"Then I'm sorry, it's impossible. The Duke is holding a press conference.
His appointment as British Ambassador was confirmed this evening."
"So I understand," Yolles said. "All the same, our business is important."
While speaking, they had moved from the corridor into the suite hallway.
Now, the Duchess of Croydon detached herself from the group in the living room and came toward them. She smiled agreeably. "Won't you come in?"
The secretary injected, "These gentlemen are not from the press."
"Oh!" Her eyes went to Peter with a glance of recognition, then to the other two.
Captain Yolles said, "We're police officers, madam. I have a badge but perhaps you'd prefer me not to produce it here." He looked toward the living room from where several people were watching curiously.
The Duchess gestured to the secretary who closed the living-room door.
Was it imagination, Peter wondered, or had a flicker of fear crossed the Duchess's face at the word 'police'? Imagined or not, she was in command of herself now.
"May I ask why you are here?"
"There are some questions, madam, that we'd like to ask you and your husband."
"This is scarcely a convenient time."
"We'll do our best to be as brief as possible." Yolles' voice was quiet, but its authority unmistakable.
"I'll inquire if my husband will see you. Please wait in there."
The secretary led the way to a room off the hallway, furnished as an office. A moment or two later, as the secretary left, the Duchess re-entered, followed by the Duke. He glanced uncertainly from his wife to the others.
"I have informed our guests," the Duchess announced, "that we shall be away no more than a few minutes."
Captain Yolles made no comment. He produced a notebook. "I wonder if you'd mind telling me when you last used your car. It's a Jaguar, I believe." He repeated the registration number.
"Our car?" The Duchess seemed surprised. "I'm not sure what was the last time we used it. No, just a moment. I do remember. It was Monday morning.
It's been in the hotel garage since then. It's there now."
"Please think carefully. Did you or your husband, either separately or together, use the car on Monday evening?"
It was revealing, Peter thought, how, automatically, Yolles addressed his questions to the Duchess and not to the Duke.
Two spots of color appeared on the Duchess of Croydon's cheeks. "I am not accustomed to having my word doubted. I have already said that the last occasion the car was used was on Monday morning. I also think you owe us an explanation as to what this is all about."
Yolles wrote in his notebook.
"Are either of you acquainted with Theodore Ogilvie?"
"The name has a certain familiarity . . ."
"He is the chief house officer of this hotel."
"I remember now. He came here. I'm not sure when. There was some query about a piece of jewelry which had been found. Someone suggested it might be mine. It was not."
"And you, sir?" Yolles addressed the Duke directly. "Do you know, or have you had any dealings with, Theodore Ogilvie?"
Perceptibly, the Duke of Croydon hesitated. His wife's eyes were riveted on his face. "Well. He stopped. "Only as my wife has described."
Yolles closed his notebook, in a quiet, level voice he asked, "Would it, then, surprise you to know that your car is at present in the State of Tennessee, where it was driven by Theodore Ogilvie, who is now under arrest? Furthermore, that Ogilvie has made a statement to the effect that he was paid by you to drive the car from New Orleans to Chicago. And, still further, that preliminary investigation indicates your car to have been involved in a hit-and-run fatality, in this city, last Monday night."
"Since you ask," the Duchess of Croydon said, "I would be extremely surprised. In fact it's the most ridiculous series of fabrications I ever heard."
"There is no fabrication, madam, in the fact that your car is in Tennessee and Ogilvie drove it there."
"If he did so, it was without the authority or knowledge either of my husband or myself. Furthermore if, as you say, the car was involved in an accident on Monday night, it seems perfectly obvious that the same man took the car and used it for his own purposes on that occasion."
"Then you accuse Theodore Ogilvie . . ."
The Duchess snapped, "Accusations are your business. You appear to specialize in them. I will, however, make one to the effect that this hotel has proved disgracefully incompetent in protecting the property of its guests." The Duchess swung toward Peter McDermott. "I assure you that you will hear a great deal more of this."
Peter protested, "But you wrote an authorization. It specified that Ogilvie could take the car."
The effect was as if he had slapped the Duchess across the face. Her lips moved uncertainly. Visibly, she paled. He had reminded her, he realized, of the single incriminating factor she had overlooked.
The silence seemed endless. Then her head came up.
"Show it to me!"
Peter said, "Unfortunately, it's been ..."
He caught a gleam of mocking triumph in her eyes.
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."
20
"That woman is lying," Captain Yolles said. "But it'll be hard to prove, if we ever do." He continued to pace, slowly, the length of Peter McDermott's office. They had come here - the two detectives, with Peter - after an ignominious departure from the Presidential Suite. So far Yolles had done little more than pace and ponder while the other two waited.