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  He had seized Auguste’s arm to steady himself, hurried away down the corridor before Auguste realized it wasn’t Roffis.

  Auguste hadn’t seen the man’s face clearly, partly because he’d been bending over and had been rattled by the unexpected encounter, partly because Auguste, though extremely shortsighted, couldn’t wear his glasses on duty. The Plaza Royale doesn’t go for spectacled waiters.

  So he couldn’t describe the man. All he had actually seen was a vague blur of a face. All he could say for sure was the man wore a light suit, cream-colored with chocolate checks, something a Londoner might possibly sport.

  He couldn’t give more than the fuzziest description of the man. Medium height. Average build. Neither especially light or dark. Indeterminate age. He was certain it was a man. That was about all he was sure of.

  Auguste had taken his tables along to the service elevator and thought no more about it. It was “quite pozzible, yes,” that this nondescript individual had wiped a hand on Auguste’s sleeve.

  I’d gotten to the point of explaining to Auguste that in all probability he’d had his hands on a murderer—or the other way round—when there was a pounding on my door.

  And Hacklin’s voice demanding admittance.

  Chapter Thirteen: DIAMOND-STUDDED COMPACT

  “JUST A MINUTE,” I called.

  Auguste looked worried. He whispered, “Mister Fine, I haf my perzsonal reasons for not wiszhing to be infestigated. By you, I don’t mind. But not outsziders.”

  I motioned him to follow me into the lost-and-found room, which opens off the opposite side of my six-by-ten cubbyhole. When I got him out there among the shelves loaded with umbrellas, slippers, girdles, bathrobes, so on, I told him to go down to the employees’ smoking-room, wait for me. I wasn’t sure whether that crack about not minding my looking into his affairs was complimentary or not.

  “Thank you szo ferry much, Mister Fine.” He stepped into the corridor, around the corner and out of sight from Hacklin. I went back through my private cubicle, shut the doors, let the Prosecutor’s assistant in.

  Hacklin wouldn’t take the chair I offered. After he shut the door, he planted his shoulders against it. “That Walch lad gimme a somewhat different story than you handed me about the Eberlein girl.”

  “How different?”

  “Says she’s a legitimate agent for chorines and models. He arranged for her to supply entertainers for Mister Lanerd’s party after the dinner tonight. Claims Mister Lanerd and his wife recommended her. Walch says he was waiting down in the bar with her to collect his commission in advance. You come in, put the pinch on the Eberlein girl, take her into the credit office. That’s the last he saw of her. He went up to the banquet room to find out where the party was supposed to take place, so he could tell the girls where to go. He don’t know anything about the key; maybe Tildy Millett did give it to her.”

  “Little inaccurate in spots,” I objected. “But close enough.”

  “You manage to fuggle things up, all along the line. You had this girl, you lose her. You have this waiter, he comes right up to you there in the banquet room; you know I want to put him through the hopper, still you send him away. I had Schneider down in the locker room; he found out the waiter’s name is Auguste Fessler.”

  “Why don’t you run me downtown,” I laid it on with a trowel, “so I can tell your boss who’s doing the real fuggling?”

  “Tell me.” Hacklin came to the desk, planted both hands on it, leaned over unpleasantly close.

  “Sure. He sends a couple of his Punch and Booty boys up here to keep a tight watch on an important witness. Because they wouldn’t work with our security office, a dozen people wander in and out of the supposedly guarded suite every day. Not all Plaza Royale people, either. We lease out the valet concession, f’rinst, and the valet’s messenger boys have been up there.”

  “Wasn’t a question of keeping people out—what we were after was to see those who came in.”

  “Happen to see a joe wearing a loud, light-colored suit? Cream-colored, maybe? Might have had chocolate checks? He was in 21MM about the time Roffis must have been knifed.”

  He squinted. “Never mind his suit. What’d he look like?”

  “Auguste couldn’t describe him. Auguste can’t see a fly on the end of his nose, without glasses. Our waiters aren’t allowed to wear glasses.”

  Veins in Hacklin’s forehead stood out like small purplish worms; his eyes had that old hard-boiled-egg look once more. “If he couldn’t see any better’n that, how’d he know this guy was in Miss Millett’s rooms?”

  “Guy bumped into him. Coming out of the bedroom where we found your partner. Grabbed Auguste’s sleeve.”

  “Yeah? An’ he just can’t tell what the fella looked like, huh? Wait’ll I get this Fessler alone for a few minutes. He’ll begin to remember things.”

  “He would. He’d even make up things to remember.” I’ve known it to happen often enough. “If you wouldn’t put the arm on him, I’d help you to get hold of him so you could question him here.”

  “Where is he?”

  “No arrest?”

  “Look.” His jaw jutted out like a comic-book detective’s. “If he confesses, I can’t—”

  “If you’re still sticking to the idea he was hired by some gambling syndicate to put the dot on Roffis, you couldn’t be wronger.”

  “All right.” It was a grudging concession. “Where is he?” Hacklin didn’t like the deal much.

  Neither did I, but it was the best I could do, off the cuff. “Waiters’ smoking-room. Basement.”

  On the way down in the service car, Hacklin told me they were all balled up now because they couldn’t locate Lanerd.

  “Thought he was at the studio.”

  “He wasn’t. Never went there. Charley talked to the producer of the Stack O’ Jack thing, fella name MacGregory. MacGregory talked to Lanerd on the phone after the show but hadn’t seen his boss at all. I called Mrs. Lanerd—he has a place out at Manhasset—but he hadn’t gone home; she hadn’t heard from him, seemed kinda worried about him.”

  “Everybody’s worried about him,” I said. “His wife, his secretary.”

  “Worried? I think she’s crazy about him.”

  “No!”

  “Yuh.” He didn’t take kindly to sarcasm. “She acts more upset than a secretary would, simply because he doesn’t call her up to let her know what’s cooking.”

  “Maybe she figures he eloped with Tildy Millett.”

  He moved aside to let a couple of buckets of champagne get around him. “What I’d like to know is where Lanerd found out she was heading for Kentucky.”

  The waiters’ recreation room is off in the corner of the service basement, beyond the silver-cleaning drums. I could tell there was something unusual afoot before we reached it. Three of our main-dining-room garçons blocked the doorway, watching something in the smoking-room. None of them spoke to me because they didn’t know Hacklin.

  What they were watching was Auguste, in shirtsleeves, shorts, and socks. Practically in tears, besides. He stood, shamefaced, beside the table where the boys sometimes played gin rummy or tarot. Schneider stood beside him, feeling in the toe of one of Auguste’s shoes. The mess jacket hung on a chair back. Auguste’s trousers lay rumpled on the table.

  Auguste saw me at the same time Schneider noticed Hacklin. They began simultaneously.

  “Mister Fine, oh, pleasze!”

  “Hi, Byrd. I guess this does it.”

  I touched Hacklin’s arm. “The search routine is all right. But no vile durance. Remember?”

  Hacklin didn’t answer. He gawked at the glittering gadget Schneider juggled in his palm. A compact. But something ultra. Engine-turned platinum, the turnings like the figures fancy skaters make on ice. Studded with diamonds. Sparklers around the circular rim. More glitter forming a nice neat T in the center. Quite an item.

  “He had it in his sock.” Schneider flipped the back of his hand at Auguste�
�s middle. Auguste practically jumped out of his socket. “Good thing I thought of comin’ back here, looking for the crut.”

  Auguste cried, “Mister Fine, Mister Fine, pleasze! Miss Millett, she gifts me this. A preszent, yesz. I tell him so, but he will not belief!”

  Hacklin grinned at me with no humor whatever. “That deal we made. I guess you won’t mind if we call that off now?”

  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:

  T.M.:—SEVEN FOR A SECRET

  BUT NEVER FORGET FOUR

  Lx

  “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 th
e 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.”

  Chapter Fifteen: EAR TO THE WALL

  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.”