Hotel

Christine asked curiously, "How do you know all this?'

"Among other things, I studied hotel law at Cornell."

"Well, I think it sounds horribly unjust."

"It's hard on anyone who gets hit, but fair to the hotel. What ought to happen, of course, is that the people who do these things should be held responsible. Trouble is, with so many rooms facing a street it's next to impossible to discover who they are. So mostly they get away with it."

Christine had been listening intently, an elbow planted on her desk, chin cupped lightly in the palm of one hand. Sunlight, slanting through half-opened venetian blinds, touched her red hair, highlighting it. At the moment a fine of puzzlement creased her forehead and Peter found himself wanting to reach out and erase it gently.

"Let me get this straight," she said. "Are you saying that a hotel isn't responsible legally for anything its guests may do - even to other guests?"

"In the way we've been talking about, it certainly isn't. The law's quite clear on that and has been for a long time. A lot of our law, in fact, goes back to the English beginning with the fourteenth century."

"Tell me."

"I'll give you the shortened version. It starts when 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 uad murderers."

"That sounds reasonable."

"It was. And the same thing was expected of the landlord when smaller chambers began to be used, because even these were always shared - or could be - by strangers."

"When you think about it," Christine mused, "it wasn't much of an age for privacy."

"That came later when there were individual rooms, and guests had keys.

After that the law looked at things differently. 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," Peter said. "On that, the law hasn't changed. When we give a guest a key it's a legal symbol, just as it was in an English inn.

It means the hotel can no longer use the room, or quarter anyone else there. On the other hand, the hotel isn't responsible for the guest once he's closed the door behind him." He pointed to the letter which Christine had put down. "That's why our friend from outside would have to find whoever dropped the bottle on him. Otherwise he's out of luck."

"I didn't know you were so encyclopedic."

"I didn't mean to sound that way," Peter said. "I imagine W.T. knows the law well enough, though if he wants a list of cases I have one somewhere."

"He'll probably be grateful. I'll clip a note on the letter." Her eyes met Peter's directly. "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. Maybe if we'd done it earlier we wouldn't be needing Curtis O'Keefe now. By the way, I suppose you know he's arrived."

"You're the seventeenth to tell me. I think the phone started ringing the moment he stepped on the sidewalk."

"It's not surprising. By now a good many are wondering why he's here. Or rather, when we shall be told officially why he's here."

Christine said, "I've just arranged a private dinner for tonight in W.T.'s suite - for Mr. O'Keefe and friend. Have you seen her? I hear she's something special."

He shook his head. "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."

"Good!" He jumped up, towering over her. "I'll collect you at seven. Your apartment."

Peter was leaving when, on a table near the doorway, he observed a folded copy of the Times-Picayune. Stopping, he saw it was the same edition - with black headlines proclaiming the hit-and-run fatalities - which he had read earlier. He said somberly, "I suppose you saw this."

"Yes, I did. It's horrible, isn't it? When I read it I had an awful sensation of watching the whole thing happen because of going by there last night."

He looked at her strangely. "It's funny you should say that. I had a feeling too. It bothered me last night and again this morning."

"What kind of feeling?"

"I'm not sure. The nearest thing is - it seems as if I know something, and yet I don't." Peter shrugged, dismissing the idea. "I expect it's as you say - because we went by." He replaced the newspaper where he had found it.

As he strode out he tamed and waved back to her, smiling.