Golden Trap Read Online Free PDF Page B

don’t intend to let it happen here,” he said.
    I had a vision of revolving doors, bringing in and taking out an endless stream of people, hundreds of them complete strangers to the staff; of a thousand guests in residence; of the staff itself, many of them with foreign backgrounds. How did we not let it happen if the man or men hunting Lovelace were determined?
    “How good is your memory, George?” Chambrun asked.
    “Too damned good!” Lovelace said, without turning. “I don’t count sheep when I try to sleep; I count faces. Thousands of faces, each with a vivid memory attached.
    “I was trained not to forget. But I can’t remember people I’ve never seen—the friends of those faces; the hired assassin who may finally do the job.”
    I put the letters back on Chambrun’s desk. “We can surround him with an army of bodyguards,” I said.
    Lovelace looked at me, his smile bitter. “Who will sample my food before I eat it? Test my drinks? Take each step before I take one to search for booby traps? To make me invisible? Is there any way to disappear, Mr. Haskell, except to die?”
    “I was just thinking out loud,” I said.
    “The man who sent this collection of envelopes and the message is very sure of himself,” Chambrun said. “He’s in no hurry. He wants Lovelace to agonize. So—time is on our side. Time gives us a chance to set a trap for him.”
    “What kind of a trap?” Jerry Dodd asked.
    “That’s what we’re here to discuss,” Chambrun said.
    “I don’t intend to spend what little time may be left to me locked in a closet,” Lovelace said sharply. “If I want a dry martini I intend to go to one of your bars and buy one. If I want to be entertained, I will go to your Blue Lagoon nightclub. If I want to pick up a girl, I’ll pick up a girl. I won’t be swept under the rug, Pierre, simply to survive. Survival is not living.”
    “We certainly won’t hide you away, George,” Chambrun said. “Without you in evidence we have no bait for the trap we’re about to discuss.”
    A private little anger was boiling in me. “How do you propose to dodge the lady who knows damn well you recognized her in the lobby this morning, Mr. Lovelace?”
    A little nerve twitched high up on Lovelace’s cheek. “She didn’t buy the idea of a mistake?”
    “For God sake, Mr. Lovelace, the woman is in love with you—or Charles Veauclaire, as she knew you. She gave me a detailed account of a certain three months in Paris.”
    “What woman?” Chambrun asked.
    “A customer,” I said. “And as usual, the customer is always right.”
    “Her name is Marilyn VanZandt,” Lovelace said. “She knew me in Paris five years ago as Charles Veauclaire.” A faint color mounted in his tanned cheeks. “I had a strange and very precious three months with her.”
    “And left her cold, without a word, just when she had come to think she’d found someone in whom she could believe,” I said.
    “It’s none of your business, Mark,” Chambrun said.
    “You’re going to have to have some story to tell her, my business or not. She knows you’re registered here at the hotel as George Lovelace,” I said, pointing a finger at Lovelace. “She’s going to come looking for you because she has to have an explanation from you—unless I tell her it really was a mistake and you aren’t Charles Veauclaire.”
    “Would she believe you?” Lovelace asked.
    “I don’t think so,” I said.
    Chambrun’s hooded eyes were narrowed little slits. “I know Miss VanZandt, George,” he said. “Were you just taking advantage of the lady’s tendency toward nymphomania, or was it something more genuine?”
    Lovelace’s face had gone hard. “Much more genuine,” he said.
    “Then you can’t fool her.”
    “I hoped,” Lovelace said. “I hoped maybe she was tight and that she’d go away thinking it was a mistake.”
    “Why?”
    “Because I don’t want her hurt again. I have nothing to give her any more. Because it