Near the end of breakfast there was a telephone call—which Dodo answered first—from Hank Lemnitzer, Curtis O’Keefe’s personal representative on the West Coast. Half suspecting the nature of the call, he took it in his own suite, closing the communicating door behind him.
The subject he had expected to be raised came up after a routine report on various financial interests—outside the hotel business—on which Lemnitzer astutely rode herd.
“There’s one thing, Mr. O’Keefe”—the nasal Californian drawl came down the telephone. “It’s about Jenny LaMarsh, the doll … er, the young lady you kindly expressed interest in that time at the Beverly Hills Hotel. You remember her?”
O’Keefe remembered well: a striking, rangy brunette with a superb figure, coolly amused smile, and a quick mischievous wit. He had been impressed both with her obvious potential as a woman and the range of her conversation. Someone had said, he seemed to recall, that she was a Vassar graduate. She had a contract of sorts with one of the smaller movie studios.
“Yes, I do.”
“I’ve talked with her, Mr. O’Keefe—quite a few times. Anyway, she’d be pleased to go along with you on a trip. Or two.”
There was no need to ask if Miss LaMarsh knew the kind of relationship her trip would entail. Hank Lemnitzer would have taken care of that. The possibilities, Curtis O’Keefe admitted to himself, were interesting. 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. Nor would she be torn by indecisions about things as simple as choosing fruit juice.
But, surprising himself, he hesitated.
“There’s one thing I’d like to ensure, and that’s Miss Lash’s future.”
Hank Lemnitzer’s voice came confidently across the continent. “Don’t give it a thought. I’ll take care of Dodo, same’s I did all the others.”
Curtis O’Keefe said sharply, “That isn’t the point.” Despite Lemnitzer’s usefulness, at times there were certain subtleties he lacked.
“Just what is the point, Mr. O’Keefe?”
“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. Of course, Dodo isn’t the brightest …”
O’Keefe insisted, “Not just anything, you understand. And take your time if necessary.”
“What about Jenny LaMarsh?”
“She doesn’t have anything else …?”
“I guess not.” There was the grudging sense of concession to a whim, then, breezily once more: “Okay, Mr. O’Keefe, whatever you say. You’ll be hearing from me.”
When he returned to the sitting room of the other suite, Dodo was stacking their used breakfast dishes on the room-service trolley. He snapped irritably, “Don’t do that! There are hotel staff paid for that kind of work.”
“But I like doing it, Curtie.” She turned her eloquent eyes upon him and momentarily, he saw, there was a bewildered hurt. But she stopped all the same.
Unsure of the reason for his own ill humor, 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. There was a harbor tour, he recalled, on an ungainly old stern-wheeler called the S.S. President. It was usually packed with sightseers and was the kind of thing she would enjoy.
At the outer doorway, on impulse, he told her about it. She responded by flinging her arms around his neck. “Curtie, it’ll be endsville! I’ll fix my hair so it doesn’t blow in the wind. Like this!”
She removed one lissome arm and with it pulled the flowing ash-blond hair back from her face, twisting it into a tight, profiling skein. The effect—her face tilted upward, her unaffected joy—was of such breathtaking, simple beauty that he had an impulse to change his immediate plans and stay. Instead, he grunted something about returning soon and abruptly closed the suite door behind him.
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. Strolling with apparent casualness, he was aware of covert glances from passing hotel employees who, at the sight of him, seemed affected with sudden energy. Ignoring them, he continued to observe the physical condition of the hotel, comparing his own reactions with those in Ogden Bailey’s undercover report. His opinion of yesterday that the St. Gregory required a firm directing hand was confirmed by what he saw. He also shared Bailey’s view about potential new sources of revenue.
Experience told him, for example, that the massive pillars in the lobby were probably not holding anything up. Providing they weren’t, it would be a simple matter to hollow out a section of each and rent the derived space as showcases for local merchants.
In the arcade beneath the lobby he observed a choice area occupied by a florist shop. The rent which the hotel received was probably around three hundred dollars monthly. But the same space, developed imaginatively as a modern cocktail lounge (a riverboat theme!—why not?) might easily gross fifteen thousand dollars in the same period. The florist could be relocated handily.
Returning to the lobby, he could see more space that should be put to work. By eliminating part of the existing public area, another half-dozen sales counters—air lines, car rental, tours, jewelry, a drugstore perhaps—could be profitably squeezed in. It would entail a change in character, naturally; the present air of leisurely comfort would have to go, along with the shrubbery and thick pile rugs. But nowadays, brightly lighted lobbies with advertising everywhere you looked were what helped to make hotel balance sheets more cheerful.
Another thing: most of the chairs should be taken away. If people wanted to sit down, it was more profitable that they be obliged to do so in one of the hotel’s bars or restaurants.
He had learned a lesson about free seating years ago. It was in his very first hotel—a jerry-built, false-fronted fire trap in a small Southwestern city. The hotel had one distinction: a dozen pay toilets which at various times were used—or seemed to be—by every farmer and ranch hand for a hundred miles around. To the surprise of young Curtis O’Keefe, the revenue from this source was substantial, but one thing prevented it becoming greater: a state law which required one of the twelve toilets to be operated free of charge, and the habit, which thrifty minded farm hands had acquired, of lining up to use the free one. He solved the problem by hiring the town drunk. For twenty cents an hour and a bottle of cheap wine the man had sat on the free toilet stoically through every busy day. Receipts from the others had soared immediately.
Curtis O’Keefe smiled, remembering.
The lobby, he noticed, was becoming busier. A group of new arrivals had just come in and were registering, preceding others still checking baggage that was being unloaded from an airport limousine. A small line had formed at the reception counter. O’Keefe stood watching.
It was then he observed what apparently no one else, so far, had seen.
A middle-aged, well-dressed Negro, valise in hand, had entered the hotel. He came toward Reception, walking unconcernedly as if for an afternoon stroll. At the counter he put down his bag and stood waiting, third in line.
The exchange, when it came, was clearly audible.
“Good morning,” the Negro said. His voice—a Midwestern accent—was amiable and cultured. “I’m Dr. Nicholas; you have a reservation for me.” While waiting he had removed a black Homburg hat revealing carefully brushed iron-gray hair.
“Yes, sir, if you’ll register, please.” The words were spoken before the clerk looked up. As he did, his features stiffened. A hand went out, withdrawing the registration pad he had pushed forward a moment earlier.
“I’m sorry,” he said firmly, “the hotel is full.”
Unperturbed, the Negro responded smilingly. “I have a reservation. The hotel sent a letter confirming it.” His hand went to an inside pocket, produ
cing a wallet with papers protruding, from which he selected one.
“There must have been a mistake. I’m sorry.” The clerk barely glanced at the letter placed in front of him. “We have a convention here.”
“I know.” The other nodded, his smile a shade thinner than before. “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.”
While they had been speaking still more new arrivals had joined the line in front of the counter. A man in a belted raincoat inquired impatiently, “What’s the hold-up here?” O’Keefe remained still. He had a sense that in the now crowded lobby a time bomb was ticking, ready to explode.
“You can talk to the assistant manager.” Leaning forward across the counter, the room clerk called sharply, “Mr. Bailey!”
Across the lobby an elderly man at an alcove desk looked up.
“Mr. Bailey, would you come here, please?”
The assistant manager nodded and, with a suggestion of tiredness, eased himself upright. As he walked deliberately across, his lined, pouched face assumed a professional greeter’s smile.
An old-timer, Curtis O’Keefe thought; after years of room clerking he had been given a chair and desk in the lobby with authority to handle minor problems posed by guests. The title of assistant manager, as in most hotels, was mainly a sop to the public’s vanity, allowing them to 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 countered, “that I have a confirmed reservation.”
The assistant manager beamed benevolently, his manifest goodwill encompassing the line of waiting guests. “Well,” he acknowledged, “we’ll just have to see what we can do.” He placed a pudgy, nicotine-stained hand on the sleeve of Dr. Nicholas’s expensively tailored suit. “Won’t you come and sit down over here?” As the other allowed himself to be steered toward the alcove: “Occasionally these things happen, I’m afraid. When they do, we try to make amends.”
Mentally Curtis O’Keefe acknowledged that the elderly man knew his job. 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. Only a youthful, broad-shouldered man, owlish behind heavy glasses, had left the line-up and was watching the new development. Well, O’Keefe thought, perhaps there might be no explosion after all. He waited to see.
The assistant manager gestured his companion to a chair beside the desk and eased into his own. He listened carefully, his expression noncommittal, as the other repeated the information he had given the room clerk.
At the end the older man nodded. “Well, doctor”—the tone was briskly businesslike—“I apologize for the misunderstanding, but I’m sure we can find you other accommodation in the city.”
With one hand he pulled a telephone toward him and lifted the receiver. The other hand slid out a leaf from the desk, revealing a list of phone numbers.
“Just a moment.” For the first time the visitor’s soft voice had taken on an edge. “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!” The boisterously cheerful greeting resounded across the lobby. Behind the voice a small elderly man with a sprightly rubicund face surmounted by a coxcomb of unruly white hair took short hurried strides toward the alcove.
The Negro stood. “Dr. Ingram! How good to see you!” He extended his hand which the older man grasped.
“How are you, Jim, my boy? No, don’t answer! I can see for myself you’re fine. Prosperous too, from the look of you. 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.”
“Don’t I know it! Don’t I know it! I spend all my life teaching fellows like you, and then you all go out and get the big-paying practices.” As the other grinned broadly: “Anyway you seem to have gotten the best of both—with a fine reputation. That paper of yours on malignant mouth tumors has caused a lot of discussion and we’re all looking forward to a first-hand report. By the way, I shall have the pleasure of introducing you to the convention. You know they made me president this year?”
“Yes, I’d heard. I can’t think of a finer choice.”
As the two talked, the assistant manager rose slowly from his chair. His eyes moved uncertainly between their faces.
The small, white-haired man, Dr. Ingram, was laughing. He patted his colleague jovially on the shoulder. “Give me your room number, Jim. A few of us will be getting together for drinks later on. I’d like to have you join us.”
“Unfortunately,” Dr. Nicholas said, “I’ve just been told I won’t be getting 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. Then, his face muscles hardening, he asserted, “Jim, I’ll deal with this. I promise you there’ll be an apology and a room. If there isn’t, I guarantee every other dentist will walk out of this hotel.”
A moment earlier the assistant manager had beckoned a bellboy. Now he instructed urgently, “Get Mr. McDermott—fast!”
4
For Peter McDermott the day began with a minor piece of organization. Among his morning mail was a memo from Reservations, informing him that Mr. and Mrs. Justin Kubek of Tuscaloosa were due to check into the St. Gregory the following day. What made the Kubeks special was an accompanying note from Mrs. Kubek, advising that her husband’s height was seven foot one.
Seated behind his office desk, Peter wished all hotel problems were that simple.
“Tell the carpenters’ shop,” he instructed his secretary, Flora Yates. “They probably still have that bed and mattress we used for General de Gaulle; if not, they’ll have to put something else together. Tomorrow have a room allocated early and the bed made up before the Kubeks get here. Tell Housekeeping too; they’ll need special sheets and blankets.”
Seated composedly on the opposite side of the desk, Flora made her notes, as usual without fuss or question. The instructions would be relayed correctly, Peter knew, and tomorrow—without his needing to remind her—Flora would check to make sure they had been carried out.
He inherited Flora on first coming to the St. Gregory and had long since decided she was everything a secretary should be—competent, reliable, nudging forty, contentedly married, and plain as a cement block wall. One of the handy things about Flora, Peter thought, was that he could like her immensely—as he did—without it proving a distraction. Now, if Christine had been working for him, he reflected, instead of for Warren Trent, the effect would have been far different.
Since his impetuous departure from Christine’s apartment last night, she had been out of his mind only briefly. Even sleeping, he had dreamed about her. The dream was an odyssey in which they floated serenely down a green-banked river (he was not sure aboard what) to an accompaniment of heady music in which harps, he seemed to recall, were featured strongly. He had told Christine this on telephoning her early this morning and she had asked, “Were we going upstream or down?—that ought to be significant.” But he could not remember—only that he had enjoyed the whole thing tremendously and hoped (he informed Christine) to pick up later where he had left off last night.
Before that, however—sometime this evening—they were to meet again. Just when and where would be arranged later, they agreed. “It’ll give me an excuse to call you,” Peter said.
�
�Who needs a reason?” she had responded. “Besides, this morning I intend to find some terribly unimportant piece of paper that suddenly has to be delivered to you personally.” She sounded happy, almost breathless, as if the excitement they had found in each other last night had spilled over into the new day.
Hoping Christine would come soon, he returned his attention to Flora and the morning mail.
It was a normal mixed batch, including several queries about conventions, which he dealt with first. As usual, Peter assumed his favorite position for dictating—feet elevated on a high leather wastebasket, and his padded swivel chair tilted precariously back, so that his body was almost horizontal. He found he could think incisively in that position, which he had refined through experimentation, so that now the chair was poised at the outer limits of balance, with only a hairs-breadth between equilibrium and disaster. As she often did, Flora watched expectantly during pauses in note taking. She just sat watching, making no comment.
There was another letter today—which he answered next—from a New Orleans resident whose wife had attended a private wedding reception in the hotel some five weeks earlier. During the reception she placed her wild mink jacket on a piano, along with clothes and belongings of other guests. Subsequently she had discovered a bad cigarette burn, necessitating a one-hundred-dollar repair to the coat. The husband was attempting to collect from the hotel, and his latest letter contained a strongly worded threat to sue.
Peter’s reply was polite but firm. He pointed out—as he had previously—that the hotel provided checking facilities which the letter writer’s wife had chosen not to use. Had she used the check room, the hotel would have considered a claim. As it was, the St. Gregory was not responsible.
The husband’s letter, Peter suspected, was probably just a try-on, though it could develop into a lawsuit; there had been plenty of equally silly ones in the past. Usually the courts dismissed such claims with costs for the hotel, but they were annoying because of time and effort they consumed. It sometimes seemed, Peter thought, as if the public considered a hotel a convenient milch cow with a cornucopian udder.
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