"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 ...
excuse me, Christine. I'd like us to have dinner, you and me - a kind of thank you for what you did the other night. If you can bear an old man's company, I'd be glad to be a stand-in."
She answered, "I'd love to have dinner, but I promise you won't be any stand-in."
"Good!" The little man beamed. "We'd best make it here in the hotel, I reckon. I told that doctor I'd not go outdoors for a couple of days."
Briefly, Christine hesitated. She wondered if Albert Wells knew just how high were the evening prices in the St. Gregory's main dining room.
Though the nursing expense had ended, she had no wish to deplete still further whatever funds he had remaining. Suddenly she thought of a way to prevent that happening.
Putting the idea aside to be dealt with later, she assured him, "The hotel will be fine. It's a special occasion, though. You'll have to give me time to go home and change into something really glamorous. Let's make it eight o'clock tomorrow night."
On the fourteenth floor, after leaving Albert Wells, Christine noticed that number four elevator was out of service. Maintenance work, she observed, was being done both on the landing doors and the elevator cage.
She took another elevator to the main mezzanine.
10
The dentists' president, Dr. Ingram, glared at the visitor to his suite on the seventh floor. "McDermott, if you've come here with some idea of smoothing things over, I'll tell you right now you're wasting time. Is that why you came?"
"Yes," Peter admitted. "I'm afraid it is."
The older man said grudgingly, "At least you don't lie."
"There's no reason I should. I'm an employee of the hotel, Dr. Ingram.
While I work here I've an obligation to do the best I can for it."
"And what happened to Dr. Nicholas was the best you could do?"
"No, sir. I happen to believe it's the worst thing we could have done. The fact that I had no authority to change a hotel standing order doesn't make it any better."
The dentists' president snorted. "If you really felt that way, you'd have the guts to quit and get a job some other place. Maybe where the pay is poorer but the ethics higher."
Peter flushed, refraining from a quick retort. He reminded himself that this morning in the lobby he had admired the elderly dentist for his forthright stand. Nothing had changed since then.
- "Well?" The alert, unyielding eyes were focused on his own.
"Suppose I did quit," Peter said. "Whoever took my job might be perfectly satisfied with the way things are. At least I'm not. I intend to do what I can to change the ground rules here."
"Rules! Rationalization! Damned excuses!" The doctor's rubicund face grew redder. "In my time I've heard them all! They make me sick! Disgusted, ashamed, and sick of the human race!"
Between them there was a silence.
"All right." Dr. Ingram's voice dropped, his immediate anger spent. "I'll concede you're not as bigoted as some, McDermott. You've a problem yourself, and I guess my bawling you out doesn't solve anything. But don't you see, son? - half the time it's the damned reasonableness of people like you and me which adds up to the sort of treatment Jim Nicholas got today."
"I do see, Doctor. Though I think the whole business isn't quite so simple as you'd make it."
"Plenty of things aren't simple," the older man growled. "You heard what I told Nicholas. I said if he didn't get an apology and a room, I'd pull the entire convention out of this hotel."
Peter said guardedly, "In the ordinary way aren't there events at your convention - medical discussions, demonstrations, that kind of thing - that benefit a lot of people?"
"Naturally."
"Then would it help? I mean, if you wiped out everything, what could anyone gain? Not Dr. Nicholas . . ." He stopped, aware of renewed hostility as his words progressed.
Dr. Ingram snapped, "Don't give me a snow job, McDermott. And credit me with intelligence to have thought of that already."
"I'm sorry."
"There are always reasons for not doing something; plenty of times they're good reasons. That's why so few people ever take a stand for what they believe in, or say they do. In a couple of hours, when some of my well-meaning colleagues hear what I'm planning, I predict they'll offer the same kind of argument." Breathing heavily, the older man paused. He faced Peter squarely, "Let me ask you something. This morning you admitted you were ashamed of turning Jim Nicholas away. If you were me, here and now, what would you do?"
"Doctor, that's a hypothetical . . ."
"Never mind the horse-shit! I'm asking you a simple, direct question."
Peter considered. As far as the hotel was concerned, he supposed whatever he said now would make little difference to the outcome. Why not answer honestly?
He said, "I think I'd do exactly as you intended - cancel out."
"Well!" Stepping back a pace, the dentists' president regarded him appraisingly. "Beneath all that hotel crap lies an honest man."
"Who may shortly be unemployed."
"Hang onto that black suit, son! You can get a job helping out at funerals." For the first time Dr. Ingram chuckled. "Despite everything, McDermott, I like you. Got any teeth need fixing?"
Peter shook his head. "If you don't mind, I'd sooner know what your plans are. As soon as possible." There would be immediate things to do, once the cancellation was confirmed. The loss to the hotel was going to be disastrous, as Royall Edwards had pointed out at lunch. But at least some of the preparations for tomorrow and the next day could be halted at once.
Dr. Ingram said crisply, "You've leveled with me; I'll do the same for you.
I've called an emergency executive session for five this afternoon." He glanced at his watch. "That's in two and a half hours. Most of our senior officers will have arrived by then."
"No doubt we'll be in touch."
Dr. Ingram nodded. His grimness had returned. "Because we've relaxed a minute, McDermott, don't let it fool you. Nothing has changed since this morning, and I intend to kick you people where it hurts."
11
Surprisingly, Warren Trent reacted almost with indifference to the news that the Congress of American Dentistry might abandon its convention and stage a protest withdrawal from the hotel.
Peter McDermott had gone immediately to the main mezzanine executive suite after leaving Dr. Ingram. Christine - a trifle coolly, he thought - had told him the hotel proprietor was in.
Warren Trent, Peter sensed, was noticeably less tense than on other occasions recently. At ease behind the black marble-topped desk in the sumptuous managing director's office, he betrayed none of the irascibility so apparent the previous day. There were moments, while listening to Peter's report, that a slight smile played around his lips, though it seemed to have little to do with events on hand. It was rather, Peter thought, as if his employer were savoring some private pleasure known only to himself.