Lovelace was really a stranger to me, but he was Chambrun’s trusted friend. In the course of twelve hours I hadn’t come to feel anything very personal for Lovelace except a kind of sympathy for the corner he was in. He was a good guy because Chambrun said he was a good guy. I would do anything for Chambrun so I would do anything for Chambrun’s friend. But I didn’t know him well enough to laugh off the story Shelda brought me from Jeanette Arnaud. I knew I had to take the story to Chambrun, and I knew it would rock him back on his heels. The one area where Chambrun considered himself infallible was his judgment of people. To have been wrong about Lovelace would be shattering. I’ve heard him say many times that when the time came that he didn’t know what was going on in the Beaumont and he began to make mistakes about people, he would retire and write that inevitable book about how to run a luxury hotel. He said it as a joke, because the idea was inconceivable. Someone was knocking rather sharply on the dressing-room door again.
