Hotel

It was a little before ten a.m., and the hotel was becoming busy. Cy Lewin took a load up from the lobby, mostly conventioneers with names on their lapels - stopping at intermediate floors until the fifteenth, which was the top of the hotel. Going down, the car was filled to capacity by the time he reached the ninth, and he highballed the rest of the way to the main lobby. On this 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, perched like an eyrie on the hotel roof, 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. The cause, unknown and unsuspected, was a tiny push rod the size of a household nail.

The push rod was screwed into a miniature piston head which, in turn, actuated a trio of switches. One switch applied and released the elevator brake, a second supplied power to an operating motor; the third controlled a generator circuit. With all three functioning, the elevator car moved smoothly up and down in response to its controls. But with only two switches working - and if the nonworking switch should be that which controlled the elevator motor - the car would be free to fall under its own weight. Only one thing could cause such a failure - the over-all lengthening of the push rod and piston.

For several weeks the push rod had been working loose. With movements so infinitesimal that a hundred might equal the thickness of a human hair, the piston head had turned, slowly but inexorably unscrewing itself from the push rod thread. The effect was twofold. The push rod and piston had increased their total length. And the motor switch was barely functioning.

Just as a final grain of sand will tip a scale, so, at this moment, the slightest further twisting of the piston would isolate the motor switch entirely.

The defect had been the cause of number four's erratic functioning which Cy Lewin and others had observed. 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. So far this morning, neither Warren Trent nor Albert Wells had appeared on the lower floors of the hotel, nor had the latter been heard from.

The financial representative of Albert Wells was a brisk, impressive person who looked like the seasoned manager of a large branch bank. He responded to a comment of Peter's about the speed of events being breathtaking with the remark, "Mr. Wells frequently has that effect." A bellboy escorted the newcomer to a suite on the eleventh floor.

Twenty minutes later Mr. Dempster reappeared in Peter's office.

He had visited Mr. Wells, he said, and spoken on the telephone with Mr. Trent. The meeting arranged tentatively for eleven-thirty was definitely to proceed. Meanwhile, there were a few people whom Mr. Dempster wished to confer with - the hotel's comptroller for one - and Mr. Trent had invited him to make use of the executive suite.

Mr. Dempster appeared to be a man accustomed to exercise authority.

Peter escorted him to Warren Trent's office and introduced Christine. For Peter and Christine it was their second meeting of the morning. On arrival at the hotel he had sought her out and, though the best they could do in the beleaguered surroundings of the executive suite was to touch hands briefly, in the stolen moment there was an excitement and an eager awareness of each other.

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 think Mr. Wells is a wonderful man. I thought so before ..." She stopped.

"Yes?"

"I'm a little embarrassed," Christine said, "about something which happened last night."

Mr. Dempster produced heavy-rimmed glasses which he polished and put on.

"If you're referring to the incident of 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 was ever done for him. He knew what was happening, of course. There's very little he misses."

"Yes," Christine said, "I'm beginning to realize that."

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.