The Evil That Men Do by Hugh Pentecost | eBook

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The Evil That Men Do

A Pierre Chambrun Mystery

By Hugh Pentecost

MysteriousPress.com/Open Road Integrated Media

CHAPTER 1

It was shortly after five o'clock in the morning when a young woman got out of a taxi in front of the Hotel Beaumont, paid the driver, and walked through the revolving door into the hotel's lobby.

The Beaumont is New York's top luxury hotel, but at five in the morning is caught a little off guard, like a glamorous actress discovered in a beauty salon, her face smeared with creams, her hair done up in curlers. At four-thirty in the morning, an army of cleaners bears down on the lobby, the bars, the restaurants, and the ballroom, with vacuum cleaners, brass- and glass-polishing potions, electrically-driven trash wagons, dusters on long poles for cleaning the magnificent chandeliers, old-fashioned buckets and mops, all propelled by old-fashioned elbow grease. The windows of the swank shops off the lobby, displaying jewels, furs, and extravagant women's clothing, and a costly nonsense of toys and small gifts, are dark. The mink draped mannequins stare out at the wall-to-wall green carpeting in the entrance halls and lobby, now being curried like a million-dollar race horse.

The young woman who had come in from the street walked straight to the reception desk. She had no luggage. Mr. Karl Nevers, night reservation clerk, gave her his pleasant, professional smile as she approached. Her belted trench coat didn't completely hide a lush and graceful figure. She had come in out of the gray-darkness of dawn, but she wore dark glasses that made her face, with its high cheekbones and wide scarlet mouth, expressionless.

Hollywood, Karl Nevers thought. Then his professional smile broke into a relaxed grin.

"Miss Standing!" he said, cordially.

"Dorothy Smith," the girl said.

"Whatever you say," Nevers said.

"As you see, I have no luggage," Dorothy Smith said, "and I have no reservation."

Nevers spun a circular card holder, took out a card, and looked pleased. "We can give you your usual suite, Miss er—Smith. It's open for another week, and if you plan to stay longer, I think we could do some juggling."

"I—don't know how long I'll be here," the girl said. She was looking past Nevers at a clock on the far wall. The time was five seventeen. Under the face of the clock was a space that showed the day's date. "This is the fourteenth?" the girl asked.

"Yes, Miss Smith."

A nerve twitched high up on her cheek. She looked quickly away from Nevers.

"I'll have the night bell captain take you up to your suite, Miss Smith," Nevers said. He pressed a button under the desk. There were no clanging bells in the Beaumont.

Mike Maggio, the night bell captain, appeared and his smile, too, was more than professional.

"Nice to see you back, Miss Standing," he said.

"Miss Smith," Nevers said.

"Oh—sure," Maggio said, and looked around for non-existent luggage.

"If you'll just sign the register, Miss Smith," Nevers said, turning the leather-framed registration card the girl's way, pen in place beside it. The girl wrote "Dorothy Smith" quickly.

"Nine F," Nevers said, as he held out a key to Maggio.

Maggio led the way across the lobby to the elevators. A scrubwoman, down on her knees, gave Miss Dorothy Smith an indignant look. Guests should not intrude on the manicuring of the hotel.

In the elevator Maggio tried conversation. "Weather must be great out your way, Miss Standing."

"Smith," the girl said.

"Ooops—sorry," Maggio said. "Spring doesn't seem to want to come here."

"You're sure this is the fourteenth of March?" the girl asked.

"One month to income-tax day," Maggio said.

The elevator door slid open noiselessly. There had been almost no sensation of motion as it had risen to the ninth floor. Maggio led the way to 9F, opened the door, and went in. He went through the routine check of the bathroom, bedroom, and sitting room. The girl stood motionless in the center of the sitting room, almost as if she was unaware of Maggio's presence. He stood opposite her, smiling, waiting for what should come next.

"Anything else I can do, Miss Smith?" he asked.

She turned her head to look at him, startled. Then she opened her bag and looked in it, as if she wasn't certain what she'd find. She brought out a crumpled collection of bills and handed one to Maggio. It was a five.

Maggio beamed. "Let me know if there's anything—"

He didn't finish, because she walked straight past him into the bedroom. She stood looking around her, and then took off the trench coat and dropped it on a chair, along with the soft-brimmed felt hat she'd been wearing. Her hair was a bright natural red.

Then she turned and threw herself, face down, on the bed. Terrible, agonizing sobs shook her....

In addition to a regular credit file on guests of the Beaumont there is a special file, filled out on the orders of Pierre Chambrun, the hotel's resident manager, which tells a great deal more than the name, address, and banking references of a customer. The code-letter A inscribed on a card means that the subject is an alcoholic; W on a man's card means an undue interest in women, possibly the expensive call girls who appear from time to time in the Trapeze Bar; M on a woman's card means a man-hunter; O arbitrarily stands for "over his head," meaning that particular guest can't afford the Beaumont's prices and shouldn't be allowed to get in too deep; in the case of a married couple, the letters MX mean that the man is double-crossing his wife with some other woman, and WX means that the wife is cheating. Pierre Chambrun and his staff know a great deal more about their guests than those guests would like them to know.

The card on Miss Doris Standing was unique. On the subject of credit the notation read: "Unlimited. The second-richest girl in the world." There was a special note in Chambrun's handwriting, distinguished by his little Greek e's, which read as follows: "When she registers as Doris Standing, batten down the hatches. You can expect her to be quickly followed by what someone has called Doris' Standing Army—a collection of irresponsible lunatics. When she registers as Dorothy Smith, you can draw a deep and grateful breath of relief. When the 'Standing Army' appears on the scene, they must be dealt with firmly but with courtesy. They could buy the hotel out from under us if the owner chose to sell."

The owner, Mr. George Battle, lived permanently on the French Riviera, apparently doing nothing more than count his money, which came from oil wells and industrial patents. The Beaumont, which operated at what would have seemed a solid profit under Chambrun's management, was no more than a plaything to Mr. Battle. He liked it for its elegance and for its preservation of a fast-fading way of life in this age of chain management. It was the home-away-from-home of the most important and distinguished people from all over the world. It is possible that Chambrun would have found some way to discourage Miss Doris Standing's patronage, except for the fact that when she and her maniacal crew were setting Europe on its collective ears, her base of operations was the luxurious château owned and lived in by Mr. George Battle. Mr. Battle, rarely amused by anyone or anything, found Doris Standing to be an "original." Escapades, which Mr. Battle would have considered unthinkable involving anyone else, were a source of amusement when invented by Doris Standing. It was Chambrun's theory that Doris Standing's outrageous behavior was condoned by George Battle because she managed, skillfully, to remind him of something he chose to forget the rest of the time—that he was a man.

Chambrun conceded that Doris Standing had a gift for making men of all ages acutely aware of their desires. Chambrun had looked at her himself and wondered whether, shed of his responsibilities, his performance could match the stirrings this extraordinary girl could create in him, a hardened cynic about such matters.

Miss Standing, in Chambrun's book, was dynamite.

In Suite 9F, Doris Standing wept like a helpless child.

If you live or work in the Beaumont you can, if you are observant, learn to tell time without a clock. You would come to know that at precisely six-thirty in the morning the newsstand at the far end of the lobby is opened and a corp of bellboys begin to deliver papers to hundreds of rooms and apartments on the twenty-five floors above them. At precisely seven A.M., Mr. Karl Nevers is relieved at the reception desk by an interim clerk who will be in charge until Mr. Atterbury, the day man, comes on at nine. Nevers, carrying a batch of papers, goes to the fourth floor where there is a lounge and locker room for employees. Also on the fourth floor is the hotel's public relations office. Nevers stops there and drops a sheet of paper in the wire basket on the receptionist's desk. It is a list of all the check-ins and -outs since five o'clock the preceding day, when PR office closed.

At precisely eight A.M., the store windows in the corridors leading to the lobby from Fifth Avenue and from the side-street boundaries of the hotel, are lighted, even though the stores themselves will not open for another hour and a half. Any suggestion of gloom is unthinkable at the Beaumont.

Long before this, hundreds of phone calls have been made to awaken guests, to order breakfasts from room service. These activities are hidden from anyone not very much on the inside.

At precisely eight-thirty, the night crew of bellmen is relieved by a morning crew. Mike Maggio, the night captain, usually has some kind of wisecrack for Johnny Thacker, the day captain. On this particular morning Mike said:

"Doris Standing checked in at five o'clock."

"Oh, God!" Johnny said.

Mike grinned. "As Dorothy Smith."

"You trying to scare me out of six-months' growth?" Johnny asked.

At precisely a quarter to nine, Miss Betsy Ruysdale crosses the lobby to the reception desk and waits to be handed a packet of letters by the clerk. Miss Ruysdale is Pierre Chambrun's secretary and the letters are for her boss. Miss Ruysdale is difficult to describe. Chambrun has many requirements in a personal secretary. She must be efficient. She must be prepared to forget the eight-hour day or any regularity of working hours. She must be chic, but not disturbing. Chambrun doesn't want to be distracted during his working hours—which are roughly twenty hours a day—nor does he want to be offended by anything unattractive. He doesn't want any of the male members of his staff mooning over some doll in his outer office. Nor must they be repelled by the lady whose job it is to anticipate his needs a dozen times a day. Miss Ruysdale, by some miracle, met all these specifications. Her clothes were quiet but smart and expensive. Her manner toward the staff was friendly, touched by a nice humor, but she'd managed to draw an invisible line over which no one stepped. She was clearly all woman; yet, if she belonged to some man, his identity was a secret no one had penetrated. It couldn't be Chambrun. Or could it? He neutered her by calling her "Ruysdale"—never Miss Ruysdale or Betsy.

Miss Ruysdale took her letters and special notes to Chambrun's office suite on the second floor. She invariably arrived there at five minutes to nine. There was a small dressing room off the outer office that was her private domain. She emerged from it at precisely nine A.M., her dark hair drawn severely back from a high forehead. She had nice bones in her face.

The first thing Miss Ruysdale looked at was a copy of the check-ins and outs that Karl Nevers had already left in the PR office. On this occasion she picked up a red pencil from her desk, circled the name "Dorothy Smith," and carried the list into Chambrun's private office. Chambrun's office was not furnished like an office. The Oriental rug on the floor was priceless, a gift from an Indian maharaja who had been rescued from an embarrassing involvement with a lady—about whom he'd been mistaken—by the Beaumont's manager. The desk was Florentine, exquisitely carved. The chairs were of the same period and locale, high-backed, beautiful to look at, and surprisingly comfortable. There was a sideboard by a far wall, on which rested the paraphernalia of a coffee service and a Turkish coffeemaker. There were no signs of office, no files, no visible safe; only the little intercom box on the desk that connected with Ruysdale's desk, and two telephones, one a private line and one connected to the hotel switchboard.

Miss Ruysdale checked the lacquered box on the desk to make certain there was an ample supply of the Egyptian cigarettes Chambrun chain-smoked all day. Satisfied, she went to the sideboard and prepared the first pot of Turkish coffee, which would be followed by a half-dozen others before the day had ended.

Miss Ruysdale looked around the office, walked to the wall facing the big desk, and straightened the blue-period Picasso which hung there, and then went briskly out to her own domain. She glanced at her wrist watch. Chambrun would be arriving for breakfast in exactly fourteen minutes. She checked an impulse to prod the kitchen. They were never late.

Upstairs in Suite 9F, sunlight streamed through the bedroom windows onto the figure of a girl who slept, fully clothed, on the bed. Her pale face looked exhausted in sleep....

Pierre Chambrun, resident manager of the Beaumont, was a small, dark man, stocky in build, with heavy pouches under dark eyes that could turn hard as a hanging judge's, or unexpectedly twinkle with humor. Chambrun had been in the hotel business for thirty-five years and had risen to the top of the field. He ran the hotel without interference from Mr. George Battle, the owner. French by birth, Chambrun had come to this country as a small boy, and now he thought like an American. His training in the hotel business had often taken him back to Europe; he spoke several languages fluently; he could adopt a Continental manner to suit an occasion, but the Beaumont is an American institution and Chambrun kept its atmosphere strictly American.

Chambrun never ate lunch. As resident manager, his busiest time was between the hours of eleven and three—people with complaints, people with special problems, members of the staff confronted by one difficulty or another, outside interests using the hotel for parties, fashion shows, special conferences. The arrivals and departures of celebrities, notables, and the just plain rich required his personal attention. Though there were special departments and department heads for handling the intricacies of travel arrangements, publicity tie-ins, and general bowings and scrapings, Chambrun was always close at hand for the emergencies. He had a gift for delegating authority, but he was always ready to take the full responsibility for touchy decisions. He could make such decisions on the instant, and after thirty-five years in the business he could tell himself, without vanity, that he'd never made a delicate decision he felt later had been an error. A few of them had proved wrong or unworkable, but faced with the same facts again, he would make the same judgement.

Chambrun's breakfast each morning, served at precisely nine-thirty, consisted of juice or fresh fruit in season, lamb chops or a small steak or brook trout or a Dover sole, toast in large quantities with sweet butter and strawberry preserve. And coffee—coffee which he went on drinking all day; American coffee for breakfast, followed by Turkish coffee, sipped in a demitasse until bedtime. At seven o'clock in the evening he ate an elaborate dinner specially prepared to meet the requirements of a gourmet's palate.

Chambrun never looked at the mail or memoranda left on his desk by Ruysdale until he came to his second cup of coffee and his first Egyptian cigarette of the day. The memoranda from the night staff usually involved familiar problems requiring tact as well as iron discipline. Despite its reputation as the top luxury hotel in America, the Beaumont was confronted with many of the same problems as lesser establishments. There were always the drunks, the deadbeats, the call girls—the most expensive in New York but nonetheless call girls—the endless cantankerous guests, the suicides, the heart attacks suffered by elderly gentlemen in the rooms of young ladies not their wives, the whims of elderly dowagers with far more money than they could count, the petty thefts committed by amateurs who were almost always caught, and the professional jobs done by experts who were rarely caught once they had been inadvertently admitted to the hotel.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from The Evil That Men Do by Hugh Pentecost. Copyright © 1966 Judson Philips. Excerpted by permission of MysteriousPress.com/Open Road Integrated Media.
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The Evil That Men Do

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A Pierre Chambrun Mystery

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