Hotel

She had a way, he realized, of bounding back after uncertainty, even if her doubts were only partially resolved. She urged him, "Just go away and think! Think, think, think! Especially about me.

He said - and meant it - "It will be difficult not to."

She put up her face to be kissed and he leaned toward her. He intended to brush her cheek, but she put up her lips to his and, as they touched, her arms wound tight around him. Dimly in his mind an alarm bell jangled. Her body pressed against him; the sense of contact was electric. Her slim fragrance was immediate and breathtaking. Her perfume filled his nostrils. It was impossible, at the moment, to think of Marsha as anything but a woman. He felt his body awaken excitedly, his senses swim. The alarm bell was silenced. He could remember only: Little Miss Preyscott ... would be fun ... for a man to be eaten up.

Resolutely, he forced himself away. Taking Marsha's hands gently, he told her, "I must go."

She came with him to the terrace. His hand caressed her hair. She whispered, "Peter, darling."

He went down the terrace steps, scarcely knowing they were there.

14

At 10:30 p.m., Ogilvie, the chief house officer, used a staff sub-basement tunnel to walk lumberingly from the main portion of the St. Gregory to the adjoining hotel garage.

He chose the tunnel instead of the more convenient main floor walkway for the same reason he had carefully picked the time - to be as inconspicuous as possible. At 10:30, guests taking their cars out for the evening had already done so, but it was too early yet for many to be returning. Nor, at that hour, were there likely to be new arrivals at the hotel, at least by road.

Ogilvie's original plan to drive the Duke and Duchess of Croydon's Jaguar north at one a.m. - now less than three hours away - had not changed. Before departure, however, the fat man had work to do and it was important that he be unobserved.

The materials for the work were in a paper bag he carried in his hand.

They represented an omission in the Duchess of Croydon's elaborate scheming. Ogilvie had been aware of the omission from the beginning, but preferred to keep his own counsel.

In the double fatality of Monday night, one of the Jaguar's headlights had been shattered. Additionally, because of the loss of the trim ring, now in possession of the police, the headlight mounting had been loosened. To drive the car in darkness as planned, the headlight would have to be replaced and its mounting repaired temporarily. Yet obviously it was too dangerous to take the car to a service garage in the city and equally out of the question to have the work done by the hotel's own mechanic.

Yesterday, also choosing a time when the garage was quiet, Ogilvie had inspected the car in its out-of-the-way stall behind a pillar. He had decided that if he could obtain the right type of headlight, he could effect a temporary repair himself.

He weighed the risk of buying a replacement headlight from New Orleans' solitary Jaguar dealer, and rejected the idea. Even though the police were not yet aware - so far as Ogilvie knew - of the make of the car they were seeking, they would know in a day or two when the shattered glass fragments were identified. If he bought a Jaguar headlight now, it might easily be remembered when inquiries were made, and the purchase traced. He had compromised by buying a standard, double-filament North American sealed-beam lamp at a self-serve auto parts store. His visual inspection had shown this might be usable. Now he was ready to try it.

Getting the lamp had been one more item in a tightly crammed day, which had left the chief house officer feeling both satisfaction and an edgy unease. He was also physically tired, a poor beginning to the long drive north which faced him. He consoled himself with remembering the twenty-five thousand dollars, ten thousand of which, as arranged, he had received this afternoon from the Duchess of Croydon. It had been a tense, cold scene, the Duchess tight-lipped and formal, Ogilvie, not caring, greedily stuffed the piled bills into a brief case. Beside them the Duke swayed drunkenly, blear-eyed, and scarcely aware of what was happening.

The thought of the money gave the fat man a pleasant glow. It was safely hidden now, with only two hundred dollars on his person - a precaution in case anything went wrong during the journey to come.

His contrasting unease had two causes. One was awareness of the consequences to himself if he failed to get the Jaguar clear of New Orleans and later Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee, and Kentucky. The second was Peter McDermott's emphasis on the need for Ogilvie to remain close to the hotel.

The robbery last night, and the likelihood that a professional thief was at work in the St. Gregory, could not have occurred at a worse time.