“Just a moment.”
At the interruption from his employer, Hall stopped abruptly.
Curtis O’Keefe said firmly, “It isn’t necessary to give me all the details. I rely on you gentlemen to take care of those eventually. What I want at these sessions is the broad picture.” Despite the comparative gentleness of the rebuke, Hall flushed and, from across the room, Dodo shot him a sympathetic glance.
“I take it,” O’Keefe said, “that along with the weaknesses in management there is a good deal of staff larceny which is siphoning off revenue.”
The younger accountant nodded emphatically. “A great deal, sir, particularly in food and beverages.” He was about to describe his undercover studies in the various bars and lounges of the hotel, but checked himself. That could be taken care of later, after completion of the purchase and when the “wrecking crew” moved in.
In his own brief experience Sean Hall knew that the procedure for acquiring a new link in the O’Keefe hotel chain invariably followed the same general pattern. First, weeks ahead of any negotiations, a “spy team”—usually headed by Ogden Bailey—would move into the hotel, its members registering as normal guests. By astute and systematic observation, supplemented by occasional bribery, the team would compile a financial and operating study, probing weaknesses and estimating potential, untapped strengths. Where appropriate—as in the present case—discreet inquiries would be made outside the hotel, among the city’s business community. The magic of the O’Keefe name, plus the possibility of future dealings with the nation’s largest hotel chain, was usually sufficient to elicit any information sought. In financial circles, Sean Hall had long ago learned, loyalty ran a poor second to practical self-interest.
Next, armed with this accumulated knowledge, Curtis O’Keefe would direct negotiations which, more often than not, were successful. Then the wrecking crew moved in.
The wrecking crew, headed by an O’Keefe Hotels vice-president, was a tough-minded and swift-working group of management experts. It could, and did, convert any hotel to the standard O’Keefe pattern within a remarkably short time. The early changes which the wrecking crew made usually affected personnel and administration; more wholesale measures, involving reconstruction and physical plant, came later. Above all, the crew worked smilingly, with reassurance to all concerned that there were to be no drastic innovations, even as it made them. As one team member expressed it: “When we go in, the first thing we announce is that no staff changes are contemplated. Then we get on with the firings.”
Sean Hall supposed the same thing would happen soon in the St. Gregory Hotel.
Sometimes Hall, who was a thoughtful young man with a Quaker upbringing, wondered about his own part in all these affairs. Despite his newness as an O’Keefe executive, he had already watched several hotels, with pleasantly individual characters, engulfed by chain-management conformity. In a remote way the process saddened him. He had uneasy moments, too, about the ethics by which some ends were accomplished.
But always, weighed against such feelings were personal ambition and the fact that Curtis O’Keefe paid generously for services rendered. Sean Hall’s monthly salary check and a growing bank account were cause for satisfaction, even in moments of disquiet.
There were also other possibilities which, even in extravagant daydreaming, he allowed himself to consider only vaguely. Ever since entering this suite this morning he had been acutely aware of Dodo, though at this moment he avoided looking at her directly. Her blond and blatant sexuality, seeming to pervade the room like an aura, did things to Sean Hall that, at home, his pretty brunette wife—a delight on the tennis courts, and recording secretary of the P.T.A.—had never achieved. In considering the presumed good fortune of Curtis O’Keefe, it was a speculative, fanciful thought that in the great man’s own early days, he too had been a young, ambitious accountant.
The musings were interrupted by a question from O’Keefe. “Does your impression of poor management apply right down the line?”
“Not entirely, sir.” Sean Hall consulted his notes, concentrating on the subject which, in the past two weeks, had become familiar ground. “There is one man—the assistant general manager, McDermott—who seems extremely competent. He’s thirty-two, a Cornell-Statler graduate. Unfortunately there’s a flaw in his record. The home office ran a check. I have their report here.”
O’Keefe perused the single sheet which the young accountant handed him. It contained the essential facts of Peter McDermott’s dismissal from the Waldrof and his subsequent attempts—unsuccessful until the St. Gregory—to find new employment.
The hotel magnate returned the sheet without comment. A decision about McDermott would be the business of the wrecking crew. Its members, however, would be familiar with Curtis O’Keefe’s insistence that all O’Keefe employees be of unblemished moral character. No matter how competent McDermott might be, it was unlikely that he would continue under a new regime.
“There are also a few other good people,” Sean Hall continued, “in lesser posts.”
For fifteen minutes more the talk continued. At the end Curtis O’Keefe announced, “Thank you, gentlemen. Call me if there’s anything new that’s important. Otherwise I’ll be in touch with you.”
Dodo showed them out.
When she returned, Curtis O’Keefe was stretched full length on the settee which the two accountants had vacated. His eyes were closed. Since his early days in business he had cultivated the ability to catnap at odd moments during a day, renewing the energy which subordinates sometimes thought of as inexhaustible.
Dodo kissed him gently on the lips. He felt their moistness, and the fullness of her body touching his own lightly. Her long fingers sought the base of his skull, massaging gently at the hairline. A strand of soft silken hair fell caressingly beside his face. He looked up, smiling. “I’m charging my batteries.” Then, contentedly, “What you’re doing helps.”
Her fingers moved on. At the end of ten minutes he was rested and refreshed. He stretched, opened his eyes once more, and swung upright. Then, standing, he held out his arms to Dodo.
She came to him with abandon, pressing closely, shaping her body eagerly to his own. Already, he sensed, her ever-smoldering sensuality had become a fierce, demanding flame.
With rising excitement, he led her to the adjoining bedroom.
11
The chief house officer, Ogilvie, who had declared he would appear at the Croydons’ suite an hour after his cryptic telephone call, actually took twice that time. As a result the nerves of both the Duke and Duchess were excessively frayed when the muted buzzer of the outer door eventually sounded.
The Duchess went to the door herself. Earlier she had dispatched her maid on an invented errand and, cruelly, instructed the moon-faced male secretary—who was terrified of dogs—to exercise the Bedlington terriers. Her own tension was not lessened by the knowledge that both might return at any moment.
A wave of cigar smoke accompanied Ogilvie in. When he had followed her to the living room, the Duchess looked pointedly at the half-burned cigar in the fat man’s mouth. “My husband and I find strong smoke offensive. Would you kindly put that out.”
The house detective’s piggy eyes surveyed her sardonically from his gross jowled face. His gaze moved on to sweep the spacious, well-appointed room, encompassing the Duke who faced them uncertainly, his back to a window.
“Pretty neat set-up you folks got.” Taking his time, Ogilvie removed the offending cigar, knocked off the ash and flipped the butt toward an ornamental fireplace on his right. He missed, and the butt fell upon the carpet where he ignored it.
The Duchess’s lips tightened. She said sharply, “I imagine you did not come here to discuss décor.”
The obese body shook in an appreciative chuckle. “No, ma’am; can’t say I did. I like nice things, though.” He lowered the level of his incongruous falsetto voice. “Like that car of yours. The one you keep here in the hotel. Jaguar, ain’t it?”
“Aah!” It was not a spoken word, but an emission of breath from the Duke of Croydon. His wife shot him a swift, warning glance.
“In what conceivable way does our car concern you?”
As if the question from the Duchess had been a signal, the house detective’s manner changed. He inquired abruptly, “Who else is in this place?”
It was the Duke who answered, “No one. We sent them out.”
“There’s things it pays to check.” Moving with surprising speed, the fat man walked around the suite, opening doors and inspecting the space behind them. Obviously he knew the room arrangement well. After reopening and closing the outer door, he returned, apparently satisfied, to the living room.
The Duchess had seated herself in a straight-backed chair. Ogilvie remained standing.
“Now then,” he said. “You two was in that hit-’n-run.”
She met his eyes directly. “What are you talking about?”
“Don’t play games, lady. This is for real.” He took out a fresh cigar and bit off the end. “You saw the papers. There’s been plenty on radio, too.”
Two high points of color appeared in the paleness of the Duchess of Croydon’s cheeks. “What you are suggesting is the most disgusting, ridiculous …”
“I told you—cut it out!” The words spat forth with sudden savagery, all pretense of blandness gone. Ignoring the Duke, Ogilvie waved the unlighted cigar under his adversary’s nose. “You listen to me, your high-an’-mightiness. This city’s burnin’ mad—cops, mayor, everybody else. They find who done that last night, who killed that kid an’ its mother, then high-tailed it, they’ll throw the book, and never mind who it hits, or whether they got fancy titles neither. Now I know what I know, and if I do what by rights I should, there’ll be a squad of cops in here so fast you’ll hardly see ’em. But I come to you first, in fairness, so’s you could tell your side of it to me.” The piggy eyes blinked, then hardened. “’F you want it the other way, just say so.”
The Duchess of Croydon—three centuries and a half of inbred arrogance behind her—did not yield easily. Springing to her feet, her face wrathful, gray-green eyes blazing, she faced the grossness of the house detective squarely. Her tone would have withered anyone who knew her well. “You unspeakable blackguard! How dare you!”
Even the self-assurance of Ogilvie flicked for an instant. But it was the Duke of Croydon who interjected, “It’s no go, old girl, I’m afraid. It was a good try.” Facing Ogilvie, he said, “What you accuse us of is true. I am to blame. I was driving the car and killed the little girl.”
“That’s more like it,” Ogilvie said. He lit the fresh cigar. “Now we’re getting somewhere.”
Wearily, in a gesture of surrender, the Duchess of Croydon sank back into her chair. Clasping her hands to conceal their trembling, she asked, “What is it you know?”
“Well now, I’ll spell it out.” The house detective took his time, leisurely puffing a cloud of blue cigar smoke, his eyes sardonically on the Duchess as if challenging her objection. But beyond wrinkling her nose in distaste, she made no comment.
Ogilvie pointed to the Duke. “Last night, early on, you went to Lindy’s Place in Irish Bayou. You drove there in your fancy Jaguar, and you took a lady friend. Leastways, I guess you’d call her that if you’re not too fussy.”
As Ogilvie glanced, grinning, at the Duchess, the Duke said sharply, “Get on with it!”
“Well”—the smug fat face swung back—”the way I hear it, you won a hundred at the tables, then lost it at the bar. You were into a second hundred—with a real swinging party—when your wife here got there in a taxi.”
“How do you know all this?”
“I’ll tell you, Duke—I’ve been in this town and this hotel a long time. I got friends all over. I oblige them; they do the same for me, like letting me know what gives, an’ where. There ain’t much, out of the way, which people who stay in this hotel do, I don’t get to hear about. Most of ’em never know I know, or know me. They think they got their little secrets tucked away, and so they have—except like now.”
The Duke said coldly, “I see.”
“One thing I’d like to know. I got a curious nature, ma’am. How’d you figure where he was?”
The Duchess said, “You know so much … I suppose it doesn’t matter. My husband has a habit of making notes while he is telephoning. Afterward he often forgets to destroy them.”
The house detective clucked his tongue reprovingly. “A little careless habit like that, Duke—look at the mess it gets you in. Well, here’s what I figure about the rest. You an’ your wife took off home, you drivin’, though the way things turned out it might have been better if she’d have drove.”
“My wife doesn’t drive.”
Ogilvie nodded understanding. “Explains that one. Anyway, I reckon you were lickered up, but good …”
The Duchess interrupted. “Then you don’t know! You don’t know anything for sure! You can’t possibly prove …”
“Lady, I can prove all I need to.”
The Duke cautioned, “Better let him finish, old girl.”
“That’s right,” Ogilvie said. “Just set an’ listen. Last night I seen you come in—through the basement, so’s not to use the lobby. Looked right shaken, too, the pair of you. Just come in myself, an’ I got to wondering why. Like I said, I got a curious nature.”
The Duchess breathed, “Go on.”
“Late last night the word was out about the hit-’n-run. On a hunch I went over the garage and took a quiet look-see at your car. You maybe don’t know—it’s away in a corner, behind a pillar where the jockeys don’t see it when they’re comin’ by.”
The Duke licked his lips. “I suppose that doesn’t matter now.”
“You might have something there,” Ogilvie conceded. “Anyway, what I found made me do some scouting—across at police headquarters where they know me too.” He paused to puff again at the cigar as his listeners waited silently. When the cigar tip was glowing he inspected it, then continued. “Over there they got three things to go on. They got a headlight trim ring which musta come off when the kid an’ the woman was hit. They got some headlight glass, and lookin’ at the kid’s clothin’, they reckon there’ll be a brush trace.”
“A what?”
“You rub clothes against something hard, Duchess, specially if it’s shiny like a car fender, say, an’ it leaves a mark the same way as fingerprints. The police lab kin pick it up like they do prints—dust it, an’ it shows.”
“That’s interesting,” the Duke said, as if speaking of something unconnected with himself. “I didn’t know that.”
“Not many do. In this case, though, I reckon it don’t make a lot o’ difference. On your car you got a busted headlight, and the trim ring’s gone. Ain’t any doubt they’d match up, even without the brush trace an’ the blood. Oh yeah, I shoulda told you. There’s plenty of blood, though it don’t show too much on the black paint.”
“Oh, my God!” A hand to her face, the Duchess turned away.
Her husband asked, “What do you propose to do?”
The fat man rubbed his hands together, looking down at his thick, fleshy fingers. “Like I said, I come to hear your side of it.”
The Duke said despairingly, “What can I possibly say? You know what happened.” He made an attempt to square his shoulders which did not succeed. “You’d better call the police and get it over.”
“Well now, there’s no call for being hasty.” The incongruous falsetto voice took on a musing note. “What’s done been done. Rushin’ any place ain’t gonna bring back the kid nor its mother neither. Besides, what they’d do to you across at headquarters, Duke, you wouldn’t like. No sir, you wouldn’t like it at all.”
The other two slowly raised their eyes.
“I was hoping,” Ogilvie said, “that you folks could suggest something.”
The Duke said uncertainly, “I don’t understand.”
“I understan
d,” the Duchess of Croydon said. “You want money, don’t you? You came here to blackmail us.”
If she expected her words to shock, they did not succeed. The house detective shrugged. “Whatever names you call things, ma’am, don’t matter to me. All I come for was to help you people outa trouble. But I got to live too.”
“You’d accept money to keep silent about what you know?”
“I reckon I might.”
“But from what you say,” the Duchess pointed out, her poise for the moment recovered, “it would do no good. The car would be discovered in any case.”
“I guess you’d have to take that chance. But there’s some reasons it might not be. Something I ain’t told you yet.”
“Tell us now, please.”
Ogilvie said, “I ain’t figured this out myself completely. But when you hit that kid you was going away from town, not to it.”
“We’d made a mistake in the route,” the Duchess said. “Somehow we’d become turned around. It’s easily done in New Orleans, with the streets winding as they do. Afterward, using side streets, we went back.”
“I thought it might be that.” Ogilvie nodded understandingly. “But the police ain’t figured it that way. They’re looking for somebody who was headed out. That’s why, right now, they’re workin’ on the suburbs and the outside towns. They may get around to searchin’ downtown, but it won’t be yet.”
“How long before they do?”
“Maybe three, four days. They got a lot of other places to look first.”
“How could that help us—the delay?”
“It might,” Ogilvie said. “Providin’ nobody twigs the car—an’ seein’ where it is, you might be lucky there. An’ if you can get it away.”
“You mean out of the state?”
“I mean out o’ the South.”
“That wouldn’t be easy?”
“No, ma’am. Every state around—Texas, Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama, all the rest’ll be watching for a car damaged the way yours is.”