Death After Breakfast by Hugh Pentecost

Duval would rush forward, waving his arms. There was something wrong with the take. More talk to the actors and the camera man, more refreshing of makeup by the experts. There were at least ten takes before Duval, now the star of the evening from the onlookers’ point of view, was finally satisfied.
    I remember glancing at my watch. It was after two A.M. Chambrun had now been missing for twenty-four hours.
    Shirley and I drifted away toward my apartment. It was not a night for love. Shirley understood that love-making, even sleep, were not in the cards for me.
    “I’d like to stay in your apartment in case you need me,” she said. “I brought a change of clothes when I thought something else was on the schedule.”
    “It would be nice to know you’re here,” I said.
    Ruysdale was on my mind. She was living in a private hell, I knew. I changed out of my evening clothes into a sports jacket and slacks, kissed Shirley, and went off down the hall to Chambrun’s office.
    Ruysdale was there as I knew she would be. I was shocked by her appearance. She looked like a ghost of herself. She was sitting at Chambrun’s desk, the telephone only inches away.
    “In case he calls,” she said, and I knew she no longer believed it was going to happen.
    “You’ve got to get some rest,” I said. I tried to make it sound light. “There’s another day coming and we have a hotel to run.”
    It was the wrong note for her. That was always Chambrun’s phrase in times of trouble—“a hotel to run.” Tears welled up into her eyes.
    “The filming went well,” I told her. “I think Garrity was right. It took people’s minds off the Kauffman thing.”
    “Hardy has nothing,” she said in a dull voice. “He’s traced down people who called Laura Kauffman during the evening, three or four who went to Twenty-one C to see her. All business about the ball. There were calls from outside he isn’t able to check. Mayberry went to see her, but we know that. He went to try to get her help in persuading Pierre to change his mind about the filming. Duval talked to her on the phone, same objective. Mayberry, who saw her, says she was fine, everything perfectly normal. Duval says she sounded undisturbed. He had never met her or seen her, only the phone call, so his testimony doesn’t mean much. There’s a gap between the time Mayberry left her and found Pierre waiting in the hall, and an hour and a half later when Jim Kauffman found her. No one appears to have talked to her in that time. No phone calls. Elevator operators don’t remember anyone unusual going to twenty-one. One of them remembered taking Jim Kauffman up, at about twenty to one. By the time Kauffman left two of the elevators were on self-service. He got one of those when he left. Whoever got to Laura managed it without attracting any attention.”
    “Coming or going,” I said.
    Ruysdale nodded. She covered her haggard face with hands that shook.
    “You’ve got to get some rest,” I said. “I’ll stay here by the phone.”
    “Perhaps the couch,” she said. “If you’ll stay—”
    Chambrun has a dressing room and bath that opens off the office. I went there and found a topcoat hanging in his closet. I brought it back, persuaded Ruysdale to lie down on the couch, and covered her with it. Then I took up the post at the desk, the telephone at my elbow.
    I watched Ruysdale and, after a few restless moments, mercifully, she slept.
    I slept too, after a while, my face buried on my arms on the desk. We’d all had just a little more than we could take. I was awakened by Ruysdale pushing me roughly away from the phone. There is no bell, only a little red light that blinks. She had seen it in her sleep.
    “Miss Ruysdale speaking,” she said. And then she cried out in a loud voice. “Pierre!”
    I had the brains to switch on the squawk box on the desk so that I could hear the conversation.
    “Ruysdale, listen to me very carefully,” Chambrun said, his voice cold and