of the top hampers. He listened to the activity going on around him and watched through a chink in the wicker-work the staff scurrying backwards and forwards.

In half an hour the activity would be transferred to the kitchens and the restaurant. In the meantime he waited.

Waiting was no hardship to Ferrari. Patience was the greatest asset to a professional killer, and Ferrari’s patience was without limit.

It had cost him twenty dollars to be smuggled into the hotel basement in the laundry hamper. The delivery man had accepted Ferrari’s story of an illicit loveaffair between himself and the wife of the head chef. The delivery man thought it was pretty funny for a dwarf to be in love to the extent of paying out good money just for a chance of seeing the chef’s wife through a hole in the laundry hamper.

It had been simple enough for him to carry Ferrari in the hamper down to the basement. Ferrari didn’t weigh much more than ninety pounds, and the delivery man had handled heavier weights than that.

So Ferrari waited in his hamper, and the hands of his strap-watch crawled on. By ten minutes after seven, the rushing to and fro began to dwindle. By seventhirty the long passage between the kitchen and the preparation room was silent and deserted.

Cautiously Ferrari lifted the lid of the hamper and peered up and down the dimly lit passage. He listened, then hearing only the uproar coming from the kitchens, he slid out of the hamper, closed the lid and keeping close to the darkest side of the wall, he went silently and swiftly down the passage, away from the kitchens towards the storerooms and the staff elevators. He arrived at the end of the passage which opened out into another big lobby stacked with cases of beer.

He heard an elevator on the move and he ducked behind the cases of beer.

The elevator bumped to rest and the door slid back. Two waiters, manoeuvring a trolley, came out and went away along the passage, leaving the elevator doors open.

In a matter of seconds, Ferrari was in the elevator and had pressed the button to the ninth floor. The elevator took him smoothly and quickly upwards.

He leaned against the wall and picked his teeth with a splinter of wood. He was as calm and as unruffled as a bishop at a tea-party.

The elevator stopped.

Ferrari knew this was his first dangerous moment. If someone happened to be in the passage when he opened the elevator doors his plans might easily be ruined. It was a risk he had to take. In any plan, no matter how carefully thought out, there were always two or three unavoidable risks. They were risks Ferrari accepted, knowing that up to now his luck had been extraordinary. He saw no reason why his luck should desert him at this moment.

He didn’t hesitate. As he pressed the button to open the doors, his hand slid inside his coat and closed on the butt of his gun.

The corridor was deserted.

He left the elevator, slid across the corridor and behind a curtain that screened one of the big windows overlooking the sea. The curtain had barely fallen into place when he heard someone coming, and he grinned to himself. His luck hadn’t deserted him.

He peered through a chink in the curtain and nodded to himself.

A big burly man who had “cop’ written all over him, came slowly along the corridor. He passed Ferrari’s hiding-place and went on, disappearing around the bend of the corridor.

Ferrari immediately left his hiding-place, and walked swiftly in the opposite direction.

The long corridor stretched ahead of him, and after he had walked fifty yards or so, he again ducked behind a window curtain. He remained there, listening and watching.

A door opened suddenly a few yards from him, and a girl appeared. She was wearing a low-cut, off-the-shoulder evening gown, and Ferrari looked at her creamy neck and shoulders with an approving eye. She closed the door, but left the key in the lock. He watched her walk slowly to the elevator. She pressed the button and waited, humming under her breath.

The big cop came back along the corridor. He touched his hat to the girl who smiled brightly at him, and he went on, not looking back.

The elevator door opened and the girl entered the cage.

Ferrari waited.

After a few minutes the cop came back. He passed close to where Ferrari was

hiding, and once more disappeared around the bend in the corridor.

Ferrari stepped out from behind the curtains, crossed over to the door of the room the girl had just left, opened it softly and looked in.

The room was in darkness. He took out the key, stepped into the room, closed the door and shot the bolt. Then he snapped on the lights.

The bed had been turned down and the room was tidy, Ferrari decided the floor maid had already visited the room, and with any luck he wouldn’t be disturbed for at least an hour. He turned out the light and went over to the window, drawing back the curtains.

The window overlooked the swimming-pool and the lawn. He could see the bright lights, the crowds still swimming or lounging around the pool while waiters in white jackets hurried to and fro carrying trays of drinks.

Frances’s room, Ferrari knew, was at the back of the hotel, facing the sea. He knew, too, that all the windows on the tenth floor on that side of the hotel were guarded. To reach her window, he would have to climb up the roof, lower himself over the ridge and then climb down the other side.

It would be a dangerous and difficult climb, one of the most dangerous climbs he had ever undertaken, but it didn’t worry him. He had studied the roof for a long time through a pair of powerful field glasses, and had decided on the route to take.

He pulled the curtain and sat on the window ledge and watched the crowd below. It wasn’t dark enough to make an attempt just yet. In another half hour the darkness would hide him from anyone who happened to look up towards the roof.

He sat staring down at the lighted bathing-pool, his mind a blank, his muscles relaxed. The hands of his strap-watch crawled on and the sky slowly darkened. At a few minutes past nine o’clock he decided it was dark enough.