Hotel

19

At last, after more questions and banalities, the Croydons' press conference had ended.

As the outside door of the Presidential Suite closed behind the last to leave, pent-up words burst from the Duke of Croydon's lips. "My God, you can't do it! You couldn't possibly get away with ..."

"Be quiet!" The Duchess of Croydon glanced around the now silent living room. "Not here. I've come to mistrust this hotel and everything about it."

"Then where? For God's sake, where?"

"We'll go outside. Where no one can overhear. But when we do, please behave less excitably than now."

She opened the connecting door to their bedrooms where the Bedlington terriers had been confined. They tumbled out excitedly, barking as the Duchess fastened their leads, aware of what the sign portended. In the hallway, the secretary dutifully opened the suite door as the terriers led the way out.

In the elevator, the Duke seemed about to speak but his wife shook her head. Only when they were outside, away from the hotel and beyond the hearing of other pedestrians, did she murmur, "Now!"

His voice was strained, intense. "I tell you it's madness! The whole mess is already bad enough. We've compounded and compounded what happened at first. Can you conceive what it will be like now, when the truth finally comes out?"

"Yes, I've some idea. If it does."

He persisted, "Apart from everything else - the moral issue, all the rest - you'd never get away with it."

"Why not?"

"Because it's impossible. Inconceivable. We are already worse off than at the beginning. Now, with this . His voice choked."

"We are not worse off. For the moment we are better off. May I remind you of the appointment to Washington."

"You don't seriously suppose we have the slightest chance of ever getting there?"

"There is every chance."

Preceded eagerly by the terriers, they had walked along St. Charles Avenue to the busier and brightly lighted expanse of Canal Street, Now, turning southeast toward the river, they affected interest in the colorful store windows as groups of pedestrians passed in both directions.

The Duchess's voice was low. "However distasteful, there are certain facts that I must know about Monday night. The woman you were with at Irish Bayou. Did you drive her there?"

The Duke flushed. "No. She went in a taxi. We met inside. I intended afterward ..."

"Spare me your intentions. Then, for all she knew, you could have come in a taxi yourself."

"I hadn't thought about it. I suppose so."

"After I arrived - also by taxi, which can be confirmed if necessary - I noticed that when we went to our car, you had parked it well away from that awful club. There was no attendant."

"I put it out of the way deliberately. I suppose I thought there was less chance of your getting to hear."

"So at no point was there any witness to the fact that you were driving the car on Monday night."

"There's the hotel garage. When we came in, someone could have seen us."

"No! I remember you stopped just inside the garage entrance, and you left the car, as we often do. We saw no one. No one saw us."

"What about taking it out?"

"You couldn't have taken it out. Not from the hotel garage. On Monday morning we left it on an outside parking lot."

"That's right," the Duke said. "I got it from there at night."

The Duchess continued, thinking aloud, "We shall say, of course, that we did take the car to the hotel garage after we used it Monday evening. There will be no record of it coming in, but that proves nothing. As far as we are concerned, we have not seen the car since midday Monday."

The Duke was silent as they continued to walk. With a gesture he reached out, relieving his wife of the terriers. Sensing a new hand on their leash, they strained forward more vigorously than before.

At length he said, "It's really quite remarkable how everything fits together."

"It's more than remarkable. It's meant to be that way. From the beginning, everything has worked out. Now. . ."

"Now you propose to send another man to prison instead of me."

"No!"

He shook his head. "I couldn't do it, even to him."

"As far as he is concerned, I promise you that nothing will happen."

"How could you be sure?"

"Because the police would have to prove he was driving the car at the time of the accident. They can't possibly do it, any more than they can prove it was you. Don't you understand? They may know that it was one or the other of you. They maybelieve they know which. But believing is not enough. Not without proof."

"You know," he said, with admiration, "there are times when you are absolutely incredible."

"I'm practical. And speaking of being practical, there's something else you might remember. That man Ogilvie has had ten thousand dollars of our money.

At least we should get something for it."

"By the way," the Duke said, "where is the other fifteen thousand?"

"Still in the small suitcase which is locked and in my bedroom. We'll take it with us when we go. I already decided it might attract attention to return it to the bank here."

"You really do think of everything."

"I didn't with that note. When I thought they had it ... I must have been mad to write what I did."

"You couldn't have foreseen."

They had reached the end of the brightly lighted portion of Canal Street.

Now they turned, retracing their steps toward the city center.

"It's diabolical," the Duke of Croydon said. His last drink had been at noon. As a result, his voice was a good deal clearer than in recent days.

"It's ingenious, devilish, and diabolical. But it might, it just might work."