"I thought I might as well get on with this," Warren Trent told Peter. "I won't need this office any more. I suppose it will be yours." There was no rancor in the older man's voice, despite their altercation less than half an hour ago.
Aloysius Royce continued to work quietly as the other two talked.
Warren Trent listened attentively to the description of events since Peter's hasty departure from St. Louis cemetery yesterday afternoon, concluding with the telephone calls, a few minutes ago, to the Duchess of Croydon and the New Orleans police.
"If the Croydons did what you say," Warren Trent pronounced, "I've no sympathy for them. You've handled it well." He growled an afterthought. "At least we'll be rid of those damn dogs."
"I'm afraid Ogilvie is involved pretty deeply."
The older man nodded. "This time he's gone too far. He'll take the consequences, whatever they are, and he's finished here." Warren Trent paused. He seemed to be weighing something in his mind. At length he said, "I suppose you wonder why I've always been lenient with Ogilvie."
"Yes," Peter said, "I have."
"He was my wife's nephew. I'm not proud of the fact, and I assure you that my wife and Ogilvie had nothing in common. But many years ago she asked me to give him a job here, and I did. Afterward, when she was worried about him once, I promised to keep him employed. I've never, really, wanted to undo that."
How did you explain, Warren Trent wondered, that while the link with Hester had been defective and tenuous, it was the only one he had.
"I'm sorry," Peter said. "I didn't know ...
"That I was ever married?" The older man smiled. "Not many do. My wife came with me to this hotel. We were both young. She died soon after. It all seems a long time ago."
It was a reminder, Warren Trent thought, of the loneliness he had endured across the years, and of the greater loneliness soon to come.
Peter said, "Is there anything I can .."
Without warning, the door from the outer office flew open. Christine stumbled in. She had been running, and had lost a shoe. She was breathless, her hair awry. She barely got the words out.
"There's been . . . terrible accident! One of the elevators. I was in the lobby . . . It's horrible! People are trapped ... They're screaming."
At the doorway, already on the run, Peter McDermott brushed her aside.
Aloysius Royce was close behind.
12
Three things should have saved number four elevator from disaster.
One was an overspeed governor on the elevator car. It was set to trip when the car's speed exceeded a prescribed safety limit.
On number four - though the defect had not been noticed - the governor was operating late.
A second device comprised four safety clamps. Immediately the governor tripped, these should have seized the elevator guide rails, halting the car. in fact, on one side of the car two clamps held. But on the other side - due to delayed response of the governor, and because the machinery was old and weakened - the clamps failed.
Even then, prompt operation of an emergency control inside the elevator car might have averted tragedy. This was a single red button. Its purpose, when depressed, was to cut off all electric power, freezing the car. In modern elevators the emergency button was located high, and plainly in view. In the St. Gregory's cars, and many others, it was positioned low. Cy Lewin reached down, fumbling awkwardly to reach it.
He was a second too late.
As one set of clamps held and the other failed, the car twisted and buckled. With a thunder of wrenching, tearing metal, impelled by its own weight and speed, plus the heavy load inside, the car split open. Rivets sheared, paneling splintered, metal sheeting separated. On one side lower than the other because the floor was now tilted at a steep angle - a gap several feet high appeared between floor and wall. Screaming, clutching wildly at each other, the passengers slid toward it.
Cy Lewin, the elderly operator, who was nearest, was first to fall through. His single scream as he fell nine floors was cut off when his body hit the sub-basement concrete. An elderly couple from Salt Lake City fell next, clasping each other. Like Cy Lewin, they died as their bodies smashed against the ground. The Duke of Croydon fell awkwardly, striking an iron bar on the side of the shaft, which impaled him. The bar broke off, and he continued to fall. He was dead before his body reached the ground.
Somehow, others held on. While they did, the remaining two safety clamps gave way, sending the wrecked car plummeting the remaining distance down the shaft. Part way, a youngish conventioneer dentist slipped through the gap, his arms flailing. He was to survive the accident, but die three days later of internal injuries.
Herbie Chandler was more fortunate. He fell when the car was near the end of its descent. Tumbling into the adjoining shaft, he sustained head injuries from which he would recover, and sheared and fractured vertebrae which would make him a paraplegic, never walking again for the remainder of his life.
A middle-aged New Orleans woman lay, with a fractured tibia and a shattered jaw, on the elevator floor.
As the car hit bottom, Dodo was last to fall. An arm was broken and her skull cracked hard against a guide rail. She lay unconscious, close to death, as blood gushed from a massive head wound.
Three others - a Gold Crown Cola conventioneer, his wife, and Keycase Milne - were miraculously unhurt.
Beneath the wrecked elevator car, Billyboi Noble, the maintenance worker who, some ten minutes earlier, had lowered himself into the elevator pit, lay with legs and pelvis crushed, conscious, bleeding, and screaming.
13
Running with a speed he had never used in the hotel before, Peter McDermott raced down the mezzanine stairs.
The lobby, when he reached it, was a scene of pandemonium. Screams resounded through the elevator doors and from several women nearby. There was confused shouting. In front of a milling crowd, a white-faced assistant manager and a bellboy were attempting to try open the metal doors to number four elevator shaft. Cashiers, room clerks, and office workers were pouring out from behind counters and desks. Restaurants and bars were emptying into the lobby, waiters and bartenders following their customers. In the main dining room, lunchtime music had stopped, the musicians joining the exodus. A line of kitchen workers was streaming out through a service doorway. An excited babel of questions greeted Peter.
As loudly as he could, he shouted above the uproar, "Quiet!"
There was a momentary silence in which he called out again, "Please stand back and we will do everything we can." He caught a room clerk's eye. "Has someone called the Fire Department?"
"I'm not sure, sir. I thought."
Peter snapped, "Do it now!" He instructed another, "Get onto the police.
Tell them we need ambulances, doctors, someone to control the crowd."
Both men disappeared, running.
A tall, lean man in a tweed jacket and drill trousers stepped forward. "I'm a Marine officer. Tell me what you want.
Peter said gratefully, "The center of the lobby must be kept clear. Use hotel staff to form a cordon. Keep a passageway open to the main entrance.
Fold back the revolving doors."
"Right!"
The tall man tamed away and began cracking commands. As if appreciative of leadership, others obeyed. Soon, a line of waiters, cooks, clerks, bellboys, musicians, some conscripted guests, extended across the lobby and to the St. Charles Avenue door.
Aloysius Royce had joined the assistant manager and bellboy attempting to force the elevator doors. He turned, calling to Peter. "We'll never do this without tools. We have to break in somewhere else."
A coveralled maintenance worker ran into the lobby. He appealed to Peter.
"We need help at the bottom of the shaft. There's a guy trapped under the car. We can't get him out or get at the others."