Hotel

It was at this impasse that Curtis O'Keefe had telephoned suggesting their meeting in New Orleans this week. "Absolutely all I have in mind is a friendly chat, Warren," the hotel magnate had declared, his easy Texan drawl coming smoothly down the long-distance phone. "After all, we're a couple of aging innkeepers, you and me. We should see each other sometimes." But Warren Trent was not deceived by the smoothness; there had been overtures from the O'Keefe chain before. The vultures are hovering, he thought. 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.

With an inward sigh, 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." He had skimmed the report when it came in early as usual, observing the notation, Complaint of excessive noise in room 1126, and then, in Peter McDermott's handwriting, Dealt with by A. Royce and P. McD. Separate memo later.

"Next thing," Warren Trent growled, "I suppose you'll be reading my private mail."

Royce grinned. "I haven't yet. Would you like me to?"

The exchange was part of a private game they played without admitting it.

Royce was well aware that if he had failed to read the report the old man would have accused him of lack of interest in the hotel's affairs.

Now Warren Trent inquired sarcastically, "Since everyone else is aware of what went on, would it be taken amiss if I asked for a few details?"

"I shouldn't think so." Royce helped his employer to more coffee. "Miss Marsha Preyscott - daughter of the Mr. Preyscott - was almost raped. Do you want me to tell you about it?"

For a moment, as Trent's expression hardened, he wondered if he had gone too far. Their undefined, casual relationship was based for the most part upon precedents set by Aloysius Royce's father many years earlier. The elder Royce, who served Warren Trent first as body servant and later as companion and privileged friend, had always spoken out with a sprightly disregard of consequences which, in their early years together, drove Trent to white hot fury and later, as they traded insult for insult, had made the two inseparable. Aloysius was little more than a 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 Mount Olivet cemetery together, behind the Negro jazz band which was playing festively Oh, Didn't He Ramble, Aloysius with his hand in Warren Trent's, who told him gruffly, "You'll stay on with me at the hotel. Later we'll work something out." The boy agreed trustingly his father's death had left him entirely alone, his mother having died at his birth - and 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, as the boy became a man, he had taken over the running of the hotel owner's suite and, though most of the physical work was done by other hotel employees, Aloysius performed personal services which Warren Trent accepted, either without comment or quarrelsomely as the mood took him. At other times they argued heatedly, mostly when Aloysius rose - as he knew he was expected to - to conversational hooks which Warren Trent baited.

And yet, despite their intimacy and the knowledge that he could take liberties which Warren Trent would never tolerate in others, Aloysius Royce was conscious of a hairline border never to be crossed. Now he said, "The young lady called for help. I happened to hear." He described his own action without dramatizing, and Peter McDermott's intervention, which he neither commended nor criticized.

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

Not for the first time Royce was surprised by the old man's perception.

He answered, "Maybe there's some chemistry between us doesn't mix. Or perhaps I don't like big white football players proving how kind they are by being nice to colored boys."

Warren Trent eyed Royce quizzically. "You're a complicated one. Have you thought you might be doing McDermott an injustice?"

"Just as I said, maybe it's chemical."

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

"A dog likes people who pat him on the head. That's because his thinking isn't complicated by knowledge and education."