Golden Trap by Hugh Pentecost Page B

Shelda. “I say, would you consider acting as a tourist guide to some of the brighter nighteries, Miss Mason?”
    Shelda gave me a wicked look. “I think it would be fun,” she said. “I’d have to go home and dress.”
    “Good show!” said the delighted Dark.
    “If you’ll take me downstairs and get me a taxi,” Shelda said, “I’ll tell you where to pick me up. See you tomorrow morning, boss.”
    Dark pulled out her chair and helped her on with her little fur jacket. Shelda sailed out and Dark said hurried goodbyes and followed her. I watched them go. Then I heard a low chuckle at my elbow.
    “Mind a personal observation, Haskell?” Carleton asked. “The young lady is trying to get your wind up.”
    “I hope so, sir,” I said.
    “Sorry, but I must toddle along,” Carleton said. “Pakistan, you know.” He stood up and was almost knocked off his feet by a burly man in an ill-fitting dinner jacket who was headed across the room. The burly man apologized in a guttural voice. Then he recognized the Englishman.
    “My dear Carleton, be so kind as to forgive my clumsiness!” he said. He had a fat, round face with a rather forced white smile. His accent was thick.
    “Oh, hello, Rogoff,” Carleton said.
    Here was another of the listed possibilities—Anton Rogoff, the Roumanian businessman whom Lovelace had exposed as a player of two sides of the street in the war.
    “I have been hoping to have a business chat with you one of these days, Carleton,” Rogoff said, ignoring me.
    Carleton wasn’t having that. “Mr. Haskell, public relations director for the hotel—Anton Rogoff.”
    Rogoff clicked his heels and gave me a stiff little bow. “Could I make an appointment to see you, Carleton?”
    “The sessions at the United Nations and their social off-shoots are unpredictable,” Carleton said. “I can’t name a time in advance. On my way now to a State dinner. Sorry.”
    “But I—”
    “Be seeing you around, Haskell,” Carleton said. He gave us a polite little bow and walked off toward the exit.
    Rogoff s eyes glittered like two little black shoe-buttons. “The British make a fetish of casualness,” he said. “It is perhaps an unintentional rudeness. Perhaps! Meeting you was a pleasure.” He gave me the little heel click again, turned away, and then turned back. “Do you know, Mr. Haskell, if by chance there is a guest in the hotel named Gregor Bodanzky? I thought I saw him in the lobby this morning.”
    Here it was.
    “The Russian delegation, perhaps?” I suggested.
    “I think not,” Rogoff said, his mouth a knife-slit.
    “I could make inquiries for you,” I said.
    “Not necessary,” he said. “I will ask at the desk myself.”
    I watched him go, wondering which man I’d least like to have for an enemy—the suave Englishman with his impeccable manners or the bull-necked Roumanian with the cruel eyes…
    While I was encountering two of the men on our special list of Lovelace enemies and watching my girl be whisked away from right under my nose, Chambrun was closeted in his office with an old friend, Louis Martine of the French delegation to the U.N. I had met Martine and his beautiful wife when they first came to the hotel about a month before. They were an eye-catching couple. Collette Martine had the lush figure of a young girl, and she obviously spent a fortune on clothes. She was politely flirtatious with all men, a special technique of most French women. This didn’t seem to disturb her husband, a distinguished-looking black-bearded gent who would have been perfectly type-cast in the role of a diplomat, which is what he was. His English was flawless but with charming Charles Boyer overtones to it.
    He had come to Chambrun’s office in answer to a request from his old friend of the Resistance days. He was wearing white tie and tails, with a bright red ribbon of honor across his starched shirt front. He too was en route to the dinner for the head of the Pakistan