Hotel

"A valet told me once - after I let him know I'd rumbled. He told me another thing. You know in hotels with dial telephones, from some phones you can dial rooms directly. So Barnum or Bailey - whichever one's which for that day - will dial the rooms he has deliveries for. If there's no answer, he waits and calls again later. If there is an answer - which means someone's in - he'll hang up without saying anything. Then a few minutes later he'll deliver your suit and pick up the second tip."

"You don't like tipping, Mr. Wells?"

"It isn't so much that, miss. Tipping's like dying; it's here to stay, so what good's worrying? Anyway I tipped Barnum well this morning - sort of paying in advance for the bit of fun I had with Bailey just now. What I don't like, though, is to be taken for a fool."

"I shouldn't imagine that happens often." Christine was beginning to suspect that Albert Wells needed a good deal less protection than she had at first supposed. She found him, though, as likeable as ever.

He acknowledged: "That's as maybe. There's one thing, though, I'll tell you. There's more of that kind of malarkey goes on in this hotel than most."

"Why do you think so?"

"Because mostly I keep my eyes open, miss, and I talk to people. They tell me things they maybe wouldn't you."

"What kind of things?"

"Well, for one, a good many figure they can get away with anything. It's because you don't have good management, I reckon. It could be good, but it isn't, and maybe that's why your Mr. Trent is in trouble right now."

"It's almost uncanny," Christine said. "Peter McDermott told me exactly the same thing - almost in those words." Her eyes searched the little man's face.

For all his lack of worldliness, he seemed to have a homespun instinct for getting at the truth.

Albert Wells nodded approvingly. "Now there's a smart young man. We had a talk yesterday."

This disclosure surprised her. "Peter came here?"

"That's right."

"I didn't know." But it was the kind of thing, she reasoned, that Peter McDermott would do - an efficient follow-up to whatever it was he was concerned with personally. She had observed before, his capacity for thinking largely, yet seldom omitting detail.

"Are you going to marry him, miss?"

The abrupt question startled her. She protested, "Whatever gave you that idea?" But to her embarrassment she felt her face was flushing.

Albert Wells chuckled. There were moments, Christine thought, when he had the mien of a mischieveous elf.

"I sort of guessed - by the way you said his name just now. Besides, I'd figured the two of you must see a lot of each other, both working where you do; and if that young man has the kind of sense I think, he'll find out he doesn't have to look much further."

"Mr. Wells, you're outrageous! You you read people's minds, then you make them feel terrible." But the warmth of her smile belied the reproof. "And please stop calling me 'miss.' My name is Christine."

He said quietly, "That's a special name for me. It was my wife's, too."

"Was?"

He nodded. "She died, Christine. So long ago, sometimes I get to thinking the times we had together never really happened. Not the good ones or the hard, and there were plenty of both. But then, once in a while, it seems as if all that happened was only yesterday. It's then I get weary, mostly of being so much alone. We didn't have children." He stopped, his eyes reflective. "You never know how much you share with someone until the sharing ends. So you and your young man - grab on to every minute there is.

Don't waste a lot of time; you never get it back."

She laughed. "I keep telling you he isn't my young man. At least, not yet."

"If you handle things right, he can be."

"Perhaps." Her eyes went to the partially completed jigsaw puzzle. She said slowly, "I wonder if there is a key piece to everything - the way you say.

And when you've found it, if you really know, or only guess, and hope."

Then, almost before she knew it, she found herself confiding in the little man, relating the happenings of the past - the tragedy in Wisconsin, her aloneness, the move to New Orleans, the adjusting years, and now for the first time the possibility of a full and fruitful life. She revealed, too, the breakdown of this evening's arrangements and her disappointment at the cause.

At the end Albert Wells nodded sagely. "Things work themselves out a lot of times. Other times, though, you need to push a bit so's to start people moving."

She asked lightly, "Any ideas?"

He shook his head. "Being a woman, you'll know plenty more'n me. There's one thing, though. Because of what happened, I shouldn't wonder if that young man'll ask you out tomorrow."

Christine smiled. "He might."

"Then get yourself another date before he does. He'll appreciate you more, having to wait an extra day."

"I'd have to invent something."

"No need for that, unless you want. I was going to ask anyway, miss ...