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Collaboration was forgotten or forgiven. People had been under terrible pressure, everyone said. St. Germaine’s widow married an Englishman named Harrison Cleaves, a shipping magnate. The boy, St. Germaine’s son Richard, took his stepfather’s name. According to George Battle he hasn’t forgotten what happened to his father and has spent his adult life hating us and dreaming of retribution in some fashion.”
    “I don’t get it,” I said. “You said at the start that that afraid-of-his-own-shadow creep upstairs had paid for the rope that hanged St. Germaine.”
    “You must learn not to judge a package by its wrapping, Mark,” Chambrun said. “George Battle is afraid of germs, he’s afraid of public transportation—yes, he’s afraid of his own shadow. But mostly he’s afraid of vengeance.”
    “I still don’t get it.”
    “You don’t get to be a multi-billionaire by kissing babies,” Chambrun said. “George was born rich, but only modestly rich. He turned a minor fortune into a colossus of wealth and power by being one of the toughest, most devious, most ruthless men alive today. What lies behind him is a path strewn with the crippled and dead who got in the way of his gigantic steam roller. What George fears most is that someone who survived may try to even what to him is a small and meaningless score.”
    “You said he ‘paid for the rope,’” I persisted. “If he helped you, he evidently supported some good causes.”
    “If what we did was a good cause,” Chambrun said.
    “Did he support the Resistance?”
    “Yes. With money, with arms made in other countries, with influence he could bring to bear in other parts of the world.”
    “So his impulses were good.”
    Chambrun smiled that bitter smile. “Perhaps they were good, certainly they paid off.”
    “How do you mean?”
    “There were hundreds of men in a restored France who felt they owed him a debt. He made a great, great deal of money out of their gratitude.”
    “He gave you the management of the Beaumont, and the penthouse,” Ruysdale said. “He must have owed you something.”
    I wouldn’t have dared say such a thing. Chambrun looked at her as though he was pleased she’d had the courage.
    “He owes me his life,” Chambrun said. “I’ve saved it at least twice. It seems I’m to be required to save it again.”
    “Then you owe him something,” Ruysdale said.
    “He paid for the rope,” Chambrun said.
    “There is one thing, Mr. Chambrun,” Shelda said.
    “Yes?”
    “It couldn’t have been Richard Cleaves who fired that shot at Mr. Battle tonight. I was with him when it happened.”
    “With him !” I said.
    “I had dinner with David Loring,” Shelda said, ignoring me. “The other guests were Angela Adams and Mr. Cleaves. We were all together at the time the attack on Mr. Battle was made.”
    Chambrun nodded, a faraway look in his eyes. “The finger that squeezes the trigger isn’t necessarily attached to the brain that plans the action,” he said.
    We had one piece of luck in that strange evening. The man assigned to the case by Homicide was Lieutenant Hardy, an old friend who’d been involved with us before. Hardy is a big, blond man who looks more like a professional football player than a detective. “Shaggy dog,” were Ruysdale’s words for him. He appeared to be a slow-moving, slow-thinking gent until you got to know him. The key to his success as a homicide man was thoroughness. He checks and checks and double-checks every detail of a case. He never gives up, and he will follow every clue, no matter how tenuous, until it pays off or checks out. He doesn’t follow the most likely leads; he follows all the leads. You know, when he handles a case, that nothing will be overlooked. He and Chambrun have a mutual admiration society going. Chambrun, mercurial, jumps from mountain peak to mountain peak. Hardy follows, but by going down into the valley and climbing up the other side. He came into the office,