Hotel

Although she curbed it mostly, once in a while it served a purpose in getting things done.

They turned a corner and stopped at the door of 1439. The bellboy knocked.

They waited, listening. There was no acknowledging sound and Jimmy Duckworth repeated the knock, this time more loudly. At once there was a response: an eerie moaning that began as a whisper, reached a crescendo, then ended suddenly as it began.

"Use your pass key," Christine instructed. "Open the door - quickly!"

She stood back while the bellboy went in ahead; even in apparent crisis a hotel had rules of decorum which must be observed. The room was in darkness and she saw Duckworth snap on the ceiling light and go around a corner out of sight. Almost at once he called back, "Miss Francis, you'd better come."

The room, as Christine entered, was stiflingly hot, though a glance at the air-conditioning regulator showed it set hopefully to "cool." But that was all she had time to see before observing the struggling figure, half upright, half recumbent in the bed. It was the birdlike little man she knew as Albert Wells. His face ashen gray, eyes bulging and with trembling lips, he was attempting desperately to breathe and barely succeeding.

She went quickly to the bedside. Once, years before, in her father's office she had seen a patient in extremis, fighting for breath. There were things her father had done then which she could not do now, but one she remembered. She told Duckworth decisively, "Get the window open. We need air in here."

The bellboy's eyes were focused on the face of the man in bed. He said nervously, "The window's sealed. They did it for the air conditioning."

"Then force it. If you have to, break the glass."

She had already picked up the telephone beside the bed. When the operator answered, Christine announced, "This is Miss Francis. Is Dr. Aarons in the hotel?"

"No, Miss Francis; but he left a number. If it's an emergency I can reach him."

"It's an emergency. Tell Dr. Aarons room 1439, and to hurry, please. Ask how long he'll take to get here, then call me back."

Replacing the phone, Christine turned to the still-struggling figure in the bed. The frail, elderly man was breathing no better than before and she perceived that his face, which a few moments earlier had been ashen gray, was turning blue. The moaning which they had heard outside had begun again; it was the effort of exhaling, but obviously most of the sufferer's waning strength was being consumed by his desperate physical exertion.

"Mr. Wells," she said, trying to convey a confidence she was far from feeling, "I think you might breathe more easily if you kept perfectly still." The bellboy, she noticed, was having success with the window. He had used a coat hanger to break a seal on the catch and now was inching the bottom portion upward.

As if in response to Christine's words, the little man's struggles subsided. He was wearing an old-fashioned flannel nightshirt and Christine put an arm around him, aware of his scrawny shoulders through the coarse material. Reaching for pillows, she propped them behind, so that he could lean back, sitting upright at the same time. His eyes were fixed on hers; they were doe-like, she thought, and trying to convey gratitude. She said reassuringly, "I've sent for a doctor. He'll be here at any moment." As she spoke, the bellboy grunted with an extra effort and the window, suddenly freed, slid open wide. At once a draft of cool fresh air suffused the room. So the storm had moved south, Christine thought gratefully, sending a freshening breeze before it, and the temperature outside must be lower than for days. In the bed Albert Wells gasped greedily at the new air. As he did the telephone rang. Signaling the bellboy to take her place beside the sick man, she answered it.

"Dr. Aarons is on his way, Miss Francis," the operator announced. "He was in Paradis and said to tell you he'll be at the hotel in twenty minutes."

Christine hesitated. Paradis was across the Mississippi beyond Algiers.

Even allowing for fast driving, twenty minutes was optimistic. Also, she sometimes had doubts about the competence of the portly, Sazerac-drinking Dr. Aarons who, as house physician, lived free in the hotel in return for his availability. She told the operator, "I'm not sure we can wait that long. Would you check our own guest list to see if we have any doctors registered?"

"I already did that." There was a touch of smugness in the answer, as if the speaker had studied stories of heroic telephone operators and was determined to live up to them. "There's a Dr. Koenig in 221, and Dr. Uxbridge in 1203."

Christine noted the numbers on a pad beside the telephone. "All right, ring 221, please." Doctors who registered in hotels expected privacy and were entitled to it.

Once in a while, though, emergency justified a break with protocol.

There were several clicks as the ringing continued. Then a sleepy voice with a Teutonic accent answered, "Yes, who is it?"