Chapter one:

Girl with eye patch

On percentage, I should have figured that pillow slip would turn out to be the fuse to a case full of dynamite. Nine times out of ten the real trouble in any hotel breaks just before the security chief is supposed to go off duty. This call came through at five to eight. I was practically on my way over to the Garden to catch the bantamweight prelims. I should have known.

But it had been a quiet night. Nothing more exciting than putting the grip on a pair of wallet workers who’d been smiting the pre-theater crowd hip and thigh until we placed them under genteel restraint. So when Zingy flagged me, I took for granted it would be merely too much alcohilarity on the sixth where a bunch of tycoons were tuning up for a banquet. Matter requiring tact but not much time, probably.

From across the lobby at the bell desk, Zingy — our jockey-sized bell captain on the night side — gave me the P sign, thumb and index fingers circled against the other outstretched forefinger, and followed it with a sweeping gesture of the palm horizontal like an umpire calling a man safe on base. One of the staff wanted me. That shouldn’t hold me up long, I figured.

Walking to the house phones, I kept my eyes on the couple who’d attracted my attention just before Zingy began his deaf-mute signals. Sandy-haired man about thirty-five; solidly put together; stocky but not fleshy; short, wide face with prominent cheekbones, broad nostrils and a thin, prissy mouth; he looked like the sort of gent who’d call every bellman Mac and every porter George.

His tux was a mite too large for him. I’d never have given it another thought if he’d been too big for his coat. Lots of bulgy burghers outgrow their tailor-mades.

But though this lad was already big, he’d need four more inches around the short ribs before he caught up with that jacket. Trifling thing? Sure. But a rented tux, paraded alongside the sleek custom jobs ordinarily circulating around our plushery, stands out like a beard on a room clerk.

Nothing wrong about hiring a pair of satin lapels, to be sure. Only — the kind of customers who can afford our Plaza Royale prices usually don’t have to rent dinner clothes. Then too, this joe matched up with his companion about like melted margarine with some of Sandor’s champignons. She was a thing.

Maybe it was the way that tall, silver comb set off her black hair in regular tourist-ad señorita style. Or the lacy, black shawl-thing over her otherwise bare shoulders and white dinner gown. Anyhow the effect was Spanish enough to make me think of clicking castanets and the thrum of guitars and high heels stamping out the final bars of a samba. What I could see of her face helped the idea along; she was young and pretty in spite of the white patch covering her right eye.

Perhaps that disfiguring patch accounted for her being so gidgety. She kept glancing around nervously, twisting her head this way and that, clutching her escort’s arm as if she was afraid he’d get away from her. Which he might have been trying to do, from what I could see of his actions.

There’d only been the two of them in the elevator when it let them out at the lobby level. Prissy-mouth had stalked out ahead of her, then turned as if suddenly remembering his manners and made a grab for her. She shook his hand off irritably, spoke crossly to him, and tucked her hand inside his arm, as they came toward the Fifth Avenue entrance. All the way across the lobby, he’d kept half a stride ahead, practically dragging her behind him. Queer pair.

It’s no part of the security office’s job to oversee who twos around with who. But something about this guy made me think of various unpleasantries a few of our femme guests had experienced after hiring an escort from one of the bureaus that make a business of that sort of thing. I made a mental note to check up on the elegant eyeful, and picked up the phone to ask if somebody wanted Mister Vine.

“Mrs. Munster does, Mister V.” The switchboard gal connected me with the head housekeeper.

“Want me, Ada?”

“I’ve got a pillow slip, Mister Vine. I wish you’d come up and look at it.” Ada Munster sounded fretful and worried, but then anybody who has to supervise two hundred floor maids is likely to sound that way.

“In the morning, okay?” I wouldn’t miss more than one of the preliminary bouts, if I could get going right away.

“I do think you’d better see it tonight. It’s got oil on it.”

That didn’t sound good. Ada wouldn’t have called about hair oil.

“And there’s — something else.” She didn’t want to talk with the switchboard girl listening. They always do on security calls. By request.

“What room, Ada?”

“Suite Twenty-One Em Em, Mister V. But I’m in my office.”

“I’ll be up.” I kissed the bantam bouts good-by, wondered if I’d make it in time for the middleweights.

When I went around behind the main desk to go back into the board room, Reidy Duman, our silky-suave assistant manager, asked if I hadn’t planned to go to the fights.

I said I’d be going directly. Meanwhile, what did he know about deluxe duplex 21MM?

He came around back of the registration board with me, looked over my shoulder at the card I took out of the rack.

It said that Teresa Marino (Miss) and maid, from Dallas, Texas, had checked in Monday, July ninth, at a daily rate of $75.00. Evidently a gal who could afford her morning corn flakes at a dime a flake, if she so wished. There were a couple of significant notations. Beside Length of Stay was typed 3–4 w. Under Credit was the Est. which meant our cashier’s department had established her financial standing to its satisfaction. Under Previous Guest History was a cryptic?. Meaning that there weren’t any records of her preference in hard or soft pillows, things like that.

“Oh, oh! That one!” Reidy touched finger tips to lips, blew a kiss to the filing-cabinets. “Something spesh. Here for eye treatment. Wears a patch—”

I said I’d seen her. And wondered why I hadn’t noticed her around the lobby or the dining-room or the elevators in the five days she’d been here. “Like to look at her bill, Reidy.”

He got it from the 20-2400 cashier. It didn’t tell much except that in the hundred-odd hours since checking in, Miss T. Marino and maid had spent a nice snug total of $311.40 for Restaurant and Bar. Also that she had quite a flock of clothes and wasn’t backward about sending them to the cleaners in large batches.

Further, that she had a loose hand with a telephone, both local and L.D. There were quite a lot of the long-line charges. None of them were to Dallas. Or any place in Texas. There were six to Lexington, Kentucky. One for each day. One extra for Saturday.

Reidy cocked a canny eye at me. “Something?”

“Thing that killed the cat, that’s all. Saw her few minutes ago with a lad who didn’t seem in her handicap division. Always thinking of the guests’ welfare. See framed motto.”

He wasn’t fooled. “Want me to put her on the Watch List?”

“I’ll do it if it’s necessary.” Reidy’s a right boy, but like all assistant managers, suffers from the illusion he can boss the security office around. “You skin your own snakes.”

“Hope you lose every bet at the Garden.” He grinned.

I went out to see Pete Zingara.

“Miss Marino? Zounds and gadzooks!” Zingy did a soft-shoe break beside the bell desk. “Halfies all the time. Never less than halfies. Sometimes she gives with the buck, on drugstore errands. For headache powders, stuff from the prescription, like that.”

“Order much of that, does she?” Only customer I hate more’n a glass-smashing drunk is one of those sleeping-pill beauties. If she was one.

“Nah, not so much.” He saw I was serious. “She’s swell folks. Owns a flock of oil wells or something. But nice and quiet, I mean. Real friendly. And that maid of hers — whoo-deedoo!”

“Ever notice one particular friend of hers?” I described the joe in the oversized tux.

“I know ’m.” He pinched his nose between thumb and forefinger; Zingy’s quite a buster with that sign language; maybe he has Indian blood in him. “I hear he’s been hangin’ around heavy, I saw him there one mornin’ when I was double-dutying, and even then he was dipping into the clear broth of bourbon, but not in his pocket. Lets her put out with all the cash. But,” he held up a palm, traffic-cop style, “I never hear he’s making like love in bloom. You ask me, Mister V.—”

“I’m asking.”

“He’s not her joy friend; he’s strictly for biz. I wouldn’t know what the deal is, but—”

“But from here in, you’ll keep your ears fanned out. Swell. Do so.” I went upstairs to the head housekeeper’s office.

Ada Munster’s a sad-faced, stringy-haired, skinny old gal with an eighteen-carat heart and a full quota of savvy about human nature. She’d have to have the savvy, after being in charge of twelve hundred bedrooms for three hundred and sixty-five nights a year, ten years. Be surprised some of the peculiar things you learn about people, making up bedrooms.

“I didn’t want to bother you.” She hauled a pillow slip out of a paper laundry bag on a chair beside her desk. “It’s not enough, we have to salvage linens after all the lipstick smears and even tallow,” she pointed to a turquoise nylon spread with little dime-sized discs of wax on it, “but oil!”

I smelled. Light machine oil. “You said there was something else?”

She turned the slip over, pointed to fine, sandy hair-clippings about an eighth of an inch long, embedded in the percale. “She has black hair, Mister Vine. Her maid has black, too.”

“Thanks, Ada.” There’s no law against sleeping with a revolver under your pillow, though it puts a guest on the Watch List and keeps him there. But we do have rules about unregistered males in the beds of female guests. Those hairs were from a freshly barbered he. Miss Marino’s sandy-haired escort, down in the lobby, had been well-groomed. “I’ll check on it, Ada. Anything else?”

“Well—” she looked unhappy, “we don’t wish to complain about guests who can afford that kind of suite. But the maids say they never can get in either of the bedrooms until late in the afternoon, sometimes, as tonight, not before four-thirty. That makes it hard for us, with so many rooms to rack up, and really it is quite unusual for a lady to want to be in her suite all day with the beds unmade! Don’t you think?”

I did think. “Where’s the maid who had sense enough to spot that gun stain?”

“Elsie Dowd? Mrs. Dowd’s still up on the twenty-first. I can call her—”

“Never mind. I’ll go up. Tell her she rates an extra day’s vacation pay. Thanks a lot, Ada.”

Elsie was checking off soap and tissue on her stock list beside the 2100 linen closet.

“I hope I didn’t make any trouble for Miss Marino, Mister Vine.” Elsie was fiftyish and sallow-eyed; she was a little frightened. “She’s been real nice to me, personally.”

“Tips you? All that?”

“Oh, most of them do. But Miss Marino makes you feel she’s interested in you. She’s so sweet. But it’s these men—”

“Plural?”

“Understand, I’m not suggesting anything wrong.” She was uneasy. “But there are generally a couple of men around. There’s one in her suite right now—”

“Probably her cousins.” I gave her a reassuring shoulder pat. “Think no more about it.”

I thought about it. No hotel likes a male patron who invites women up to his suite, particularly in the evening. But any good house would rather have a dozen like such than one woman who attracts men to her suite. That’s bad. For business, I mean.

I knocked at the 21MM living-room door.

No answer.

I rattled keys.

A gruff bass voice: “Who you want?”

“This the house officer.”

“Miss Marino’s not here.”

“Open the door.”

“Hell I will.” He sounded tough.

“You’re not registered in this suite.” I raised my voice so Elsie would hear me and come along the corridor. “Open up, or I will.”

“Try it!” he growled. “You’ll damn well wish you hadn’t.”

In my book there’s only one thing to do in a case like that.

So I did it.

Chapter two:

Streak of blood

Ordinarily, I’d never have walked in on him, cold like that. Not after a warning. Especially not after learning some party’d been snoozing with a persuader under his pillow!

Thing would have been for me to stay out there in the corridor, watch all three of the suite’s doors, and send Elsie to phone for Duman. Then we’d have had two witnesses to any action which might lead to a suit against the hotel.

But this seemed to be an emergency. The guest was out. Somebody else was in her suite. If the guy was there with her permission, still I’d be entitled to look into this free-wheeling pretty who entertained her men friends in our bedrooms.

So I used my master key, gave the door a push, stepped back fast enough to make it tough for him to get a snap shot at me, but not so sudden he couldn’t see me.

Fifteen steps farther along was the door to the suite’s east bedroom. I got to it, quick and quiet. While I was unlocking it, I called to Elsie, loud enough to cover the click of the latch, “Phone Mister Duman, ask him to hustle up.”

I went in, catfoot. The twins were made up. The spreads weren’t mussed. No men’s clothes around. No male brushes or such on the bureau. Only a trace of parfum de panatella. From a ten-cent cigar, if I’m any judge.

The door to the long living-room was half open. Through it I could see the back of a white linen suit. The man was close to the door of the bedroom on my side. I was only ten feet away when I saw him. His left elbow leaned on the bulgy-eyed television set all those double-letter suites are equipped with. Shielded by the cabinet, his right hand hung down so the automatic he held would be hidden from anyone coming in from the corridor to the living-room.

All I could see was that narrow-shouldered but nicely tailored back, the thick and well-tanned neck. And the gun.

He was concentrating on that door so it was no trick to come up behind, grab his wrist before he heard me.

He didn’t battle. Just used one explosive obscenity, then kept still, vocally and otherwise.

While I was prying the gun out of his paw I started to make a crack about house rules forbidding the brandishing of weapons. But when he twisted around so I got a look at his face — I didn’t bother to finish. I was more astonished than he’d been.

He didn’t recognize me; least he didn’t know who I was; he might have noticed me around the lobby. But the tenseness didn’t go out of those smooth, freshly barbered college-boy features which contrasted so handsomely with the curly white hair. That hair was by way of being his trade-mark, so thick and tight it might have been a wig carved out of marble. It really did have the polished look of marble.

I’d have known him, of course, even if he hadn’t been a spectacularly splurgish patron of the Plaza Royale. Even with his ten-dollar cravat a bit on the bias and his brown-agate eyes squinting with alarm, he could have marched smack off the front cover of that weekly which had run his portrait in color, week or so ago. All he needed was that background the mag had used as a frame for his picture — the horn of plenty spewing out a cornucopian flood of slick convertibles, summer cottages, shiny refrigerators, outboard motors, movie projectors, washing machines, all showered round with coins of the realm. Yair, sure. Dow Lanerd.

I laid the automatic on the coffee table beside a silver bowl with yellow lilies floating on water. “Maid reported a man in this suite, Mister Lanerd.” I knew the sandy hair-clippings hadn’t come from his cranium. He wouldn’t have been smoking cheap stogies in this social-register atmosphere.

“Naturally I’m here by invitation.” He kept his face toward the corridor door. “What right have you to force your way in here, Mister—”

“Vine. Gilbert Vine. All the right in the world. If we learned that some unauthorized individual was prowling your suite, you’d expect us to investigate. Why object to letting a house officer in here?”

“Didn’t believe you were — an officer.” He sauntered to the coffee table, waited a second to find out if I’d say, ‘Mustn’t touch!’ When I didn’t, he picked up the automatic, slid it in his pocket, kept his hand there. But he wasn’t watching me; whatever danger he anticipated would evidently come from the corridor.

“Realize you have a job to do, Vine. Only I’m not exactly unauthorized. I’m registered here. My rooms happen to be just across the corridor — and since I had business to discuss with Miss Marino, I came across for a chat. Then she had to leave, asked me to wait until she returned.”

I let him see I didn’t buy it. “Didn’t look to me as if you were waiting for a lady.”

He gave out with one of the famed Lanerd boyish grins — a small-boy grin, partly sheepish, partly mischievous. Hard to dislike a man with a grin like that. “What’d be your reaction, if you’d been in a pretty girl’s apartment, suddenly a gruff voice demanded immediate entrance?”

“Worried about her husband?” I knew it hadn’t been that. If he’d feared what the tabs call a Jealous Mate, he’d have done what any other man would do — scramoose through one of the bedrooms, out to the corridor.

“She’s not married.” He approached the door, hesitated, peered down the corridor toward the elevators, twisted around to look in the opposite direction, came back in, shut the door. “But it wouldn’t surprise me if she had some close friend. Be easy to misconstrue the reason for my being here.”

“It certainly would have. When’ll Miss Marino be back?”

“Can’t tell you.”

“No?” That burned me. For him to think I could be dumb enough to believe she’d ask this hundred-thousand-a-year biggie to hang around her hotel room until her indefinite return. Or that he’d remain, on any such vague basis. “Where’d she go?”

“Couldn’t say.”

“Know who she went with?” From the door of the west bedroom, I gave it the quick runover. Lingerie on one boudoir chair. Mules and nylons on the floor beside it. Gold brush and mirror on the dresser alongside a flock of crystal bottles, lacquered jars.

“Some friend.” Lanerd kept that winning smile on his face. “Wouldn’t it be better if you asked her, when she gets back?”

“I’ve known occasions when an early question saved a lot of trouble later. F’rinst—” I pointed to dark marks on the pile of the chartreuse broadloom, curving in a crazy parabola toward the door from the bedroom to the corridor, “why did somebody feel it necessary to move the bureau against her door? That was done after the maid vacuumed in here.”

Lanerd chuckled, a forced chuckle. “Some women never can stay in any place without shifting the furniture to see how it’ll look in a different arrangement. ‘Now, if the beds were only catercorner instead of straight against the wall,’ or ‘How would it be if—’”

“—we stopped horsing.” His assumption he was putting over that mahaha got under my skin. “I saw Miss Marino down in the lobby just now. Be my guess she was afraid of somebody then. I come up here, find you ready to plug any unwelcome intruder. Then there’s this, sometime after the maids were here this afternoon, she felt it was necessary to block the door with furniture. Then it was moved back where it belongs. People don’t do it for laughs.”

“Well—” Lanerd dropped the kidding attitude. “Not exactly, perhaps. But it isn’t as serious as you imagine.” He went to the video set again, inspected his wrist watch. “I’ve pledged my word not to tell a soul. But I’m going to tell you, because I can see you’re the persistent kind who’ll keep on until you’ve dug out the answer — and spilled the whole keg of nails, meantime.”

I said, “Damn white of you,” just to be saying something — anything — except what was running through my mind.

How’d you get that blood on your hand?

It was still moist; a thin streak of blood, glistening like a fresh scratch on the back of my left hand. It was no scratch. I hadn’t cut myself.

“There’s nothing sinister about it,” Lanerd was saying. “It’s all in a spirit of good, clean fun.”

He switched on the video set.

Chapter three:

Missing steak knife

My gang at those Friday night Dealer’s Choice Association gatherings will testify I’m far from psychic. But any dummy in a Fifth Avenue window could have sensed something nokay in that suite.

The blood — and the gun — were plain implications. And no security chief can afford violence in his hotel, however much he may admire it from the ringside at Madison Square. Naturally the front office doesn’t expect me to be wise to all the details every time something illegal or immoral goes on behind one of our twelve hundred locked doors. But the management does have a quaint method of insuring against too frequent trouble; unless the head man of the protection staff is sharp enough to catch the warning of those offbeat incidents which break into the regular rhythm of routine, he hunts for another job, but sudden. Hotels, like cars, ought to run smooth and quiet.

The indications of trouble in Suite 21MM were as plain as red blinkers at a grade crossing. Still, could be the troubles weren’t any of my business. I had to bear that in mind; the management being so skittish about being sued by annoyed guests.

Natural reluctance to run into people while wearing an eye patch might have kept a good-looking gal more or less hidden in her rooms for five days. She could have private reasons for two-ing around with a hard-eyed customer in a misfit dinner jacket. There could even be plausible justification for a guy sleeping in a gal’s hotel suite when they weren’t registered as man and wife.

But the blood on my hand was a tough one to explain. I had to find out about that. Even at the risk of offending the big billboard-and-broadcast man.

The gun was the only item I was sure I’d touched since coming in the suite. But if there’d been blood on my hands when I wrangled the automatic away from him, some would have smeared that nice white linen suit. It hadn’t. His sleeve was spotless.

Watching him fiddling with the dials, some of the stuff I’d read in that magazine came back to me:... a playboy who does his most dynamic work while having fun... who goes at sport as aggressively as if it was a top-drawer business deal... shoots golf in the middle seventies... flew his own six-place jet job to Alaska for black bear... sailed his ketch to Easter Island recently for monster marlin...

There’d been pages of such guff; he was a crack squash-rackets man, one of the country’s best off the high diving-board, what it added up to — no panty-waist, he. If the kingpin of Lanerd, Kenson & Fullbright had been jittery enough to carry side arms, there was more in the wind than cheap cigar smoke.

“No use handing you a lot of horse, Vine.” Now he was giving with the man-to-man approach. No more winning grin. Just a good, honest scowl. “I don’t like this business one damn bit.”

“Makes us even.” I wasn’t certain we were talking about the same thing.

“Suppose not. Well, you may know I have something to do with certain television programs.” He kept his face toward me but his eyes were cocked up at a corner of the ceiling, the way people do when they’re trying to hear a sound behind them.

“Practically subsidize the networks, don’t you?” The bleached-wood top of the coffee table was clean as a hound’s molars. The blood hadn’t come from that.

“Putting it a bit strong.” His smile registered appreciation. “Our clients have several of the high-rated programs. This Stack O’ Jack simulcast which’ll come on here in a second is rather outstanding among audience-participation shows, one of the most popular our agency has developed.” He talked at me but turned his head to one side. His ears would have to be better than mine, to hear anything out in the corridor, over the whoopdeedo booming from the loud-speaker — a blare of trumpets and an announcer who sounded as excited as if he was describing a knockdown in a heavyweight championship:

“Hear-Ye... See-Ye... Whee-Ye!... It’s Stack... O’ Jack... time!”

On the screen, a banner waved sequin-spangled letters:

E-V-E-R-Y-B-O-D-Y P-L-A-Y-S

THE KOBLER GLOVE CORPORATION PAYS A STACK O’JACK

Biggest Prizes on the Air

You Can Play It Anywhere

The banner lifted to reveal thick packets of bills, tall piles of silver ducats, a water cooler packed to the spigot with half dollars, a plastic sack big enough to hold a bushel of wheat but crammed full of quarters. All coyly labeled to goose the imagination: $10,000, $7500, $5000, $2500.

It occurred to me I might have grabbed hold of the set during our disarming act. “Never happened to catch your show, Mister Lanerd. Conflicts with the fights.”

He gave out with a prop ha-ha. “You’d get more attractive odds on Stack O’ Jack than at the Garden.” He wondered why I was examining the set, but didn’t ask.

There wasn’t any blood on the cabinet or the carpet around it. “I’ve heard about it. You put on some guess artist, keep him hidden from the audience, but let ’em hear his voice or see the back of his haircut, then pay off if the party you call long distance can identify. That the setup?”

“Guess artist? Very good. Yes.” He did hear something out in the hall then; his hand slid down into the pocket where he had the gun. “Yes. Not quite as simple as that, perhaps. If you watch here for a minute—”

I only half paid attention to the luscious creech who appeared on the screen in close-up, pulling on a pair of gloves, caressing the fingers the way dames do. She had a sensational pair of shoulders; that was about all I noticed because she sat with her back to the cameras, in front of a dressing-table with one of those trick mirrors, counting the reflections; forty snugly gloved fingers frolicked around while some syrupy announcer drooled:

“To you who already appreciate the incomparable luxury of Smoothskin Handwear — to you who plan to compliment your sense of well-being when next you need fine gloves — the Kobler Glove Corporation offers truly the chance of a lifetime — the opportunity to win twenty-five thousand dollars in cash: Twenty... Five... Thousand... Dollars!”

Generally, when people come up with those impressive figures, I listen. Often as not here in the Plaza Royale they actually have that kind of corn and aren’t just blowing Broadway bubbles. But I couldn’t keep my mind on what the spieler was selling; I’d just remembered what it was I’d touched. The door. The door or the jamb leading from the living-room into Miss Marino’s bedroom and bath.

I went to it while violins began to moan about those Pa-a-ale Hands I Loved Beside the Shalimar.

The hand that had touched the inside of that door hadn’t been so pale.

No doubt about its being a hand; marks of the fingers were still there, sticky-thick crimson blotches on the inside of the French-gray door. Four fingers of a right hand, the marks weren’t large enough for me to be sure whether they’d been made by a man or woman.

There were only those four prints, about a foot above the lock. And on the edge of the door, where it fits the jamb, the thumb had left another smear. That had been before the door had been closed; there was a corresponding streak on the metal jamb. The mark I’d gotten on my hand had come from that edge of the door, where I’d pushed it open a little.

When I turned around Lanerd was watching the screen, but standing so he could have seen me peer around the door, at the jamb.

“This is what I want you to see, Vine.” He beckoned, as some ill-mannered guests do to a bellman.

I didn’t move. I could see all I wanted from where I stood.

On the tube, another cutie was playing a piano, the camera shooting down on the keyboard from above so only her hands and forearms showed. Not even the shoulders, this time.

I don’t know enough about ivory technique to tell whether she was good or not, but her playing was brisk and full of spirit.

The tune was We Won’t Go Home Until Morning; but the words some baritone was enunciating carefully weren’t the ones I knew:

“These are the hands of a charmer

Millions of people have seen

In magazines, newspapers, movies,

And now — on our Stack O’ Jack screen—”

The camera pushed right down close on the hands. The hands and keyboard vanished. A huge question mark took the center of the bulb.

“You understand now, Vine?” Lanerd gave me the chummy, confidential tone, the buddy-to-buddy lift of the bushy gray eyebrows.

“No.” I took a step away from the bedroom door, but stopped, hearing the soft snick of a key in a door lock close by.

“The Stack O’ Jack secret.” Apparently he hadn’t heard the key. “The answer to the twenty-five-thousand-dollar question.”

“Oh.” The door from the corridor to the bedroom began to swing. I stepped into the living-room where I couldn’t be seen, but could peek at reflections in the bureau mirror.

“Miss Marino.” He was beginning to be irritated. “She’s Miss Hands! We’ve been working our tails off to keep her under cover. All sorts of crackpots try to find out who she is — where she lives — so now you see—”

What I saw was a black jacket, a starched shirt, a thin, pale face — in the mirror. I stepped back into the bedroom.

The weak, watery, china-blue eyes of Auguste, our senior room-service captain, opened very wide. Auguste was around fifty; he must have been carrying a napkin over his arm most of his half century; he had all the professional deformities — stoop shoulders, flat feet, an expression of weary disillusionment.

“Mister Fine! Ah, hello — Mister Fine.”

“What you after, Auguste?”

He wiped the back of his left hand with the long, thin bony fingers of his right. “Nozzing of importance, Mister Fine.”

“No?” I went up to him. He still held the pass key between the thumb and forefinger of his right hand; it wiggled while he massaged the knuckles of the other hand. “You usually bust in a suite like this without knocking?”

“I had been told; Miss Marino told me, there would be no one here at this time. So I do not bozzer to knock.”

Lanerd moved in behind me.

“Hi, Auguste. What’s ’a matter?”

“Is only one of the pieces does not come back with the serving-table, Mister Lanerd. So we make check-off. I find it is mizzing. I come back for it, is all.”

“What piece?” I asked.

“A knife, Mister Fine. One of our bone-handled sszteak knifes. Perhaps you haf seen it?”

“No,” I told him. “But I’ll have a look around for it.”

“Pardon, Mister Fine. Is not my intention to bozzer you.”

“That’s all right, Auguste. If I find it, I’ll let you know.”

He said, “Thank you ferry much,” and, “Good efening, Mister Lanerd,” and bowed himself out. I thought he looked more unhappy than usual. If that was possible.

Dow Lanerd slapped my shoulder. “Well, now you’ve been taken behind the scenes, Vine—”

“Haven’t been,” I said. “But I’m going to have a look there, right now.”

Chapter four:

Sitting corpse

Our chariot trade entertains the notion that an assistant manager is merely a convenient mustache stationed in the lobby so upon request he can direct the high-heeled half of our clientele to “the first door on the left upstairs on the mezzanine.” Truth is, some bow ties aren’t good for much else. Reidy Duman is.

Reidy doesn’t make with a headwaiter’s hot buttered hauteur. But he chums with our upper-crust patrons as easily as he gets along with the staff. High score in any hostelry.

So I was glad to see his long-nosed, cleft-chinned countenance poking in from the other bedroom, a minute after Auguste left.

For one thing, the Plaza Royale has a rock-ribbed rule: never unlock a closet in absence of guest — unless an assistant manager is nigh. For another, I couldn’t search the suite and keep an eye on Lanerd, at the same time.

It wouldn’t be fair to suggest he was acting like a man who’d used a steak knife with felonious intent; I’d had no experience along those lines. But he wasn’t acting with the aplomb you’d expect of a business wizard with an international rep. I didn’t turn my back on him, tell you that.

“You dine here in the suite, Mister Lanerd?”

“No.” He didn’t seem to be paying attention to the Stack O’ Jack yammer-yammer any longer; wasn’t even watching the screen. “I have to speak at that banquet downstairs, hour or so. Miss Marino had dinner here with her maid, far’s I know.”

The whoop-it-up lad on the program soothed some party at the other end of the phone, for having guessed Miss Mystery was Dinah Shore and anyhow she was still a great big winner because wasn’t she getting a fine pair of Koblers for free? “How long you been here, Mister Lanerd?”

“About fifteen minutes.” Lanerd backed against the wall as Reidy came in from the other bedroom. If he wasn’t rigid with apprehension, he gave a good imitation of it.

“Evening.” Reidy sensed electricity in the air. He was bland as butter. “Everything all right?” He might have been addressing the wonder-boy.

I answered, “Trying to find out, Reidy. Guest’s out of her suite. Mister Lanerd’s here at her invitation but doesn’t know when she’ll return.” I didn’t mention that he couldn’t have been in the suite with her more than a couple of minutes, if his statement about arriving fifteen minutes ago was on the up and up. It had been just that long since I saw her in the lobby.

“Wait, wait now, Vine.” Lanerd made that ducal gesture of the vertical palm. “Since it’s been necessary to let you in on our secret, no reason you shouldn’t know Miss Marino’s expected back right after the show.” He checked with his wrist watch. “Say, twenty-five minutes.”

He acted as if that explained everything. It didn’t clarify the reason for his standing guard over an empty room, while this Mystery Mamma was at the studio. But Reidy nodded sagely, as if he understood everything, including my going to work with master keys on the two big closets opening off the living-room.

I gave him the gist while I opened doors, switched lights on and off, peered in at empty coat hangers, rawhide luggage marked with T.M.

“Miss Marino’s the gimmick-girl on Mister Lanerd’s Stack O’ Jack video showdeo. They’ve been keeping her under cover; anybody who spotted her as the Mystery Miss would be in line for twenty-five thousand, if he happened to be on the right phone at the same time.”

“The name doesn’t mean much to me.” Reidy shrugged. “But I can understand now why we haven’t seen much of her.”

“Yair, sure.” I wasn’t sure. Those tower suites are all air-conditioned, but I was sweating like a fry cook at the fat kettle. I’d keyed my way into one guest’s rooms, strong-armed another important patron, and trumpeted a hurry call for an assistant manager. For what?

A gun. A splotch of blood. A missing steak knife. But so far, nothing else. Empty closets in the old corral. If that was all, one and all would be extremely vexed. With reason.

Lanerd trailed me into Miss Marino’s bedroom, stood a yard away from the blood-prints on the door without noticing them, apparently, while I gave the quick peek under the twin beds. Blanko.

“Marks on the carpet.” I wanted to wise Reidy to the fact there was more reason for my snooping than met the casual glance.

Reidy knew what the marks meant, took the ball away from me for a minute. “Why should Miss Marino want to block her door? Strictly against fire regulations, you know.” He might have been speaking to me.

Lanerd started to explain. “My agency has naturally insisted on her taking all possible precautions for remaining incognito—” He didn’t finish.

I’d switched on the bulb in the closet nearest the corridor in Miss Marino’s bedroom; Lanerd and Reidy could see the legs the second the light went on. Man’s legs amid a mass of femme footwear. Big legs in black dress pants, big feet stretched out so polished toes glinted in the glare.

I got down on one knee, pulled the hangered dresses and night things aside so I could see the rest of him. He’d been propped up with his back to the closet wall and his knees hunched up under his chin. His right hand lay on a pair of golden slippers.

His head lolled over on one side; the eyes were open, so was his mouth. He wasn’t as big as his legs had made me expect, but he must have been over six feet; the long, narrow, bony face made him look tall. It wasn’t a handsome face but its thin, high forehead lent him a look of alertness. For all the good it may have done him.

Lanerd muttered, “Crysake! For crysake! That’s torn it!”

Reidy stayed behind Lanerd, called past the adman’s shoulder, “Dead, Gil?” He knew the answer.

I bent over so I could see the gashes in the back of the dead man’s tux between the shoulder blades, the soggy streaks crawling like snail slime down toward the small of his spine. Maybe you get used to that sort of thing if you see enough of it. Looking at that was more than enough for me. I had to swallow hard before I said, “Somebody worked on him with a knife.”

I shoved back the silkies on the dress hangers, looked in the corners of the closet for the steak knife. It wasn’t there.

Reidy asked what a hotel man naturally would, “He a guest, Gil?”

“Doubt it.” Without moving him too much, I felt in the dead man’s pockets for a wallet or keys or letters. The wallet was there; there was silver in his pockets; I didn’t remove either. There was a holster under his left armpit. It was loaded. He’d never had a chance to pull it.

Lanerd cleared his throat. “Name was Roffis. He was a — a guard — here to protect our star performer—”

“She wasn’t the only one who needed protection.” Reidy’s face was oyster-gray.

I knew what Duman was thinking, but it didn’t seem possible. If Lanerd had done the butcher job, his clothes would have shown it. It wasn’t reasonable to suppose he’d have waited around the suite after the murder. There were other points, but I didn’t want to go into them then. I went to the phone.

“Hold it! Hold it, godsake!” Lanerd made his stop-sign gesture again. “You don’t want to call the cops!”

“I don’t?” I picked up the handset. “Let me have Mona, honeychile. This’s Mister V.” Mona’s our switchboard super, a very crisp cookie in the headwork department.

Lanerd held out both palms, pleading, “There’s a hell of a lot of things you don’t know about this business. If you’ll wait about ten minutes, Miss Millett will be back and—”

“Millett?”

“That’s right, that’s right!” Lanerd smoothed his carved-marble hair with both hands. “Miss Marino is Tildy Millett.”

Reidy was startled. “The Queen of Skates? Here in the house?”

“Oh, oh!” My surprise wasn’t due to her checking in under a nom de hotel. Plenty of people do, besides the John-Smith-and-wife couples who check in those midtown flea-bags after the niteries close. What jolted me was that I’d seen the Sweetheart of the Silver Skates, that’s the way they usually billed her, half a dozen times at the Music Hall, and she hadn’t looked anything like the lovely señorita with the fancy comb.

Lanerd went on distractedly. “That’s why she wears that eye-patch disguise and keeps out of sight all she can. But—”

Mona murmured, “’Sme, Mister V. What’ll it be?”

“Slight delay,” I told her. “I’ll call back. Sit on this plug, will you?”

She said she would. I racked the phone, turned to Lanerd.

“Your idea she murdered this guy?” I asked.

“No, no.” He groaned. “Stake my life she didn’t. It’s worse than that. The person who did that” — he stared at Roffis in horror — “is trying to kill her, too.”

Chapter five:

D.A. cover-up?

Back when a security officer didn’t resent being called house dick to his face, it was sometimes possible to put the shush on a murder in a hotel. A freemealing district captain would occasionally return past favors by hustling an assistant medical examiner over to certify the corpse before newshounds got wind of the crime. But there’ve been some changes made.

Even in those days, a homicide in the suite of a notable couldn’t have been kept quiet. Especially a nationally known character like Tildy Millett. She was what you might call a famous figure; the simplest silhouette of any trim-limbed femme in a short, flared-out skirt was merely a trade-mark for Tildy. Dame like that would be news if she did nothing more’n switch from one brand of face powder to another.

Tildy Millett, the name was up there in incandescent lights somewhere on the Main Stem practically all the time. The crowds who’d swarmed to see the Icequadrilles, or made Holiday On Ice a six-week holdover, or seen her Skate Mates in Technicolor, they’d have wolfed any gossip about her. Even before this Mystery Miss hodelyo.

So it didn’t seem as if there was any chance to avoid flash-bulbing and scare-headlining in connection with this dead man.

I felt sorry for the poor guy; probably he’d been an all-right joe whose folks and friends would miss him plenty. But I didn’t know Roffis, whereas I did know just how much grief his death would cause around the Plaza Royale. If Dow Lanerd had any good reason for delaying the yapping of the hounds, I was ready to listen.

I asked if he thought she knew something about the murder.

“She was here with Roffis just before I came across from my rooms.” Lanerd was trying to decide how far into his confidence to take us. “He was supposed to escort her over to the studio. But about ten minutes before the three of them were scheduled to start — her maid Nikky goes everywhere with her — Roffis disappeared. Just like that. They looked through the suite for him, couldn’t find any trace, finally got worried, and called me because they were scared to go out without a guard.”

Reidy looked at the blood-prints on the door. “How about this maid?”

“No, no. Nikky might use a knife on a man — to defend herself.” Lanerd waggled his hand to indicate excitability. “Nikky Narian has what you might call a mercurial temperament. But she’d never have done a thing like this.” He squatted beside me, reached toward the dead man.

I pushed him away. “They’ll be checking everything but the ceiling for prints.” He didn’t push easy. I shoved harder.

He didn’t like that. He wasn’t used to it. His neck got red under the golf-links tan. “Roffis had a key to this suite. I wanted to find out if it’s still on him.”

“Don’t.” I went to the phone. “Mona?”

A brusque voice behind me: “Pudda phone down.” I did as requested. The guy in the door was the prissy-mouth with the misfit tuxedo. He had his right hand in the pocket of his dinner jacket just as Lanerd had. But the newcomer had an uglier scowl.

Lanerd burst out, “Where is she, Hacklin?”

Hacklin shifted his eyes from me to Reidy and back again.

“These hotel people?”

“Mister Vine’s the security chief.” Lanerd waved at me. “The other—”

“Duman.” Reidy frowned. “Assistant manager.”

I asked, “And you?”

With his left hand Hacklin reached around to his hip pocket, brought out a wallet, flipped it open, in one smooth, practiced movement.

From his manner I guessed he was flashing a buzzer, one of those gold-plated items which get plain-clothes men through many a door where they aren’t welcome. But it wasn’t that. It was an identification, complete with photo. Fat type across the top said: Office of the District Attorney, City of New York. Typed-in letters said that Hacklin, Byrd A., was a duly-authorized special assistant to the Prosecutor in charge of homicide investigations.

It only took a couple of seconds, that inspection of credentials. But I did some high-speed cerebration in that brief space.

Something a lot bigger than a video guessing-game was going on, for certain. Special assistants to homicide prosecutors don’t go a-squiring beauteous babes just because a choice sum is at stake!

Hacklin stalked to the closet. Standing in the living-room door he could have seen the body, but I hadn’t been sure he had, until I saw there was no change of expression on his wide, stolid face.

“We been workin’ together six years.” Hacklin’s voice was flat, emotionless. He surveyed the body for a long breath. “He stood up for my kid’s christening, last month.”

“Tough.” I meant it.

“Any idea who gave it to him?”

I said, “Somebody with a steak knife. All we know.”

“Who found him?”

I said I had; Hacklin studied me impassively. Lanerd gripped Hacklin’s shoulder. “Didn’t Tildy come back from the studio with you?”

“She gave me the run-around. She and that tricky maid.” Hacklin satisfied himself the gun was still in Roffis’s holster. He slid his hand down to the dead man’s right leg, let his fingers rest there a second, patted the knee several times rapidly. “I can stick with a female most places, but when she begs off to go to the john, lets me out. There’s a corridor outside that new studio, between it and the can. I waited across the hall. After ten minutes I sent one of the actresses in; Miss Millett and the maid had scramoosed.”

Reidy frowned. “Doesn’t mean she killed this man.”

Hacklin eyed him bleakly. “Don’t strain your brain speculating about this. It’s official business. My business. Herb was my partner. I don’t want any theorists mucking around with it. All I want you to do is lock your lip and get out of here. Oh, one thing. Call Spring four nine-one-two-one on a pay phone. Ask for Schneider. Tell him to jump over here fast. Got that? Four nine-one-two-one.”

Reidy didn’t care much for the way it was put to him. He looked to me for a cue. In his book I’m the guy to be giving orders when trouble is busting around the Plaza Royale. That’s how my book reads, too. But I’d been working in the dark up to then. I wanted more light before I began to throw my weight around. So I reassured Reidy.

“We’re all in a fog. But Hacklin seems to know the road. Let him drive, time being.”

Hacklin growled, deep in his throat, as if he was minded to tell me off. But he didn’t. He repeated, “Don’t call through the hotel switchboard. And don’t come back up here, or tell a damn soul what’s happened. Thanks.”

Reidy nodded dourly. “Spring four nine-one-two-one, Schneider.” He flicked me on the arm with the back of his hand, took a parting shot at the bull in the china shop. “You’re in charge, Gil.” He went away before Hacklin tried to challenge that last remark.

Lanerd began, “What, for godsake, we going to do about—”

Hacklin rubbed one hand over his face as if to shut out the whole scene — the dead man, all of us. “Tell you what you’re going to do, Mister Lanerd. You’re going to chase over to Video City, get hold of anybody who might have seen Miss Millett depart, anybody who had any idea where she went.”

“Hell, I can’t! I’m due to make a speech downstairs at a convention banquet in just about—”

“Hell with your social obligations.” None of the deference due the Great Man in Hacklin’s tone. “Get over there, find out where she went, where she is. Don’t argue. We’ve played it your way long’s we’re going to. Herb wouldn’t be dead now if we’d done if different.”

Lanerd agreed with poor grace. “I’m sorry about Roffis. Damn sorry. I’ll do what I can to find Tildy.”

“Phone me when you get to the studio.”

“Right.”

“I don’t have to ask you to keep quiet about this?” Hacklin asked wearily.

“No, no.” Lanerd seemed to be glad to get out.

On the chance the hotel’s name might somehow be kept out of the tabloids, I let Hacklin know where I stood.

“One thing sure, you don’t have to ask me!”

“Don’t I?” He had a mean glint in his eye. “That’s where you’re wrong. I’m about to ask you plenty!”

Chapter six:

Dead stoolies don’t sing

Ex-cops never make good house officers. In uniform, they get too used to pushing people around, can’t overcome the habit. That bulldozing approach makes ’em liabilities around a hotel. This Hacklin was demonstrating.

He wasn’t actually a blue, still he had the law behind him. But I couldn’t let him snap that Simon Legree lash at me. Not so any bellman or floor maids could overhear him; the Chinese aren’t the only people sensitive about face. So I threw the first punch.

“Don’t mind my taking that call-back from Lieutenant Weissman, when it comes?”

All I meant was to jolt him out of that browbeating frame of mind. Show him I had friends over at the precinct. What my phoney question did, though, was bring him to me, jaw a-jutting.

“You phoned Harry Weissman?”

“Why not? Harry’s handled grief like this for us before.”

We do get along with the precinct badges; hand them a pinch on a platter now and again.

“You actually speak to him?” The whites of Hacklin’s eyes looked like the bluish skin of a hard-boiled egg left too long in the icebox.

“Not yet.”

“Then don’t.” He put up his left hand to shove me, boys-in-the-back-room style.

I had to make up my mind, fast. Let him get that edge on me, or risk a real muss. If it came to a kilkenny, he’d have, say, forty pounds on me. I only pushed the pointer up to one seventy, dripping wet. Hacklin had beef on his bones. But if he got away with his rough-riding, in no time he’d be ordering me around like a headwaiter bossing a new bus boy.

I took a step back so he wouldn’t rock me on my heels, used both hands to grab the fingers of the one he pushed out at me. He thought I was trying to fend him off, kept shoving. I bent his palm back toward his chest with all the force I could get into it.

He slugged at me with his right. The blow had no force; he was pulling away from me as he punched, bending at the knees, twisting to free his hand from that leverage.

I let go before any bones cracked. You can easy snap a wrist with that judo hold. Hacklin dropped to one knee to save himself from toppling. He looked ugly enough to go for his gun, so I spoke up quick; he could have taken it for salve, if he wanted to.

“I don’t mind playing on your team, coach, but les’ save that strong arm for the other side, hah?”

He came up on both feet, red-faced, hot-eyed. All his downtown training and associations were in favor of his making something of it. I think he would have if I hadn’t pointed to the bedroom door.

“Did you spot these blood-prints, coach?”

He made that great-big-papa-bear noise, deep in his throat. His eyes still smoldered. But he moved them from me to the door. “You must have picked that grip up in a commando unit.”