Hotel

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. She clucked her tongue. "Mr. O'Keefe won't be needing these, now will he? I'll have new ones sent up."

Taking the Bibles under her arm, she regarded Peter questioningly. "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."

He was aware of the housekeeper's eyes following him interrogatively as he left the suite. Mrs. du Quesnay, he knew, supported an invalid husband and any threat to her job would be cause for anxiety. He felt a genuine sympathy for her as he rode an elevator to the main mezzanine.

In the event of a management change, Peter supposed, most of the younger and brighter staff members would have an opportunity to stay on. He imagined that most would take it since the O'Keefe chain had a reputation for treating its employees well. Older employees, though, some of whom had grown soft in their jobs, 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. I wondered if you knew."

The chief nodded his bald, domed head morosely. "It's a pure business when machinery that needs money spending on it doesna' get it."

"Is it really that bad?" The engineering budget, Peter knew, had been pared recently, but this was the first he had heard of serious trouble with the elevators.

The chief shook his head. "If you mean shall we have a big accident, the answer's no. I watch the safety guards like I would a bairn. But we've had small breakdowns and sometime there'll be a bigger one. All it needs is a couple of cars stalled for a few hours to throw this building out of joint."

Peter nodded. If that was the worse that could happen, there was no point in worrying unduly. He inquired, "What is it you need?"

The chief peered over his thick-rimmed spectacles. "A hundred thousand dollars to start. With that I'd rip out most of the elevator guts and replace them, then some other things as well."

Peter whistled softly.

"I'll tell you one thing," the chief observed. "Good machinery's a lovely thing, and sometimes well nigh human. 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 - and the machinery - 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?

Certainly not yet for the St. Gregory, though for the hotel's present regime he suspected the point was already passed.

There was a pile of mail, memos and telephone messages on his desk. He picked up the top one and read: Miss Marsha Preyscott returned your call and will wait in room 555 until she hears from you. It was a reminder of his intention to find out more about last night's events in 1126-7.

Another thing: he must drop in soon to see Christine. There were several small matters requiring decisions from Warren Trent, though not important enough to have brought up at this morning's meeting. Then, grinning, he chided himself: Stop rationalizing! You want to see her, and why not?

As he debated which to do first, the telephone bell shrilled. It was Reception, one of the room clerks. "I thought you'd want to know," he said. "Mr. Curtis O'Keefe has just checked in."

5

Curtis O'Keefe marched into the busy, cavernous lobby swiftly, like an arrow piercing an apple's core. And a slightly decayed apple, he thought critically. Glancing around, his experienced hotel man's eye assimilated the signs. Small signs, but significant: a newspaper left in a chair and uncollected; a half-dozen cigarette butts in a sand urn by the elevators; a button missing from a bellboy's uniform; two burned-out light bulbs in the chandelier above. At the St. Charles Avenue entrance a uniformed doorman gossiped with a news vendor, a tide of guests and others breaking around them. Closer at hand an elderly assistant manager sat brooding at his desk, eyes down.

In a hotel of the O'Keefe chain, in the unlikely event of all such inefficiencies occurring at once, there would have been whip-cracking action, slashing reprimands and perhaps dismissals. But the St. Gregory isn't my hotel, Curtis O'Keefe reminded himself. Not yet.