Free Deadly Joke by Hugh Pentecost Page B

kept him from falling over. His skull had been beaten in like an eggshell.
    “Girl kept her head,” Jerry said. “Closed the door and called the front desk.”
    We were standing just outside the door, looking in. I turned away. I thought I was going to be sick at my stomach. Shaw had been a dark, glowering sort of man. His ugly face was streaked by blood from the awful wounds on his head.
    “I’m only guessing, but I don’t think it was those kids,” Jerry said. “They came in a mob and they all headed for Fourteen B. Shaw wasn’t there with us. Also, the blood has already started to dry. Seems like it happened a little while ago, even before the kids broke into the hotel.”
    “Where’s Hardy?” Chambrun asked.
    “God knows,” Jerry said. “I sent word downstairs. He’s questioning kids somewhere, I imagine.” Jerry took a handkerchief out of his pocket and blotted at the beads of perspiration on his forehead. “I thought I’d better report to you out here, boss. The Maxwells have had about all you could expect them to take for one night. How come Shaw wasn’t in Fourteen B acting like a bodyguard?”
    “Maxwell sent him back to his house to get something he says he needed,” Chambrun said.
    “He’s sitting on a briefcase,” Jerry said. “I didn’t want to move him till Hardy got here.”
    “Weapon?” Chambrun asked. “That wasn’t done with anyone’s fists.”
    “Unless he’s sitting on something beside the briefcase, no weapon,” Jerry said. “Odd thing. He’s wearing a shoulder holster with a police special in it. It looks like he never got it out to protect himself.”
    “Your men outside Fourteen B didn’t hear anything?” Chambrun asked. “Nothing.”
    I should explain the lay of the land. The elevators were at the south end of the building. There were five cars which opened into a sort of foyer on each floor. In the daytime a receptionist sat at a desk on each floor, opposite the elevators. You either turned right or left and then down a corridor. Suite 14B was down the right-hand corridor. This linen room was down the left-hand corridor. Between the two corridors were suites of rooms, back to back, all soundproofed. You couldn’t have heard a bomb go off in one corridor in the other.
    “Shaw wasn’t headed for Fourteen B down this corridor,” Chambrun said. “Where do you think it happened, Jerry?”
    “He was probably dragged here from somewhere,” Jerry said. “Maybe some distance, maybe just a few feet.” He looked down at the dark green carpeting. “Those damned kids trampled all over everything. Maybe when we get down to it we can find some traces of blood.”
    “God knows he bled,” Chambrun said. He turned to me. “See if you can get Watson Clarke out here,” he said. “Somebody’s got to break the news to Maxwell.”
    I went back around the corner to 14B . Miss Ruysdale answered my ring and I put in a request for Clarke. I told her what had happened. She went away, her face expressionless. Clarke joined me.
    “What’s up?” he asked.
    I told him. He looked at me as if I was out of my mind.
    “Stew Shaw?” he said.
    “In what was once the flesh,” I said.
    “My God!” he said. “Do they know who?”
    “Not yet,” I said.
    We rounded the corner to where Chambrun and Jerry had been joined by Hardy and one of his men. Clarke looked into the closet and his breath whistled through his teeth.
    “It is the bodyguard, Mr. Clarke?” Hardy asked.
    “No question,” Clarke said. “Doug told me he’d gone up to the Maxwells’ house to get some papers for him. Somebody must have ambushed him when he came back. But why, Lieutenant? There were other guards. Getting rid of Stew wouldn’t leave Doug open to attack. Dodd’s men were there, outside the door, and Dodd himself.”
    “I arrived just about when you did, Mr. Clarke,” Jerry said. “After the kids had started to run wild downstairs. My first thought was Maxwell. They were screaming they