Hotel

"And did you come here with them - to this suite?"

Again a whisper. "Yes."

Peter looked questioningly at Marsha. At length, he said, "It's up to you, Miss Preyscott, whether you make an official complaint or not. Whatever you decide, the hotel will go along with. But I'm afraid there's a good deal of truth in what Royce said just now about publicity. There would certainly be some - a good deal, I imagine - and not pleasant." He added: "Of course, it's really something for your father to decide. Don't you think I should call, and have him come here?"

Marsha raised her head, looking directly at Peter for the first time. "My father's in Rome. Don't tell him, please - ever."

"I'm sure something can be done privately. I don't believe anyone should get away with this entirely." Peter went around the bed. He was startled to see how much of a child she was, and how very beautiful. "Is there anything I can do now?"

"I don't know. I don't know." She began to cry again, more softly.

Uncertainly, Peter took out a white linen handkerchief which Marsha accepted, wiped the tears, then blew her nose.

"Better?"

She nodded. "Thank you." Her mind was a turmoil of emotions: hurt, shame, anger, an urge to fight back blindly whatever the consequences, and a desire - which experience told her would not be fulfilled - to be enfolded in loving and protective arms. But beyond the emotions, and exceeding them, was an overwhelming physical exhaustion.

"I think you should rest a while." Peter McDermott turned down the coverlet of the unused bed and Marsha slipped under it, lying on the blanket beneath. The touch of the pillow to her face was cool.

She said, "I don't want to stay here. I couldn't."

He nodded understandingly. "In a little while we'll get you home."

"No! Not that either! Please, isn't there somewhere else ... in the hotel?"

He shook his head. "I'm afraid the hotel is full."

Aloysius Royce had gone into the bathroom to wash the blood from his face. Now he returned and stood in the doorway of the adjoining living room. He whistled softly, surveying the mess of disarranged furniture, overflowing ash trays, spilled bottles, and broken glass.

As McDermott joined him, Royce observed, "I guess it was quite a party."

"It seems to have been." Peter closed the communicating door between the living room and bedroom.

Marsha pleaded, "There must be some place in the hotel. I couldn't face going home tonight."

Peter hesitated. "There's 555, I suppose." He glanced at Royce.

Room 555 was a small one which went with the assistant general manager's job. Peter rarely used it, except to change. It was empty now.

"It'll be all right," Marsha said. "As long as someone phones my home. Ask for Anna the housekeeper."

"If you like," Royce offered, "I'll go get the key."

Peter nodded. "Stop in there on the way back - you'll find a dressing gown.

I suppose we ought to call a maid."

"You let a maid in here right now, you might as well put it all on the radio."

Peter considered. At this stage nothing would stop gossip. Inevitably when this kind of incident happened any hotel throbbed backstairs like a jungle telegraph. But he supposed there was no point in adding postscripts.

"Very well. We'll take Miss Preyscott down ourselves in the service elevator."

As the young Negro opened the outer door, voices filtered in, with a barrage of eager questions. Momentarily, Peter had forgotten the assemblage of awakened guests outside. He heard Royce's answers, quietly reassuring, then the voices fade.

Her eyes closed, Marsha murmured, "You haven't told me who you are."

"I'm sorry. I should have explained." He told her his name and his connection with the hotel. Marsha listened without responding, aware of what was being said, but for the most part letting the quiet reassuring voice flow easily over her. After a while, eyes still closed, her thoughts wandered drowsily. She was aware dimly of Aloysius Royce returning, of being helped from the bed into a dressing gown, and being escorted quickly and quietly down a silent corridor. From an elevator there was more corridor, then another bed on which she laid down quietly.

The reassuring voice said, "She's just about all in."

The sound of water running. A voice telling her that a bath was drawn.

She roused herself sufficiently to pad to the bathroom where she locked herself in.

There were pajamas in the bathroom, neatly laid out, and afterward Marsha put them on. They were men's, in dark blue, and too large. The sleeves covered her hands and even with the trouser bottoms turned up it was hard not to trip over them.

She went outside where hands helped her into bed. Snuggling down in the crisp, fresh linen, she was aware of Peter McDermott's calm, restoring voice once more. It was a voice she liked, Marsha thought - and its owner also. "Royce and I are leaving now, Miss Preyscott. The door to this room is self-locking and the key is beside your bed. You won't be disturbed."

"Thank you." Sleepily she asked, "Whose pajamas?"

"They're mine. I'm sorry they're so big."

She tried to shake her head but was too tired. "No matter ... nice ..."

"She was glad they were his pajamas. She had a comforting sense of being enfolded after all.

"Nice," she repeated softly. It was her final waking thought.

8

Peter waited alone for the elevator on the fifth floor. Aloysius Royce had already taken the service elevator to the fifteenth floor, where his quarters adjoined the hotel owner's private suite.

It had been a full evening, Peter thought - with its share of unpleasantness - though not exceptional for a big hotel, which often presented an exposed slice of life that hotel employees became used to seeing.

When the elevator arrived he told the operator, "Lobby, please," reminding himself that Christine was waiting on the main mezzanine, but his business on the main floor would take only a few minutes.

He noted with impatience that although the elevator doors were closed, they had not yet started down. The operator - one of the regular night men - was jockeying the control handle back and forth. Peter asked, "Are you sure the gates are fully closed?"

"Yes, sir, they are. It isn't that, it's the connections I think, either here or up top." The man angled his head in the direction of the roof where the elevator machinery was housed, then added, "Had quite a bit of trouble lately. The chief was probing around the other day." He worked the handle vigorously. With a jerk the mechamsm took hold and the elevator started down.

"Which elevator is this?"

"Number four."

Peter made a mental note to ask the chief engineer exactly what was wrong.

It was almost half-past-twelve by the lobby clock as he stepped from the elevator. As was usual by this time, some of the activity in and around the lobby had quieted down, but there was still a fair number of people in evidence, and the strains of music from the nearby Indigo Room showed that supper dancing was in progress. Peter turned right toward Reception but had gone only a few paces when he was aware of an obese, waddling figure approaching him. It was Ogilvie, the chief house officer, who had been missing earlier. The heavily jowled face of the ex-policeman - years before he had served without distinction on the New Orleans force - was carefully expressionless, though his little pig's eyes darted sideways, sizing up the scene around him. As always, he was accompanied by an odor of stale cigar smoke, and a line of fat cigars, like unfired torpedoes, filled the top pocket of his suit.

"I hear you were looking for me," Ogilvie said. It was a flat statement, unconcerned.

Peter felt some of his earlier anger return. "I certainly was. Where the devil were you?"

"Doing my job, Mr. McDermott." For an outsize man Ogilvie had a surprisingJy falsetto voice. "If you want to know, I was over at police headquarters reporting some trouble we had here. There was a suitcase stolen from the baggage room today."

"Police headquarters! Which room was the poker game in?"

The piggy eyes glowered resentfully. "If that's the way you feel, maybe you should do some checking. Or speak to Mr. Trent."

Peter nodded resignedly. It would be a waste of time, he knew. The alibi was undoubtedly well established, and Ogilvie's friends in headquarters would back him up. Besides, Warren Trent would never take action against Ogilvie, who had been at the St. Gregory as long as the hotel proprietor himself. There were some who said that the fat detective knew where a body or two was buried, and thus had a hold over Warren Trent. But whatever the reason, Ogilvie's position was unassailable.

"Well, you just happen to have missed a couple of emergencies," Peter said.

"But both are taken care of now." Perhaps after all, he reflected, it was as well that Ogilvie had not been available. Undoubtedly the house officer would not have responded to the Albert Wells crisis as efficiently as Christine, nor handled Marsha Preyscott with tact and sympathy. Resolving to put Ogilvie out of his mind, with a curt nod he moved on to Reception.

The night clerk whom he had telephoned earlier was at the desk. Peter decided to try a conciliatory approach. He said pleasantly, "Thank you for helping me out with that problem on the fourteenth. We have Mr. Wells settled comfortably in 1410. Dr. Aarons is arranging nursing care, and the chief has fixed up oxygen."

The room clerk's face had frozen as Peter approached him. Now it relaxed.

"I hadn't realized there was anything that serious."

"It was touch and go for a while, I think. That's why I was so concerned about why he was moved into that other room."

The room clerk nodded sagely. "In that case I'll certainly pursue inquiries. Yes, you can be sure of that."

"We've had some trouble on the eleventh, too. Do you mind telling me whose name 1126-7 is in?"

The room clerk flipped through his records and produced a card. "Mr. Stanley Dixon."

"Dixon." It was one of the two names Aloysius Royce had given him when they talked briefly after leaving Marsha.

"He's the car dealer's son. Mr. Dixon senior is often in the hotel."

"Thank you." Peter nodded. "You'd better list it as a checkout, and have the cashier mail the bill." A thought occurred to him. "No, have the bill sent to me tomorrow, and I'll write a letter. There'll be a claim for damages after we've figured out what they are."

"Very well, Mr. McDermott." The change in the night clerk's attitude was most marked. "I'll tell the cashier to do as you ask.

I take it the suite is available now."

"Yes." There was no point, Peter decided, in advertising Marsha's presence in 555, and perhaps she could leave unnoticed early. The thought reminded him of his promise to telephone the Preyscott home. With a friendly "good night" to the room clerk he crossed the lobby to an unoccupied desk, used in daytime by one of the assistant managers. He found a listing for Mark Preyscott at a Garden District address and asked for the number. The ringing tone continued for some time before a woman's voice answered sleepily. Identifying himself, he announced, "I have a message for Anna from Miss Preyscott."