Артур Хейли * Отель * Адаптированная книга

Monday Evening

1

If he had a chance, Peter McDermott, the assistant general manager^[1] of the St. Gregory Hotel, would have fired the chief house detective long ago. The ex-policeman was again missing when he was needed most.

Christine Francis, who had left her own office a few minutes earlier, glanced at her wrist watch. A few minutes before eleven p.m. “He might be in the bar on Baronne Street.”

Peter McDermott nodded. He took out cigarettes and offered them to Christine. She accepted one and McDermott lit it, then did the same for himself. She had been working late and was about to go home when she saw the light under Peter’s door.

“W.T. allows Mr. Ogilvie to make his own rules,” Christine said.

“You’re right. I tried to make an official complaint against him once, but W.T. declined it and warned me not to do it ever again.”

She said quietly, “I didn’t know that.”

“I thought you knew everything.”

And usually she did. As personal assistant to Warren Trent, the owner of New Orleans’ largest hotel, Christine knew all inner secrets and its day-to-day affairs.

Christine asked, “What’s wrong?”

“We’ve a complaint from the eleventh floor about a sex orgy; on the ninth the Duchess of Croydon claims her Duke has been insulted by a room-service waiter; somebody is moaning horribly in 1439.”

He spoke into the telephone and Christine went to the office window. She suddenly realized how very tired she was. Looking at the city, she could see into the tight, crowded rectangle of the French Quarter, where lights in front of late night bars, bistros, jazz halls, and strip joints would burn into tomorrow morning.

The rain would be welcome, suddenly thought Christine. For three weeks the city had suffered from heat. This afternoon there had been another complaint about the air conditioning from the chief engineer.

Peter McDermott put down the telephone and she asked, “Do you have a name of the room where the moaning is?”

“Albert Wells, Montreal.”

“I know him,” Christine said. “A nice little man who stays here every year. If you like, I can help you with him.”

He hesitated.

The telephone rang and he answered it. “I’m sorry, sir,” the operator said, “we can’t locate Mr. Ogilvie.”

“Never mind.” Even if McDermott couldn’t fire the chief house detective, he would do some hell raising in the morning. Meanwhile he could send someone else to the eleventh and handle the Duke and Duchess incident himself.

He asked the operator for the bell captain and recognized the nasal voice of Herbie Chandler, one of the St.Gregory’s old-timers. McDermott explained the problem and asked Chandler to investigate the complaint about an alleged sex orgy. “That is not my job, Mr. Mac, and we’re still busy down here.” As McDermott had expected.

McDermott instructed, “I want you to take care of that complaint now. And something else: send a boy with a pass key to meet Miss Francis.” He replaced the phone before there could be any more discussion.

“Let’s go. Take a bellboy with you.” His hand touched Christine’s shoulders lightly.

2

Herbie Chandler stood thoughtfully by the bell captain’s desk in the St. Gregory lobby.

The bell captain’s post commanded a view of the lobby’s comings and goings. There was plenty of movement now. Two conventions were to take place in the hotel soon, and the conventioneers had been in and out all evening.

Occasional new arrivals were roomed now by bellboys^[2]. The “boys” was a figure of speech since none was younger than forty, and several graying veterans had been with the hotel a quarter century or more. Herbie Chandler held the power of hiring and firing his bell staff. He preferred older men. Someone who had to grunt a bit with heavy luggage was likely to earn bigger tips than a youngster. One old-timer, who actually was as strong as a mule, seldom earned less than a dollar from conscience-stricken guests. What they did not know was that ten per cent of their tip would go to Herbie Chandler’s pocket with the two dollars daily from each bellboy as the price of retaining his job.

McDermott had just instructed him to investigate a complaint on the eleventh floor. But Herbie Chandler had no need to investigate because he knew what was happening there. He had arranged it himself.

Three hours earlier two youths, whose fathers were wealthy local citizens and frequent guests of the hotel, came up to him with a request. “Listen, Herbie. We’ve taken a suite.” The first boy flushed. “We want a couple of girls.”

It was too risky. Both were little more than boys, and he suspected they had been drinking. He began, “Sorry, gentlemen,” when the second youth cut in.

“We can pay, Herbie. You know that. How much?”

The bell captain hesitated, his mind working greedily. Herbie remembered their fathers, and multiplied the standard rate by two. “A hundred dollars.”

There was a momentary pause. Then one of the boys, Dixon, said decisively, “You got a deal.”

“In advance, gentlemen. And you’ll have to make sure there’s no noise. If we get complaints, there could be trouble for all of us.”

There would be no noise, they had assured him, but now, it seemed, there had been.

An hour ago the girls had come in through the front entrance as usual, with only a few of the hotel’s staff aware that they were not registered hotel guests. Both should have left by now. The eleventh floor complaint meant that something had gone seriously wrong. Herbie was now wondering whether he should go upstairs or stay away.

3

The St. Gregory’s largest and most elaborate suite had housed a number of distinguished guests, including presidents and royalty. The Duke and Duchess of Croydon, plus their secretary, the Duchess’s maid, and five terriers occupied the suite now.

Waiting in front of the door, McDermott thought what he had heard about the Croydons.

Within the past decade, and aided by his Duchess – herself a known public figure and cousin of the Queen – the Duke of Croydon had become a successful ambassador for the British government. More recently, however, there had been rumors that the Duke enjoyed a little too much the company of liquor and other men’s wives. Though many knew that the Duchess had the situation well in hand. After all, the Duke of Croydon was said to be soon named British Ambassador to Washington.

“Excuse me, Mr. McDermott, can I have a word with you?”

McDermott recognized Sol Natchez, one of the elderly room-service waiters.

“I expect you’ve come about the complaint – the complaint about me.”

McDermott glanced at the double doors to the suite. They had not yet opened, only the dogs were barking. He said, “Tell me what happened.”

Sol swallowed twice, “If I lose this job, Mr. McDermott, it’s hard at my age to find another. The Duke and the Duchess are not the hardest people to serve… except for tonight. They expect a lot, but I’ve never minded, even though there’s never a tip.”

Peter smiled involuntarily. British nobility seldom tipped, thinking, perhaps, that the privilege of waiting on them was a reward in itself.

“It was about half an hour ago. They’d ordered a late supper, the Duke and Duchess – oysters, champagne, shrimp Creole.”

“What happened?”

“When I was serving the shrimp Creole, well… the Duchess got up from the table. As she came back she jogged my arm. If I didn’t know better I’d have said it was deliberate.”

“That’s ridiculous!”

“I know, sir, I know. After that there was a small spot on the Duke’s trousers.”

Peter said doubtfully, “Is that all this is about?”

“Mr. McDermott, I swear to you that’s all. I apologized, I got a clean napkin and water to get the spot off, but it wouldn’t do. She insisted on sending for Mr. Trent… ”

“Mr. Trent is not in the hotel.”

He would hear the other side of the story, Peter decided. Meanwhile he instructed, “If you’re all through for tonight you’d better go home.”

As the waiter disappeared, the door was opened by a moon-faced, youngish man with pince-nez. It was the Croydons’ secretary.

He introduced himself to the secretary.

The secretary said, “We were expecting Mr. Trent.”

“Mr. Trent is away from the hotel for the evening.”

“Why can’t he be sent for?” the Duchess of Croydon appeared, three of the terriers at her heels. She silenced the dogs and turned her eyes on Peter. He was aware of the handsome face, familiar through a thousand photographs.

“To be perfectly honest, Your Grace, I was not aware that you required Mr. Trent personally.”

“Even in Mr. Trent’s absence I expected one of the senior executives.”

Peter flushed. He had an impression, at this moment, of being on foot while the Duchess was mounted.

“I’m assistant general manager. That’s why I came personally.”

“Aren’t you young for that?”

“Nowadays a good many young men are in hotel management.”

“How old are you?”

“Thirty-two.”

The Duchess smiled. She was five or six years older than himself, he calculated, though younger than the Duke who was in his late forties. Now she asked, “Do you take a course or something?”

“I have a degree from Cornell University – the School of Hotel Administration. Before coming here I was an assistant manager at the Waldorf.” He was tempted to add: from where I was fired and black-listed by the chain hotels, so that I am lucky to be here, in an independent hotel. He would not say it, of course, because a private hell was something you lived with alone.

“The Waldorf would never have tolerated an incident like tonight’s.”

“I assure you, ma’am, the St. Gregory will not tolerate it either.”

The conversation was like a game of tennis. He waited for the ball to come back.

“Your waiter poured shrimp Creole over my husband.”

It was obviously an exaggeration. He wondered what had caused it.

“I’m here to apologize for the hotel.”

“My husband and I decided to enjoy a quiet evening in our suite here, by ourselves. We were out for a short walk, then we returned to supper – and this!”

He was about to leave when the door to the living room opened fully. The Duke of Croydon came in. He was untidily dressed, in a white shirt and the trousers of a tuxedo. Instinctively Peter McDermott’s eyes sought the spot where Natchez had “poured shrimp Creole.” He found it, though it was barely visible.

“Oh, beg pardon.” Then, to the Duchess: “I say, old girl. I must have left my cigarettes in the car.”

“I’ll bring some.” With a nod the Duke turned back into the living room. It was an uncomfortable scene that had for some reason heightened the Duchess’s anger.

Turning to Peter, she snapped, “I insist on a full report and a personal apology.”

Still perplexed, Peter left the suite. The bellboy who had accompanied Christine was waiting for him. “Miss Francis wants you in 1439, please, hurry!”

4

When the elevator stopped at the fourteenth floor, Christine thought that if five years ago someone at the University of Wisconsin had asked what twenty-year-old Chris Francis would do a couple of years later, she would have never guessed she would work in a New Orleans hotel.

After the accident in Wisconsin, she had sought a place, where she could be unknown and which was unfamiliar to herself. Familiar things had become an ache of heart. Strangely there were never nightmares after that day at Madison airport.

She had been there to see her family leave for Europe. Her mother, her father, her elder sister, embraced Christine; and even Tony, two years younger and hating public affection, consented to be kissed. They all promised to write, even though she would join them in Paris two weeks later when term ended.

And a few minutes later the big jet took off with a roar. It barely cleared the runway before it fell back, one wing low, becoming a whirling Catherine wheel, for a moment a dust cloud, and then a torch. Finally, it turned into a silent pile of machinery fragments and what was left of human flesh.

It was five years ago. A few weeks after, she left Wisconsin and never returned.

Jimmy Duckworth, the bellboy accompanying her, noticed, “Room 1439 – that’s the old gent, Mr. Wells. We moved him from a corner room a couple of days ago.”

Down the corridor, a door opened and a man came out. Closing the door behind him, he hesitated, eying Christine with frank interest. Barely perceptibly, the bellboy shook his head. Christine, who missed nothing, supposed she should be flattered to be mistaken for a call girl. Herbie Chandler’s list embraced a glamorous membership.

“Why was Mr. Wells’s room changed?”

“Somebody else had 1439 and raised a fuss.”

Christine remembered 1439 now; there had been complaints before. It was next to the service elevator and served as the meeting place of all the hotel’s smokers. The place was noisy and unbearably hot.

“Why was Mr. Wells asked to move?

“I guess it’s because he never complains.” Christine’s lips tightened angrily as Jimmy Duckworth went on, “They give him that table beside the kitchen door, the one no one else will have. He doesn’t seem to mind, they say.”

At the realization that a regular guest, who also happened to be a quiet and gentle man, had been so awfully treated, fury rose inside her.

They stopped at the door of 1439. The bellboy knocked. At once there was a response, a moaning.

“Open the door – quickly!” Christine instructed.

The room, as Christine entered, was stiflingly hot, though the air-conditioning regulator was set hopefully to “cool.” But then she saw the struggling figure, half upright in the bed. It was the birdlike little man she knew as Albert Wells. His face was ashen gray, his eyes were bulging and his lips were trembling. He was attempting desperately to breathe.

She went quickly to the bedside, “Get the window open. We need air in here.”

The bellboy said nervously, “The window’s sealed. They did it for the air conditioning.”

“Then force it. If you have to, break the glass.”

She had already picked up the telephone beside the bed, “This is Miss Francis. Is Dr. Aarons in the hotel?”

“No, Miss Francis; but he left a number.”

“It’s an emergency. Tell Dr. Aarons room 1439, and to hurry, please. Ask how long he’ll take to get here, then call me back.”

The elderly man was breathing no better than before. His face was turning blue. The moaning had begun again.

“Mr. Wells,” she said, trying to sound confident, “You might breathe more easily if you kept perfectly still.” As if in response to Christine’s words, the little man’s struggles lessened. Christine put an arm around Mr. Wells. She put the pillows behind his back, so that he could lean back, sitting upright at the same time. His eyes were fixed on hers, trying to convey gratitude. “I’ve sent for a doctor. He’ll be here at any moment.”

The bellboy had used a coat hanger to break a seal on the window. And now a draft of cool fresh air entered the room. In the bed Albert Wells gasped greedily at the new air. As he did, the telephone rang. Christine answered it.

“Dr. Aarons is on his way, Miss Francis. He’ll be at the hotel in twenty minutes.”

Christine hesitated. He could come too late. Also, she sometimes had doubts about his competence. She told the operator, “I’m not sure we can wait that long. Would you check our own guest list to see if we have any doctors registered?”

“I already did that. There’s a Dr. Koenig in 221, and Dr. Uxbridge in 1203.”

“All right, ring 221, please.” Doctors who registered in hotels expected privacy, once in a while, though, emergency justified a break with protocol.

A sleepy voice answered, “Yes, who is it?”

Christine identified herself. “I’m sorry to disturb you, Dr. Koenig, but one of our other guests is extremely ill. I wonder if you could come.”

“My dearest young lady, I would be very glad to assist. Alas, I am a doctor of music, here to ‘guest conduct’ this city’s fine symphony orchestra.”

Christine had an impulse to laugh. She apologized.

“Of course, if my unfortunate fellow guest becomes beyond the help of the other kind of doctors, I could bring my violin to play for him.”

“Thank you. I hope that won’t be necessary.” She was impatient to make the next call.

Dr. Uxbridge in 1203 answered the telephone at once. He could help and promised to come in a few minutes.

Christine instructed the bellboy to go find Mr. McDermott and bring him here. She picked up the telephone again.

“The chief engineer, please.”

Doc Vickery was Christine’s friend, and she knew that she was one of his favorites. In a few words she told him about Albert Wells. “The doctor isn’t here yet, but he’ll probably want oxygen.”

“I will bring it myself. If I don’t, some clown will likely open a tank under your man’s nose, and that’ll finish him for sure.”

The little man’s eyes were closed. He appeared not to be breathing at all.

There was a tap at the opened door and a tall man stepped in from the corridor. A dark blue suit failed to conceal beige pajamas beneath. “Uxbridge,” he announced in a quiet, firm voice.

The newcomer took out a syringe, assembled it. When he had drawn the fluid from a small glass vial into the syringe, he pushed the patient’s sleeve upward, cleansed the forearm above a vein with alcohol and inserted the syringe. Glancing at his watch, he began to inject the liquid slowly.

“Aminophylline; it should stimulate the heart.”

A minute passed. Two. The syringe was half empty. So far there was no response.

Christine whispered, “What is it that’s wrong?”

“Severe bronchitis, with asthma as a complication. I suspect he’s had these attacks before.”

Suddenly the little man was breathing, more slowly than before, but with fuller, deeper breaths. His eyes opened. The tension in the room had lessened.

“You were very ill when we found you, Mr. Wells. This is Dr. Uxbridge who was staying in the hotel and came to help.”

Mr. Wells looked at the doctor and said with an effort: “Thank you.”

“If there’s anyone to thank it should be this young lady.”

The doctor then told Christine, “The gentleman is still very sick and will need further medical attention. My advice is for immediate transfer to a hospital.”

“No, no! I don’t want that.” The words came from the elderly man in the bed.

For the first time Christine studied his appearance. Originally she had judged him to be in his early sixties; now she decided to add a half dozen years. His face held an expression, which was mild and inoffensive, almost apologetic.

The first occasion she had met Albert Wells had been two years earlier. He had come to the hotel’s executive suite, concerned about his bill. The amount in question was seventy-five cents, and Albert Wells insisted that he did not owe it to the hotel. Christine proved that the little man was right. She liked him and respected him for his stand.

“If you stay here, you’ll need a nurse for twenty-four hours and oxygen.”

The little man insisted, “You can arrange about a nurse, can’t you, miss?”

“I suppose we could.” She wondered, though doubting whether he had any idea of the high cost of private nursing.

The chief engineer came in, wheeling an oxygen cylinder on a trolley.

“This isn’t hospital style, Chris. It might work, though.”

Dr. Uxbridge seemed surprised. Christine explained her original idea that oxygen might be needed, and introduced the chief engineer, who was connecting the tube to the plastic bag.

“This hotel appears to have some highly competent help.” Dr. Uxbridge was still perplexed.

She laughed. “Wait until we mix up your reservations. You’ll change your mind.”

The chief engineer had connected the free end of the rubber tube to the green cylinder with oxygen. Dr. Uxbridge told him, “We’ll begin with five minutes on oxygen and five minutes off.” Together they arranged the improvised mask around the sick man’s face.

“Have you sent for a local doctor?”

Christine explained about Dr. Aarons.

Dr. Uxbridge nodded in approval.

There were firm footsteps down the corridor and Peter McDermott strode in. His eyes went to the bed. “Will he be all right?”

“I think so.” Then she brought Peter into the corridor and described the change in rooms, which the bellboy had told her about. “If he stays, we should give him another room, and I imagine we could get a nurse.”

Peter nodded in agreement. A few minutes later, everything was arranged.

5

“You must have been insane,” the Duchess of Croydon protested after Peter McDermott’s departure, carefully closing the inner door behind her.

“I’m sorry, old girl. Couldn’t hear the fellow. Thought he’d left.”

“You make it sound as if it’s all some sort of game.”

The Duchess went on accusingly, “I was doing the best I could. I even invented a walk that we went for in case anyone saw us come in. And then you announce you left your cigarettes in the car.”

“Only one heard me.”

“He noticed. I was watching his face.” She continued, “We’d be suspected. That’s why I made that trouble with the waiter. It isn’t an alibi but it’s the next best thing. Going gambling tonight was madness; and to take that woman…”

“We have already discussed that,” the Duke said wearily. “Exhaustively. On our way back. Before it happened.” The Duke of Croydon sipped his drink. “Why’d you marry me?”

“I suppose it was mostly that you stood out in our circle as someone who was doing something worthwhile.”

“Washington?” The word was a question.

“We could manage it,” the Duchess said. “If I could keep you sober and in your own bed.”

“Aha!” Her husband laughed. “A cold bed it is. Ever wondered why I married you?” He drank again, as if for courage, “Wanted you in that bed. Fast. Legally.”

“I’m surprised you bothered. With so many others to choose from – before and since.”

“Didn’t want others. Wanted you. Still do. Magnificent. Savage. Passionate.”

“Stop it! Stop it!” Her face was white, her voice high pitched. “I don’t care if the police catch you! I hope they do! I hope you get ten years!” 6

After making the necessary arrangements, Peter McDermott returned to 1439 and asked for Dr. Uxbridge’s permission to transfer the patient to another room on the same floor.

The doctor who had responded to Christine’s emergency call nodded.

Then McDermott turned to Christine, “We’ll let Dr. Aarons arrange nursing care.”

“I’m worried about that. I don’t think he has much money.” When she was concentrating, Peter noticed, Christine’s nose had a charming way of crinkling. He was aware of her closeness and a faint, fragrant perfume.

“Oh well,” he said, “we’ll let the credit department look into it then. Now let’s get Mr. Wells to 1410.” But the doorway, they discovered, was an inch too narrow for the bed.

“Never mind,” Peter said. “There’s a quicker way – if you’re agreeable, Mr. Wells.”

The other smiled, and nodded. Peter bent down, put a blanket around the elderly man’s shoulders and picked him up.

“You’ve strong arms, son,” the little man said.

Peter smiled. Then, as easily, as if his burden were a child^[3], he strode down the corridor and into the new room.

Fifteen minutes later all was functioning. The oxygen equipment had been successfully transferred, the air conditioning made the air sweeter. The resident physician, Dr. Aarons, had arrived, and accepted Dr. Uxbridge’s offer to drop in the following day. A private duty nurse had been telephoned was on the way. Albert Wells was sleeping gently.

Walking with Peter toward the elevators, Christine said, “I’m glad we let him stay. Some places wouldn’t. All they want is people to check in, check out, and pay the bill.”

“A real hotel is for hospitality if a guest needs it. Unfortunately, too many people in hotel business have forgotten it.”

“You think we’ve forgotten here?”

“You’re damn right we have! A lot of the time, anyway. If I had my way there’d be a good many changes…” He stopped, embarrassed. The St. Gregory was inefficient in many ways. Currently the hotel was facing a financial crisis. “But W.T. isn’t keen on new ideas.”

“That’s no reason for giving up.”

He laughed. “You sound like a woman.”

“I am a woman.”

“I know,” Peter said. “I’ve just begun to notice.”

For most of the time he had known Christine – since his own arrival at the St. Gregory – he had taken her for granted. Recently, though, he had started to notice how attractive she was.

“I didn’t have dinner tonight; too much going on. If you feel like it, how about joining me for a late supper?”

Christine said, “I love late suppers.”

“There’s one more thing I want to check. I sent Herbie Chandler to look into that trouble on the eleventh but I don’t trust him. Will you wait on the main mezzanine?”

His hands were surprisingly gentle for his size. It was an interesting face as well, with a hint of determination, she thought.

“All right,” she agreed. “I’ll wait.” 7

Marsha Preyscott wished she had spent her nineteenth birthday some other way. It had been a mistake to come here. But as always, and rebelliously, she had sought something different, which was what Lyle Dumaire had promised.

She had known that boy for years and dated occasionally. His father was president of one of the city’s banks as well as a close friend of her own father. Without thinking about it, she said yes, when he asked whether she wanted to come with him upstairs to the small, crowded suite 1126-7. There were more people than she expected, and some of the boys were already very drunk. One of the girls had passed out.

Something was happening in the adjoining room, to which the door was closed, though a group of boys, whom Lyle Dumaire had joined – leaving Marsha alone – was there. She heard a question, “What was it like?” but the answer was lost in a shout of laughter. When she realized, or at least suspected, what was happening, disgust made her want to leave.

If her father had come home as he promised, she would not have been here now^[4]. Instead, there would have been a birthday celebration at home. But he had not come home. Instead, he had telephoned from Rome. Perhaps, there were some things in Rome, which he wouldn’t tell her about, just as she would never tell him what was happening in room 1126 now.

Youth was a dull time, Marsha often thought, especially when you had to share it with others the same age as yourself. There were moments – and this was one – when she longed for companionship that was more mature. She would not find it though in Lyle Dumaire.

Others were beginning to leave the suite. One of the older boys whom she knew as Stanley Dixon came out from the other room, “… girls said they’re going.”

“Why not somebody from here?” It was Lyle Dumaire’s voice, much less under control than it had been earlier.

“Yeah, but who?”

Marsha ignored them. The suite was almost cleared. If Lyle planned to escort her, Marsha thought, she would turn him down.

Then she heard the outer door close. Stanley Dixon was standing in front of it, his hands behind him. The lock clicked.

“Hey, Marsha,” Lyle Dumaire said. “What’s the big rush?”

Marsha had known Lyle since childhood, but now there was a difference.

“I’m going home.”

“Aw, come on. Have a drink.”

“No, thank you.”

“You’re going to be a good girl, aren’t you?”

“Some of us have had a good time already. It’s made us want more of the same,” said Dixon. The other two, whose names she didn’t know, were grinning.

“I’m not interested in what you want.” Though her voice was firm, she was aware of an underlying note of fear.

“Listen, Marsha,” Lyle blustered. “We know you want to. All girls want to. Eh, fellas?”

They began to move closer.

“If you touch me I shall scream.”

Suddenly, without seeming to move, Dixon was behind her, clapping a big sweaty hand across her mouth, another holding her arms. She struggled, and tried to bite the hand, but without success.

“Listen, Marsha,” Lyle said, “you’re going to get it, so you might as well enjoy it.”

Lyle had the other arm and together they were forcing her toward the adjoining bedroom.

“Somebody grab her feet.” The remaining boy took hold. With a sense of unreality Marsha felt herself being carried through the bedroom doorway.

“Get her things off,” someone said.

There were twin beds in the room. Resisting wildly, Marsha was forced backward onto the nearest. A moment later she lay across it, her head pressed back cruelly. All she could see was the ceiling above.

Dixon was half sitting on the bed, near her head. She felt hands holding her. She attempted to kick but her legs were pinned down. Someone tore her dress.

“I’m first,” Stanley Dixon said. “Somebody take over here.”

Her legs were still held firmly, but Dixon’s hand on her face was moving, another taking its place. It was an opportunity. As the new hand came over, Marsha bit fiercely. She felt her teeth go into flesh, meeting bone.

Inflating her lungs, Marsha screamed. “Help! Please help me!”

Only the last word was cut off by Stanley Dixon’s hand. She heard him snarl, “You fool! You stupid goon!”

“She bit me!”

There was a knock on the outside door.

“Christ! Somebody did hear.”

“What do we do?”

The knocking was repeated.

“I’ll go,” said Dixon. He murmured to one of the others, “Hold her down and this time don’t make any mistake.”

The lock clicked.

“Excuse me, sir. I’m an employee of the hotel. I happened to be passing and heard someone cry out.”

“Well, thanks. But it was only my wife having a nightmare.”

Twisting her body sideways, Marsha freed her mouth. “Help!” she called before she could be stopped.

She heard the new voice say, “I’d like to come in, please.”

“This is a private room. I told you my wife is having a nightmare.”

“I’m sorry, sir; I don’t believe you.”

The hands upon Marsha removed themselves. A young Negro was entering. In his early twenties, he had an intelligent face and was neatly dressed. “Let the young lady go.”

“Take a look, fellas,” Dixon said. “Take a look at who’s giving orders. You asked for it, nigger boy.” His right fist blow would have felled the young Negro, but in a single movement the other moved sideways. In the same instant the Negro’s own left fist landed with a crack at the side of his attacker’s face.

A hand on his cheek, Dixon said, “Let’s get him!”

Assaulted by three, the Negro went down. Marsha heard the thud of blows and also a growing hum of voices in the corridor. The others heard the voices as well and hurried out of the room hastily.

The young Negro was rising from the floor, his face bloody.

Outside, a new, authoritative voice asked. “Where is the disturbance, please?”

“In there.”

The door opened wide and then closed from the inside.

Peter McDermott asked, “What happened?”

Marsha’s body was shivering with sobs. She attempted to stand, but fell back weakly: “Tried… rape…”

McDermott’s looked at the young Negro.

“No! No!” called Marsha. “It wasn’t him! He came to help!”

The young Negro put the handkerchief away from his face, “Why don’t you go ahead, Mr. McDermott, and hit me. You could always say afterward it was a mistake.”

McDermott had a profound dislike of Aloysius Royce who combined the role of personal valet to the hotel owner, Warren Trent, with the study of law at Loyola University, and whom Peter found too arrogant.

“There were four of them. Four nice white young gentlemen. I recognized two of them.”

Peter crossed to the telephone beside the nearer bed.

“Who you calling?”

“The city police.”

There was a smile on the young Negro’s face. “I wouldn’t do it. For one thing, I’d have to be a witness. And no court in Louisiana is gonna take a nigger boy’s word in a white rape case. Not when four young white gentlemen say the nigger boy is lying. Not even if Miss Preyscott supports the nigger boy, which I doubt her pappy’d let her.”

Peter put down the receiver as what Royce had said was true. “Did you say ‘Miss Preyscott’?”

Unhappily, Marsha nodded.

“Miss Preyscott,” Peter said, “did you know the people who were responsible for what happened?”

“Yes.”

“And did you come here with them to this suite?”

Again a whisper. “Yes.”

“It’s up to you, Miss Preyscott, whether you make an official complaint or not. Whatever you decide, the hotel will go along with. But I’m afraid Royce is right about publicity.” He added: “Of course, it’s really something for your father to decide.”

Marsha raised her head, looking directly at Peter for the first time. “My father’s in Rome. Don’t tell him, please, ever.”

Peter was startled to see how much of a child Marsha was, and how very beautiful. “Is there anything I can do now?”

“I don’t know.” She began to cry again.

Uncertainly, Peter took out a white linen handkerchief, which Marsha accepted.

“Thank you.”

“I think you should rest a while.”

“I don’t want to stay here. I couldn’t.”

He nodded understandingly. “In a little while we’ll get you home.”

“No! Not that! Please, isn’t there somewhere else… in the hotel?”

Peter hesitated. “There’s 555, I suppose.” He glanced at Royce.

Room 555 was a small one, which went with the assistant general manager’s job. Peter rarely used it, except to change. It was empty now.

“It’ll be all right,” Marsha said. “As long as someone phones my home. Ask for Anna the housekeeper.”

“I’ll go get the key,” Royce offered.

As the young Negro opened the outer door, voices filtered in, with a barrage of eager questions. McDermott heard Royce’s answers, quietly reassuring, then the voices fade.

Marsha murmured, “You haven’t told me who you are.”

“I’m sorry.” He told her his name and his connection with the hotel.

She was taken to 555 in a service elevator and shown to the bathroom. There were men’s pajamas there prepared for her, in dark blue, and too large. She put them on.

Hands helped her into bed. She was aware of Peter McDermott’s calm voice once more. It was a voice she liked, Marsha thought – and its owner also. “Royce and I are leaving now, Miss Preyscott. The door to this room is self-locking and the key is beside your bed. You won’t be disturbed.”

“Thank you.” Sleepily she asked, “Whose pajamas?”

“They’re mine. I’m sorry they’re so big.”

“No matter… nice…” It was her final thought.

8

It had been a full evening, Peter thought – with its share of unpleasantness – though not exceptional for a big hotel. When the elevator arrived he told the operator, “Lobby, please.” Christine was waiting on the main mezzanine, but his business on the main floor would take only a few minutes.

He noted with impatience that although the elevator doors were closed, they had not yet started down.

“Are you sure the gates are fully closed?”

“Yes, sir, they are. It isn’t that, it’s the connections I think, either here or up top,” the operator explained.

With a jerk the mechanism took hold and the elevator started down.

Peter made a mental note to ask the chief engineer exactly what was wrong.

It was almost half-past-twelve by the lobby clock as he stepped from the elevator. Peter turned right toward Reception, but had gone only a few paces when he was aware of an obese figure approaching him. It was Ogilvie, the chief house officer. As always, he was accompanied by an odor of stale cigar smoke.

“I hear you were looking for me,” Ogilvie said.

Peter felt some of his earlier anger return. “I certainly was. Where were you?”

“Doing my job, Mr. McDermott. I was over at police headquarters reporting some trouble we had here. There was a suitcase stolen from the baggage room today.”

“Police headquarters! Which room was the poker game in?”

“Maybe you should speak to Mr. Trent about it.”

Warren Trent would never take action against Ogilvie, who had been at the St. Gregory as long as the hotel proprietor himself. There were some who said that the fat detective knew where a body or two was buried, and thus had a hold over Warren Trent.

“Well, you’ve missed a couple of emergencies,” Peter said. Perhaps after all, he reflected, it was good that Ogilvie had not been available.

The night clerk whom he had telephoned earlier to ask for a room was at the desk. “Thank you for helping me out with that problem on the fourteenth. We have Mr. Wells in 1410. Dr. Aarons is arranging nursing care, and the chief has brought up oxygen. But I am concerned why Mr. Wells was moved into that other room earlier.”

“I’ll find that out.”

“We’ve had some trouble on the eleventh, too. Do you mind telling me whose name 1126-7 is in?^[5]”

The room clerk flipped through his records and produced a card. “Mr. Stanley Dixon. He’s the car dealer’s son. Mr. Dixon senior is often in the hotel.”

“Thank you. Have his bill sent to me tomorrow, and I’ll write a letter. There’ll be a claim for damages.”

“Very well, Mr. McDermott. And as I understand it, the suite is available now.”

“Yes.” With a friendly “good night” to the room clerk he crossed the lobby to an unoccupied desk, used in daytime by one of the assistant managers. He found Mark Preyscott at a Garden District address in a phone book.

The ringing tone continued for some time before a woman’s voice answered sleepily. Identifying himself, he announced, “I have a message for Anna from Miss Preyscott.”

“This is Anna. Is Miss Marsha all right?”

“She’s all right, but she asked me to tell you that she will stay the night at the hotel.”

The housekeeper’s voice said, “Who did you say that was again?”

“Look,” he said, “if you want to check, why don’t you call back? It’s the St. Gregory, and ask for the assistant manager’s desk in the lobby.”

In less than a minute they were reconnected. “It’s all right,” she said, “now I know who it is for sure. We worry about Miss Marsha.”

He decided he would have a talk with Marsha Preyscott tomorrow to find out what happened before the attempted rape occurred.

This time he rode up one floor only, to the main mezzanine.

Christine was waiting in his office.

“Don’t marry a hotel man,” he told her. “There’s never an end to the work.”

“I hadn’t told you, but I’ve a crush on that new sous-chef. The one who looks like Rock Hudson. Do we have more troubles?”

“Other people’s, mostly. I’ll tell you as we go.”

“Where to?”

“Anywhere away from the hotel. We’ve both had enough for one day.”

Christine considered. “We could go to the Quarter. There are plenty of places open. Or if you want to come to my place, I prepare perfect omelets.”

They went to the door where Peter switched off the office lights. “An omelet,” he declared, “is what I really wanted and didn’t know it.” 9

A sleepy parking attendant brought down Christine’s Volkswagen and they climbed in. She reminded him, “You were going to tell me what happened.”

He frowned, bringing his thoughts back to the hotel, then in short sentences told her what he knew about the attempted rape of Marsha Preyscott. Christine listened in silence, heading the little car northeast as Peter talked, ending with the suspicion that Herbie Chandler, the bell captain, had ignored the incident intentionally. “He always knows more than he says.”

“That’s why he’s been around a long time.”

“Being around isn’t the answer to everything.”

In the St. Gregory, a good deal of organization was unwritten, with final judgments depending upon Warren Trent, and made by the hotel owner in his own capricious way. In ordinary circumstances, Peter – a brilliant graduate of Cornell University’s School of Hotel Administration – would have made a decision months ago to seek more satisfying work elsewhere. But circumstances were not ordinary.

At the Waldorf, where he had gone to work after graduation as a junior assistant manager, Peter McDermott had been the bright young man who seemed to hold the future in his hand. At a time when he was supposedly on duty, he was discovered in a bedroom with a woman guest. He might have escaped retribution. Good-looking young men who worked in hotels got used to flirting with lonely women. A warning from the management was usually the highest possible punishment for such relationships. Two factors, however, happened to be against Peter. The fact that it was the woman’s husband, aided by private detectives, who discovered them, and a messy divorce case, which resulted in publicity hotels abhorred. The end result was unofficial blacklisting by the major chain hotels. Only at the St. Gregory, an independent house, had he been able to obtain work.

Moreover, three years before the Waldorf case, Peter McDermott had married impulsively and the marriage, soon after, ended in separation. To an extent, his loneliness had been a cause of the incident in the hotel.

Christine said, “There’s something I think you should know. Curtis O’Keefe is arriving in the morning. “

It was the kind of news that he had feared, yet half expected.

Curtis O’Keefe, head of the world-wide O’Keefe hotel chain, he bought hotels as other men chose ties and handkerchiefs.

Peter asked, “Is it a buying trip?”

“It could be. W.T. doesn’t want it that way. But it may turn out there isn’t any choice.” She was about to add that the last piece of information was confidential, but checked herself. Peter would realize that. “There are problems about refinancing.”

Peter wondered if he had reached the point where a hotel chain, such as O’Keefe, might consider him rehabilitated and worth employing. He doubted it. Eventually it could happen, but not yet.

He decided to worry about new employment when it happened.

“When shall we know for sure?”

“One way or the other by the end of this week.”

“That soon!”

They were headed north on Elysian Fields, when abruptly a flashing white light, waving from side to side, loomed directly ahead. Christine braked and, as the car stopped, a uniformed traffic officer walked forward. Christine lowered her window as the officer came to her side of the car.

“You’ll have to detour. Drive slowly through the other lane, and the officer at the far end will wave you back into this one.”

“What is it?” Peter said.

“Hit and run. Happened earlier tonight.”

Christine asked, “Was anyone killed?”

The policeman nodded. “Little girl of seven.” Responding to their shocked expressions, he told them, “Walking with her mother. The mother’s in the hospital. Whoever was in the car drove right on. Bastards!”

They were silent as Christine drove slowly through the detour and, at the end of it, was waved back into the regular lane. Somewhere in Peter’s mind was a half-thought he could not define. He supposed the incident itself was bothering him, as sudden tragedy always did, but a vague uneasiness kept him preoccupied until, with surprise, he heard Christine say, “We’re almost home.”

“If all else fails,” Peter said cheerfully, “I can go back to bartending.” He was mixing drinks in Christine’s living room to the sound of breaking eggshells from the kitchen adjoining.

“Were you ever one?”

“For a while.” He measured three ounces of rye whiskey, dividing it two ways. “Sometime I’ll tell you about it.”

When he took the drinks to the kitchen, Christine was emptying beaten eggs from a mixing dish into a softly sizzling pan.

“Three minutes more,” she said, “that’s all.”

He gave her the drink and they clinked glasses.

The omelet proved to be everything she had promised – light, fluffy, and seasoned with herbs. “The way omelets should be,” he assured her, “but seldom are.”

“I can boil eggs too.”

“Some other breakfast,” he smiled.

Afterward they returned to the living room and Peter mixed a second drink. It was almost two a.m. Sitting beside her on the sofa, he pointed to the odd-appearing clock. “I get the feeling that thing is staring at me.”

“Perhaps it is,” Christine answered. “It was my father’s. He was a doctor and the clock used to be in his office where patients could see it. It’s the only thing I saved.”

Once before Christine had told him, matter-of-factly, about the airplane accident in Wisconsin. Now he said gently, “After it happened, you must have felt desperately alone.”

She said simply, “I wanted to die. Though you get over that, of course – after a while. That part – wanting to die – took just a week or two.”

“And – after?”

“When I came to New Orleans,” Christine said, “I tried to concentrate on not thinking. For a while I considered going back to university, then decided not. It seemed as if I’d grown away from it all.”

Christine sipped her drink, her expression pensive. “Anyway,” she went on, “one day I saw a sign, which said ‘Secretarial School.’ I thought – that’s it! I’ll learn what I need to, then get a job involving endless hours of work. In the end that’s exactly what happened.”

“Why the St. Gregory?”

“I was staying there. I had since I came from Wisconsin. Then one morning I saw in the classifieds that the managing director of the hotel wanted a personal secretary. It was early, so I thought I’d be first. In those days W.T. arrived at work before everyone else. When he came, I was waiting in the executive suite.”

“He hired you on the spot?”

“Not really. Actually, I don’t believe I ever was hired. It was just that, when W.T. found out why I was there, he called me in and began dictating letters. By the time more applicants arrived I’d been working for hours, and I told them the job was filled. About three days later I left a note on his desk. ‘My name is Christine Francis,’ and I suggested a salary. I got the note back without comment – just initialed, and that’s all there’s ever been.”

“It makes a good bedtime story.” Peter rose from the sofa, stretching his big body. “That clock of yours is staring again. I guess I’d better go.”

“It isn’t fair,” Christine objected. “All we’ve talked about is me.” She found herself wondering what it would be like to be carried in his arms.

“Anyway, there’ll be other times.” He stopped, regarding her directly. “Won’t there?”

As she nodded in answer, he leaned forward, kissing her lightly.

Already in a taxi to his own apartment he decided that whatever, if anything, developed between Christine and himself should happen slowly, with caution on his own part.

Tuesday 1

As with all hotels, the St. Gregory came awake early after a short, light sleep.

Near five a.m., night cleaning parties tiredly began dissembling their equipment to store it for another day.

A switchboard operator put down her knitting and made the first morning wake-up call. Between now and seven a.m., the switchboard group would awaken other guests. As usual, the peak would be 7:45, with close to a hundred and eighty calls requested. Even working at high speed, the three operators would have trouble completing that many in less than twenty minutes. Inevitably today there would be complaints from guests to management alleging that some operator had called them either too early or too late.

Two floors below street level, in the engineering control room, Wallace Santopadre, third-class stationary engineer, put down a paperback copy of Toynbee’s Greek Civilization. Now it was time for the final stroll of his watch around the engineers’ domain. He checked the hot-water system, noting that there would be plenty of hot water during the heavy demand period soon to come, when upwards eight hundred people might decide to take morning showers at the same time. Santopadre also noted that the massive air conditioners were running more easily as the result of a drop in outside temperature.

Not far from the engineering station, in an odorous room, Booker T. Graham wheeled today’s last trolley with garbage in and, a little at a time, spread the contents on a large flat tray, raking the mess back and forth like a gardener preparing topsoil. Whenever he saw a trophy – a returnable bottle, intact glassware, silverware, and sometimes a guest’s valuables – Booker T. retrieved it. At the end, what was left was pushed into the fire and a new portion spread out. The present month, almost ended, promised to be average for recoveries. So far, silverware had totalled nearly two thousand pieces, each of which was worth a dollar to the hotel. There were some four thousand bottles worth two cents each, eight hundred intact glasses, a quarter a piece, and a large assortment of other items. Graham yearly saved to the hotel about forty thousand dollars.

In the kitchen area, lights were on. In a few minutes the cooks would begin preparing the hotel’s sixteen hundred breakfasts and later – long before the last egg and bacon would be served at mid-morning – start today’s two thousand lunches. At the kitchen fry station Jeremy Boehm, a sixteen-year old helper, checked the big, multiple deep-fryer he had switched on ten minutes earlier. He had set it to two hundred degrees, as his instructions called for. The fat of the fried chicken in the fryer had heated all right, though he thought it seemed quite a bit smokier than usual. He wondered if he should report the smokiness to someone, then remembered that only yesterday an assistant chef had scolded him for showing an interest in sauce preparation. This was none of his business either. Let someone else worry.

Someone was worrying in the hotel laundry half a block away. Mrs. Isles Schulder was concerned about a pile of soiled tablecloths. In the course of a working day the laundry would handle about twenty-five thousand pieces of linen, ranging from towels and bed sheets to greasy coveralls from Engineering. Mostly these required routine handling, but lately businessmen had stated to do figuring on tablecloths, using ball-point pens. Once ballpoint ink got wet, you could write a cloth off because, after that, nothing would ever get the ink out. So, Nellie – the laundry’s best spotter – would have to work hard today with the carbon tetrachloride, the only thing that could wash off the ink.

And so it went, through the entity of the hotel. Upon stage and behind a new day came awake. 2

In his private six-room suite on the hotel’s fifteenth floor, Warren Trent stepped down from the barber’s chair, in which Aloysius Royce had shaved him. Looking in the mirror, he could find no fault with it as he studied his reflection. It showed a beaked nose and deep-set eyes with a hint of secretiveness. His hair, black in youth, was now white, thick and curly still. He looked as an eminent southern gentleman.

It was Tuesday. Including today, there were only four more days to prevent his lifetime’s work from turning into nothingness.

The hotel proprietor entered the dining room where Aloysius Royce had laid a breakfast table. He gestured for Royce to sit with him. Serving the two portions, Royce remained silent, knowing his employer would speak when ready. There had been no comment so far on Royce’s bruised face or the two adhesive patches he had put on. At length, pushing away his plate, Warren Trent observed, “You’d better make the most of this. Neither of us may be enjoying it much longer.”

Royce said, “The trust people haven’t changed their mind about renewing?”

“They haven’t and they won’t.”

“Some things get better, others worse.”

Warren Trent said sourly, “It’s easy for you. You’re young. You haven’t lived to see everything you’ve worked for fall apart.”

On Friday before the close of business – a twenty-year-old mortgage on the hotel property was due and the investment syndicate holding the mortgage had declined to renew. One banker whom he knew well advised him frankly, “Hotels like yours are out of favor, Warren. Nowadays the chain hotels have replaced the big independents and are the only ones, which can show profit. Look at your balance sheet. You’ve been losing money steadily.”

Curtis O’Keefe would arrive today and there was not the slightest doubt that he was fully briefed on the St. Gregory’s financial woes.

Warren Trent switched his thoughts to more immediate affairs. “You’re on the night report,” he told Aloysius Royce.

“I know,” Royce said. “I read it.” Complaint of excessive noise in room 1126, and then, in Peter McDermott’s handwriting, Dealt with by A. Royce and P. McD. “Miss Marsha Preyscott – daughter of the Mr. Preyscott – was almost raped. Do you want me to tell you about it?”

Royce and Warren Trent’s casual relationship was based upon the example of Aloysius Royce’s father. The elder Royce, who served Warren Trent first as body servant and later as companion and privileged friend, had always spoken out with disregard of consequences, which, in their early years together, drove Trent to white hot fury and later had made the two inseparable. Aloysius was a little boy when his father had died over a decade ago, but he had never forgotten Warren Trent’s face, grieving and tear stained, at the old Negro’s funeral. They had walked away from the cemetery together after Trent’s words, “You’ll stay on with me at the hotel. Later we’ll work something out.” The “something” had turned out to be college followed by law school, from which he would graduate in a few weeks’ time. In the meanwhile, Aloysius performed personal services, which Warren Trent accepted. At other times, they argued heatedly. And yet Aloysius Royce was conscious of a border never to be crossed^[6]. Now he said, “The young lady called for help. I happened to hear.” He described his own action and Peter McDermott’s intervention, which he neither praised nor criticized.

Warren Trent listened, and at the end said, “McDermott handled everything properly. Why don’t you like him?”

Royce was surprised by the old man’s perception. “Perhaps I don’t like big white football players proving how kind they are by being nice to colored boys.”

“Your father had an instinct for people. But he was a lot more tolerant than you.”

The elder Royce had always accepted cheerfully whatever life brought, without question or complaint. Knowledge of affairs beyond his own limited horizon rarely disturbed him. And yet he had an insight into fellow human beings too deep to be overlooked.

“You’d better tell young McDermott to come and see me. Ask him to come here. I’m a little tired this morning.”

“Mark Preyscott’s in Rome, eh? I suppose I ought to telephone him,” said Mr. Trent instead of greeting Peter McDermott.

“His daughter insists that we shouldn’t. And there was no rape as it was prevented.”

Warren Trent sighed and waved a hand in dismissal. “You deal with it all.” His tone made clear that he was already tired of the subject. There would be no telephone call to Rome.

“Something else I’d like to deal with concerns the room clerks.” Peter described the Albert Wells incident.

“We should have closed off that room years ago.”

“I don’t think we should close it if we tell the guest what he’s getting into.”

Warren Trent nodded. “Attend to it.”

Now Peter said, “I thought you should know about the Duke and Duchess of Croydon. The Duchess asked for you personally.” He described the incident and the differing version of the waiter Sol Natchez.

Warren Trent grumbled, “I know that damn woman. She won’t be satisfied unless the waiter’s fired.”

“I don’t believe he should be fired.”

“Then tell him to go fishing for a few days with pay. And warn him from me that next time he spills something, to be sure it’s boiling and over the Duchess’s head.”

Abruptly changing the subject, Warren Trent announced, “Curtis O’Keefe is checking in today. He wants two adjoining suites. You’d better make sure that everything’s in order.”

“Will Mr. O’Keefe be staying long?”

“I don’t know. It depends on a lot of things.”

For a moment Peter felt a surge of sympathy for the older man.

The hotel proprietor asked, “What’s our convention situation?”

“About half the chemical engineers have checked out; the rest will leave by today. Coming in – Gold Crown Cola is in and organized. They’ve taken three hundred and twenty rooms, which is better than we expected, and we’ve increased the lunch and banquet figures accordingly. The Congress of American Dentistry begins tomorrow, though some of their people checked in yesterday and there’ll be more today. They should take close to two hundred and eighty rooms.”

Warren Trent gave a satisfied grunt. At least the news was not all bad.

“We had a full house last night,” Warren Trent said. He added, “Can we handle today’s arrivals?”

“It’ll be close. Our over-bookings are a little high.”

Like all hotels, the St. Gregory accepted more reservations than it had rooms available. It gambled on the certain foreknowledge that some people who made reservations would fail to show up, so the problem resolved itself into guessing the true percentage of non-arrivals. Most times, experience and luck allowed the hotel to come out with all rooms occupied – the ideal situation.

But once in a while an estimate went wrong.

In Peter’s own experience the worst occasion was when a baker’s convention, meeting in New York, decided to remain an extra day so that some of its members could take a moonlight cruise around Manhattan. Two hundred and fifty bakers and their wives stayed on without telling the hotel, which expected them to check out so an engineers’ convention could move in. Hundreds of angry engineers and their women waited in the lobby that night, some waving reservations made two years earlier. In the end, the city’s other hotels being already filled, the new arrivals were dispersed to motels in outlying New York until next day when the bakers went innocently away. But the monumental taxi bills of the engineers were paid by the hotel and exceeded the profit on both conventions.

Peter said, “I talked with the Roosevelt. If we’re in a jam tonight, they can help us out with maybe thirty rooms.” Even fiercely competitive hotels aided each other in that kind of crisis, never knowing when the roles would be reversed.

“All right,” Warren Trent said, a cloud of cigar smoke above him, “now what’s the outlook for the fall?”

“It’s disappointing. The two big union conventions have been cancelled.”

“Why?”

“It’s the same reason I warned you about earlier. We’ve continued to discriminate. We haven’t complied with the Civil Rights Act, and the unions resent it.” Involuntarily, Peter glanced toward Aloysius Royce who had come into the room.

“More conventions, and just plain folks, are going to stay away until this hotel and others like it admit that times have changed,” remarked Royce.

“It so happens,” Peter said quietly, “that I agree with what he said.”

“You’re being fools, both of you,” grunted Warren Trent.

When Warren Trent heard the outer door close behind Peter McDermott and Aloysius Royce’s footsteps return to the small book-lined sitting room, which was the young Negro’s private domain, the hotel proprietor noticed how quiet it was in the living room. There was only a whisper from the air conditioning, and occasional stray sounds from the city below. Sitting quietly here, the memory stirred him.

More than thirty years since he had carried Hester, as a new, young bride, across the threshold of this very room. And how short a time they had had: those few brief years, joyous beyond measure, until the paralytic polio struck without warning. It had killed Hester in twenty-four hours, leaving Warren Trent, mourning and alone, and the St. Gregory Hotel. Warren Trent remembered her like a sweet spring flower, who had made his days gentle and his life richer, as no one had before or since.

In the silence, a rustle of silk seemed to come from the doorway behind him. He turned his head, but the room was empty and, unusually, moisture dimmed his eyes.

Was the hotel worth fighting for? Surrender: perhaps that was the answer. Surrender to changing times.

And yet… if he did, what else was left?

Nothing. For himself there would be nothing left, not even the ghosts that walked this floor.

No! He would not sell out. Not yet. While there was still hope, he would hold on.

3

When Christine Francis saw him, Sam Jakubiec, the stocky, balding credit manager, was standing at the Reception, making his daily check of the account of every guest in the hotel. There was almost nothing that the credit chief’s shrewd mind missed. In the past it had saved the hotel thousands of dollars in bad debts.

“Anything interesting this morning?”

Without pausing, Jakubiec nodded. “A few things. For example, Sanderson, room 1207. Disproportionate tipping.”

It showed two room-service charges – one for $1.50, the other for two dollars. In each case a two-dollar tip had been added and signed for.

“People who don’t intend to pay often write the biggest tips,” Jakubiec said. “Anyway, it’s one to check out.”

“Now,” he said, “what can I do?”

“We’ve hired a private duty nurse for 1410.” Briefly Christine reported the previous night’s crisis concerning Albert Wells. “I’m a little worried whether Mr. Wells can afford it,” she said, though she was more concerned for the little man himself than for the hotel.

They crossed the lobby to the credit manager’s office. A dumpy brunette secretary was working inside.

“Madge,” Sam Jakubiec said, “see what we have on Wells, Albert.”

Without answering, she opened a drawer and flipped over cards. Pausing, she said in a single breath, “Albuquerque, Coon Rapids, Montreal, take your pick.”

“It’s Montreal,” Christine said, and Jakubiec took the card the secretary offered him. Scanning it, he observed, “He looks all right. Stayed with us six times. Paid cash. One small query, which seems to have been settled.”

“It was our fault.”

The credit man nodded. “I’d say there’s nothing to worry about.” He handed the card back to the secretary.

“I’ll look into it, though. If he has a cash problem, we could maybe help out, give him a little time to pay.”

“Thanks, Sam.”

Back in her own office in the executive suite she decided first to complete the matter which had taken her downstairs. Lifting the telephone, she asked for room 1410.

“Mr. Wells passed a comfortable night,” the nurse informed her, “and his condition is improved.”

Wondering why some nurses felt they had to sound like official bulletins, Christine replied, “Please, tell Mr. Wells I called and that I’ll see him this afternoon.” 4

The inconclusive conference in the hotel owner’s suite left Peter McDermott in a mood of frustration. As he had on other occasions, he wished fervently that he could have six months and a free hand to manage the hotel himself.

Near the elevators he stopped to use a house phone, inquiring from Reception what accommodation had been reserved for Mr. Curtis O’Keefe’s party. There were two adjoining suites on the twelfth floor.

As he approached, he saw that all four doors to the suites were open and, from within, the whine of a vacuum cleaner was audible. Inside, two maids were working industriously under the critical eye of Mrs. Blanche du Quesnay, the St. Gregory’s sharp-tongued but highly competent housekeeper.

She turned as Peter came in, “I might have known that one of you men would be checking up to see if I’m capable of doing my own job.”

Peter grinned. “Relax, Mrs. Q. Mr. Trent asked me to drop in. If only he had known you were giving this your personal attention!” He then inquired, “Have flowers and a basket of fruit been ordered?”

“They’re on the way up. Have a look around. There’s no charge.”

Both suites, Peter saw as he walked through them, had been gone over thoroughly. The furnishings were dustless and orderly. In bedrooms and bathrooms the linen was spotless and correctly folded, hand basins and baths were dry and shining. Mirrors and windows gleamed. There was nothing else to be done, Peter thought, as he stood in the center of the second suite.

Then a thought struck him. Curtis O’Keefe was notably religious. The hotelier prayed frequently, sometimes in public. The thought prompted Peter to check the Gideon Bibles – one in each room.

He was glad he did.

As usually happened when they had been in use for any length of time, the Bibles’ front pages were dotted with call girls’ phone numbers, since a Gideon Bible – as experienced travelers knew – was the first place to seek that kind of information. Peter showed the books silently to Mrs. du Quesnay. “I’ll have new ones sent up. I suppose what Mr. O’Keefe likes or doesn’t is going to make a difference to people keeping their jobs around here.”

He shook his head. “I honestly don’t know, Mrs. Q. Your guess is as good as mine.”

Peter supposed that most of the younger and brighter staff members would have an opportunity to stay on. Older employees though had a good deal more to worry about.

As Peter McDermott approached the executive suite, the chief engineer, Doc Vickery, was leaving it. Stopping, Peter said, “Number four elevator was giving some trouble last night, chief. Is it really that bad?”

“If you mean shall we have a big accident, the answer’s no. But we’ve had small breakdowns and sometime there’ll be a bigger one.”

Peter inquired, “What is it you need?”

“A hundred thousand dollars to start. Good machinery’s a lovely thing. Most times it’ll do more work than you think it could, and after that you can patch it and coax it, and it’ll work for you some more. But somewhere along there’s a death point you’ll never get by, no matter how much you want to.”

Peter was still thinking about the chief’s words when he entered his own office. What was the death point, he wondered, for an entire hotel?

The telephone bell rang. It was Reception. “Mr. McDermott, Mr. Curtis O’Keefe has just checked in.” 5

Curtis O’Keefe marched into the busy lobby like an arrow piercing an apple’s core. And a slightly decayed apple, he thought critically. He headed for Reception not without grace. His athlete’s body had been his pride through most of the fifty-six years, in which he had manipulated himself upward from a lower-middleclass nonentity to become one of the nation’s richest men.

“My name is O’Keefe and I have reserved two suites, one for myself, the other in the name of Miss Dorothy Lash.”

“Yes, sir. I’m sure your suites are ready, sir. One moment, please.”

O’Keefe stepped back a pace from the counter, allowing other arrivals to move in. Outside, in bright, warm sunshine, airport limousines and taxis were discharging passengers. He noticed a convention was assembling. A banner proclaimed ‘CONGRESS OF AMERICAN DENTISTRY’.

He could now see Dodo entering the lobby: all legs and breasts radiating sex. He had left her at the car to supervise the baggage. She enjoyed doing things like that occasionally. Anything requiring more cerebral strain was too difficult to her.

She joined him. Under the big hat, which failed to conceal the ash-blond hair, her baby blue eyes were wide as ever in the flawless childlike face.

“Curtie, they say there are a lot of dentists staying here.”

“I’m glad you told me. Otherwise I might never have known.”

“Geez, well maybe I should get that filling done.”

“They’re here to open their own mouths, not other people’s.”

Dodo looked puzzled, as she did so often. Some of O’Keefe’s acquaintances, he knew, wondered about his choice of Dodo as a traveling companion when, with his wealth and influence, he could have anyone he chose. But then, of course, they could only guess the savage sensuality, which Dodo could turn on, according to his own mood. Her stupidities, which seemed to bother others, he thought of as amusing. He supposed, though, he would part with Dodo soon. He would, of course, take care of her and arrange a supporting role or two in Hollywood. She had the body and the face. Others had risen high on those commodities alone. She could do it, too.

The room clerk returned to the front counter. “Everything is ready, sir.” 6

Shortly after Curtis O’Keefe and Dodo, Julius “Keycase” Milne obtained a single room.

It had started well.

He had arrived at Moisant Airport shortly before 7:30 a.m., driving from the cheap motel on Chef Menteur Highway where he had stayed the night before. He read on a plaque that the airport was named after John Moisant, an Orleanian who had been a world aviation pioneer, and he noted that the initials were the same as his own, which could be a favorable omen.

Strolling inconspicuously through the airport terminal, a trim, well-dressed figure, carrying a folded newspaper beneath his arm, Keycase stayed carefully alert. He gave the appearance of a well-to-do businessman, relaxed and confident. Only his eyes moved ceaselessly, following the movements of the early rising travelers, pouring into the terminal from limousines and taxis, which had delivered them from downtown hotels. Twice he saw the beginning of the kind of thing he was looking for. Two men, reaching into pockets for tickets or change, encountered a hotel room key, which they had carried away in error. The first took the trouble to locate a postal box and mail the key, as suggested on its plastic tag. The other handed his to an airline clerk who put it in a cash drawer, presumably for return to the hotel.

Both incidents were disappointing, but Keycase was a patient man. Ten minutes later his patience was rewarded.

A balding man stopped to choose a magazine on his way to the departure ramp. At the newsstand cash desk he discovered a hotel key and gave an exclamation of annoyance, “There isn’t time.” Keycase followed him closely. Good! As the man passed a trash can, he threw the key in.

For Keycase the rest was routine. Strolling past the trash can, he tossed in his own folded newspaper, then, as if abruptly changing his mind, turned back and recovered it. At the same time he looked down, observed the discarded key and palmed it unobtrusively. A few minutes later in the privacy of the men’s toilet he read that it was for room 641 of the St. Gregory Hotel.

Half an hour later a similar incident terminated with the same kind of success. The second key was also for the St. Gregory – a convenience, which prompted Keycase to telephone at once, confirming his own reservation there.

It was not without reason that a New York prosecuting attorney years before had observed in court, “Everything this man becomes involved in, your honor, is a key case. Frankly, I’ve come to think of him as ‘Keycase’ Milne.” The observation followed by a sentence of fifteen years had found its way into police records and the name stuck, so that even Keycase himself now used it with a certain pride. Given time, patience, and luck, the chances of securing a key to almost anything were extremely good.

Countless people left a hotel with their room keys forgotten in pocket or purse. The conscientious ones eventually dropped the keys in a mailbox, and a big hotel like the St. Gregory regularly paid out fifty dollars or more a week in postage due on keys returned. But there were other people who either kept the keys or discarded them indifferently.

This last group kept professional hotel thieves like Keycase steadily in business.

He entered the St. Gregory with a confident air, surrendering his bags to a doorman, and registered as B. W. Meader of Ann Arbor, Michigan. The room clerk treated the newcomer with respect and allocated room 830. Now, Keycase thought agreeably, there would be three St. Gregory keys in his possession: one the hotel knew about and two it didn’t.

Room 830, into which the bellboy ushered him a few moments later, turned out to be ideal. It was spacious and comfortable and the service stairway, Keycase observed as they came in, was only a few yards away.

When he was alone, he unpacked and decided he would have a sleep in preparation for the serious night’s work ahead.

7

After making sure the hotel proprietor had been informed of O’Keefe’s arrival, Peter went on to see Marsha Preyscott in 555.

As she opened the door, “I’m glad you came,” she said.

There was something almost breathtaking in the half-woman, half-child appearance.

“I’m sorry it took so long.”

“It’s the room for emergencies, isn’t it? If you don’t mind, I thought I’d stay on for tonight, at least,” she said.

“Oh! May I ask why?”

“I’m not sure,” she lied, as she knew that the real reason was to put off her return to the empty house. “Maybe it’s because I want to recover from what happened yesterday, and the best place to do it is here.”

He nodded doubtfully. “How do you feel?”

“Better. It isn’t the kind of experience you get over in a few hours,” Marsha admitted, “but I’m afraid I was pretty stupid to come here at all – just as you reminded me.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“No, but you thought it.”

“We all get into tough situations sometimes. I was hoping you’d tell me how it all started.”

Last night her overwhelming feelings had been shock, hurt pride, and physical exhaustion. But now the shock was gone and her pride, she suspected, might suffer less from silence than by protest. It was likely, too, that in the sober light of morning Lyle Dumaire and his cronies would not be eager to boast of what they had attempted.

“I can’t persuade you if you decide to keep quiet,” Peter said. “Though I’d remind you that what people get away with once they’ll try again – not with you, perhaps, but someone else. I don’t know if the men who were in that room last night were friends of yours or not. But even if they were, I can’t think of a single reason for shielding them.”

“One was a friend. At least, I thought so.”

“We know two of them already. Who was the leader?”

“I think… Dixon.”

“Now then, tell me what happened beforehand.”

Marsha had a sense of being dominated, and, surprisingly, she found herself liking it. Obediently she described the sequence of events ending with the welcome arrival of Aloysius Royce. Only twice was she interrupted. Had she seen the women in the adjoining room whom Dixon and the others had referred to? Had she observed anyone from the hotel staff? To both questions she shook her head negatively.

At the end she had an urge to tell him more.

“Yesterday was my birthday. I was nineteen.”

“And you were alone?”

Marsha described the telephone call from Rome and her disappointment at her father’s failure to return.

“I’m sorry,” he said when she had finished. “And what I want to do now is make use of what you’ve told me. I’ll call the four people – Dixon, Dumaire and the other two – into the hotel for a talk.”

“That way, wouldn’t a lot of people find out?”

“I promise that when we’re finished there’ll be even less likelihood of anyone talking.”

“All right,” Marsha agreed. “And thank you for all you’ve done.”

It had been easier than he expected, Peter thought.

“There’s something I should explain, Miss Preyscott.”

“Marsha.”

“All right, I’m Peter.” He supposed the informality was all right.

“A lot of things go on in hotels, Marsha, that we close our eyes to. But when something like this happens we can be extremely tough. That includes anyone on our staff, if we find out they were implicated.”

It was one area, Peter knew – involving the hotel’s reputation – where Warren Trent would agree with him. The conversation went on.

“You’re new to New Orleans, aren’t you?” Marsha said.

“Fairly new. In time I hope to know it better.”

She said with sudden enthusiasm, “I know lots about local history. Would you let me teach you I’d like to do something to show how grateful… “

“There isn’t any need for that.”

“Well then, I’d like to anyway. Please!” She put a hand on his arm.

Wondering if he was being wise, he said, “It’s an interesting offer.”^[7]

“That’s settled. I’m having a dinner party at home tomorrow night. It’ll be an old-fashioned New Orleans evening. Afterward we can talk about history.”

The past, the importance of avoiding involvement with a young girl who was also a hotel guest, made Peter hesitate. Then he decided: it would be silly to refuse. And there was nothing bad about accepting an invitation to dinner. There would be others present, after all. “If I come,” he said, “I want you to do one thing for me now.”

“What?”

“Go home, Marsha. Leave the hotel and go home.”

Their eyes met directly.

“All right,” she said. “If you want me to, I will.”

It troubled Peter McDermott that someone as young as Marsha Preyscott should be so apparently neglected. If I were her father, he thought… or brother…

In his office his thoughts were interrupted by Flora Yates, his freckle-faced secretary.

Flora’s fingers, which could dance over a typewriter keyboard faster than any others he had ever seen, were clutching a pack of telephone messages.

“Anything urgent?”

“They’ll keep until this afternoon.”

“We’ll let them, then. I asked the cashier’s office to send me a bill for room 1126-7. It’s in the name of Stanley Dixon.”

“It’s here.” Flora plucked a folder from several others on his desk. “There’s also an estimate from the carpenters’ shop for damages in the suite. I put the two together.”

The bill was for seventy-five dollars, the carpenters’ estimate for a hundred and ten. Peter said, “Get me the phone number for this address. I expect it’ll be in his father’s name.”

There was a folded newspaper on his desk which he had not looked at until now. The hit-and-run fatality of the night before was on the front page. It had become a double tragedy, the mother had died in the hospital during the early hours of the morning. “Police attach credence to the report of an unnamed bystander that a “low black car moving very fast” was observed leaving the scene seconds after the accident.” City and state police were looking for a presumably damaged automobile fitting this description.

Peter wondered if Christine had seen the newspaper report.

The return of Flora with the telephone number he had asked for brought his mind back to more immediate things.

A deep male voice answered, “The Dixon residence.”

Peter introduced himself. “I’d like to speak to Mr. Stanley Dixon.”

“I’m sorry, sir. Mr. Dixon, junior, is not available.”

“Tell him if he doesn’t choose to come to the telephone I intend to call his father directly.”

There was a click on the line and a voice announced, “This’s Stan Dixon. What’s all the fuss?”

Peter answered sharply, “The fuss concerns what happened last night. Does it surprise you?”

“Who are you?”

He repeated his name. “I’ve talked with Miss Preyscott. Now I’d like to talk to you.”

“You’re talking now,” Dixon said.

“Not this way. In my office at the hotel. Four o’clock tomorrow, with the other three. You’ll bring them along.”

“Whoever you are, you’d better watch out because my old man knows Warren Trent.”

“For your information I’ve already discussed the matter with Mr. Trent. He left it for me to handle. But I’ll tell him you prefer to have your father brought in.”

“Hold it!” There was the sound of heavy breathing, “I’ve got a class tomorrow at four.”

“Cut it,” Peter told him, “and have the others do the same. My office is on the main mezzanine.”

Replacing the telephone, he found himself looking forward to tomorrow’s meeting^[8]. 8

The pages of the morning newspaper lay around the Duchess of Croydon’s bed. There was little in the news that the Duchess had not read thoroughly. There had never been a time, she realized, when her wits and resourcefulness were needed more.

She suddenly announced thinking aloud, “What we desperately need is to have some attention focused on you.”

As if by consent, neither referred to the events of the night before.

“Only thing likely to do that is an announcement confirming my appointment to Washington.”

“Exactly.”

“You can’t hurry it…” The Duke’s tone was close to hysteria.

“I’m going to call London. I shall speak to Geoffrey. I intend to ask him to do everything he can to speed up your appointment.” In contrast to her husband, the Duchess’s tone was businesslike. “Geoffrey’s good at pressure when he wants to be. Besides, if we sit here and wait it maybe worse still.”

The Duchess picked up the telephone beside the bed and instructed the operator, “I wish to call London and speak to Lord Selwyn.” When the Duchess of Croydon had explained its purpose, her brother, Lord Selwyn, was notably unenthusiastic.

“If things are left as they are, how long will a decision take?”

“The way I hear, though, it could be weeks.”

“We simply cannot wait weeks,” the Duchess insisted. “What I’m asking is for the family’s sake as well as our own.”

“I don’t like it, sis, but you usually know what you are doing. I’ll do what I can.”

The bedside telephone rang again in a few moments.

A nasal voice inquired, “Duchess of Croydon?”

“This is she.”

“Ogilvie. Chief house officer. I want a private talk. With your husband and you.”

The Duchess’s hands were shaking, “It is not convenient to see you right now.”

“I’ll be there in an hour.” It was a declaration, not a question. There was a click as the caller hung up.

“Who was it?” The Duke approached, his face paler than before.

The Duchess closed her eyes. She had a desperate yearning to be relieved of leadership and responsibility for them both. In her family, though strength was a norm, others followed her lead. Even Geoffrey always listened to her in the end, as he had just now. She could not give up and she would not.

9

“When W.T. comes he won’t like this,” sighed Christine putting off the letter and looking at Peter. “You remember a month ago,” Christine said, “– the man who was walking on Carondelet Street when a bottle dropped from above. His head was cut quite badly.”

Peter nodded. “The bottle came from one of our rooms, no question of that. But we couldn’t find the guest who did it.”

“He’s suing the hotel for ten thousand dollars. He charges shock, bodily harm, loss of earnings and says we were negligent.”

Peter said flatly, “He hasn’t a chance.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“Because there’s a whole range of cases where the same kind of thing has happened. It gives defending lawyers all kinds of precedents they can quote in court. For example, there was a classic case in Pittsburgh – at the William Penn. A man was hit by a bottle which was thrown from a guest room and went through the roof of his car. He sued the hotel.”

“And he didn’t win?”

“No. The court said that a hotel – any hotel – is not responsible for the acts of its guests.”

“Are you saying that a hotel isn’t responsible legally for anything its guests may do – even to other guests?”

“A lot of our law, in fact, goes back to the English beginning with the fourteenth century. The English inns had one great hall, warmed and lighted by a fire, and everyone slept there. While they slept it was the landlord’s business to protect his guests from thieves and murderers. And the same thing was expected of the landlord when smaller chambers began to be used.”^[9]

“It wasn’t much of an age for privacy.”

“That came later when there were individual rooms, and guests had keys. After that the innkeeper was obliged to protect his guests from being broken in upon. But beyond that he had no responsibility, either for what happened to them in their rooms or what they did.”

“So the key made the difference.”

“It still does.”

“I didn’t know you were so encyclopedic.”

“I didn’t mean to sound that way,” Peter said.

“You like all this, don’t you? Running a hotel; the other things that go with it.”

He answered frankly, “Yes, I do. Though I’d like it more if we could rearrange a few things here. But right now I’m more interested in my own dinner plan – involving you, which is why I’m here.”

“If that’s an invitation for tonight, I’m free and hungry.”

“I’ll collect you at seven. Your apartment.”

At half-past two, leaving word with one of the secretaries in the outer office, Christine left to visit Albert Wells and met Sam Jakubiec, the credit manager, on her way. Seeing Christine, he stopped. “I’ve been to see your invalid friend, Mr. Wells. I got this out of him, but lord knows how good it is.”

Christine accepted the paper the credit manager had been holding. On the sheet Albert Wells had written and signed an order on a Montreal bank for two hundred dollars.

“Is this legal?”

“It’s legal if there’s money in the bank to meet it. I’m going to invest in a phone call to Montreal to find out if this is a good check. If it isn’t, he’ll have to leave.”

“I’d appreciate it if you told me before you do anything.”

“I’d be glad to, Miss Francis.” The credit manager nodded, then continued down the corridor.

The door of room 1410 was opened by a uniformed, middle-aged and serious-faced nurse. Christine identified herself and asked if she could see Mr. Wells. “If you want to have a few minutes off, I can stay until you come back,” she added.

The voice from inside said, “Miss Francis knows what she’s up to^[10]. If she didn’t I’d have been a goner last night.”

“All right,” the nurse said.

Albert Wells beamed as Christine came in.

“I wanted to know how you were.”

“Thanks to you, miss, much better.”

“The doctor said yesterday you had bronchitis. How did you get it?” she asked.

“I was a miner once. For more years than I like to think about, miss. The stories about my past are long and boring.”

“I’d like to hear about what you did. I don’t believe it is boring.”

He chuckled. “There are some in Montreal who’d argue that.”

“I’ve often wondered about Montreal.”

“It’s in some ways a lot like New Orleans.”

“Is that why you come here every year? Because it seems the same?”

“I never thought about that. I guess I come here because I like things old-fashioned and there aren’t too many places left where they are. It’s the same with this hotel. I hate chain hotels. They’re all the same, when you’re in them, it’s like living in a factory.”

“I’m afraid the St. Gregory may be part of a chain soon.”

“If it happens I’ll be sorry,” Albert Wells said. “Though I figured you people were in money trouble here. What’s the trouble now – bank tightening up, mortgage foreclosing, something like that?”

There were surprising sides to this retired miner, Christine thought, including an instinct for the truth. She answered, smiling, “I’ve probably talked too much already. What you’ll certainly hear, though, is that Mr. Curtis O’Keefe arrived this morning.”

“Oh no! Not him. This hotel needs changes, but not his kind.”

“What kind of changes, Mr. Wells?”

“I do know one thing, in time the public will get tired and want to come back to older things – like real hospitality and a bit of character and atmosphere. Only trouble is, by the time they get around to knowing it, most of the good places – including this one maybe – will have gone.”

As she left, he winked at her.

A note on her office desk requested Christine to call Sam Jakubiec.

“I phoned that bank at Montreal”, he said. “They wouldn’t tell me anything about a credit rating. I told them the amount, though, and they didn’t seem worried, so I guess he’s got it.” 10

After a careful inspection of the magnificent basket of fruit, which Peter McDermott had ordered delivered to the suite, Dodo selected an apple and was slicing it as the telephone at O’Keefe’s elbow rang twice within a few minutes.

The first call was a polite welcome from Warren Trent. Curtis O’Keefe accepted an invitation for himself and Dodo to dine privately with the St. Gregory’s proprietor that evening. “We’ll be truly delighted,” the hotelier affirmed him, “and, by the way, I admire your house.”

“That is what I’ve been afraid of.”

The second call, which followed immediately, was from a pay telephone in the hotel lobby. “Hello, Ogden,” Curtis O’Keefe said when the caller identified himself, “I’m reading your report now. Give me fifteen minutes, then come to see me.”

Hanging up, Curtis O’Keefe said amusedly to Dodo, “I’m glad you enjoy the fruit. If it weren’t for you, I’d put a stop to all these harvest festivals.”

“My mom’d go crazy with a basket like this.”

“Why not send her one?” Lifting the telephone once more, he asked for the hotel florist. “This is Mr. O’Keefe. I believe you delivered some fruit to my suite. I would like an identical fruit basket telegraphed to Akron, Ohio, and charged to my bill.” He handed the telephone to Dodo. “Give them the address and a message for your mother.”

When she had finished, she flung her arms around him. “Curtie, you’re the sweetest!”

It was strange, he reflected, that while Dodo loved expensive gifts as much as any of her predecessors, it was the small things – such as at this moment – which seemed to please her most.

In fifteen minutes precisely, there was a knock on the door which Dodo answered. She showed in two men, both carrying briefcases – Ogden Bailey who had telephoned, and the second man, Sean Hall, who was a younger edition of his superior. Ogden Bailey was an experienced key figure in the O’Keefe organization. As well as having the usual qualifications of an accountant, he possessed an extraordinary ability to enter any hotel and, after a week or two of discreet observation – usually unknown to the hotel’s management – produce a financial analysis, which later would prove close to the hotel’s own figures. Hall, whom Bailey himself had discovered and trained, showed every promise of developing the same kind of talent.

“Now, gentlemen, how much am I going to have to pay for this hotel?”

Ogden Bailey began respectfully, “The two-million-dollar mortgage due on Friday should make bargaining a good deal easier. No one in the financial community will touch the hotel now, mostly because of its operating losses coupled with the poor management situation.”

“It isn’t necessary to give me all the details. I rely on you gentlemen to take care of those eventually. What I want at these sessions is the broad picture.”

Hall flushed and, from across the room, Dodo shot him a sympathetic glance.

In his own brief experience Sean Hall knew that the procedure for acquiring a new link in the O’Keefe hotel chain followed the same general pattern. First a “spy team” – usually headed by Ogden Bailey – moved into the hotel, its members registering as normal guests. By systematic observation and bribery, the team compiled a financial and operating study, revealing weaknesses and estimating potential.

Next, armed with this accumulated knowledge, Curtis O’Keefe directed negotiations, which, more often than not, were successful.

Then the wrecking crew moved in. It was a group of management experts. It converted any hotel to the standard O’Keefe pattern within a remarkably short time. A team member once described their work in two sentences: “The first thing we announce is that there will be no staff changes. Then we get on with the firings.”

Sean Hall supposed the same thing would happen soon in the St. Gregory Hotel.

The process saddened Hall. He had uneasy moments, too, about the ethics, by which some tasks were accomplished. But personal ambition and the fact that Curtis O’Keefe paid generously for services rendered were cause for satisfaction.

“But there are also a few good people,” Sean Hall continued, “There is one man – the assistant general manager, McDermott – who seems extremely competent. He’s thirty-two, a Cornell-Statler graduate. Unfortunately, there’s a flaw in his record. There are others in lesser posts.”

The hotel magnate returned the sheet without comment. A decision about McDermott and others would be the business of the wrecking crew.

11

This time the Duchess went to the door herself. Earlier she had dispatched her maid on an invented errand and instructed the secretary – who was terrified of dogs – to take the terriers for a walk.

A wave of cigar smoke accompanied Ogilvie in.

“My husband and I find strong smoke offensive. Would you kindly put that out?”

He ignored her. “Now then,” he said. “You two were in that hit-’n-run.”

She met his eyes directly. “What are you talking about?”

“You listen to me. This city’s burning mad – cops, mayor, everybody else. They find who did that last night, who killed that kid and its mother. And we all know who that is. I can go to the police right now if you want it.”

It was the Duke of Croydon who interjected, “What you accuse us of is true. I was driving the car and killed the little girl. What is it you know?”

“Last night, you drove to Lindy’s Place in Irish Bayou in your fancy Jaguar, and you took a lady friend. You won a hundred at the tables, then lost it at the bar. You were into a second hundred when your wife got there in a taxi. You and your wife took off home, you were driving…”

The Duchess interrupted. “You can’t possibly prove…”

“Lady, I can prove all I need to. Last night I saw you come in – through the basement, both rather shaken. Late last night the word was out about the hit-’n-run. On a hunch I went to the garage and took a quiet look at your car. Oh yeah, I should tell you. There’s plenty of blood, though it doesn’t show too much on the black paint.

“And the police got some things to go on. They got a headlight trim ring, some headlight glass. They can figure out what kind of car they are from – make, model, and maybe the year, or close to it. With your car being foreign, it’ll likely take a few days.

“But when you hit that kid you were going away from town, not to it. You must have made a mistake in the route. The police have not figured it yet. They’re looking for somebody who was headed out. That’s why, right now, they’re working on the suburbs and outside of the town. So there is a four-day delay.”

“How could that help us – the delay?”

“It might,” Ogilvie said. “If you can get the car out of the South.”

“That wouldn’t be easy.”

“No, ma’am. Every state around – Texas, Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama, all the rest’ll be watching for a car damaged the way yours is.”

It was essential, the Duchess of Croydon knew, that her thinking remain calm and reasoned.

Today was Tuesday. From all that this man said, they had until Friday or Saturday at best.

The Duchess faced Ogilvie. “How much do you want?”

“Ten thousand dollars.”

Though it was twice what she had expected, her expression did not change.

“What would we receive in return?”

“I keep quiet about what I know.”

“No. We will not pay you.”

“Now listen, lady…”

“I will not listen. Instead, you will listen to me. We would achieve nothing by paying you, except possibly a few days’ delay.” What came next, the Duchess of Croydon knew, could be the most significant thing she had ever done. She intended to gamble on the fat man’s greed. “We will pay you twenty-five thousand dollars. In return for that,” she continued evenly, “you will drive our car north.”

The silence hung. At length Ogilvie spoke. “Is this cigar bothering you, Duchess?”

As she nodded, he put it out. 12

Christine closed the menu and looked at him. “You order for both of us.”

They were in the city’s finest restaurant, Brennans Restaurant, in the French Quarter. Peter had a sense of wellbeing and delight in Christine’s company. Now, accepting Christine’s suggestion, he ordered for them both.

“With a well-run kitchen, as they have here,” Peter said, “decisions about food ought not to matter much. It’s a question of choice between equal qualities.”

“Your hotelship’s showing. But I like it. I’ve sometimes wondered, though, how you started your career.”

“I was a bellboy in Manhattan who became ambitious. One night I put a drunk to bed – helped him upstairs, got him in pajamas and tucked him in. It turned out that he was a writer for The New Yorker. A week or two after he called us ‘the hotel that’s gentler than mother’s milk.’ We took a lot of kidding, but it made the hotel look good. And I got noticed.

“That same summer they let me try other jobs in the hotel, including helping out at the bar. I was at the bar alone when a customer came in, ‘I hear you’re the bright boy The New Yorker wrote about. Can you mix me a Rusty Nail? I happened to have read about it in a book about mixing drinks the other day. Anyway, I mixed it and afterward he said, ‘That’s good, but you won’t learn the hotel business this way.’ Then he gave me his card and told me to see him next day.

“As it turned out, he didn’t own anything. His name was Herb Fischer and he was a salesman. But he knew the hotel business, and most people in it, because it was there he did his selling.”

“Tell me about Mr. Fischer.”

“Well, at first I thought he was just a big talker. But he badgered some hotel people into recommending me to the School of Hotel Administration, and they offered me a scholarship.”

Peter continued thoughtfully, “I owe a lot to Herb Fischer. I tried to thank him – the same way I tried to like him. But he wouldn’t let me do either. I found out afterward his commissions weren’t big. I paid him back by sending checks for small amounts. Most were never cashed.”

“Why don’t you see him any more?”

“He died,” Peter said. “I went to the funeral. And I found there were eight of us there – whom he’d all helped in the same kind of way.”

Christine was quiet through coffee.

“Thanks to him, I now know one thing I want to achieve – or at least something like it. I’ll show you.”

They left Brennan’s. Taking Christine’s arm, Peter led her diagonally across Royal Street. “That’s what I’d like to create,” he said. “Something at least as good, or maybe better.”

There it was, the Royal Orleans Hotel, the finest hotel in North America.

“They’ve everything – history, style, and imagination. They proved you can build freshly yet retain old character. The Royal Orleans is a chain hotel.” He added, “But not Curtis O’Keefe’s kind.”

“More like Peter McDermott’s?”

“There’s a long way to go for that.”

“Yes,” Christine said, “I know. But you’ll do it.” 13

In the dining room of Warren Trent’s private suite, Curtis O’Keefe puffed at a cigar. Directly across, Dodo, in a clinging black gown, inhaled on a Turkish cigarette, which Royce had also produced and lighted.

“A fine meal, Warren. Please compliment your chef.”

“By the way, you may like to know that precisely the same meal was available tonight in my main dining room.”

The hotel magnate observed, “There aren’t many hotels nowadays offering that kind of cuisine. Most had to change their ways.”

“Most but not all.”

“Our entire business has changed, Warren, since you and I were young in it – whether we like the fact or not. What the public expects nowadays from a hotel is an ‘efficient, economic package. The big houses like yours – if they want to survive my kind of competition – have to think as I do.”

Warren Trent said sharply, “I haven’t spent my life building an institution to see it become a cheap-run joint.”

“If you’re referring to my houses, none of them are that.” O’Keefe reddened angrily.

In the cold, ensuing silence Dodo asked, “Will it be a real fight or just a words one?”

Both men laughed.

Warren Trent continued, “My instinct tells me plenty of people still like to travel first class. They’re the ones who expect something more than boxes with beds.”

“But jet airplanes killed first-class travel, and an entire state of mind along with it.”

Royce brought another cigarette to Dodo, and Warren Trent found himself wondering how Aloysius’s father might have reacted to the news that control of the hotel might soon pass on to other hands. Warren Trent could almost hear him now, asserting in his cracked voice, “You had your own way so long. But if you believe in something, you fight for it.”

O’Keefe said, “In my organization I’ve had a blueprint developed for the future.

“The first thing we’ll have simplified is Reception, where checking in will take a few seconds at the most. There’ll be a kind of instant sorting office, masterminded by an IBM brain that is ready now.

“Guests with reservations will be sent a keycoded card. They’ll insert it in a frame and immediately be on their way by individual escalator section to their room.

“For those driving their own cars there’ll be coded, moving lights to guide them into personal parking stalls, from where other individual escalators will take them directly to their rooms.

“All services will have automated room delivery systems. And apart from other benefits, I’ll break the tipping system, a tyranny we’ve suffered – along with our guests – for years too long. My building design and automation will keep to a minimum the need for any guest room to be entered by a hotel employee. All this, and more, can be accomplished now.”

“I hope,” Warren Trent said firmly, “that I never live to see it happen in my house.”

“You won’t,” O’Keefe informed him. “Before it can happen here we’ll have to tear down your house and build again.”

Dodo seemed surprised. “I think this is a swell hotel.” She turned her wide and seemingly innocent eyes toward O’Keefe. “Curtie, why’ll you have to pull it down?”

Curtis O’Keefe glanced at her sharply. There were moments when he wondered if Dodo were perhaps a little brighter than generally she allowed herself to seem.

“I was merely reviewing a possibility. Warren, it’s time you were out of the hotel business. Even your hotel staff is no longer loyal to you.” At length he said, “You’ve an old employee, haven’t you, who runs your Pontalba Bar?”

“Yes – Tom Earlshore. If there’s one man I’d trust with anything, it’s Tom.”

“You’d be a fool if you did,” O’Keefe said crisply. “I’ve information that he’s bleeding you white.”

In the shocked silence O’Keefe recited the facts. There were a multiplicity of ways in which a dishonest bartender could steal from his employer. “I’d say it’s been going on a long time. Your supposedly loyal staff is riddled with corruption. Naturally, I haven’t all the details, but those I have you’re welcome to. If you wish I’ll have a report prepared.”

“Thank you.” The words were whispered. At last, slowly and with a trace of weariness, Warren Trent announced, “What you have told me may make a difference to my own position.”

“In any case, now we’ve reached that point I’d like to have you consider a proposal.” In brief, Curtis O’Keefe described the mortgage crisis the hotel was in. Warren Trent was not surprised he knew everything.

“My proposal,” Curtis O’Keefe said, “is a purchase price for this hotel of four million dollars. Of this, two millions will be obtained by renewing your present mortgage. The balance will be a million dollars cash, enabling you to pay off your minority stockholders, and one million dollars in O’Keefe Hotels stock – a new issue to be arranged. Additionally, you will have the privilege of retaining your apartment here for as long as you live.”

Warren Trent sat motionless, his face neither revealing his thoughts nor his surprise. The terms were better than he had expected. But he said abruptly, “Suppose I refuse to sell. What are your plans?”

“I shall look for other property and build. The competition we’ll provide will force you out of business. And I’d prefer your answer at once.”

The truth was: the O’Keefe Hotel Corporation wanted the St. Gregory very much, and urgently. The lack of an O’Keefe affiliate in New Orleans was like a missing tooth in the company’s otherwise solid bite on the traveling public.

“I’m not prepared to give you an answer now.”

“I’d like to leave here no later than Thursday night.”

14

“There’s something exciting,” Peter McDermott observed, “about a girl fumbling in her handbag for the key to her apartment.”

“Here! – I’ve found it.”

“Hang on!” Peter took Christine’s shoulders, then kissed her. It was a long kiss and in course of it his arms moved, holding her tightly.

Taking the key, Peter opened the apartment door.

“Cigarette?”

“Yes, please.”

Peter held a match flame for them both.

“This is nice,” Christine said. “Just sitting, talking.”

“Talking wasn’t exactly…”

“I know. But there’s a question of where we’re going, and if, and why.”

“If what could happen… happens, it ought to mean something for both of us.”

He stubbed out his cigarette, then took Christine’s and did the same. “We need to get to know each other.” His eyes searched her face. “Words aren’t always the best way.”

His arms reached out and she came to him. Trembling, and to the pounding of her heart, she told herself: whatever was to happen must take its course.

Then, unexpectedly, they were no longer close together. He whispered, “You were right. Let’s give it time.”

She felt herself kissed gently, then heard footsteps recede.

“Please don’t go!” she breathed.

But there was only silence. 15

A few minutes only remained of Tuesday.

In a Bourbon Street strip club the big-hipped blonde leaned closer to her male companion. “Sure I want to go to bed with you, honey.”

If he breathes at me any more, she thought, I’ll puke.

“What are we waiting for, then? Why don’t we leave now?” the man asked thickly.

“I already told you, sugar. I work here. I can’t leave yet. I got my act to do.”

As if with sudden inspiration, the hippy blonde said, “What hotel you staying at?”

“St. Gregory.”

“Wait, Stanley darling! I’ve an idea.”

For the past hour and a half Stan whoever-he-was from somewhere had docilely followed the tired old routine: the first drink at four times the price he would have paid in an honest bar. Then the waiter had brought her over to join him. They had been served a succession of drinks. And later they were served a bottle of domestic champagne, for which the bill, though Stanley didn’t know it yet, would be forty dollars! So all that remained was to ditch him, though she wanted to get a bonus for enduring that stinking breath.

“Leave me your hotel key. You can get another at the desk, they always have spares. Soon as I’m through here I’ll come and join you.”

He said doubtfully, “Hey, you sure you’ll…”

“Honey, I promise I’ll fly.”

He gave her the key and, before he could change his mind, she had left the table. She wondered how long he would lie hopefully awake in his hotel room, and how long it would take him to realize she wasn’t coming, and never would.

Some two hours later she sold the key for ten dollars.

The buyer was Keycase Milne. Wednesday 1

At the first gray streaks of a new dawn, Keycase was refreshed, alert, and ready for work. He dismissed a shadow of fear concerning the awful possibility of being sent down for fifteen years if he was caught.

He had five keys now. One of the keys had been obtained last evening in the simplest way possible – by asking for it at the hotel front desk. His own room number was 830. He had asked for the key of 803. The fifth key had been sold to him by a Bourbon Street girl.

He made his last preparations. In the bathroom he gargled with whiskey thoroughly, though drinking none. Checking his pockets where his collection of keys was disposed, he let himself out of the room.

He went two floors down to the sixth, moving easily, not hurrying. The corridor was deserted and silent.

Keycase had already studied the hotel layout and the system of numbering rooms. Taking the key of 641 from an inside pocket, he held it casually in his hand and walked unhurriedly to where he knew the room was.

The door of 641 was in front of him. He stopped. No light from beneath. He produced gloves and slipped them on. Making no sound, he inserted the key. The door opened noiselessly. Removing the key, he went in, gently closing the door behind him.

To the right was the shadow of a bed. From the sound of even breathing, its occupant was well asleep.

The dressing table was the place to look for money first. His gloved fingers encountered a small pile of coins. Where there were coins there was likely to be a wallet. Ah! – he had found it. It was interestingly bulky.

A bright light in the room snapped on.

Reaction was instinctive. He dropped the wallet and spun around guiltily, facing the light.

The man who had switched on the bedside lamp was in pajamas, sitting up in bed. He was youngish, muscular, and angry. He said explosively, “What the devil do you think you’re doing?”

Swaying as if drunkenly, Keycase said, “Wadya mean, wha’m I doin’? Wha’ you doin’ in my bed?” Unobtrusively, he slipped off the gloves.

“Damn you! This is my bed. And my room!”

Moving closer, Keycase loosed a blast of breath. He saw the other recoil. Keycase had bluffed his way out of dangerous situations like this before. He said stupidly, “Your room? You sure?”

“You lousy drunk! Of course I’m sure it’s my room!”

“This is 614?”

“You stupid jerk! It’s 641.”

“Sorry, old man. Guess, it’s my mistake.”

“Get out!”

Already he was on the way to the door. “Said I’m sorry, old man. No need to get upset.”

Keycase closed the door behind him.

The man inside got out of bed, the protective chain went on.

For fully five minutes Keycase stood in the corridor, waiting to hear if the man in the room telephoned downstairs. But there was no sound, no telephone call. The immediate danger was removed.

Later, though, it might be a different story. When Mr. 641 awoke again in the full light of morning he would remember what had occurred. What Keycase ought to do was pack up and run. If he hurried, he could be clear of the city in less than an hour.

Except that he had invested money – the motel, his hotel room, the girl. Now, funds were running low. Think hard, Keycase told himself.

So how long did he have? Another clear day, probably two. It would be enough.

And he must go on now before he could lose his nerve.

The man named Stanley, from Iowa, who had fallen for the oldest routine on Bourbon Street, was at last asleep. He neither heard Keycase enter, nor move carefully and methodically around the room. He continued to sleep soundly as Keycase extracted the money from his wallet, then pocketed his watch, ring, gold cigarette case, matching lighter and diamond cuff links. He did not stir as Keycase, just as quietly, left.

It was mid-morning before Stanley from Iowa awoke, and another hour before he was aware of having been robbed.

The same day Keycase saw the Duchess of Croydon.

Keycase stopped, at first startled and unbelieving. An avid reader of magazines and newspapers, he had seen too many photographs not to be sure. And the Duchess was staying, presumably, in this hotel.

The Duchess of Croydon’s gem collection was among the world’s most fabulous. Whatever the occasion, she never appeared anywhere without being resplendently jeweled. Even now his eyes narrowed at the sight of her rings, worn casually, which must be priceless.

A half-formed idea – reckless, audacious, impossible… or was it?… was taking shape in Keycase’s mind. 2

Hotel guests who entertained in their rooms, or even drank alone, often had an inch or two of liquor left in bottles at the time of their departure. Good liquor was usually left intact on dressing tables of the vacated rooms. If a bellboy observed such bottles when summoned to carry a guest’s bags at checkout time, he was usually back within a few minutes to collect them. In laundry bags the liquor found its way to the corner of a basement storeroom, the private domain of Herbie Chandler.

Herbie sorted the bottles containing gin into a single group. He repeated the process with bourbon, Scotch, and rye. A lonely few ounces of vodka he emptied, after a moment’s hesitation, into the gin.

Later in the day the seven full bottles would be delivered to a bar a few blocks from the St. Gregory. The bar owner served the liquor to customers, paying Herbie half the going price of regularly bottled supplies.

Today’s accumulation would have pleased Herbie if he had not been preoccupied with other thoughts. Late last night there had been a telephone call from Stanley Dixon. The young man told about the conversation between himself and Peter McDermott. What Dixon wanted to find out was: Just how much did McDermott know?

Herbie Chandler had been unable to supply an answer, except to warn Dixon to be discreet and admit nothing. But, ever since, he had been wondering what exactly happened in rooms 1126-7 two nights earlier, and just how well informed – concerning the bell captain’s own part in it – the assistant general manager was.

Another nine hours until four o’clock would pass slowly. 3

In his morning prayer, Curtis O’Keefe did not forget to remind God of his own continuing interest in the St. Gregory Hotel. He regretted that he had not insisted on Warren Trent’s decision last night. He had not the least doubt of a favorable decision from Warren Trent. There could be no possible alternative.

Near the end of breakfast there was a telephone call from Hank Lemnitzer, Curtis O’Keefe’s personal representative on the West Coast.

“There’s one thing, Mr. O’Keefe. It’s about Jenny LaMarsh…”

O’Keefe remembered a striking, rangy brunette with a superb figure and a quick mischievous wit. He had been impressed both with her obvious potential as a woman and the range of her conversation.

“I’ve talked with her, Mr. O’Keefe. She’d be pleased to go along with you on a trip. Or two.”

Conversation, as well as other things with Jenny LaMarsh, would be highly stimulating. Certainly she would have no trouble holding her own with people they met together.

But, surprising himself, he hesitated.

“There’s one thing I’d like to ensure, and that’s Miss Lash’s future. I’d like you to line up something for Miss Lash specifically. Something good. And I want to know about it before she leaves.”

The voice sounded doubtful. “I guess I could.”

Returning back to the dining room, he informed her, “I’m going to take a walk through the hotel.” Later today, he decided, he would make amends to Dodo by taking her on an inspection of the city. At the outer doorway, on impulse, he told her about it. She responded by flinging her arms around his neck.

He rode an elevator down to the main mezzanine and from there took the stairway to the lobby where he resolutely put Dodo out of his mind. He could see how he could change everything in this place and planned future reconstructions in his head.

The lobby was becoming busier. A small line had formed at the reception counter. O’Keefe stood watching. It was then that he observed what apparently no one else had seen.

A middle-aged, well-dressed Negro entered the hotel. At the counter he put down his bag and stood waiting, third in line.

“Good morning,” the Negro said. “I’m Dr. Nicholas; you have a reservation for me.” While waiting he had removed a black hat revealing carefully brushed iron-gray hair.

“Yes, sir. Could you register, please?” The words were spoken before the clerk looked up. As he did, his features stiffened.

“I’m sorry,” he said firmly, “the hotel is full.”

The Negro responded smilingly. “I have a reservation. The hotel sent a letter confirming it.”

“There must have been a mistake. We have a convention here.”

“It’s a convention of dentists. I happen to be one.”

The room clerk shook his head. “There’s nothing I can do for you.”

The Negro put away his papers. “In that case I’d like to talk with someone else.”

O’Keefe had a sense that a time bomb was ticking, ready to explode.

“You can talk to the assistant manager. Mr. Bailey!”

The title of assistant manager, as in most hotels, was mainly to make guests believe they were dealing with a higher personage than in reality. The real authority of the hotel was in the executive offices, out of sight.

“Mr. Bailey,” the room clerk said, “I’ve explained to this gentleman that the hotel is full…”

“And I’ve explained,” the Negro protested, “that I have a confirmed reservation.”

“Won’t you come and sit down over here?”

Smoothly and without fuss, a potentially embarrassing scene had been eased from center stage into the wings. Meanwhile the other arrivals were being quickly checked in with the aid of a second room clerk who had joined the first.

Well, O’Keefe thought, perhaps there might be no explosion after all.

The assistant manager gestured his companion to a chair beside the desk and eased into his own.

“I apologize for the misunderstanding, but I’m sure we can find you other accommodation in the city.”

“You tell me the hotel is full, but your clerks are checking people in. Do they have some special kind of reservation?”

“I guess you could say that.” The professional smile had disappeared.

“Jim Nicholas!” Behind the voice, a small elderly man took short hurried strides across the lobby.

The Negro stood. “Dr. Ingram! How good to see you!”

“How are you, Jim, my boy? I assume your practice is going well.”

“It is, thank you,” Dr. Nicholas smiled. “Of course my university work still takes a good deal of time.”

“Anyway you seem to have gotten the best of both with a fine reputation. By the way, I shall have the pleasure of introducing you to the convention. You know they made me president this year?”

Dr. Ingram patted his colleague on the shoulder. “Give me your room number, Jim. A few of us will be getting together for drinks later on^[11]. I’d like you to join us.”

“Unfortunately,” Dr. Nicholas said, “I’ve been told I won’t get a room. It seems to have something to do with my color.”

There was a shocked silence, in which the dentists’ president flushed deep red, “Jim, I’ll deal with this. I promise you, there will be an apology and a room. If there isn’t, I guarantee every other dentist will walk out of this hotel.”

The assistant manager instructed a bellboy urgently, “Get Mr. McDermott – fast!”

4

Since his impetuous departure from Christine’s apartment last night, she had been out of Peter McDermott’s mind only briefly. Even sleeping, he had dreamed about her. Some time this evening they were to meet again.

Hoping Christine would come soon, he turned his attention to Flora and the morning mail. There was a light tap on the door from the outer office.

“It’s just me,” Marsha Preyscott said. “There wasn’t anyone outside, so I…” She caught sight of Peter. “Oh, my goodness! Won’t you fall over backwards?”

The resounding crash was followed by a second’s startled silence.

His left ankle stung painfully where it had struck a leg of the overturning chair on the way down. The back of his head ached as he fingered it, though, fortunately, the rug had cushioned most of the impact.

And there was his vanished dignity – attested to by Marsha’s rippling laughter and Flora’s more discreet smile.

As they came around the desk to help him up, Christine came in.

She stopped at the doorway, a sheaf of papers in her hand. Her eyebrows went up. “Am I intruding?”

“No,” Peter said. “I… well, I fell out of my chair. It went over backwards.”

Christine glanced toward Marsha. Peter introduced them.

“How do you do, Miss Preyscott,” Christine said, “I’ve heard of you.”

She answered coolly, “I expect, working in a hotel, you hear all kinds of gossip, Miss Francis.”

Peter sensed an instant antagonism between Marsha and Christine.

“Please don’t go on my account, Miss Francis. I just came in for a minute to remind Peter about dinner tonight.” Marsha turned toward him. “You hadn’t forgotten, had you?”

Peter had a hollow feeling in his stomach. “No,” he lied, “I hadn’t forgotten.”

“Well, I’d better be off. Oh, yes – seven o’clock,” she told Peter, “and it’s on Prytania Street – the house with four big pillars. Goodbye, Miss Francis.”

With a wave of her hand, she went out, closing the door.

Christine inquired, “Would you like me to write that down? So you won’t forget.”

“I’d forgotten about the other arrangement because last night… with you… drove everything else out of my mind.”

There were limits, Christine decided, even to patient understanding. “I hope you have a delightful evening.”

He shook his head impatiently. “She is just a child. And two nights ago…”

“She went through a lot and needed a friend.”

“That’s right.”

“And there you were!”

“We got talking. And I said I’d go to a dinner party at her house. There’ll be other people.”

“Are you sure?”

Before he could reply, the telephone rang.

“Mr. McDermott,” a voice said urgently, “there’s trouble in the lobby and the assistant manager says will you please come quickly.” 5

There were moments of decision, Peter McDermott thought grimly, which you hoped you would never have to face.

It had taken him less than a minute to grasp the situation in the lobby, even though explanations were still continuing. It was distressingly plain that a crisis had abruptly appeared, which, if badly handled, might set off a major explosion.

He was aware of two spectators. The first was Curtis O’Keefe, the familiar, much-photographed face watching intently from a discreet distance. The second spectator was a youthful, broad-shouldered man with heavy rimmed glasses, wearing gray flannel trousers with a tweed jacket.

The dentists’ president drew himself to his full five feet height, “McDermott. When you refuse to accommodate Dr. Nicholas, let me inform you it’s a personal insult to me and to every member of our congress.”

My job is to get this scene out of the lobby, somehow. He suggested, “Perhaps you and Dr. Nicholas” – his eyes took in the Negro courteously – “would come to my office where we can discuss this quietly.”

Heads were turning now. Several people had paused in their progress through the lobby.

It was ironic that only yesterday Peter had argued against the policies of Warren Trent, which had created this very incident. Peter admired Dr. Ingram and wanted to do as he demanded, but to admit a Negro as a guest was not what he was entitled to do.

“I’m as sorry as you, Dr. Ingram. Unfortunately, there is a house rule and it prevents me from offering Dr. Nicholas accommodation. I wish I could change it, but I don’t have authority.”

“McDermott, you’re a young man, and intelligent I should imagine. How do you feel about what you’re doing at this moment?”

Peter thought: Why evade? He replied, “Frankly, Doctor, I’ve seldom been more ashamed.”

The Negro shook his head. “I won’t pretend it doesn’t hurt. Anyway, there’s an afternoon flight north. I’ll try to be on it.”

Dr. Ingram faced Peter. “Don’t you understand? This man is a respected teacher and researcher. He’s to present one of our most important papers.”

Peter thought miserably: there must be some way. “I wonder,” he said, “if you’d consider a suggestion. If Dr. Nicholas accepts accommodation at another hotel, I’ll arrange for his attendance at the meetings here.”

It would be hard to ensure and would involve an explanation to Warren Trent.

“And the social events – the dinner and luncheons?” The Negro’s eyes were directly on his own.

Slowly Peter shook his head. It was useless to make a promise he could not fulfill.

Dr. Nicholas looked around for his bag. Peter said, “I’ll get a bellboy.”

“No!” Dr. Ingram brushed him aside. “Carrying that bag is a privilege I’ll reserve for myself.”

“Excuse me, gentlemen.” It was the voice of the man in the tweed jacket and glasses. As they turned, a camera shutter clicked.

Peter McDermott inquired sharply, “Who are you?”

Dr. Ingram asked, “Are you a newspaperman?”

“Good question, Doctor.” The man with the glasses grinned. “Sometimes my editor says no, though I guess he won’t today. Not when I send him this little gem from my vacation.”

“What paper?” Peter asked.

“New York Herald Trib.”

“Good!” The dentists’ president nodded approvingly. “I hope you saw what happened.”

Dr. Ingram seized his Negro colleague’s arm. “It’s the way to fight this thing, Jim. We’ll drag the name of this hotel through every newspaper in the country. And I’ll see to it that our convention moves to another place immediately.”

There was nothing to do, Peter thought glumly. Nothing at all. 6

There had been a change since yesterday in the relationship between the Croydons and Ogilvie. Before, they had been antagonists. Now they were conspirators, though still uncertainly.

“Why are we wasting time?” the Duchess said.

The house detective’s mean eyes hardened. “You figure I should pull the car out now? Right in daylight? Maybe park it on Canal Street?”

At length the Duchess of Croydon said, “When do you propose to leave? When will you drive the car north?”

“Tonight,” Ogilvie answered. “I reckon the best time to pull out is around one in the morning.”

“How far will you go?”

“There will be light by six. I’ll be in Mississippi. As soon as it’s dark, I will go up through Alabama, Tennessee, Kentucky, Indiana.”

“When will it be safe? Really safe.”

“Indiana, I reckon.”

“And you’ll stop in Indiana Friday?”

“And reach Chicago Saturday morning.”

“My husband and I will fly to Chicago Friday night. We shall register at the Drake Hotel and wait there until we hear from you,” the Duchess said.

“Is there anything you need?”

“I would like to have a note to the garage, in case I need it, saying I can take your car.”

“I’ll write it now.” The Duchess wrote quickly and a moment later returned with a sheet of hotel stationery, folded. “This should do.”

The Duke of Croydon rose and walked stiffly away, “And he wants money.”

“Ten thousand now, like we said. Fifteen more in Chicago, Saturday.”

“I don’t know how I have forgotten. It will have to be this afternoon. Our bank must arrange…”

“In cash,” the fat man said. “Nothing bigger than twenties, and not new bills. It won’t be traceable that way.”

“You don’t trust us?”

He shook his head. “In something like this, it isn’t smart to trust anybody.”

“Do you think,” the Duchess said, “that we won’t pay you in Chicago?”

“I’m glad you brought that up,” Ogilvie said. “What’ll happen in Chicago, Duchess, is this. I stash the car some place, though you don’t know where. I come to the hotel, collect the money. When I do that, you get the keys and I tell you where the car is. Anything goes wrong, I call cops right there in Chicago.”

“You’ll have to explain why you drove the car north.”

“I’d say you paid me a couple hundred to bring the car up. Only when I got to Chicago and took a good look at the car, I figured things out.”

“I’m glad we understand each other. Come back at five. The money will be ready.” 7

As O’Keefe had promised, a report – with specific details of observations, dates and times – was delivered to Warren Trent by a young man who introduced himself as Sean Hall of the O’Keefe Hotels Corporation. Not only Tom Earlshore’s, but also other names of trusted employees appeared in the investigators’ findings.

The report, however, Warren Trent reflected, had had one useful effect. It released him from an obligation. Until last night, a good deal of his thinking about the St. Gregory had been conditioned by a loyalty, which he assumed he owed to the hotel’s employees. Not anymore.

It was twenty-five minutes before noon when Warren Trent entered the Pontalba Lounge from the lobby. Tom Earlshore, Warren Trent observed, was behind the bar with his back to the room. The elderly bartender was studying a Racing Form.

“Is that the way you’ve been using my money?”

Tom Earlshore deftly folded the Racing Form, stuffing it into a rear pants pocket. “It’s been a long time since we’ve seen you in here, Mr. Trent. Too long.”

“Being left alone has given you a lot of opportunities.”

Tom Earlshore said uncomfortably, “Is anything wrong, Mr. Trent? Can I mix you something?”

About to refuse, he changed his mind and named a drink.

Tom Earlshore reached swiftly for the ingredients. It had always been a pleasure to watch him at work.

“This drink is as good as any you’ve ever made.” Warren’s eyes met Earlshore’s. “I’m glad of that because it’s the last drink you’ll ever mix in my hotel.”

Earlshore’s tongue touched his lips nervously. “You don’t mean that, Mr. Trent.”

The hotel proprietor pushed his glass away. “Of all people, Tom, why did it have to be you?”

“I don’t know what…”

Warren Trent produced the O’Keefe investigators’ report, “Read!”

Earlshore put on his glasses. He read a few lines then stopped. He looked up. There was no denial now. “You can’t prove anything.”

“If I choose to, I can. These people smelled out the corruption, because they didn’t make the mistake – my mistake – of trusting you, believing you a friend. Well, you needn’t worry; I don’t intend to prosecute. If I did, I’d feel I was destroying something of myself.”

The barman felt relief and pleaded, “I swear if you gave me another chance it would never happen again.”

Warren Trent said brusquely, “There’s been enough said. Now get out of the hotel and don’t ever come here again. You don’t work here anymore.”

Slowly the ex-head barman’s expression changed. A twisted grin took its place as he declared, “All right, I’ll go. But you won’t be far behind, Mr. High-and-Mighty Trent, because you’re getting thrown out too, and everybody around here knows it. For more years than I remember, you acted as if you owned everybody in this place. You did pay a few more cents in wages than some others, and hand out bits of charity the way you did to me. But you paid the wages to keep out the unions, and the charity made you feel great, so people knew it was more for you than for them.” Earlshore stopped, his face revealing a suspicion he had gone too far.

Strangely, the anger of a few moments ago had left Warren Trent. “Tom, you’ll not know the why or how, but the last thing you’ve done for me has been a favor. Now go before I change my mind about sending you to jail.”

Tom Earlshore turned and, looking neither to right nor left, walked out.

The remark that he had been laughed at for his attempts to treat employees well had cut deeply – the more, because it had a ring of truth. Well, he thought; wait a day or two. We’ll see who’s laughing then.

Warren Trent asked for a taxi and instructed the driver, “Just drive me a few blocks. Take me to a pay phone.” He felt disinclined to explain that the call he was about to make was far too secret to risk the use of any hotel line.

He retraced his steps to the telephone and closed the booth door carefully. “A credit card call,” he informed the operator. “To Washington, D.C.”

“Good morning,” Warren Trent said. “Some time ago, when we met, you made a tentative proposal. Possibly you don’t remember…”

“I always remember. Some people wish I didn’t.”

“I’m willing to make a deal.”

“I make deals. Others accept them.”

“For years you’ve been trying to get a foot in the hotel business. You also want to strengthen your union’s position in New Orleans. I’m offering you a chance for both.”

“How high’s the price?”

“Two million dollars – in a secured first mortgage. In return, you get a union shop and write your own contract. I presume it would be reasonable since your own money would be involved.”

“When do you need the money?”

“The money by Friday. A decision before tomorrow midday.”

“Came to me last, eh? When everybody’d turned you down?”

There was no point in lying. Warren Trent answered shortly, “Yes. The O’Keefe people made an offer to buy…”

“Might be smart to take it.”

“If I do, you’ll never get this chance from them.”

Warren Trent could sense the other man thinking, calculating. For a decade the International Brotherhood of Journeymen had attempted to infiltrate the hotel industry. So far, however, they had failed. The reason had been a unity – on this one issue – between hotel operators, who feared the Journeymen, and more honest unions, who despised them. For the Journeymen, a contract with the St. Gregory hotel could be a crack in this massive dam of organized resistance.

As to the money, a two-million-dollar investment – if the Journeymen chose to make it – would be a small bite from the union’s massive treasury.

Within the hotel industry, Warren Trent realized, he would be branded a traitor if the arrangement he was suggesting went through. And among his own employees he would be heatedly condemned, at least by those informed enough to know they had been betrayed.

It was the employees who stood to lose most. If a union contract was signed, union dues – probably six to ten dollars monthly – would become compulsory. Thus, not only would any immediate wage increase be wiped out, but employees’ pay would be decreased.

“I’ll send two of my financial people. They’ll fly down this afternoon. If tomorrow morning my people report okay to me, you’ll sign a three-year union shop contract. In three years you’ll have to pay us off the mortgage and interest.” It was a statement, not a question.

“Of course, and there’ll have to be an employees’ vote, though I’m certain I can guarantee the outcome.” Warren Trent had a moment’s uneasiness, wondering if he really could.

“This will be a Voluntary Recognition Agreement. Nothing in law says it has to be voted on. There will be no vote.”

So, his own signature on a union contract would, in the circumstances, be binding on every hotel employee, whether they liked it or not.

8

Returning to his office on the main mezzanine, Peter occupied himself with routine business for the remainder of the morning, when he was informed that a guest room, occupied by Mr. Stanley Kilbrick of Marshalltown, Iowa, had been robbed. A long list of valuables and cash was alleged to be missing, and the guest, according to the assistant manager, seemed extremely upset. A house detective was already on the scene. Some twenty minutes later, he arrived in Peter McDermott’s office.

Ogilvie laid a handwritten list of missing valuables on Peter’s desk.

“Is there any sign of forced entry?”

The detective shook his head. “Key job sure. Kilbrick claims he lost his key. More than likely, though, he fell for a Bourbon Street girl routine. But he’s already figured the hotel’s insurance is good for what he lost. Maybe a bit more; he says there was four hundred dollars cash in his wallet.”

“Do you believe him?”

“No.”

“Do you think it was a once-only job?”

“No, I don’t,” Ogilvie said. “I reckon we’ve got a professional hotel thief here.”

“What makes you think so?”

“A complaint from room 641. Near dawn some character let himself in 641 with a key. The man in the room woke up. The other guy pretended he was drunk and said he’d mistook it for 614.”

“The desk could have given out a wrong key.”

“Could have, but didn’t. And 614’s a married couple; they went to bed early last night.”

“It looks as if you’re right about a professional thief. In which case we should start planning a campaign.”

“I already told the desk clerks to ask names when they hand out keys. And my men will do extra patrol.” Ogilvie said.

Peter nodded approvingly. “That sounds good. Have you considered moving into the hotel yourself for a day or two?”

Peter thought, a worried expression crossed the fat man’s face. Then he shook his head. “Won’t need it. My men know what to do. You don’t have to worry.”

Peter’s instinct told him that for some reason the fat man was worried himself.

He descended to the lobby and strolled to the main dining room. The St. Gregory’s comptroller, Royall Edwards, and Sam Jakubiec, the credit manager, were already at lunch as Peter joined them. Doc Vickery, the chief engineer, who had arrived a few minutes earlier, was studying a menu.

Jakubiec asked, “What’s this rumor I hear – that our dentists’ convention may walk out?”

“Your hearing’s good, Sam. This afternoon I’ll know whether it remains a rumor.” Peter began his soup, which had appeared like magic, then described the lobby events of an hour earlier. The faces of the others grew serious as they listened.

Then Jakubiec asked pointedly, “Well, what is the news?”

Peter shook his head. “Don’t know a thing, Sam. Except that was a good soup.”

Royall Edwards had been sampling the fried chicken served to himself and Jakubiec a moment earlier. Now he put down his knife and fork.

Peter asked, “Is it really that bad?”

“No, if you happen to be partial to rancid food.”

Jakubiec sampled his own serving as the others watched. At length he informed them: “If I were paying for this meal – I wouldn’t.”

Peter caught sight of the head waiter across the dining room and beckoned him over. “Max, is Chef Hebrand on duty?”

“No, Mr. McDermott, Sous-chef Lemieux is in charge. If it’s about the fried chicken, I assure you everything is taken care of. We’ve stopped serving that dish and where there have been complaints the entire meal has been replaced.”

“At the moment,” Peter said, “I’m more concerned about finding out what happened. Would you ask Chef Lemieux if he’d care to join us?”

It was a temptation to stride through and inquire directly what had gone wrong. But to do so would be unwise. In dealing with their senior chefs, hotel executives followed a protocol as proscribed and traditional as that of any royal household. Within the kitchen the chef de cuisine – or, in the chef’s absence, the sous-chef – was undisputed king. For a hotel manager to enter the kitchen without invitation was unthinkable.

To invite a chef outside the kitchen was in order. In fact, it was close to a command since, in Warren Trent’s absence, Peter McDermott was the hotel’s senior officer.

The kitchen door swung open once more.

“Gentlemen,” Peter announced to the executives’ table, “in case you haven’t met, this is Chef Andre Lemieux.”

Peter McDermott had encountered the new sous-chef several times since the latter’s arrival at the St. Gregory six weeks earlier. At each meeting Peter found himself liking the newcomer more.

His qualifications were excellent. He had trained in Paris, worked in London. But already in his short time at the St. Gregory, Peter suspected, the young sous-chef had encountered frustration. This was the refusal of M. Hebrand to allow any changes in the kitchen, despite the chef de cuisine’s own frequent absences from duty, leaving his sous-chef in charge.

In many ways, Peter thought sympathetically, the situation paralleled his own relationship with Warren Trent.

Peter indicated a vacant seat at the executives’ table. “Won’t you join us?”

“Thank you, monsieur.”

“Have you discovered,” Peter asked, “what caused the trouble?”

The sous-chef glanced unhappily toward the kitchen. “The troubles have many causes. In this, the fault was frying fat badly tasting. But it is I who must blame myself – that the fat was not changed, as I believed. And I, Andre Lemieux, I allowed such food to leave the kitchen.” He shook his head unbelievingly.

“It’s hard for one person to be everywhere,” the chief engineer said. “All of us, who have departments, know that.”

“Unfortunately, we’ll never know how many didn’t complain about what they had, but won’t come back again.

Andre Lemieux nodded glumly. “Messieurs, you will excuse me. Monsieur McDermott, when you finish, perhaps we could talk together, yes?”

Fifteen minutes later Peter entered the kitchen through the dining-room door.

“It is good of you to come, monsieur.”

Peter shook his head. “I enjoy kitchens.”

“I wished to speak with you alone, monsieur. With others present, you understand, there are things that are hard to say.” The young chef’s face was troubled. “This morning I give the order. My nose informed me the fat was not good. But M. Herbrand – without telling me about it – forbade to follow my order.”

Involuntarily Peter smiled. “What was the reason for changing the order?”

“Fat is high cost. Lately we have changed it many times. Too many.”

“Have you tried to find the reason for that?”

Andre Lemieux raised his hands in a despairing gesture. “I have proposed, each day, a chemical test – for free fatty acid. It could be done in a laboratory, even here. M. Herbrand does not agree – with that or other things.”

“You believe there’s a good deal wrong here?”

“Many things. This is not a kitchen to work with pride. Yes, monsieur, I would make changes, many changes, better for the hotel, for Mr. Herbrand, for others. But I am told – as if an infant – to change nothing.”

Peter asked curiously, “If the St. Gregory stayed independent, what kind of changes would you have in mind?”

“In this hotel we waste much money on the decor. But not enough on the sauce. With less throw-away we could have a cuisine that would satisfy any taste. Now it is extravagantly ordinary. We must cook fast many meals, serve many people who are too much in an American hurry. But in these limitations there can be excellence of a kind. And I have proved my ideas are not that high-cost.”

“How have you proved?”

The young Frenchman led the way into the glass-paneled office. Opening a desk drawer he took out a large envelope and, from this, a folder. He handed it to Peter. “You ask what changes. It is all here.”

There were many pages, each filled with a fine, precise handwriting. Several larger, folded sheets proved to be charts. It was, he realized, a master catering plan for the entire hotel. On successive pages were estimated costs, menus, a plan of quality control and an outlined staff reorganization.

Peter looked up, “It’s impressive. If I may, I’d like to study this.”

“Take it. There is no haste. And now there may be a great trouble if we do not find the cause why the fat had gone bad.”

“What kind of trouble?”

“Today – through much good fortune – we have used the frying fat a little only. Tomorrow, monsieur, there are six hundred fryings for convention luncheons.”

“The fat will be fresh tomorrow, of course. When was it changed previously?”

“Yesterday.”

‘That recently!”

Andre Lemieux nodded. “M. Herbrand was making no joke when he complained of the high cost. But what is wrong is a mystery.”

Some long forgotten facts stirred in Peter’s brain. At Cornell there had been a course in food chemistry for Hotel Administration students. He remembered a lecture dimly…

“There are certain substances,” Peter said reminiscently, “which, in contact with fat, will act as catalysts and break it down quite quickly.”

“They are the moisture, the salt, the brass or the copper couplings in a fryer, too much meat, the oil of the olive. All these things I have checked. This is not the cause.”

“What metal are your fry baskets?”

“They are chrome.” The tone was puzzled.

“Is the chrome in any places worn?”

Lemieux hesitated, his eyes widening slightly. Silently he lifted one of the baskets down and wiped it carefully with a cloth. The chrome was scratched from long and constant use.

“It is brass!” The young Frenchman clapped a hand to his forehead. “Without doubt it has caused the bad fat.”

Andre Lemieux seemed close to tears. He said slowly, “Others have said to me you are a good man, and intelligent. Now, myself, I know this is true.”

Peter touched the folder in his hand. “I’ll read your report and tell you what I think.”

“Monsieur, there is something else that I am thinking.” The young sous-chef hesitated. “You and I, Monsieur McDermott – with the hands free – we could make this a hot-shot hotel.”

9

A second after knocking at the door of room 1410, Christine Francis wondered why she had come. Maybe she was, at this moment, just plain lonely, wanting to offset her disappointment in learning she would not meet Peter this evening.

Christine knocked again, more sharply. The door opened to reveal Albert Wells. He was fully dressed. He looked well and there was color in his face, which brightened as he saw Christine. “I was hoping you’d come, miss.”

She said, surprised, “I thought…”

“I sent the hotel doctor for Dr. Uxbridge. He said I was fine, and the nursing service was no longer needed.” He beamed.

As she followed him into the room, he asked, “Did you knock before? I’m sorry. I guess my mind was on this.” He pointed to a table near the window. On it was a large and intricate jigsaw puzzle, of which about two thirds was completed. “Or I thought it was Bailey.”

Christine asked curiously, “Who’s Bailey?”

“If you stay a minute, you’ll meet him.”

She leaned over the jigsaw puzzle, inspecting it, “I used to do these a long time ago with my father.”

“I set out one of these when I want to think. Sometimes I discover the key piece, and the answer to what I’m thinking about, around the same time.”

Abruptly there was a sharp, authoritative knock at the outer door.

She was surprised, when the door opened, to see a uniformed hotel valet. He had a collection of suits, which he put into a closet and returned to the door, where he stopped with his palm outstretched.

“I already took care of you,” Albert Wells said with amusement in his voice. “When the suit was picked up this morning. You’re Bailey. I tipped your friend Barnum.”

Bailey grinned sheepishly and went out, closing the door behind him.

“What was all that about?” asked Christine.

The little man chuckled, “It’s a simple thing, miss. Hotel valets work in pairs, but the one who picks up a suit is never the one who delivers it back. They figure it that way, so mostly they get tipped twice.”

She laughed. “How did you find out?”

“A valet told me once.”

“You don’t like tipping, Mr. Wells?”

“I tipped Barnum well this morning – sort of paying in advance for the bit of fun I had with Bailey just now. What I don’t like is to be taken for a fool. And many here figure they can get away with anything. It’s because you don’t have good management, though it could be good.”

“Peter McDermott told me exactly the same thing – almost in those words.”

“Now there’s a smart young man. We had a talk yesterday.”

“Peter came here? I didn’t know.”

“Are you going to marry him, miss?”

She protested, “Whatever gave you that idea?”

Albert Wells chuckled, reminding her of a mischievous elf.

“I sort of guessed – by the way you said his name just now. If that young man has the kind of sense, he’ll find out he doesn’t have to look much further, miss.”

“You read people’s minds, then you make them feel terrible. And my name is Christine.”

He said quietly, “That’s a special name for me. It was my wife’s, too. She died. So long ago, sometimes I think the times we had together never really happened.” He stopped. “You never know how much you share with someone until the sharing ends. Don’t waste a lot of time; you never get it back.”

“He isn’t my young man. At least, not yet.”

“He can be.”

Then, almost before she knew it, she found herself telling the little man about the tragedy in Wisconsin, her aloneness, the move to New Orleans, the adjusting years, and now for the first time the possibility of a full and fruitful life. She revealed, too, the breakdown of this evening’s arrangements and her disappointment at the cause.

“I bet that young man asks you out tomorrow.”

Christine smiled. “He might.”

“Then get yourself another date before he does. He’ll appreciate you more, having to wait an extra day. I was going to ask anyway, Christine. I’d like us to have dinner, you and me – a kind of thank you for what you did the other night, if you can bear an old man. We’d best make it here in the hotel.”

“I’d love to have dinner with you.” 10

“McDermott, if you’ve come here with some idea of smoothing things over, I’ll tell you right now you’re wasting time. Is that why you came?”

“Yes, Dr. Ingram,” Peter admitted. “I’m afraid it is. I’m sorry I have no authority to change anything.”

“If you really felt sorry, you’d quit and get a job some other place.”

Peter reminded himself that this morning in the lobby he had admired the elderly dentist for his stand. Nothing had changed since then.

“Suppose I did quit,” Peter said. “Whoever took my job might be perfectly satisfied with the way things are. At least I’m not. I intend to do what I can to change the rules here.”

“These excuses make me ashamed, and sick of the human race!” Dr. Ingram’s voice dropped, “Well, son. I see that you have many problems that are not simple to solve. But you heard what I told Nicholas. I said if he didn’t get an apology and a room, I’d pull the entire convention out of this hotel.”

“Aren’t there events at your convention that benefit a lot of people?”

“Naturally.”

“Then would cancelling everything help? Not Dr. Nicholas…”

“There are always reasons for not doing something; plenty of times they’re good reasons. Let me ask you something. If you were me, here and now, what would you do?”

Peter considered. As far as the hotel was concerned, he supposed whatever he said now would make little difference to the outcome. Why not answer honestly?

“I think I’d do exactly as you intended – cancel out.”

“Beneath all that hotel crap lies an honest man.”

“Who may shortly be unemployed.”

“Despite everything, McDermott, I like you. Got any teeth need fixing?”

“If you don’t mind, I’d sooner know what your plans are. As soon as possible.” The loss to the hotel was going to be disastrous, as Royall Edwards had pointed out at lunch.

Dr. Ingram said crisply, “You were honest with me; I’ll do the same for you. I’ve called an emergency executive session for five this afternoon. I’ll be in touch. But even if you are a decent man, nothing has changed since this morning, and I intend to kick you people where it hurts.” 11

Surprisingly, Warren Trent reacted almost with indifference to the news that the Congress of American Dentistry might abandon its convention.

“They’ll talk, but they won’t go.”

“Dr. Ingram seems quite serious.”

“People will talk about so-called principles, but they won’t inconvenience themselves if they can avoid it.”

Peter said doggedly, “It might still be simpler if we changed our policy. Otherwise, we’d be in trouble.”

Warren Trent’s patrician features creased sardonically. “We may have been in trouble for a while. In a day or two, however, that will not be true. Tomorrow I shall tell O’Keefe and his entire hotel chain to go jump in Lake Pontchartrain.”

A few minutes later Flora Yates showed four young men into Peter McDermott’s office. He motioned them to chairs and inquired, “Which of you is Dixon?”

“I am.”

“Dumaire?”

Less confidently, Lyle Dumaire nodded.

“I don’t have the other two names.”

The third youth interjected, “I’m Gladwin. This is Joe Waloski.”

“All of you,” Peter stated, “are aware that I’ve listened to Miss Marsha Preyscott’s report of what occurred Monday night. If you wish, I’m willing to hear your version.”

Dixon spoke quickly, before anyone else could intervene. “Coming here was your idea, not ours. So if you’ve got any talking, get on with it.”

“Very well. I suggest we deal with the least important matter first. Suite 1126-7 was registered in your name. When you ran away” – he emphasized the last two words – “you had overlooked checking out, so I did it for you. There is an unpaid bill of seventy-five dollars and there is a further bill, for damage to the suite, of one hundred and ten dollars.”

“We’ll pay the seventy-five,” Dixon said. “That’s all.”

“If necessary, we’ll sue.”

Lyle Dumaire shifted uneasily, “Stan, whatever happens they can make a lot of fuss.” He addressed Peter, “If we do pay – the hundred and ten – we might have trouble getting it all at once. Could we pay a little at a time?”

“Certainly.” He glanced around the group. “Are we to regard that part as settled?”

The quartet nodded.

“That leaves the matter of the attempted rape.”

Waloski and Gladwin flushed. Lyle Dumaire uncomfortably avoided Peter’s eyes. Only Dixon maintained his self-assurance. “Don’t you wish you’d been there? Or maybe you had your piece after.”

Peter gripped the arms of his chair tightly. He fought back an impulse to rush out from behind the desk and strike the smirking face in front of him. But he could not give Dixon the advantage he was trying to get.

“You are all aware that criminal charges can be laid.”

“If they were going to be,” Dixon countered, “somebody’d have done it by now.”

“Would you be willing to repeat that statement to Mr. Mark Preyscott? If he’s brought back from Rome after being told what happened to his daughter?”

Lyle Dumaire looked up sharply, his expression alarmed. For the first time, there was a flicker of panic in Dixon’s eyes.

“I have here a signed statement, made by me, of exactly what I was informed by Miss Preyscott, and what I observed myself on arrival at suite 1126-7, Monday night. There is a further statement made and signed by Aloysius Royce, the hotel employee you assaulted.”

Last night in response to a telephoned request the young Negro had delivered his statement early this morning. The neatly typed document was clear and carefully phrased, reflecting Royce’s legal training.

Stan Jakubiec had been helpful also. At Peter’s request the credit manager had made inquiries about the two youths, Stanley Dixon and Lyle Dumaire. He reported: “Dumaire’s father, as you know, is the bank president; Dixon’s father is a car dealer – good business, big home. But Mark Preyscott has as much influence as anyone in this town. He and the other two men move in the same circle, though Preyscott probably rates higher socially.”

“I imagine if the case goes to the court, your families might give some of you a hard time.” From a glance between Dixon and Dumaire he knew the last thrust had gone home.

Lyle Dumaire asked, “What are you going to do?”

“If you cooperate, I intend to do nothing more. On the other hand, I intend to cable Mr. Preyscott in Rome and deliver these papers to his lawyers here.”

“What does ‘cooperate’ mean?”

“Here and now you will each write an account of what took place Monday night, including whatever occurred in the early part of the evening and who, if anyone, was involved from the hotel.”

“What will you do then?”

“You have my word they will be seen by no one, other than internally within the hotel.”

“How do we know we can trust you?”

“You’ll have to take that chance.”

Waloski said, “I’ll take a chance. Give me something to write on.”

“I guess I will too.” It was Gladwin.

Lyle Dumaire, unhappily, nodded.

Dixon shrugged. “So everybody’s going to write. What’s the difference?”

A half hour later Peter McDermott reread, more carefully, the several pages he had skimmed over quickly before the youths left.

The four versions of Monday’s evening events filled in earlier gaps in information, and all four mentioned the bell captain, Herbie Chandler.

12

The appearance of the Duchess of Croydon at the same time Keycase himself was passing through the lobby was an omen among omens, Keycase thought. He now knew exactly what he was supposed to do.

First, he rode elevators several times, and when he was alone with an elevator operator, he asked the seemingly casual question, “Is it true the Duke and Duchess of Croydon are staying in the hotel?”

“That’s right, sir.”

“I suppose the hotel keeps special rooms for visitors like that.”

“Well, sir, the Duke and Duchess have the Presidential Suite.”

“Oh! What floor’s that?”

“Ninth.”

Point two was to establish the precise room number. Up one flight by the service stairs, then a short walk, and Keycase noted the number: 973-7.

Then a quick inspection of Reception showed that the room key to 973-7 was in the slot.

After a few minutes’ observation it became obvious that the hotel had been alerted. Today as guests requested keys, the clerks asked names, then checked the answer against a registration list. He felt a cold stab of fear. Once again, remembering the awful price of one more conviction, Keycase was tempted to play safe, check out and run. Then, forcing doubts aside, he comforted himself with the memory of this morning’s omen.

After a time the waiting proved worth while. One desk clerk, a young man with light wavy hair, appeared unsure of himself, Keycase judged him to be new to his job.

Hurriedly, Keycase left the hotel. His destination was the Maison Blanche department store.

Keycase bought inexpensive but bulky items, mainly children’s toy, and waited while each was enclosed in a box or wrapping paper. He also stopped at a florist’s, and returned to the hotel with presents and a large azalea plant in bloom.

His heart pounding, Keycase approached the Reception area. The young clerk turned to Keycase and smiled involuntarily at the amount of packages topped by the blooms.

“I’m sure it’s very funny. But if it isn’t too much trouble, I’d like the key of 973.”

“Your name, sir?”

“What is this – an interrogation?” Simultaneously he allowed two parcels to drop. Flustered, the young clerk retrieved both.

“I beg your pardon, sir.”

“Never mind.” Accepting the parcels and rearranging the others, Keycase held out his hand for the key.

The young man hesitated. Then the image Keycase had hoped to create won out: a tired, frustrated shopper; absurdly burdened; an already irritated guest, not to be trifled with further…

The desk clerk handed over the key of 973.

He instructed the elevator operator, “Nine”– a precaution in case anyone had heard him demand a ninth-floor key. Stepping out as the elevator stopped, he adjusted parcels until the doors closed behind him, then hurried to the service stairs. On a landing, halfway, was a garbage can. Opening it, he stuffed in the plant, which had served its purpose. A few seconds later he was in his own room, 830.

He shoved the parcels hurriedly into a closet. Tomorrow he would return them to the store and claim refunds.

He unzipped a suitcase and took out a number of white cards. Selecting one of the cards, Keycase laid the Presidential Suite key upon it. Then, holding the key still, he drew an outline around the edge. Next, with micrometer and calipers, he measured the thickness of the key and the exact dimensions of each horizontal groove and vertical cut, jotting the results beside the outline on the card. He now had an expertly detailed specification, which a skilled locksmith could follow unerringly.

Moments later he was back in the main lobby. He waited until the desk clerks were busy and laid the 973 key unnoticed upon the counter. 13

Peter approached an iron gate, which opened smoothly. He had reached the terrace steps when Marsha went out of the house. She was in white, her raven black hair startling by contrast. He was aware, more than ever, of the provoking woman-child quality.

“Welcome!”

“Thank you. Your place is amazing.”

She entwined her arm in his. “I’ll give you the Preyscott official tour before it’s dark.”

Through his coat sleeve he could feel the warm firmness of her flesh. Her fingertips touched his wrist lightly.

“This is where you see it all best.”

From this side of the lawn the view was even more impressive. The immense, white-fronted mansion was breathtaking

“A French nobleman built the house in the 1840s. He liked Greek Revival architecture, and also having his mistress handy, which was the reason for an extra wing. My father added the other wing. He prefers things balanced. My father did a lot of restoration.”

“You must love all this very much.”

“I hate it,” Marsha said.

He looked at her inquiringly.

“Oh, I wouldn’t if I came to see it as a visitor for fifty cents. I’d admire it because I love old things. But not to live with always, especially alone and after dark.”

He reminded her, “It’s getting dark now.”

“But you’re here. That makes it different.”

“Won’t your other guests be missing you?”

She glanced sideways, mischievously. “What other guests? I said I was giving a dinner party; so I am. For you. Besides, Anna is here.” They had passed into the house. In the background a small elderly woman in black silk nodded, smiling. “I told Anna about you. And this is Ben,” Marsha said, pointing at a Negro manservant.

“You spend a lot of time alone here?”

“My father comes home between trips. It’s just that the trips get longer and the time between shorter. I’d prefer a bungalow or a hotel apartment if I shared it with someone I really cared about.”

A moment later the manservant announced quietly that dinner was served.

A small circular table was set for two. They chatted through dinner. Marsha seemed more charming as the minutes passed, and he himself more relaxed in her company. He wondered if long ago the French nobleman who built the great house, and his mistress, had dined as intimately here.

At the end of dinner Marsha said, “We’ll have coffee on the gallery.”

There they took their coffee to a cushioned porch glider, which swung lazily as they sat down.

“You’ve suddenly become quiet.”

“I know. I was wondering how to say something.”

“You might try directly. It often works.”

“All right.” There was a breathlessness to her voice. “I’ve decided I want to marry you.”

For what seemed like long minutes but were, he suspected, seconds only, Peter remained unmoving.

Marsha coughed, then changed the cough to a nervous laugh. “If you want to run, the stairs are that way.”

“If I did that, I’d never know why you said what you did just now.”

“I’m not sure myself.” He sensed that she was trembling. “Except I suddenly wanted to say it.”

It was important, he knew, that whatever he next said to this impulsive girl should be with gentleness and consideration. But it was true that Marsha was not a child, nor should she be treated like one.

“Marsha, you scarcely know me, or I you.”

“I had an instinct about you. From the very first moment.”

“But instinct may be wrong.”

“You can always be wrong, even when you wait a long time.” Marsha turned, facing him directly. “My father and mother knew each other fifteen years before they married. My mother once told me that everyone they knew said it would be a perfect match. As it turned out, it was the worst. I know. I was in the middle.”

He was silent, not knowing what to say.

“You saw Anna tonight? When she was seventeen, she was forced to marry a man she’d met just once before. But they stayed married for forty-six years. Her husband died last year. He was the kindest, sweetest man I’ve ever known. If ever there was a perfect marriage it belonged to them.”

“Anna didn’t follow her instinct. If she had, she’d not have married.”

“I know. I’m simply saying there isn’t any guaranteed way, and instinct can be as good a guide as any.” There was a pause, then Marsha added, “I know I could make you love me, in time.”

He had a sudden, irrational conviction that what she said might well be true.

He wondered what the reaction of the absent Mark Preyscott would be.

“If you’re thinking about my father, he always listens to reason and I know I could convince him. Besides, he’d like you. I know the kind of people he admires most, and you’re one. And I know – and my father would too – that someday you’ll be a big success with hotels, and maybe own your own. Not that I care about that. It’s you I want.”

“Marsha,” Peter said gently, “I don’t… I simply don’t know what to say. I’m moved and overwhelmed.”

“Then don’t say any more!” Marsha leaped to her feet, her hands held out toward him. He took them and stood facing her, their fingers interlaced. “Just go away and think! Especially about me.”

He said – and meant it – “It will be difficult not to.”

She put up her face to be kissed. He intended to brush her cheek, but she put up her lips to his. It was impossible, at the moment, to think of Marsha as anything but a woman. He felt his senses swim, but he forced himself away. “I must go.”

He went down the terrace steps, scarcely knowing they were there. 14

At 10:30 p.m., Ogilvie, the chief house officer, came to the hotel garage. The fat man had some things to do before departure. For that he had bought a standard lamp at a self-serve auto parts store.

The thought of the twenty-five thousand dollars gave the fat man a pleasant glow. He had received ten thousand this afternoon, and it was safely hidden now, with only two hundred dollars on him. But he still felt uneasy. The robbery last night, and the likelihood that a professional thief was at work in the St. Gregory, meant that, in spite of all instructions to his men he was to direct operations personally. McDermott would be furious to learn about his absence, and their row would do what he wanted to avoid most – draw attention to his movements in the next few days.

The garage was quiet. Ogilvie went to the garage office where the night checker was on duty.

“Wanted to let you know,” Ogilvie said. “I’ll be taking the Duke of Croydon’s car out soon. I’m doing a favor for him.” Ogilvie produced the Duchess of Croydon’s note, written this morning at his request.

“I’ll have to keep this.”

The fat man would have preferred to have the note, but to insist would raise an issue.

A few minutes later he replaced the remnants of the shattered Jaguar headlight with a new lamp. All the time he was aware he had to be cautious. If a jockey observed him and came across, it would mean curiosity and questions, which would be repeated downstairs. He headed to a cleaners’ closet on the floor below, where he selected a broom, dustpan, and a bucket, filled the bucket with water, and hurried back to the Jaguar on the floor above.

The last thing he did was wiping dried blood off the car.

15

“I might be able to help more,” Royall Edwards observed pointedly, “if someone told me what this is all about.”

The St. Gregory’s comptroller had been instructed personally by the hotel proprietor, “These gentlemen will examine our books. They will probably work through until tomorrow morning. I’d like you to stay with them. Give them everything they ask for. Hold no information back.”

“I’d say if we’re to get through this job by morning, we’d better have less chit-chat,” the first man answered, without looking up from a balance sheet.

The second man added, “You see how it is, Mr. Edwards? I guess Frank’s right. So, maybe we’d provide explanations later. Now, Mr. Edwards, I’d like to go over your inventory system – purchasing, card control, present stocks, your last supply check, all the rest. And could we have more coffee?” Thursday 1

It was a half hour past midnight. Peter McDermott had walked, he thought, for a couple of hours, perhaps longer. He felt refreshed and tired. He had returned to his downtown apartment after visiting Marsha, but he had been restless, so he had gone out walking.

A few minutes earlier he had telephoned the St. Gregory. The dentists’ executive board, after a six-hour session, had reached no firm conclusion. However, an emergency general meeting of all convention delegates was to be held at 9:30 a.m.

Apart from this brief diversion, most of his thoughts had been of Marsha. One thing was clear: her proposal was impossible. But he knew, he had been drawn to Marsha tonight, not as a young girl but as a woman. Would he see Marsha again? He supposed it was inevitable he should. But when and how to end it all?

There remained the thought of Christine, too.

The St. Gregory was more or less on the way and instinctively his footsteps took him past it. When he reached the hotel, it was a few minutes after one a.m.

He was about to pass the entry to the hotel garage when he halted, warned by the sound of a motor. It was a black Jaguar and it looked as if a fender had been dented; there was something odd about the headlight too. He hoped the damage had not occurred in the hotel garage.

Automatically he glanced toward the driver. He was startled to see it was Ogilvie. The chief house officer, meeting Peter’s eyes, seemed equally surprised. Then the car pulled out of the garage and continued on. 2

Keycase Milne had troubles with having a duplicate of the key. It would not be ready until midday Thursday, and the price demanded was high.

He had to wait and, even though there were still two room keys in his collection, he decided to wait and concentrate on the larger project involving the Duchess of Croydon.

That night he dreamed that a great iron door, shutting out air and daylight, was closing upon him. He tried to run while a gap remained, but was powerless to move. When the door had closed, he wept, knowing it would never open again.

He awoke shivering, in darkness. His face was wet with tears. 3

About seventy miles north of New Orleans, Ogilvie was still speculating on his encounter with Peter McDermott. He thought that the only possible reason for Peter McDermott’s presence was to witness his own departure. How McDermott might have learned of the plan, Ogilvie had no idea.

It was only later that he began to wonder: Could it have been coincidence after all? If McDermott had been there with some intent, the Jaguar would have been pursued or halted at a roadblock long before now.

It was then it happened. Behind him, appearing as if magically, was a flashing red light. A siren shrieked imperiously. It was the very thing, which for the past several hours he had expected to happen. When it failed to, he had relaxed. Now, the reality was a double shock.

Instinctively, his accelerator foot slammed to the floor, but soon realized it was useless. Even if he outdistanced pursuit now, he could not avoid others forewarned ahead.

As he slowed down, the ambulance passed by.

The incident left him shaken and convinced of his own tiredness. He stopped to consult a map and shortly afterward turned off the highway onto a complex of minor roads. Soon the road surface had deteriorated to a grassy track. The surrounding countryside was sparsely wooded and desolate, with no habitation in sight.

Ogilvie drove forward carefully until foliage concealed the car. Then he climbed into the back seat and slept. 4

Warren Trent hummed cheerfully to himself, thinking about the deal made yesterday with the Journeymen’s Union, as he showered and afterward was shaved by Aloysius Royce. After he immediately telephoned Royall Edwards. According to the comptroller’s report, the visitors, though briefed on the hotel’s current financial crisis, had uncovered nothing else extraordinary and seemed satisfied by Edwards’ responses to their queries.

Almost at once the telephone rang. An operator’s voice announced that the call was long distance. When he had identified himself, a second operator asked him to wait. At length the Journeymen’s Union president came brusquely on the line, “I warned you yesterday not to hold back on information. You were stupid enough to try. You’re lucky this time that the whistle blew before a deal was closed.”

The unexpectedness momentarily robbed Warren Trent of speech. Recovering, he protested, “I’ve not the least idea what this is about.”

“No idea, when there’d been a race riot in your goddamned hotel!”

“There was an incident yesterday morning, a small one. At the time we talked I was unaware that it had happened.”

“If I put money into a hotel that turns away nigs, my members’ll scream bloody murder along with every congressman who wants the colored vote.”

Aware that whatever was said would make no difference now, Warren Trent commented acidly, “You haven’t always been so particular about using union funds.”

“Someday you may be sorry for that.”

Slowly, Warren Trent replaced the telephone. On a table nearby Aloysius Royce had spread open the New York newspapers. It showed yesterday’s scene in the St. Gregory lobby with Dr. Nicholas and Dr. Ingram as central figures. “It’s mostly in here. I don’t see anything in the Times.”

His eyes flickered upward, meeting the young Negro’s gaze. “I suppose you think I got what I deserved.”

Royce considered. “Something like that, I guess.”

“O’Keefe will take over.” The older man walked to a window and stood looking out, “I imagine you heard the terms I was offered – among them that I’d continue to live here. I suppose that when you graduate from law school next month, I’ll still have to put up with you around the place.”

Aloysius Royce knew that what he was hearing was the plea of a defeated, lonely man for him to stay. For almost twelve years Warren Trent had treated him in many ways like a son. And yet there were other, conflicting pressures affecting the choice to go or stay.

“I haven’t thought about it much,” he lied.

Warren Trent reflected: all things, large and small, were changing, most of them abruptly. In his mind he had not the least doubt that Royce would leave him soon, just as control of the St. Gregory had finally eluded him.

In a few minutes, he would call Curtis O’Keefe and officially surrender. 5

Herbie Chandler’s report on the St. Gregory civil rights incident in the Time magazine press room confirmed what Quaratone, an eager young man, who had already interviewed the dentists’ president, Dr. Ingram, had been told.

“The dentists’ meeting is taking place this morning, but they’ve told the head floor waiter no one’s to get in except members, not even wives.” Quaratone’s idea was, however, to attend the meeting in a borrowed bellboy’s uniform.

“The room where the meeting will be held,” Quaratone queried, “is it a good size convention hall?”

Chandler nodded. “The Dauphine Salon, sir, seats three hundred.”

Quaratone said, thinking aloud, “Professional people – on racial issues anyway – don’t usually take strong stands. I’d say the situation’s unique.” More than ever he was determined to find a way of getting into the meeting.

Abruptly, he told Herbie Chandler, “I want a plan of the convention floor and the floor above. I want it fast because if we’re to do any good we’ve less than an hour.” The Time man handed five of twenty-dollar bills to Chandler.

Within a few minutes, Herbie Chandler arrived with Ches Ellis, a hotel maintenance worker. The newcomer shook hands with Quaratone, then, touching a roll of whiteprints under his arm, said uneasily, “I have to get these back.”

Quaratone helped Ellis roll out the plans, “Now, where’s the Dauphine Salon?”

“Right here.”

“What is this?”

“Cold-air duct. Runs through the Dauphine Salon ceiling. There are three outlets to the room. Center and each end.”

“How big is the duct?”

“About three feet square.”

“I’d like you to get me in that duct, so I can hear and see what’s going on below.”

In a few minutes, a metal grille, high on the wall, was removed by Ellis, and a tall stepladder stood in front of an opening, which the grille had covered. Without conversation, Quaratone ascended the stepladder and eased himself upward and in. Darkness, except for stray glimmers from the kitchen, was complete. He felt a breath of cool air on his face. Ellis whispered after him, “Count four outlets! The fourth, fifth, and sixth are the Dauphine Salon. I’ll come back in half an hour; if you’re not ready, half an hour after that.”

Quaratone tried to turn his head and failed. It was a reminder that getting out would be harder than getting in.

The air duct outlets were easy to spot because of light. Nearing the fourth, he could hear voices. The meeting had begun. The view was even better from the next outlet. He could see half of the assemblage. The Time man brought out a notebook and a ballpoint pen with a tiny light in its tip.

Dr. Ingram was speaking, “Professional people like us do not discriminate – at least most of the time – and in the past we have considered that to be enough. But here and now we are involved. I suggest we should cancel our convention. The step I have proposed involves inconvenience, disappointment to me, no less than to you – and a professional as well as a public loss. But it is the only way, by which we shall prove that in matters of human rights this profession is not to be trifled with again.”

Near the center of the room a figure rose to his feet.

“I’ve just one question for the doctor. Will he be the one who’ll explain to my little woman – who’s been counting on this trip like a lot of other wives – why it is that having just got here we’re to go home?”

A number of other voices spoke at once. Then, as if by assent, attention focused on a slim figure. “Some of my best-liked associates are those of other races. But I cannot believe that our unfortunately absent colleague, Dr. Nicholas, would gain in the least from cancellation of our convention. Naturally, we must support our own people where necessary, and in a moment I shall suggest certain steps in the case of Dr. Nicholas. But we are professional medical men with time for little else.”

“Can’t all of you see that we are considering a question of human rights and decency?!” exclaimed Mr. Ingram.

There were cries of “Order! order!”

“Thank you. Gentlemen, I will make my suggestions briefly. First, I propose that our future conventions should be held in locales where Dr. Nicholas and others of his race will be accepted without question or embarrassment. Secondly, I propose that we pass a resolution disapproving the action of this hotel in rejecting Dr. Nicholas, after which we should continue with our convention as planned.”

On the platform, Dr. Ingram shook his head in disbelief.

In his eyrie, Quaratone had ceased to listen. He was watching, instead, the faces of the listeners below. They mirrored relief. Relief from the need for the kind of action. There had been some mild protest but it was short-lived.

But the Time man had his story.

6

Peter McDermott heard of the Dentistry Congress decision to continue with its convention almost as soon as the meeting ended. He supposed that for the hotel’s sake he should be pleased. Instead, he had a feeling of depression.

As Peter entered the managing director’s section of the executive suite, Christine looked up from her desk. She smiled warmly, reminding him how much he had wanted to talk with her last evening.

“Was it a nice party?”

“Everything was fine. I missed you, though. If you’re free, perhaps I could make up for it tonight.”

“Tonight I’m having dinner with Mr. Wells. If you work late, why not join us afterward?”

“If I can, I will. Is W.T. available?”

“You can go in. But he seems depressed this morning.” Indeed, the news, which Peter brought, seemed to make little impression on him.

The exchange reminded Christine of the stratagem she had thought of yesterday. She telephoned Max, head waiter of the main dining room.

“Max,” Christine said, “I’ve a friend, who likes dining-room service – an elderly gentleman named Mr. Wells. We’ll be in for dinner tonight. I want you to make sure that his bill is light, though not so small that he’ll notice. The difference you can put on my account.”

The head waiter chuckled. “Say! You are the kind of girl I’d like to know myself. Miss Francis, when we present his bill he’ll think he ate in the automat.”

She hung up, laughing, aware that Max would handle the situation with tact and good sense.

Peter McDermott read Ogilvie’s memo, slowly, for the second time.

It read:

Mr. P. McDermott

The undersigned begs to report I am taking four days leave commencing immediately. For personal urgent reasons.

W. Finegan, dep. chief house officer, is advised concerning robbery. Also can act with all other matters.

Yours truly,

T. L. Ogilvie

The memo said “personal urgent reasons.” But what kind of personal reason was involved?

Peter decided he would make an effort to learn where the chief house officer had gone and why.

“Flora, if you can,” Peter said, “I want you to find out where he is. Call the garage. I happened to be walking by the hotel last night. He drove out around one o’clock – in a Jaguar.”

The deputy chief house officer, Finegan, had no idea where Mr. Ogilvie had gone either. Yes, last night there had been continuous patrols through the hotel, but no suspicious activity was observed. Certainly, if Finegan heard from Mr. Ogilvie, Mr. McDermott would be informed at once.

Then Flora announced on the office intercom, “Miss Marsha Preyscott on line two.”

He picked up the telephone.

“Do you remember I promised you some New Orleans history? We could start this afternoon.”

After a slight hesitation he said, “All right. Let’s see how many centuries we can cover between two o’clock and four.” 7

It was a relief to Curtis O’Keefe to remember that this was his final day in New Orleans. He would leave for New York tonight and Italy tomorrow. The destination there, for himself and Dodo, was the Naples O’Keefe Hotel. Later, of course, he would return to New Orleans, to the O’Keefe St. Gregory.

As the telephone rang, he expected to hear the voice of Warren Trent. Instead, an operator announced that the call was long distance.

A moment later the nasal voice of Hank Lemnitzer came on the line.

“I found a deal for Dodo. Walt Curzon’s shooting a remake of You Can’t Take It With You. Yesterday I found out Walt needed a girl to play the old Ann Miller role. It’s a good supporting part.”

“I assume there’ll be a screen test. How do we know Curzon will agree to the casting?”

“Are you kidding? Don’t underrate your influence, Mr. O’Keefe. Dodo’s in. Only thing is, we have to move fast. They need her yesterday, Mr. O’Keefe. And, as you asked, Jenny LaMarsh flies to New York tonight, she’ll join you there tomorrow. We’ll switch Dodo’s Naples reservations to Jenny.”

O’Keefe could find no flaw in the plan. He wondered why he wanted to.

Lemnitzer said, “If you’re worried about telling Dodo, why don’t I do it?”

“Thank you. I’m quite capable of handling the matter personally.”

Dodo returned breathlessly, loaded with packages and followed by a grinning bellboy, similarly burdened. O’Keefe gave the bellboy a dollar and waited until he had gone.

“Did you miss me, Curtie?”

“Let’s sit down. I want to tell you about some changes in plan. The fact is, my dear, you’re being given a movie role.”

Dodo said slowly, “I guess it means… I have to go away.”

“Unfortunately, my dear, it does.”

“Soon?”

“I’m afraid – tomorrow morning. You’ll fly directly to Los Angeles. Hank Lemnitzer will meet you.”

“Curtie, it’s all right.” Dodo’s eyes were still upon him. Despite their innocence, he had an absurd notion they had penetrated to the truth.

“I’d hoped – about the movie role – you might be more pleased. It’s really a tremendous opportunity.”

“I guess…” There was the slightest catch in Dodo’s voice. “I guess you’ll go tonight. Before me.”

“No, I’ll cancel my flight and leave tomorrow morning. Tonight will be a special evening for us both.”

As Dodo looked up gratefully, the telephone rang.

“This is Christine Francis – Mr. Warren Trent’s assistant. Mr. Trent wondered if it would be convenient for him to come to see you now.”

“Yes,” he acknowledged. “I’ll see Mr. Trent. Tell him to come.” 8

Warren Trent hoped that for the hour or so, which remained of his proprietorship, he would be undisturbed. But Christine Francis came in quietly, as usual sensing his mood, and announced, to Warren Trent’s surprise, that Mr. Emile Dumaire was waiting outside.

A good deal of money from the Industrial Merchants Bank, of which Emile Dumaire was president, was tied up in the St. Gregory Hotel. It was also Industrial Merchants, which, months earlier, had refused an extension of credit as well as a larger loan for refinancing.

“I apologize, Warren, for the abrupt intrusion without an appointment.”

They shook hands. The hotel proprietor waved his visitor to a chair.

“First, permit me to say how sorry I was that it was not feasible to accede to your loan request. Unfortunately, the sum and terms were far beyond our resources or established policy.”

Warren Trent nodded. He had little liking for the banker, though he had never made the mistake of underrating him.

“I am very well aware of the terms of the offer for this hotel from the O’Keefe Corporation. But I am here to make a counter-offer. And it will be better than O’Keefe’s.”

There was ironic justice in the fact that Curtis O’Keefe who used espionage as a business tool, should be spied upon himself.

“Just how are the terms better?”

“Basically, the valuation, which my principals place upon this hotel, is identical with that of the O’Keefe Corporation. In other respects, however, there are several significant differences.”

Warren Trent was conscious of a mounting interest in what the banker had to say.

“First, my principals have no wish that you should sever your personal connection with the St. Gregory Hotel or divorce yourself from its financial structure. Second, it would be their intention to maintain the hotel’s independence and existing character. They would, however, insist on acquiring a majority of the outstanding common shares – a reasonable requirement in the circumstances – to provide effective management control. A further requirement would be your immediate resignation as president and managing director.”

“What would I become?”

The banker smiled. “My principals propose that immediately following your resignation you be appointed chairman of the board, initially for a two-year term.”

The hotel proprietor was silent.

“I am further instructed to inform you that my principals will match any offer of a personal nature concerning accommodation here.”

As the banker talked on, closely consulting his notes, Warren Trent had a sense of unreality. Who, among the city’s business leaders, was behind Emile Dumaire? 9

“Are you really telling me you’ve sold elsewhere?”

“You may also be interested to know, Mr. O’Keefe, that I have not sold entirely, but have retained a substantial interest in the hotel.”

O’Keefe’s face flushed with rage. It had been many years since anything he wished to buy had been denied him. Dodo reached out. Her hand touched O’Keefe’s sleeve, “Curtie!”

He wrenched the arm free. “Shut up!” He added addressing the hotel proprietor, “I’ll drive this hotel down, and out of business.”

Dodo’s eyes went appealingly to Warren Trent. Warren Trent felt his own self-control increase as O’Keefe’s diminished. “We may not see it happen, of course, because what you intend will take time.”

O’Keefe raged, “Get out!”

With a slight, courteous bow to Dodo, he went out.

“It’s only a hotel, Curtie. You have so many others,” Dodo said.

“I want this one!”

Dodo, frightened, had never known him in a mood so uncontrolled before.

“I’m surrounded by fools! You’re a fool! It’s why I’m getting rid of you. Replacing you with someone else.”

He regretted the words the instant they were out. Dodo’s eyes were misty.

“I guess I knew, Curtie. You didn’t have to tell me.”

10

Keycase Milne was on the point of leaving the Maison Blanche store when he saw a well-dressed woman drop a ring of keys. Upon recovering them, he saw a miniature auto license tag. The tag showed a Louisiana license number. Keycase hurried to a telephone. Holding the keys in front of him, Keycase read out the license number from the miniature tag. A bored clerk informed him that the car was registered to one, F. R. Drummond, with an address in the Lakeview district of New Orleans. He made one more telephone call, dialing the listed number for F. R. Drummond. There was no answer.

The front door opened easily to the first key he tried.

“Anybody home?” There was no answer.

He found furs and put them into one of suitcases, and emptied a jewelry box, adding a movie camera, binoculars and a portable radio. He closed the case and carried it downstairs. A tape recorder, which he noticed at the last moment, he carried out to the car in one hand, the larger case in the other.

Keycase had been inside the house barely ten minutes. On the way, with a gleam of humor, he put the keys into a mail box.

The duplicate key to the Presidential Suite was ready and he paid cheerfully.

In the Presidential Suite the Duke of Croydon was unsteadily pouring a Scotch and soda. It was now nineteen hours since the Croydons’ last contact with the chief house officer and there had been no word of a development of any kind.

“Couldn’t the fellow telephone?”

“We agreed there should be no communication,” the Duchess reminded him.

Beside the Duchess was a copy of the afternoon paper, and they had listened to hourly radio news broadcasts throughout the morning.

Her husband returned morosely to his drink. “That woman… the child. There were pictures… suppose you saw. Funeral today… this afternoon… at least could go.”

“You can’t, and you know you won’t.”

The silence was broken by the jangle of the telephone. They heard the voice of the secretary answering.

A moment later the secretary knocked and came in. “Your Grace, it’s one of the local newspapers. They say that they have had a flash bulletin, which appears to concern you.”

The Duchess said. “I will take the call.” Her hands were trembling.

After the greetings a crispy voice said, “Sorry, madam. I’ll read this to you. “Parliamentary sources here today name the Duke of Croydon as Britain’s next ambassador to Washington. An official announcement is expected soon.” 11

“Why we called was to see if your husband has a statement, then with your permission we’d like to send a photographer to the hotel.”

“At the moment,” the Duchess injected, “my husband has no statement, nor will he have unless and until the appointment is officially confirmed. The same applies to photography.”

After replacing the telephone, at length, a slight smile hovering around her lips, she said, “It’s happened. Geoffrey has succeeded.”

Her husband stared incredulously. “Washington?”

“Later today you will be obliged to meet the press.”

He nodded slowly. He lifted his glass to sip.

“No!” The Duchess rose. She removed the bottle and he heard the contents of the glass being poured into the sink. Returning, she announced, “There will be no more.”

He seemed about to protest, then acknowledged, “Suppose… only way.”

His wife was already reasoning aloud. “It will be necessary to revise our plans about Chicago. From now on, your movements will be the subject of close attention. If we go there together, it could arouse curiosity. I shall go alone.” 12

“Did you discover anything about Ogilvie?”

Peter McDermott’s secretary shook her head. “There’s just one thing. The car Mr. Ogilvie used – you said it was a Jaguar? It belongs to the Duke and Duchess of Croydon.”

“Are you sure someone hasn’t made a mistake?”

“I wondered about that,” Flora said, “But I talked to Kulgmer, who’s the garage night checker. He was on duty last night. He says Mr. Ogilvie had written authority from the Duchess of Croydon to take the car.”

He inquired, “Has the car come back?”

Flora shook her head negatively. “I wondered if I should check with the Duchess of Croydon. Then I thought I’d ask you first.”

“I’m glad you did.” He supposed it would be simple enough to ask the Croydons if they knew Ogilvie’s destination, but after his own talk with the Duchess on Monday night, Peter was reluctant to risk another misunderstanding.

There was another piece of unfinished business, Peter remembered – Herbie Chandler. “Find out if Herbie Chandler’s on duty this evening,” he instructed Flora. “Tell him I’d like to see him here at six o’clock or tomorrow morning.”

A few minutes later, Peter stepped out into the brilliant, early afternoon sunlight of St. Charles Street.

“Peter! I’m here.” Marsha was waving from the driver’s seat of a white convertible.

“Hi!” Marsha said when he joined her in a car. Impulsively, he took her hand and squeezed it.

“I like that,” she assured him, “even though I promised my father I’d use both hands to drive.” She eased the convertible out into traffic.

It seemed that he was constantly being driven about New Orleans by attractive women.

There was an excitement in being close together, especially remembering their parting kiss of the night before.

“What were you thinking about just then?” Marsha asked.

“History,” he lied. “Where do we start?”

“The old St. Louis Cemetery. You haven’t been there?”

Peter shook his head.

Marsha parked the car. “In the early 1700s, when New Orleans was founded by the French, the land was mostly swamp. When a grave was dug, it flooded before anyone could put a coffin in. Sometimes gravediggers punched holes in the wood to make the coffin sink. People used to say, if you weren’t really dead, you’d drown. Anyway, later on there was a law that all burials had to be above the ground.”

They began to walk between rows of uniquely constructed tombs. “This is what happened after the law was passed. In New Orleans we call these places cities of the dead.”

He pointed, “They’re like apartment entrances.”

“The tombs are like apartments. They are divided into sections,” Marsha explained. “The ordinary family tombs have two to six sections, the bigger ones more. Each section has its own little door. When there’s to be a funeral, ahead of time one of the doorways is opened up. The coffin already inside is emptied, and the remains from it pushed through a slot into the ground. The old coffin is burned and the new one put in. It’s left for a year, then the same thing happens.”

An elderly man in stained denim coveralls regarded them cheerfully. Removing an ancient straw hat, he mopped his bald head with a red silk handkerchief. “Hot, isn’t it? Lot cooler in there.” He slapped his hand against a tomb.

“I’ll settle for the heat,” Peter said.

“Hullo, Mr. Collodi,” Marsha said. “This is Mr. McDermott.”

“Going to the family tomb?”

Marsha nodded.

“This way, then.”

They stopped before a six-sectioned tomb that was painted white and in better repair than most around it. “We’re an old family,” Marsha said. “It must be getting crowded down among the dust.”

Sunshine slanted brightly on the tomb.

“That’s the next one for opening, Miss Preyscott. Your daddy’ll go in there.” He touched another in a second tier. “That will be yours. Death comes sooner than we want for all of us. Waste no time, sir!”

Despite the heat of the day, Peter shivered.

Marsha’s eyes were on his face. “It’s simply that here we’re brought up to see all this as part of us.”

They were on the way out, when a line of cars had stopped immediately outside. It was obvious that a funeral procession was about to come in.

“Oh no!” Marsha said.

Peter gripped her hand tightly.

Marsha whispered, “It’s the people who were killed in that hit-and-run. There was a mother, a little girl.” He saw that she was crying. He felt his own eyes moisten as the cortege moved on.

Behind the family mourners were others. To his surprise, Peter recognized Sol Natchez, the elderly room-service waiter suspended from duty after the dispute with the Duke and Duchess of Croydon on Monday night.

The funeral procession moved farther into the cemetery and out of sight.

Unexpectedly a hand touched Peter’s arm. Turning, he saw it was Sol Natchez.

“I saw you watching, Mr. McDermott. Did you know the family?”

“No,” Peter said. “We were here by chance.” He introduced Marsha.

“You knew the family, then?”

“Very well, Mr. McDermott.”

Peter nodded. There seemed nothing else to say.

Natchez said, “I didn’t get to say it Tuesday, Mr. McDermott, but I appreciate what you did.”

“I didn’t think you were to blame.”

“It’s a funny thing when you think about it. All this. The accident. It must have happened just before I had that bit of trouble Monday night. Just think, while you and me were talking…”

“Yes,” Peter said.

“I meant to ask, Mr. McDermott – was anything more said about that business with the Duke and Duchess?”

“Nothing at all.”

“I thought about it a lot after. Seemed almost as if they went out of their way to make a fuss.”

And later Peter had had the same general impression: that the Duchess wanted the incident remembered. She spoke about the walk they had had. Then the Duke of Croydon had mumbled something about leaving his cigarettes in the car… But if the Croydons had stayed in the suite, then merely walked around the block…

Why conceal the use of their car? It’s a funny thing… the accident must have happened just before that trouble.

The Croydons’ car was a Jaguar.

Ogilvie. He had a sudden memory of the Jaguar emerging from the garage last night.

There were pieces of a puzzle. And they appeared to relate. The idea was impossible. And yet…

As if from a distance, he heard Marsha’s voice. “Peter, you’ve suddenly gone white.”

“Marsha,” Peter said, “I have to go back to the hotel. I’m sorry. I’ll try to explain later.”

He left Marsha and Natchez standing, bewildered, looking after him.

He gave the driver the address of his apartment. It would be quieter there. To think. To decide what he should do.

He forced himself to think rationally, carefully, unexcitedly. He had reviewed, point by point, the accumulated incidents since Monday night. He had searched for alternatives of explanation. He found none.

Should he tell Mr. Trent? No. Whatever was to be done, he must do it alone.

He returned to his office in the hotel, lifted the telephone, waited for a line, and dialed the number of the city police.

13

A mosquito, which had somehow found its way into the Jaguar’s interior, woke Ogilvie during the afternoon. A glance at his watch showed that he had slept, uninterrupted, for almost eight hours. The car was stifling. His body was aching. He was thirsty and hungry.

Ogilvie opened a package with a Thermos of coffee, several cans of beer, sandwiches, a salad sausage, a jar of pickles, and an apple pie. While eating, he listened to the car radio, waiting for a newscast from New Orleans. When it came, there was only a brief reference to the hit-and-run investigation as there had been no new developments.

Now he had only to wait for darkness. 14

Shortly after five p.m., Keycase Milne cautiously approached the Presidential Suite.

He listened, but here was no sound. He glanced both ways down the corridor then, with a single movement, produced the key and tried it in the lock. It turned. Keycase opened one of the double doors an inch.

There was still no sound from inside. He closed the door carefully and removed the key, which was ready for use whenever he chose.

He would enter the suite tonight. 15

Captain Yolles of the Detective Bureau, New Orleans Police, looked less like a policeman than anyone Peter had ever seen. He continued to listen politely, as a bank manager might consider an application for a loan, to Peter’s recital of fact. Only once during the lengthy discourse had the detective interrupted, to inquire if he could make a telephone call, but he spoke in a voice so low that Peter heard nothing of what was said.

As there was no response, Peter concluded, “I’m not sure all this makes sense. In fact, I’m already beginning to feel a little foolish.”

“If there were more people like you, Mr. McDermott, it would make police work a lot easier. Meanwhile, there are a couple of details I’d like to have. One is the license number of the car. And the other thing is a physical description of your man Ogilvie. I know him, but I’d like to have it from you.”

As Peter concluded the description, the telephone rang. Peter pushed the phone across. “For you.”

Now Peter could hear the conversation. “I’d say he’s very dependable. Worried too.” The detective repeated the information concerning the car number and Ogilvie’s description, then hung up.

Peter said, “You’re right about being worried. Do you intend to contact the Duke and Duchess of Croydon?”

“We’d like a little more to go on.” The detective regarded Peter thoughtfully. “Have you seen tonight’s paper? The “States-Item” published it that the Duke of Croydon is to be British ambassador to Washington.”

Peter whistled softly. “Doesn’t that mean there would be some kind of diplomatic immunity?”

The detective shook his head. “Not for something that’s already happened. But a false accusation…”

“Would be serious in any case, especially so in this one.”

“I’ll let you in on a couple of things,” Captain Yolles said. “Chances are, your man drove last night – after you saw him and holed up somewhere for the day. Tonight, if he shows, we’re ready.”

Captain Yolles rose to go, and Peter walked with him to the outer office.

Peter was surprised to find Herbie Chandler waiting, then remembered his own instructions for the bell captain to report here this evening or tomorrow. He invited the bell captain in, where he took out a folder containing the statements made yesterday by Dixon, Dumaire, and the other two youths and handed them to Chandler.

As Chandler turned the pages, his lips tightened. A moment later he muttered, “Bastards!”

“You mean because they’ve identified you as a pimp?”

“What are you going to do?”

“What I’d like to do is go to Mr. Trent and fire you on the spot.”

“Mr. Mac, couldn’t you just keep this between you and me?”

“No.”

Chandler hesitated, then unfastened the button of a tunic pocket. Reaching inside he removed a folded envelope, which he placed on the desk. The envelope was unsealed and contained five one-hundred-dollar bills.

“I was curious to know how high you thought my price came.” Peter tossed the money back. “Take it and get out.”

“Mr. Mac, if it’s a question of a little more…”

“Get out!” Peter’s voice was low.

As he retrieved the money and left, Herbie Chandler’s face was a mask of hatred.

On his desk was a printed form, which Flora had left, with a late-afternoon house count. Peter studied the figures. Tonight, it seemed, there was a certainty of another full house.

Peter skimmed through his mail, deciding that there was nothing, which could not be left until tomorrow. Beneath it was a folder with the proposed master catering plan, which the sous-chef, Andre Lemieux, had given him yesterday. Peter had begun studying the plan this morning. He decided he would continue now. A fresh and clearly competent brain had thought over present troubles in food management and come up with solutions.

Peter left a message that he was coming down to the kitchen now. Andre Lemieux was waiting at the doorway from the main dining room.

“Come in, monsieur! You are welcome.”

In contrast to the comparative quietness of yesterday afternoon, the atmosphere now, in early evening, was pandemonic. There were twice as many people, and their rush was accompanied by the clatter of plates, the inviting odor of food and the sweet, fresh fragrance of brewing coffee.

“I’ve read your report.” Peter returned the folder to the sous-chef, then followed him into the glass-paneled office where the noise was muted. “I like your ideas. I’d argue a few points, but not many.”

“It would be good to argue if, at the end, the action was to follow.” Then he added, “Monsieur, I am about to visit the convention floor. Would you care to accompany me?”

“Thank you. I’ll come.”

They rode a service elevator two floors up, stepping out into what was a duplicate of the main kitchen below. From here some two thousand meals could be served at a single sitting to the St. Gregory’s three convention halls and dozen private dining rooms.

“As you know, monsieur, we have two big banquets tonight. In the Grand Ballroom and the Bienville hall.”

“Yes, the Dentists’ Congress and Gold Crown Cola.” He observed that the dentists’ main course was roast turkey. Teams of cooks and helpers were serving it, apportioning vegetables with machine-like rhythm and loading the whole onto waiters’ trays.

Now the conundrum was how many convention meals to prepare at any time. Convention organizers gave the hotel a minimum guarantee, but in practice the figure could vary a hundred or two either way.

“What was the original estimate?”

“For the dentists, five hundred. We’re close to that and we’ve begun serving. But they still seem to be coming in.”

“If we have to, can we produce extra food?”

“When I have the word of requirements, monsieur, then we will do our best.”

A waiter returned with his report, “It looks like an additional hundred and seventy people. They’re flooding in! We’re already setting up more tables.”

Peter turned to Andre Lemieux, only to discover that the young Frenchman was no longer there. He was already among his staff, issuing orders: Use the reserves! Speed up! More vegetables! Steal some from the second banquet! Alert the pastry chef! One hundred and seventy more desserts required in minutes…

Already, waiters were being reassigned, some smoothly withdrawn from the smaller banquet of Gold Crown Cola. A meal each second… – faster still! In front of the serving counter, a line of waiters, becoming long.

Amid the urgency, a moment of incongruity. “Chef, there’s a gentleman says he doesn’t like turkey. May he have rare roast beef?”

A shout of laughter went up from the sweating cooks.

But the request had observed protocol correctly, only the senior chef could authorize any deviation from a standard menu.

A grinning Andre Lemieux said, “He may have it, but serve him last at his table.”

The line of waiters at the serving counter was shortening. To most guests in the Grand Ballroom the main course had been served.

The dessert was bombe aux marrons. Now, waiters were lining up before the service doors. Two cooks stood by with lighted candles.

As Andre Lemieux nodded, the head waiter’s arm swept down.

The cooks ran down the line of trays, igniting them. The double service doors were opened. Outside an electrician dimmed the lights. The music of an orchestra stopped. A hum of conversation among guests died.

There was a second’s silence, then a fanfare of trumpets followed by the orchestra and organ, and the procession of waiters, with flaming trays, marched out.

Peter McDermott moved into the Grand Ballroom for a better view. Andre Lemieux had come to stand beside Peter. “That is all for tonight, monsieur.”

Peter smiled. “It was a good show. Congratulations!”

As he turned away, the sous-chef called after him, “Good night, monsieur. And do not forget.”

Puzzled, Peter stopped. “Forget what?”

“About the hotel, monsieur, that you and I could make.”

Peter was on his way when he remembered he hadn’t seen D. Ingram. Peter called the chief cashier. “Has Dr. Ingram of Philadelphia checked out?”

“Yes, Mr. McDermott, just a minute ago. I can see him in the lobby now.”

“Send someone to ask if he could please wait.”

Dr. Ingram was standing, suitcases beside him, a raincoat over his arm, when Peter arrived.

“I heard about your resignation. I came to say I’m sorry.”

“I guess they’ll do without me.” From the Grand Ballroom two floors above, there was the sound of applause and cheering. “It sounds as if they have already.”

“Do you mind very much?”

The little doctor shifted his feet, looking down, then growled, “If I’m honest, McDermott – and God knows why I’m telling you this – it’s eating my heart out, not being up there tonight.” He paused, looking up, as the sounds from the ballroom were audible once more. “Once in a while, though, you have to weigh what you want against what you believe in, even though some of your friends may think you’re a fool.”

“It isn’t idiotic to stand up for a principle.”

“You didn’t do it, McDermott, when you had the chance.”

“I’m afraid that’s true.”

“I’ll tell you something, son. Sometimes you get a second chance. If it happens to you – take it.”

16

At Columbus, Mississippi, Ogilvie stopped for gas. He was careful to choose a small store on the outskirts of town. He paid cash for the gas and a half-dozen chocolate bars, then drove on.

Traffic was averagely light and the Jaguar performed superbly. Driving conditions were ideal. There was no sign of police activity of any kind. Ogilvie was relaxed.

Gradually traffic grew heavier. A few miles farther on, Ogilvie could see that the scene bore the familiar pattern of a highway accident. Then, abruptly, rounding a curve, he saw the real reason for the delay. Two lines of Tennessee Highway Patrol cars. At the same instant, the car, which had been following, switched on a police beacon of its own.

Ogilvie stopped the car and raised his hands above his head.

“Keep your hands where they are,” a sergeant ordered, opening his door, “and come out slowly. You’re under arrest.” 17

Christine Francis mused aloud, “There! – you’re doing it again. Both times, when the coffee was poured, you’ve held your hands around the cup. As if it gave you a kind of comfort.”

“You notice more things than most people.”

They were in the St. Gregory’s main dining room. Since their arrival more than an hour ago, most of the other diners had left. Max, the head waiter, came discreetly to their table.

“Will there be anything else, sir?”

Albert Wells glanced at Christine who shook her head.

“I reckon not. When you’d like to, you can bring the bill.”

“Certainly, sir.” Max nodded to Christine, his eyes assuring her that he had not forgotten their arrangement of this morning.

When the head waiter had gone, the little man said, “About the coffee. Being a prospector in the north, you never waste anything if you want to stay alive, not even the beat from a cup you’re holding. It’s wise to remind yourself of some things once in a while.”

“Because they were good times, or because life is better now?”

“Some of both.”

“I didn’t know about your being a prospector. When you were prospecting, what was it for?”

“Uranium, cobalt. Mostly gold.”

“Did you find any? Gold, I mean.”

He nodded affirmatively. “Mostly, though, the country was too tough to mine and take it out.”

“You said that mostly it was too difficult to mine the gold. It wasn’t always?”

“Not always. Some were luckier ’n others. But the Shield and the Barren Lands do strange things to people. Some you think ’d be strong – and not just in body either – they turn out to be the weak ones. One time I remember…” He stopped as the head waiter placed a salver on the table with their bill. He turned over the bill, inspecting it. He glanced across the room at the head waiter, then back toward Christine. Abruptly, he took out a pencil and signed the bill.

“In ’36 I was prospecting near the shore of Great Slave Lake. Had a partner then, Hymie Eckstein from Ohio. On the Shield you lose all track of time, we were there for a month or two. Then one day the two of us sat down to roll our cigarettes. I took a piece or two of rock from the place. Later I panned the rock. It showed good coarse gold.

“We rushed back to the place and covered it with moss. Two days later, we found the ground had already been staked. A Toronto prospector had been out the year before, then gone back east, not knowing what he had. Under Territories law, his rights’d run out a year from recording. The next three months were the longest any two men lived. Maybe the hardest. We existed. On fish, some bits of plants.

“Finally it got to the last day of September. We had our stakes ready. We rushed in at midnight… The next clear thing I know was being in a hospital in Edmonton, near a thousand miles from where we staked. I found out after, Hymie got me out from the Shield, though I never figured how he did it. And some pilot flew me south. They thought I had died.” He stopped to drink from the coffee cup.

“Wasn’t the claim legal?”

“The trouble was Hymie. Each of us – on paper – turned over his half of the claim to the other, in case one of us didn’t come through. Hymie said it’d save a lot of legal mess.”

Christine prompted, “So while you were in the hospital…”

“Hymie’d taken both papers and registered his.”

Albert Wells stopped and waved a greeting across the dining room.

Christine looked up to see Peter McDermott approaching their table.

Hoping there would be an opportunity to talk privately with Peter afterward, Christine said, “Mr. Wells has been telling me a wonderful story. I must hear the end.”

Peter sipped his coffee, which the waiter had brought.

The little man smiled, “There isn’t a whole lot more. I went north and found Hymie in Yellowknife. When I’d quieted down my curses, Hymie told me to come with him. We went to a lawyer and there were papers, ready drawn, handing me back my half share.”

Bewildered, Christine shook her head. “I don’t understand. Why did he…”

“Hymie had always intended to hand my share back. Only thing was, he had never let me know. Right from the beginning, though, he’d fixed things up legally. If he’d died, I’d have got his share as well as mine. We had the same arrangement – about that one mine – till the day Hymie died, which was five years ago. When you believe in somebody, don’t be in a rush to change your mind.”

Peter McDermott said, “And the mine?”

“It still goes on – one of the best producers in the north. Now and then I go back to take a look.”

Speechless, Christine stared at the little man. “You… you… own a gold mine.”

Albert Wells nodded cheerfully. “There are a few other things now, besides. A couple of newspapers, some ships, an insurance company, buildings, other bits and pieces. I bought a food chain last year. I like new things. In fact, there’s something I was going to tell you tomorrow, but I may as well do it now. I’ve just bought this hotel.” 18

Captain Yolles closed the office door. “Mr. McDermott, Ogilvie has been arrested.” There was a pause, then Yolles said, “He claims he knew nothing about the car being involved in an accident. He says that the Duke and Duchess of Croydon paid him two hundred dollars to drive it north. He had that amount of money on him.”

“Do you believe that?”

“We’ll know better after we’ve done some questioning tomorrow. We intend to pay a call on the Duke and Duchess of Croydon. If you don’t mind, we’d like you along.”

“I suppose… if you think it necessary.”

“There is one other thing, Mr. McDermott,” the second detective said. “Do you suppose anyone kept the Duchess’s written permission for their car to be taken from the hotel garage?”

Kulgmer, the garage night checker, apologized again. “I must have thrown it out yesterday with the paper from my sandwiches.”

Peter McDermott asked, “What did the note from the Duchess of Croydon say?”

“Just that Mr. O. had permission to take away the car.”

“Was the note written on hotel stationery?”

“Yes, Mr. McDermott, I do remember that. The paper was embossed and had ‘Presidential Suite’ at the top. I’m sorry again. I must have thrown the note in a garbage can.” Kulgmer led the way to a garbage can around two in the morning. But this is emptied every day.

“What happens to the garbage when it leaves here?” asked the detective.

“It goes to our central incinerator.”

When they went up to the ninth floor, to Peter’s surprise, the doors of the Presidential Suite were open. As they approached, a buzz of voices could be heard. There was a group of men and women, the Duke and Duchess of Croydon among them. Most of the visitors were holding drinks.

The Croydons’ male secretary appeared in the hallway. “Good evening,” Peter said. “These two gentlemen would like to see the Duke and Duchess.”

“Are they from the press?”

Captain Yolles shook his head. The Duchess of Croydon detached herself from the group in the living room and came toward them. The secretary pointed, “These gentlemen are not from the press.” Her eyes went to Peter with a glance of recognition, then to the other two.

Captain Yolles said, “We’re police officers, madam.”

The secretary closed the living-room door.

“There are some questions, madam, that we’d like to ask you and your husband. We’ll do our best to be as brief as possible.”

“I’ll inquire if my husband will see you.” The Duchess re-entered, followed by the Duke.

Captain Yolles started his interrogation. “I wonder if you’d mind telling me when you last used your car. It’s a Jaguar, I believe.” He repeated the registration number.

“It was Monday morning. It’s been in the hotel garage since then. It’s there now.”

“Please think carefully. Did you use the car on Monday evening?”

“I am not accustomed to having my word doubted.”

“Are either of you acquainted with Theodore Ogilvie?”

“He came here. I’m not sure when. There was some query about a piece of jewelry, which had been found.”

“And you, sir?” Yolles addressed the Duke directly. “Do you know Theodore Ogilvie?”

The Duke of Croydon hesitated. “Only as my wife has described.”

“Would it, then, surprise you to know that your car is at present in the State of Tennessee, where it was driven by Theodore Ogilvie, who is now under arrest? Furthermore, that Ogilvie has made a statement to the effect that he was paid by you to drive the car from New Orleans to Chicago. And, still further, that preliminary investigation indicates, your car was involved in a hit-and-run fatality, in this city, last Monday night.”

“If Ogilvie drove our car so, it was without the authority or knowledge either of my husband or myself. Furthermore, if the car was involved in an accident on Monday night, it seems perfectly obvious that the same man took the car and used it for his own purposes on that occasion.”

Peter protested, “But you wrote an authorization. It specified that Ogilvie could take the car.”

Visibly, she paled.

“Show it to me!”

Peter said, “Unfortunately…”

He caught a gleam of mocking triumph in her eyes.

19

As the outside door of the Presidential Suite closed behind the last to leave, the Duke of Croydon cried, “You couldn’t possibly get away with…”

“Be quiet!” The Duchess of Croydon glanced around the now silent living room. “We’ll go outside. Where no one can overhear.”

Only when they were outside, she murmured, “Now!”

“I tell you it’s madness! Can you imagine what it will be like now, when the truth finally comes out?”

“If it does.” The Duchess’s voice was low. “However distasteful, there are certain facts that I must know about Monday night. The woman you were with at Irish Bayou. Did you drive her there?”

The Duke flushed. “No. She went in a taxi.”

“Then you could have come in a taxi yourself. Was there any witness to the fact that you were driving the car on Monday night?”

“There’s the hotel garage. When we came in, someone could have seen us.”

“No! We saw no one. No one saw us. And on Monday morning we left it on an outside parking lot.”

“That’s right,” the Duke said. “I got it from there at night.”

“We shall say we have not seen the car since midday Monday.”

“And another man will go to prison instead of me.”

“No! The police can’t possibly prove he was driving the car at the time of the accident, any more than they can prove it was you.”

He looked at her with admiration, “There are times when you are absolutely incredible. By the way, where is the other fifteen thousand?”

“Still in the small suitcase which is locked and in my bedroom. We’ll take it with us when we go.”

“It is all diabolical. But it might, it just might work.” 20

“That woman is lying,” Captain Yolles said. “But it’ll be hard to prove, if we ever do.”

“Her husband might break,” the second detective suggested.

“She’s too smart to let it happen.”

Peter injected, “Isn’t it enough for the night checker – and Ogilvie, I suppose – to swear that the note existed?”

“She’d claim that Ogilvie wrote it himself.”

“There is one possibility,” Peter said. “We do have a man. He’s in charge of the incinerator. A lot of the garbage he sorts by hand. It would be a long shot and it’s probably too late…”

“For Christ’s sake!” Yolles snapped. “Let’s get to him.”

While they were waiting for the elevator, the second detective, Bennett, said, “I hear you’ve had some other trouble this week.”

“There was a robbery early yesterday. With all this, I’d almost forgotten.”

“Today a funny thing happened. There was a break-in in a private home. A key job. It had all the signs of your robbery here, including the kind of stuff taken, and no prints. He hasn’t been arrested, but a neighbor saw a car. It had license plates that were green and white. Five states use plates with those colors – Michigan, Idaho, Nebraska, Vermont, Washington – and Saskatchewan in Canada. For the next day or two, all our boys will be watching for cars from those places.”

A moment later the elevator arrived.

The sweat-shining face of Booker T. Graham beamed with pleasure at the sight of Peter McDermott. Captain Yolles wrinkled his nose at the overpowering odor of garbage, magnified by intense heat.

Peter McDermott talked with the big Negro himself. McDermott had brought a sheet of the special Presidential Suite stationery and held it up for inspection. The Negro nodded and took the sheet, retaining it, but his expression was doubtful. He gestured to the dozens of overflowing bins crowded around them.

“About a third of what came in had already been burned and whether what we want was in there or not, we’ve no means of knowing. As for the rest, Graham will keep an eye open for a paper of the kind I’ve given him. But before the garbage gets here, it’s compressed and a lot of it is wet,” reported Peter McDermott.

Yolles sighed, “I suppose it’s the best we can do.” 21

Keycase was faced with the choice between waiting another day and abandoning the attempt to reach the Duchess’s jewels when the Duke and Duchess of Croydon emerged, preceded by the Bedlington terriers. Obviously the Duke and Duchess would not be away for long. But whatever the risk of an encounter, it had to be taken. Walking quietly, he approached the Presidential Suite.

The lock made no noise. Nor did the door. There was no one in sight. The lights in the suite were turned on.

Keycase slipped on gloves. He moved warily, yet wasting no time. In the bedrooms, as elsewhere, lights were on. There was no mistaking which room was the Duchess’s.

There were a number of items, which, with more time and in other circumstances, he would have taken with him. But now he was seeking a major prize and discarding all else.

In the third drawer, on top, were negligees. Beneath them was a box of hand-tooled leather. It was locked. Keycase worked with a knife and screwdriver to break the lock. At length the lock gave, the lid flew back. Beneath were two tiers of jewels: rings, brooches, necklets, clips, tiaras. With both hands he reached out to seize the spoils. At the same instant, a key turned in the lock of the outer door.

Keycase slammed down the jewelbox lid and slid the drawer closed. He flew to the door. A hotel maid was entering. She had towels on her arm and was headed for the Duchess’s bedroom.

Keycase yanked a lamp. Now he needed something in his hand to indicate activity. Anything!

Against the wall was a small case. He seized it.

“Oh!” The maid’s hand went over her heart as she saw Keycase.

He frowned. “You should have come here earlier.”

“I’m sorry, sir. I saw there were people in.”

“It doesn’t matter now. There’s a lamp that needs fixing.” He gestured into the bedroom. “The Duchess wants it working tonight.” He kept his voice low, remembering the secretary.

Keycase went out.

In the corridor he tried not to think. In his own room he buried his face in a pillow in despair.

It was more than an hour before he bothered forcing the lock of the case he had brought with him. Inside he found used bills, all of small denominations.

With trembling hands, he counted fifteen thousand dollars. 22

Peter McDermott was called out by the night manager in the lobby. “Mr. McDermott, here’s a note from Miss Francis.”

It read simply:

I’ve gone home. Come if you can.

– Christine.

He would go, he decided. Nothing else to do tonight at the hotel. Or was there? Abruptly, Peter remembered he had promised to telephone Marsha, but he had forgotten until now. It seemed like days, but he supposed he should call her, late as it was.

Marsha answered on the first ring.

“Oh, Peter,” she said, “I waited and waited, then called twice and left my name.”

“I’m genuinely sorry, and I can’t explain, at least not yet.”

“Tell me tomorrow. At breakfast,” Marsha said. “You’ll love a New Orleans breakfast. They’re famous. And Anna’s are special.”

It was impossible not to be charmed by Marsha’s enthusiasms. And he felt sorry for this afternoon.

They agreed on 7:30 a.m.

A few minutes later he was in a taxi on his way to Christine’s apartment.

Christine was waiting with the apartment door open. “Not a word,” she said, “until after the second drink.”

She had mixed daiquiris, which were chilling in the refrigerator.

They talked continuously for almost two hours, all the time their closeness growing. At the end, they concluded that tomorrow would be an interesting day.

“I know I won’t sleep now.” Christine said.

“I couldn’t either,” Peter said. “But not for the reason you mean.”

He had no doubts. He took her in his arms and kissed her.

Later, it seemed the most natural thing in the world that they should make love. Friday 1

There had been no message during the night concerning anything found in the incinerator. The night manager reported that he had spoken with the incinerator employee, Graham, who was sorry, but the paper Mr. McDermott wanted had not turned up.

Between sips of coffee, and while dressing, Peter thought constantly about Christine and his own future, if any, at the St. Gregory Hotel.

Whatever might be ahead, he wished Christine to be a part of it. It might be unromantic, Peter reflected, to say that he was comfortable with Christine. But it was true and, in a sense, reassuring.

As to the hotel, it was hard to believe, even now, that Albert Wells had assumed control of the St. Gregory, or would today. It seemed possible that Peter’s own position might be strengthened by the unexpected development. But Peter decided not to worry about events until they happened.

Clocks were chiming seven-thirty as Peter McDermott arrived, by taxi, at the Preyscott mansion.

“Good morning!” Marsha smiled. They exchanged a few phrases, but Peter’s thoughts kept drifting away.

As they sat down, Ben placed a Creole cream cheese Evangeline, garlanded with fruit, in front of them.

“Earlier on,” Marsha said, “you said something about the hotel.”

“Oh, yes.” Between mouthfuls of cheese and fruit, he explained about Albert Wells. The call had been from Warren Trent. It informed Peter that Mr. Dempster of Montreal, financial representative of the St. Gregory’s new owner, was en route to New Orleans. Surprisingly, Warren Trent had sounded not in the least depressed.

Peter also knew that Curtis O’Keefe and his companion Miss Lash were due to leave the St. Gregory later this morning, in different directions though.

“You’re thinking about a lot of things,” Marsha said. “I wish you’d tell me some.”

Peter smiled. He told her the kind of day that he expected it to be.

As they talked, the remains of the cheeses Evangeline were removed, to be replaced by steaming, aromatic eggs Sardou. Peter caught sight of the housekeeper, Anna, hovering in the background. He called out “Magnificent!” and saw her smile.

More plates arrived, and Peter pointed, “You’ve made this breakfast an occasion. This and a good deal more. Meeting you, my history lessons, being with you here. I won’t forget it – ever.”

“It sounds as if you’re saying goodbye.”

“I am, Marsha.” He met her eyes steadily, then smiled.

“I thought…”

He reached out across the table, his hand covering Marsha’s. “Perhaps we were both daydreaming. I think we were. But it’s quite the nicest daydream I ever had.”

Perhaps, at this moment, he was making a mistake, which years from now he would remember with regret. He sensed that Marsha was close to tears.

“Excuse me.” She stood up and walked from the gallery.

Peter wished he could have spoken more gently. After a few minutes, Anna appeared. “I don’t believe Miss Marsha’ll be back.”

He asked, “How is she?”

“She’s crying in her room.” Anna shrugged. “It’s a way she has when she doesn’t get all she wants. When she’s past the most of it, I’ll do the best I can. If only her father were at home more…”

“You’re very understanding.” Peter remembered what Marsha had told him about Anna. “I heard about your husband. He must have been a fine man.”

“My husband!” The housekeeper cackled. “I had no husband. My goodness! Miss Marsha’s been taking you in with all her stories. A lot of the time she is just acting, which is why you don’t need to worry now.”

Peter wondered if he would ever be wise about women. He rather doubted it.

2

Now, today, number four elevator was starting and stopping jerkily at every floor. It was a little before ten a.m., when on Cy Lewin’s latest trip he noticed that the jerkiness had stopped. Well, whatever that trouble was, he guessed it had fixed itself.

He could not have been more wrong.

High above Cy Lewin was the elevator control room. There, in the mechanical heart of number four elevator, a small electrical relay had reached the limit of its useful life.

A maintenance crew had tried to trace the trouble, but had not succeeded. They could hardly be blamed. There were more than sixty relays to a single elevator, and twenty elevators in the entire hotel. Nor had anyone observed that two safety devices on the elevator car were partially defective.

At ten past ten on Friday morning, number four elevator was – in fact, and figuratively – hanging by a thread. 3

Mr. Dempster of Montreal checked in at half-past ten. Peter McDermott, notified of his arrival, went down to the lobby to extend official greetings.

The financial representative of Albert Wells responded to a comment of Peter’s about the speed of events being breathtaking with the remark, “Mr. Wells frequently has that effect.”

Twenty minutes later Mr. Dempster reappeared in Peter’s office. He had visited Mr. Wells and spoken on the telephone with Mr. Trent. Meanwhile, there were a few people whom Mr. Dempster wished to discuss the matters with, and Mr. Trent had invited him to make use of the executive suite.

Peter escorted him to Warren Trent’s office and introduced Christine. For the first time since his arrival, the man from Montreal smiled. “Oh yes, Miss Francis. Mr. Wells mentioned you. In fact, he spoke of you quite warmly.”

“I’m a little embarrassed,” Christine said, “about something which happened last night.”

“If you’re referring to the incident with the restaurant bill, Miss Francis, it’s unnecessary that you should be. Mr. Wells told me – and I quote his own words – that it was one of the sweetest, kindest things that had ever been done for him.”

There was a knock at the outer office door, which opened to reveal the credit manager, Sam Jakubiec. “Excuse me,” he said when he saw the group inside, and turned to go. Peter called him back.

“I came to check a rumor about Mr. Wells,” Jakubiec said.

“It isn’t rumor,” Peter said. “It’s fact.” He introduced the credit man to Mr. Dempster.

“My God! – I checked his credit. I doubted his check. I even phoned Montreal.”

For the second time Mr. Dempster smiled. “At the bank they were vastly amused.”

The next to arrive was Royall Edwards. The comptroller was armed with papers and a bulging brief case. Shaking hands, Mr. Dempster informed the comptroller, “We’ll have a brief talk in a moment, and I’d like you to remain for our eleven-thirty meeting. By the way – you too, Miss Francis.”

“As we have time, I might explain some matters concerning Mr. Wells.” Mr. Dempster removed his glasses, breathed on the lenses and polished them. “Despite Mr. Wells’ considerable wealth, he has remained a man of very simple tastes. For himself he prefers modest things, even in such matters as clothing, travel, and accommodation.”

Royall Edwards seemed amused. “It’s like something from the Brothers Grimm!”

“Perhaps. But don’t ever believe that Mr. Wells lives in a fairy tale world. I’ve known Mr. Wells a good many years. In that time I’ve come to respect his instincts both about business and people.”

“I suppose,” Royall Edwards said, “we can expect a good many changes around here.”

“The first change will be that I shall become president of the hotel company, an office I hold in most of Mr. Wells’ corporations. He has never cared to assume titles himself.”

Christine said, “So we’ll be seeing a good deal of you.”

“Actually very little, Miss Francis. I will be a figurehead, no more. The executive vice-president will have complete authority. That is Mr. Wells’ policy, and also mine.”

So, Peter’s future would depend on the executive vice-president, whoever that might be.

He suddenly discovered he wanted to remain at the St. Gregory very much indeed. Christine, of course, was one reason. Another was that the St. Gregory, with continued independence under new management, promised to be exciting.

“Mr. Dempster,” Peter said, “if it isn’t a great secret, who will the executive vice-president be?”

The man from Montreal looked at Peter strangely.

“Excuse me, I thought you knew. That’s you.” 4

Throughout last night Booker T. Graham had labored alone in the incinerator. It was time for him to quit and go home. The hotel objected to paying overtime. And yet, more than anything else, Booker T. wanted to stay and find the paper he had been looking for the whole night for Mr. McDermott. So, he decided he would go on searching.

He worked slowly, painstakingly. By mid-morning he was very tired and down to the last container but one.

He saw it almost at once when he emptied the bin – a ball of waxed paper, which looked like sandwich wrappings. When he opened them, inside was a crumpled sheet of stationery, matching the sample Mr. McDermott had left.

Without waiting to dispose of the remaining garbage, Booker T. headed to McDermott’s office. 5

While the members of the eleven-thirty meeting were gathering in Warren Trent’s office, Peter still could not recover from the shock administered by the man from Montreal.

Executive vice-president. To run the St. Gregory with absolute control was like fulfillment of a vision. Peter knew that the St. Gregory could become a fine hotel.

When he had learned of the purchase of the hotel by Albert Wells, and its continued independence, Peter hoped that the new proprietor would have the insight to make progressive changes. Now, he was to be given the opportunity himself. The prospect was exhilarating. And a little frightening.

Peter’s thoughts raced on. Still stunned, he joined the others now taking their places at a long board table near the center of the room.

Albert Wells was last to arrive. He came in shyly, escorted by Christine.

As he did, those already in the room rose to their feet. The little man waved them down. “No, no! Please!”

Warren Trent stepped forward, smiling. “Mr. Wells, I welcome you to my house.” They shook hands. “When it becomes your house, it will be my heartfelt wish that these old walls will bring to you as great a happiness and satisfaction as, at times, they have to me.”

Warren Trent took his arm and personally performed the introductions.

The terms of sale had already been substantially agreed. The purpose of the meeting was to decide upon procedures, including a date for takeover. There appeared to be no difficulties. The mortgage on the hotel, due to be foreclosed today, had been paid already.

Then Peter McDermott and Royall Edwards answered questions, as they arose, affecting administration and finance. On two occasions Christine left the meeting and returned, bringing documents from the hotel files.

Within less than half an hour, the principal business bad been disposed of. The official transfer date was set for Tuesday. Other minor details were left for the lawyers to arrange between them.

Mr. Dempster spoke again addressing Warren Trent, “Now our first business will be to propose your election, Mr. Trent, as chairman of the board.”

“I shall be honored to accept.”

“It is Mr. Wells’ further wish that I should assume the presidency with Mr. Peter McDermott as executive vice-president.”

A chorus of congratulations was directed at Peter from around the table.

Christine was smiling. With the others, Warren Trent shook Peter’s hand.

Mr. Dempster waited until the conversation died. “There remains one further point. This week I was in New York when the unfortunate publicity occurred concerning this hotel. I would like an assurance that there will be no repetition. I am not suggesting that there be any basic change in hotel policy^[12]. My opinion, as a businessman, is that local viewpoints and customs must be respected. What I am concerned with is that, if such a situation arises, it should not produce a similar result.”

Peter answered, “It’s true. A delegate to a convention in this hotel, with a confirmed reservation, was refused accommodation. He was a dentist – a distinguished one – and incidentally a Negro. I regret to say that I was the one who turned him away. I have since made a personal decision that the same thing will never happen again.”

“Gentlemen.” Mr. Dempster replaced his glasses. “I made it clear, I thought, that I was not suggesting any fundamental change.”

“But I am, Mr. Dempster.” If there was to be a showdown, Peter thought, better to have it now, and done with. Either he would run the hotel or not.

The man from Montreal leaned forward. “Let me be sure I understand your position.”

“My position is quite simple. I would insist on complete desegregation of the hotel as a condition of my employment. Hasty or not, I think it’s fair to let you know where I stand.”

Christine, Peter observed, had her eyes intently on his face. He wondered what she was thinking.

Mr. Dempster addressed the room at large. “I imagine we all respect a firmly held conviction. But this is a serious change. If Mr. McDermott agrees, we can postpone a firm decision now. In a month or two, the subject can be reconsidered.”

It was not the best time. To wait, perhaps, would be the wisest choice. But then, the time for drastic change was never right. There were always reasons for not doing things.

“Mr. Dempster,” Peter said, “the law on civil rights is perfectly clear.”

Warren Trent snorted. “I warn you! You will run this hotel into the ground.”

“Mr. McDermott, in view of your attitude, we may have to reconsider…” For the first time, the man from Montreal seemed uncertain. He glanced at Albert Wells.

The little man’s eyes met Mr. Dempster’s.

“Charlie,” Albert Wells said, “I reckon we should let the young fellow do it his way.” He nodded toward Peter.

Mr. Dempster announced, “Mr. McDermott, your conditions are met.”

The meeting was breaking up. Christine went to the door first. A moment later she returned, saying that his secretary was waiting in the outer office. At the doorway, she slipped a folded piece of paper into Peter’s hand, whispering, “Read it later.”

“Mr. McDermott,” Flora said, “I wouldn’t have disturbed you… But there’s a man in your office. He says he works in the incinerator and has something important that you want. He won’t give it to me or away.”

“I’ll come as quickly as I can.”

“Please hurry! The fact is… well, he smells.”

6

A few minutes before midday, a slow-moving maintenance worker named Billyboi Noble lowered himself into a shallow pit beneath the shaft of number four elevator. His business there was routine cleaning and inspection, which he had already performed this morning on elevators numbers one, two, and three. It was a procedure, for which it was not considered necessary to stop the elevators and, as Billyboi worked, he could see the car of number four alternately climbing and descending high above. 7

If Booker T. had been a different kind of man, if he had gone home at the appointed time, if he had been less diligent in searching, then the single sheet of paper, now staring up at Peter from his desk, would have been destroyed.

The “ifs” were endless. Whatever the cause, the result was here.

The note was dated two days earlier and had been written by the Duchess of Croydon on Presidential Suite stationery. Peter had already checked the handwriting.

Now Peter’s duty was to inform Captain Yolles at once that the missing piece of evidence had been recovered.

With his hand on the telephone, Peter hesitated.

He felt no sympathy for the Croydons.

The reason was simply a tradition that was centuries old, the credo of an innkeeper of politeness to a guest.

Whatever else the Duke and Duchess of Croydon might be, they were guests of the hotel.

He would call the police. But he would call the Croydons first. 8

After his angry outburst then, Curtis O’Keefe had been immediately and genuinely sorry. But his tirade against Dodo had been inexcusable, and he knew it.

Worse, it was impossible to repair. Despite his apologies, the truth remained.

Curtis O’Keefe attributed his feelings to the loss of the hotel. In his long career he had experienced his share of business disappointments. But on this occasion, even after a night’s sleep, the mood persisted.

It made him irritable with God. There was an undertone of criticism in his morning prayers.

Afterward he found Dodo packing his bags as well as her own. When he protested, she assured him, “Curtie, I like doing it. And if I didn’t, who would?”

At breakfast Dodo tried to be cheerful. “Gee, Curtie, we don’t have to be miserable. It isn’t like we’ll never see each other. We can meet in L.A. lots of times.”

But O’Keefe knew that they would not.

The moments slipped by. It was time for Dodo to leave. O’Keefe checked his watch and walked to the connecting doorway. “You’ve very little time, my dear.”

Dodo’s voice floated out. “I have to finish my nails, Curtie.”

When, at last, Dodo walked out from the adjoining room, Curtis O’Keefe thought there should be music. The ash-blond hair was loose about her shoulders. Her wide blue eyes regarded him.

“Goodbye, dearest Curtie.” She put her arms around his neck and kissed him. Without intending to, he held her tightly.

He had an absurd impulse to instruct the bell captain to bring back Dodo’s bags from downstairs, to tell her to stay and never to leave. He dismissed it as sentimental foolishness.

At the doorway she turned and waved back. He could not be sure, but he had an impression she was crying.

Herbie Chandler, who had personally come to accompany such an important guest, closed the door from outside.

On the twelfth-floor landing, the bell captain rang for an elevator. The elevators seemed slow this morning, Herbie Chandler thought.

Impatiently he depressed the call button a second time, holding it down for several seconds. He was still tense, he realized. He had been tense ever since the session yesterday with McDermott, wondering just how and when the call would come, which would mark the end of Herbie’s career at the St. Gregory Hotel.

An elevator had arrived at last. Its doors opened.

There were several people already inside, who eased politely to the rear as Dodo entered. Herbie Chandler followed. The doors closed.

It was number four elevator. The time was eleven minutes past noon. 9

It seemed to the Duchess of Croydon as if she was waiting for a slow-burning fuse to reach an unseen bomb. Since last night, when the police detectives left, there had been no further word.

“You’d almost think,” the Duke of Croydon ventured, “that they’re trying to wear us down by silence.”

“If that’s the case,” the Duchess responded, “well see to it that…”

She was interrupted by the jangling of the telephone. The Duchess reached out her hand, then was stopped by a premonition that this call would be different.

The Duke asked sympathetically, “Would you rather me do it?”

She shook her head. Lifting the telephone, she answered, “Yes?”

She said into the telephone, “Yes, I remember. You were present when those ridiculous charges…”

The Duchess stopped. As she listened, her face paled.

She replaced the receiver. Her hands were trembling.

“The note.” Her voice was scarcely audible. “The hotel manager has it.”

At length her husband asked, “And now?”

“He’s calling the police. He said he decided to notify us first.”

“It’s a little late to talk of decency,” he went into the adjoining bedroom, returning almost at once with a light raincoat and a Homburg hat, “but if I can, I intend to tell to the police before they come to me. I imagine there isn’t much time, so I’ll say what I have to say quickly.”

In a controlled, quiet voice the Duke affirmed, “I want you to know that I’m grateful for all you did. I’ll do all I can to see that you’re not involved.”

The Duchess nodded dully. For one, whose entire life and future had collapsed around him a few moments earlier, the Duke held on remarkably.

“You’ll need money for the lawyer,” he reminded her. “You could start him off with some of that fifteen thousand dollars you wanted to take to Chicago.”

A look of pity crossed the Duke’s face. He said uncertainly, “It may be a long time…” His arms went out toward her.

Coldly, deliberately, she averted her head.

With a slight shrug her husband turned, then went out quietly, closing the outer door behind him.

For a moment or two the Duchess sat passively, considering the future and weighing the disgrace ahead. Then, habit reasserting itself, she rose. She would arrange for the lawyer, which seemed necessary at once. Later, she decided calmly, she would examine the means of suicide.

Meanwhile, the money, which had been mentioned, should be put in a safer place.

It took only a few minutes, mainly of unbelief, to discover that the case was gone. When she considered the possibility of informing the police, the Duchess of Croydon convulsed in hysterical laughter.

The Duke of Croydon seemed to have been waiting for the elevator on the ninth floor for several minutes. Now, at last, he could hear a car approaching from above, its doors opened.

He stepped into number four elevator.

There were several people already inside, including an attractive blond girl and the hotel bell captain, who recognized the Duke.

“Good day, your Grace.”

The Duke of Croydon nodded absently as the doors slid closed. 10

It had taken Keycase Milne most of last night and this morning to decide that what had occurred was reality and not a hallucination. There was a temptation to check out at once. Keycase resisted it. The night cashier would remember and could describe him. The best time to check out was mid-morning or later, when plenty of other people would be leaving too.

Still dazed and unbelieving, Keycase slept.

He woke up at 11:30. He shaved and dressed quickly, then completed his packing and locked both suitcases.

He would leave the suitcases in his room, he decided, while he went down to pay his bill.  He took only one key, his own key, 830, for handing in when he left his room for the last time.

The lobby was averagely busy, Keycase paid his bill and received a friendly smile from the girl cashier. “Is the room vacant now, sir?”

“It will be in a few minutes. I have to collect my bags, that’s all.”

In 830 he took a last careful look around the room, then, picking up both suitcases, he left.

His watch showed ten past twelve.

On the eighth-floor landing he rang for an elevator. Waiting, he heard one coming down. It stopped at the floor above, started downward once more, then stopped again. In front of Keycase, the door of number four elevator slid open.

At the front of the car was the Duke of Croydon.

For a horror-filled instant, Keycase had an impulse to turn and run. In the same split second, sanity told him that the encounter was accidental.

The elevator operator, an elderly man, said, “Going down!”

Alongside the operator was the hotel bell captain. Nodding to the two bags, the bell captain inquired, “Shall I take those, sir?” Keycase shook his head.

As he stepped into the elevator, the Duke of Croydon and a beautiful blond girl eased nearer the rear to make room.

The gates closed. The operator, Cy Lewin, pushed the selector handle to “descend.” As he did, with a scream of tortured metal, the elevator car plunged downward, out of control. 11

He owed it to Warren Trent, Peter McDermott decided, to explain personally what had occurred concerning the Duke and Duchess of Croydon.

Peter McDermott found the hotel proprietor in his main mezzanine office. Aloysius Royce was with his employer, helping assemble personal possessions, which he was packing into cardboard containers.

“I won’t need this office any more. I suppose it will be yours.” Warren Trent told Peter, but he had come for another reason.

Warren Trent listened attentively to the description of events since Peter’s 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.

“I’ve no sympathy for the Croydons. You’ve handled it well. At least we’ve got rid of those dogs.”

“I’m afraid Ogilvie is involved pretty deeply.”

“This time he’s gone too far. He’ll take the consequences. I suppose you wonder why I’ve always been lenient with Ogilvie.”

“Yes,” Peter said.

“He was my wife’s nephew. 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 promised to keep him employed. I’ve never, really, wanted to undo that.”

How did you explain, Warren Trent wondered, that it was the only link with Hester 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 was a reminder, Warren Trent thought, of the loneliness he had endured across the years, and of the greater loneliness soon to come.

Without warning, the door from the outer office flew open. Christine stumbled in breathless. 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.”

Peter McDermott brushed her aside. Aloysius Royce was close behind.

12

As one set of safety clamps held and the other failed, the number four car twisted and buckled. With a thunder of tearing metal, impelled by its own weight and speed, plus the heavy load inside, the car split open. 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 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, but 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 falling down the remaining distance of the shaft. Part way, a youngish conventioneer dentist slipped through the gap. He was to survive the accident, but die three days later of internal injuries.

Herbie Chandler 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 fractured vertebrae, which would make him a paraplegic, never walking again for the remainder of his life.

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

When Peter McDermott reached the lobby, it was a scene of pandemonium. There was confused shouting and frightened screaming. In front of the 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.

As loudly as he could, Peter shouted above the uproar, “Quiet! Please stand back and we will do everything we can.” He caught a room clerk’s eye. “Has anyone called the Fire Department?”

“I’m not sure, sir.”

Peter snapped, “Do it now!” He instructed another, “Get onto the police. Tell them we need ambulances, doctors, someone to control the crowd.”

A tall, lean man in a tweed jacket 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.”

The tall man began cracking commands.

A maintenance worker ran into the lobby, “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.”

Peter snapped, “Let’s get down there!”

A gray brick tunnel, dimly lighted, led to the elevator shaft. Here, the cries they had heard above were audible again, but now with greater closeness.

Peter shouted to the men not occupied, “Get more lights in here!”

He instructed the maintenance man who had come to the lobby, “Get back upstairs. Guide the firemen down.” Aloysius Royce, on his knees beside the debris, shouted, “And send a doctor – now!”

The man nodded and ran back the way they had come.

The chief engineer, Doc Vickery, shouldered his way through the tonnel, “My God! I warned if we didn’t spend money, something like this…” He seized Peter’s arm. “You’ve heard me enough times…”

“Later, chief.” It was evident that the chief was in no condition to take charge. Peter instructed him, “Check on the other elevators. Don’t take chances of a repetition.” Bowed and broken, the old man moved away.

Peter returned to the elevator shaft. Aloysius Royce had eased himself under part of the debris and was holding the shoulders of the injured, screaming maintenance man. It was clear that a mass of wreckage rested on his legs.

Peter took one of the injured man’s hands. “Help is coming.”

Distantly, high above, he could hear a growing wail of sirens. 14

The room clerk’s telephone summons reached the Fire Alarm Office in City Hall. Automatically, four fire halls responded – Central on Decatur, Tulane, South Rampart, and Dumaine. Within less than a minute, five engine companies, two hook and ladders, emergency, rescue and salvage units, a deputy chief and two district chiefs were on the way to the St. Gregory.

The Police Complaint Department received its warning two ways – from the Fire Alarm Office and directly from the hotel.

Two women communications clerks wrote the information on message blanks, a moment later handed them to a radio dispatcher. The message went out: All ambulances to the St. Gregory Hotel. 15

Three floors below the St. Gregory lobby, in the tunnel to the elevator shaft, the noise, commands, moans and cries continued. A young man with a medical bag was approaching them.

“Doctor!” Peter called urgently. “Over here!”

The newcomer joined Peter and Aloysius Royce. Billyboi Noble screamed again.

The doctor produced a syringe. Peter pushed back Billyboi’s sleeve. Within seconds the morphine had taken hold. Billyboi’s head fell back. His eyes closed.

“I haven’t much with me. I came off the street. How quickly can you get him out?”

“As soon as we’ve help. It’s coming.”

More running footsteps. Helmeted firemen streaming in. With them, bright lanterns, heavy equipment – axes, power jacks, cutting tools, lever bars. Little talk.

“A jack under there. Get this heavy stuff moving!”

From above, the sound of yielding metal. A stream of light as shaft doors opened at the lobby level. A cry, “We need ladders here!”

The young doctor’s command: “I must have this man out!

“We need a smaller jack!”

Peter’s voice. “That bar there! The one higher. If we move it, it will lift the lower, leave clearance for the jack.”

“Twenty tons up there. Shift something, it can all come down. When we start, we’ll take it slow.”

Royce and Peter, shoulders together, backs under the higher bar, arms interlocked. Strain upward! Nothing. Strain harder again! Still harder! Do the impossible! A shout, “The jack is in!” The straining ended. Down. The jack turning, lifting. Debris rising.

The doctor’s voice, quietly. “Take your time. He just died.”

The dead and injured were brought upward by the ladder one by one. Women were crying. Some men had turned away.

One by one the ambulances raced away. First, with Herbie Chandler; next, the injured dentist who would die. Other ambulances drove more slowly to the city morgue. Inside the hotel, a police captain questioned witnesses, seeking names of victims.

Dodo was brought up last. A doctor had applied a compression dressing to the gaping head wound. Keycase Milne, ignoring offers of help himself, had stayed with Dodo, holding her, guiding rescuers to where she lay. Keycase was last out. The Gold Crown Cola conventioneer and his wife preceded him. A fireman passed up the bags – Dodo’s and Keycase’s – from the elevator’s wreckage to the lobby. A uniformed city policeman received and guarded them.

Peter McDermott had returned to the lobby when Dodo was brought out. She was white and still. Two doctors worked over her briefly. The younger doctor shook his head.

Behind the cordon, a man was shouting, “Let me pass!”

Peter motioned to the cordon to part. Curtis O’Keefe came rushing through.

When Peter last saw him, he was on the street outside, pleading to be allowed in the ambulance. The intern nodded. Doors slammed. The ambulance raced away. 16

Barely believing his own deliverance, Keycase climbed the ladder in the elevator shaft. In the lobby Keycase found that he could stand and move unaided. Once more, his brain was alert. Uniforms were all around. They frightened him.

His two suitcases! If the larger one had burst open!… But no. They were with several others nearby. He moved toward them.

A policeman behind said, “Sir, there’s an ambulance waiting. Everyone must go, sir. It’s for a check. For your own protection.”

Keycase protested, “I must have my bags.”

The young policeman carried the bags and escorted Keycase to the ambulance.

While the policeman was gone, Keycase picked up his bags and melted into the crowd.

He continued to walk, without haste, to the outdoor parking lot where he had left his car yesterday. He had a sense of peace and confidence. Nothing could possibly happen to him now.

From downtown, Keycase drove carefully to the motel on Chef Menteur Highway where he had cached his earlier loot. Its value was small, compared with the glorious fifteen thousand dollars cash, but still worthwhile.

Making sure he was unobserved, he loaded the suitcases into the car, placing the coats beside them. He checked out of the motel and paid a balance owing on his bill.

His destination was Detroit. On the way he would do some serious thinking about the future. For a number of years Keycase had promised himself that if ever he acquired a reasonably substantial sum of money, he would use it to buy a small garage. There he would settle down to work honestly through the sunset of his days.

But hadn’t the success of the past three days been an omen? Perhaps after all, Keycase reflected, he should continue the old ways for a while. The garage could come later.

Approaching the junction of Canal Street and City Park Avenue, Keycase observed that the intersection’s traffic lights had failed. A policeman was directing traffic from the center of the road on the Canal Street side.

A few yards from the intersection, Keycase felt a tire go flat.

Motor Patrolman Nicholas Clancy, of the New Orleans Police, had once been accused “the dumbest cop”.

Despite long service, which had made him a veteran, Clancy had never once advanced in rank or even been considered for promotion. With no arrests made, his record was inglorious. One solitary thing in line of duty gave Clancy not the slightest trouble – directing traffic. He enjoyed it.

From the opposite side of the avenue, Clancy saw the gray Ford slow and stop. He strolled across. “Flat tire?”

Keycase nodded.

He was remembering the single, simple factor his plans had overlooked. The spare tire and jack were in the trunk. To reach them, he must open the trunk, revealing the fur coats and the suitcases.

“Guess you’ll have to change the wheel, eh?”

He could do it fast. Three minutes at the most. If only the cop left…

“Gets busy around here. You’d better start now.”

Keycase drew the keys from the ignition. He forced a smile. “It’s all right, officer. I can handle it.”

Clancy said good-naturedly, “I’ll give you a hand.”

An impulse seized Keycase to abandon the car and run. Instead, he inserted the key and opened the trunk. Scarcely a minute later, he had the jack in place, wheel nuts were loosened, and he was raising the rear bumper. The suitcases and fur coats were heaped to one side in the trunk. As he worked, Keycase could see the cop contemplating the collection. Incredibly, so far, he had said nothing.

Clancy leaned down and fingered one of the coats. “Bit hot for these.”

“My wife… sometimes feels cold.”

“Little lady not with you, eh?”

“I… I’m picking her up.”

Keycase froze.

Fate had presented him a chance, and he had thrown it away. Now, in anger, fate had turned its back. Terror struck as he remembered what, a few minutes earlier, he had forgotten – the awful price of one more conviction; the long imprisonment lasting, perhaps, for the remainder of his life.

Freedom had never seemed more precious.

At last, Keycase knew what the omens of the past day and a half had really meant. They had offered him release, a chance for a new and decent life, an escape to tomorrow.

Was it too late now – at least for hope?

He vowed that if he escaped this moment, he would never again, in all his life, do one more dishonest thing.

Keycase opened his eyes. The cop was walking to another car, whose driver had stopped to ask directions.

Keycase had the trunk repacked when the cop returned.

Clancy nodded approvingly, “All finished, eh?”

Keycase slammed the trunk lid down. For the first time, Motor Patrolman Clancy saw the Michigan license plate.

Green on white. Clancy wished he could remember.

From behind, an impatient horn. Clancy seemed to remember he was a policeman. “Let’s get this lane clear.”

Green and white. The thought still bothered him.

Keycase drove forward. Clancy watched him go. After all, he had been called “the dumbest cop”.

17

Curtis O’Keefe followed close behind the stretcher bearing Dodo, almost running to keep up.

Swinging doors marked ACCIDENT ROOM opened to meet the stretcher. Inside were nurses, doctors, activity, other stretchers. A male attendant barred Curtis O’Keefe’s way. “Wait here, please.”

Curtis O’Keefe tried to protest but remained facing the doors. His eyes were misted, his heart despairing.

It had all happened less than half an hour ago. After Dodo’s leavetaking, instinct told him that something had gone from his life that he might never find again. Rationality won out. He remained where he was.

A few minutes later he heard the sirens. The activity below made him decide to go down. On the twelfth-floor landing, after almost five minutes, when an elevator failed to come, O’Keefe decided to use the emergency stairs. As he went down, he discovered others had had the same idea.

In the lobby he learned from excited spectators the essential facts of what had occurred. It was then he prayed with intensity that Dodo had left the hotel before the accident. A moment later he saw her carried, unconscious, from the elevator shaft. The look of death was on her face.

In that instant, Curtis O’Keefe discovered the truth he had shielded from himself so long. He loved her. He knew too late that letting Dodo go had been the greatest single error of his life.

When the nurse approached him, she shook her head and hurried on.

He had a sense of helplessness. There was so little he could do, but he would do it.

He opened doors marked PRIVATE and stopped before the Director’s desk. When Curtis O’Keefe identified himself, the Director’s anger lessened.

Fifteen minutes later O’Keefe was introduced to Dr. Beauclaire.

“I understand that you are a friend of the young lady. We are doing everything we can. But I must tell you there is a strong possibility she may not live.”

“Doctor, if there’s anything you need – a question of money, professional help…”

The Director interrupted quietly. “This is a free hospital, Mr. O’Keefe. It’s for emergencies. All the same, there are services here that money couldn’t buy. I should tell you that Dr. Beauclaire is one of the leading neurosurgeons in the country.”

O’Keefe said humbly, “I’m sorry.”

“Perhaps there is one thing,” the doctor said, “The patient is unconscious now, and under sedation. Earlier, she asked for her mother. If it’s possible to get her mother here…”

“It’s possible.” It was a relief that at least there was something he could do.

From a corridor pay phone, Curtis O’Keefe called to Akron, Ohio, and instructed, “You are to contact a Mrs. Irene Lash of Exchange Street, Akron. I do not have the number of a house.” O’Keefe remembered the street from the day that he and Dodo had telegraphed the basket of fruit.

O’Keefe continued, “See her personally and say that her daughter might soon die. I want Mrs. Lash flown to New Orleans by the fastest possible means. Disregard expense.”

As soon as the arrangements were known, O’Keefe instructed, he was to be contacted at Charity Hospital.

Ninety minutes later, an operating room was being readied for Dodo. Before she was wheeled into the operating room, Curtis O’Keefe had been permitted to see her briefly. She was pale and unconscious.

Dodo’s mother was on her way.

For the moment there was nothing to do but wait.

Suddenly, he had a desire to pray. He clasped his hands and lowered his head.

Strangely, for the first time in many years, he could find no words for what was in his heart. 18

Dusk was settling over the city. Soon, Peter McDermott thought, the night would come, with sleep and, for a while, forgetfulness. Tomorrow, the immediacy of today’s events would begin receding. But it would be many dusks before those, who were closest to today’s events, would be free from a sense of tragedy and terror.

The grim, sad process of identifying the dead and notifying families had been completed. Where the hotel was to aid with funerals, arrangements had began.

Elevator service had been partially restored.

Insurance investigators were collecting statements.

But despite today’s tragedy, it was necessary to think ahead.

On Monday, a team of consultants would fly from New York to begin planning for replacement of all passenger elevator machinery with new.

The resignation of the chief engineer was on Peter’s desk. He intended to accept it. The chief, Doc Vickery, must be honorably retired, with the pension befitting his long years of service to the hotel.

M. Hebrand, the chef de cuisine, would also retire and Andre Lemieux would be promoted to his place. Much of the St. Gregory’s future would depend on young Andre Lemieux and his projects.

There must be other appointments and a reorganization of departments.

There was his own future with Christine. The thought of it was inspiring and exciting.

Other unfinished business still remained. An hour ago, Captain Yolles of the New Orleans Police had dropped into Peter’s office. He had come from an interview with the Duchess of Croydon. “When you’re with her,” Yolles said, “you sit there wondering what’s under all that solid ice. Does she feel about the way her husband died?” Later, answering Peter’s question, Yolles said, “Yes, we’ll charge her as an accessory, and she’ll be arrested after the funeral.” Ogilvie had already been charged.

When Captain Yolles had gone, the office was quiet. After a while, Peter heard the outer door open and close, then there was a light tap. He called, “Come in!”

It was Aloysius Royce. The young Negro carried a tray with a martini pitcher and a single glass, “I thought maybe you could do with this.”

“Thanks,” Peter said. “But I never drink alone.”

“I had an idea you’d say that.” From his pocket, Royce produced a second glass.

They drank in silence.

Peter asked, “Did you deliver Mrs. Lash?”

Royce nodded. “Drove her right to the hospital. I took her to Mr. O’Keefe.”

“Thank you.” After Curtis O’Keefe’s call, Peter had wanted someone at the airport on whom he could rely. It was the reason he had asked Royce to go.

“They’d finished operating when we got to the hospital. The young lady – Miss Lash – will be all right. Mr. O’Keefe told me they’re going to be married. Her mother seemed to like the idea.”

Peter smiled fleetingly. “I suppose most mothers would.”

There was a silence, then Royce said, “I heard about the meeting this morning. The way things turned out.”

Peter nodded. “The hotel is desegregated. You might stay with W.T., and you’d be entirely free. There’s legal work for the hotel as well.”

“I’ll thank you for that,” Royce said. “But the answer’s no. I told Mr. Trent this afternoon – I’m leaving, right after graduation.” He refilled the martini glasses. “We’re in a war, you and me – on opposite sides. What I can do, with what I’ve learned about the law, I intend to do for my people. You’ll have your share here. You’ve desegregated, but that isn’t the end. There’ll be problems – with our people who won’t behave nicely, who’ll embarrass you because some are the way they are.”

“It may not be easy,” Peter said. “I’ll try to be objective.”

“You will. Others won’t. All the same, it’s the way the war will go. There’s just one good thing. Once in a while there’ll be truces.” Royce picked up the tray with the pitcher and the empty glasses. “I guess this was one.”

The cycle of another innkeeping day was about to end.

This had differed from most, but routines had continued. Reservations, reception, administration, housekeeping, engineering, garage, kitchens… all had combined in a single, simple function. To welcome the traveler, sustain him, provide him with rest, and speed him on.

Soon, the cycle would begin again.

Wearily, Peter McDermott prepared to leave. Near the stairway to the lobby he saw himself in a mirror. For the first time, he realized that the suit he was wearing was rumpled and soiled. It became that way, he reflected, under the elevator debris where Billyboi died.

As he smoothed the jacket with his hand, he remembered about a folded paper in his pocket. Christine had given it to him as he left the meeting this morning, where he had staked his career on a principle, and won.

He opened it curiously. It read: It will be a fine hotel because it will be like the man who is to run it. At the bottom – in smaller lettering, Christine had written: P.S. I love you.

Smiling, he went downstairs to the lobby of his hotel.