Random Killer Read Free Page A

murder.”
    Dick looked at me, his eyes widening. “You’re kidding!”
    “I wish I was,” I said. “Thirty-four-oh-six in fifteen minutes—if you keep the others off us.”
    Dick grinned. “Chambrun must be boiling,” he said. “No one that important has a right to get killed in his hotel.”
    Our Richard wasn’t far off the mark. But, I noticed, not shocked by the news. I was to realize before too much time had passed that Geoffrey Hammond was not loved by many people.
    A note about Betsy Ruysdale, who was my next port of call. She looks taller than she is because she carries herself so well, straight and lithe. I’m guessing that she is in her late thirties, but she could be more or less. Someone has said that the older a woman gets the better she gets—up to a point, I suppose. Betsy Ruysdale is well within that point, whatever it is. She is handsome, well groomed, her hair a reddish blond. She dresses conservatively in the office. Chambrun wouldn’t want messenger boys hanging around making eyes at some chick. I’ve seen her at a couple of swank evening functions in the hotel, dressed to kill, and she is gorgeous. I might have had dreams about her if I hadn’t been convinced that Chambrun was both her business and her private life.
    As a secretary she is fantastic. As far as Chambrun is concerned she reads his mind. He orders something done and it has been done before he mentions it. He wants something from the office files and Ruysdale already has it in her hands. She and Chambrun are tuned in on exactly the same wavelength. About a year ago Chambrun disappeared, without explanation, from the hotel for twenty-four hours. The. person who took charge in his absence was Betsy Ruysdale. No one debated it. Every detail that Chambrun had at his fingertips was also at hers.
    Betsy Ruysdale is a very special person and, secretly, I am quite mad for her. But that morning was not a time for daydreams.
    One of the girls from the stenographic pool was at Ruysdale’s desk in the outer office when I got there. Ruysdale was in Chambrun’s office, at the command post. Evidently orders were coming down from 3406.
    “We’d better try to locate Roy Conklin,” I said.
    “He’s on his way,” Ruysdale said.
    I should have known. I told her that I’d had to spill the beans to Dick Barrows in order to keep the other reporters out of our hair. She nodded approval, I thought.
    “Hammond evidently wasn’t popular with his peers,” I said.
    “To put it mildly,” Ruysdale said.
    “It would seem he was having breakfast with someone who didn’t like him,” I said.
    She gave me a thoughtful look. “Jerry doesn’t think we can assume that,” she said. “The person who had breakfast with him could have left before the killer appeared on the scene. Odd thing, Mark. Hammond was a very busy man, on the go every second—appointments, interviews—but Jerry hasn’t found any kind of appointment book, any addresses or telephone numbers. First thing he looked for, to see who was due for breakfast.”
    “Maybe Conklin handles all that for him.”
    Ruysdale tapped a green leather notebook on Chambrun’s desk. “Pierre keeps more in his head than any man I ever knew,” she said. “But appointments and special phone numbers are written down for him. I do it for him if he neglects to. Conklin isn’t around to do my kind of job.”
    “Jerry thinks somebody stole an appointment book?”
    “I’d steal it, wouldn’t you, if you didn’t want anyone to know you’d had breakfast with him?”
    “Sounds logical,” I said.
    “No other signs of robbery,” Ruysdale said. “Money, watch, jewelry like pearl dress studs, all untouched. But no record of any appointments.”
    “He must have had appointments lined up for the day,” I said. “He wouldn’t be sitting around playing solitaire in his room, even if he was keeping his presence here a secret. Where did you find Conklin?”
    “At his office, just a few blocks down