Dead of Night

Chapter fourteen: High jinks in no. 2010

That was a bad spot.

I knew they had to take Auguste. They’d have been derelict if they didn’t. Presumably neither Hacklin nor Schneider knew about Auguste’s having quarreled with Roffis. Or his background of belligerency.

Still, the steak knife, the blood on his sleeve, that ridiculous numbers clipping, they were enough. Even without this compact. The compact wasn’t precisely the sort of trivia a guest hands out as cumshaw. More likely the kind of article included on some jewelry insurance inventory.

So Auguste was in for it. No matter what I did.

But a security man stands or falls, depending on whether he has his staff with him or agin him. We’re hired to keep order in a city, a vertical city to be sure, but one with more transients moving in and out every day than, say, a city like Northampton, Massachusetts. Yet we don’t really have any power or authority. No night sticks or hip holsters. It’s all done with mirrors. We have to depend on employees for information and backing. No protection man rates that sort of support unless the staff knows he’ll go to bat for an employee if and when necessary.

So I couldn’t just let them walk out with Auguste. In five minutes the bunch on the grapevine would have spread the word all over the house.

“Auguste,” I said, “when’d she give you this?”

“This efening, Mister Fine. While I am bringing in the tables.” Shame and resentment made his face older; standing there with his bony shanks and knobby knees showing below the draggling, striped shorts, he was a miserable specimen. “With efery Tower room-serfice order, we are always szending a rose. But Miss Millett she does not like roszes. For her I haf perzonally arrange with each tray a camellia, pink. Always she is ferry pleaszed, she mentions how pleaszed. Tonight she says she may soon be going away — and for my thoughtfulnesz, is there anything she could do for me?”

“Come on!” Schneider threw the pants at him. “Climb into those. Le’s get going. You c’n spill that mahooly downtown—”

I interrupted. “Take your time, Auguste.” It wasn’t a necessary remark; his fingers trembled so he couldn’t fasten the buttons. I was talking for the benefit of the boys in the doorway. “Go on. She asked what kind of gratuity would suit you.”

“No szir, pleasze, she did not. I told her I would prefer zum little trinket by which to remember a moszt gracious lady.”

Hacklin laughed harshly. “You certainly picked yourself a cheap little trinket. Musta cost a thousand, at least. Who you think you kiddin’? You stole this compact!”

“You haf only to ask her.” Auguste got the trousers on with difficulty; he had the shakes but good. “Myself, when she goes to her bag and brings out this,” he pointed a bony finger at the compact, “I am flibber-gaszted. It is too much, I proteszt, but she inzists it is szomething for which she will have no more use and she wiszhes me to take it. So I thank her many times and I do take it. When I change into messz jacket, the compact makes bulge in pantz pocket so I put it where I keep my wallet moszt always when I am on serfice.” I suppose Hacklin and Schneider thought that was just so much parsley, though, remembering what Elsie Dowd had said about Miss Marino, I was ready to believe it. Until we could check on it. As for keeping it in his sock, that’s where any waiter would conceal a valuable.

But there were ugly implications. If Auguste had overheard some remark about her clearing out, as a result of being scared of Mrs. Lanerd or of Al Gowriss, he might have decided to make a grab while the grabbing wouldn’t be noticed. Or at least when she wouldn’t be likely to come back for the stolen article.

Put it another way, the compact might have been payment for overlooking something Tildy Millett didn’t want talked about. An affair with Lanerd, maybe. Or a man’s body in a closet.

Schneider took the mess jacket off the chair, held it out for Auguste to put on. “If she gave it to you, you’ll get it back, jughead. If she didn’t, you won’t get back, yourself. C’mon, now.”

“Auguste,” I said, “how long have you known Miss Marino’s identity?”

“Crysake,” Hacklin muttered. “That’s right. The name was never supposed to be mentioned while any hotel people were around. How ’bout that, huh?”

Auguste sputtered. “When she firszt — when she gafe me the compact, so I would know who I should remember — she told me then, but I muszt promise — now I haf broken—” He was broken up about it, all right. “I do not wiszh cause any trouble for her—”

I gave him the big pat on the shoulder, took his arm. “You’re not, Auguste. You’re helping. Come along with us; we’ll get her to verify the gift; everything’ll be hokaydory.” I led him out of the recreation room before Schneider could do more than grab his other arm. Hacklin tagged along behind as we went through the door.

I spoke to the listening group of waiters. “Don’t talk about this until Auguste gets back, a’right, boys?”

“Absotively,” they agreed. “Sure thing, Mister V.”

“You gonna hock that an’ buy a chicken farm, ’Guste?”

He sniggered feebly. It made him feel a little less as if he was being marched off to a dungeon.

Schneider didn’t enthuse about my leading role. When we got out to the clanking silver-polishing drums, he growled, “Never mind comin’ any farther, Vine.”

“You couldn’t find your way down here. You’d wind up in the glass-sterilizer room. Auguste,” I went on quickly, “these men will try to hold you for stealing that compact. What they expect to do is link you up with the murder. I know you didn’t do it. I’ll get you out. Keep that left hand up and your chin in.”

“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:

“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.”