Hotel

"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.

As she often did for lunch, Christine had room service send a sandwich and coffee to her desk. During the course of it Warren Trent appeared, but stayed only to read the mail before setting out on one of his prowls of the hotel which, as Christine knew, might last for hours. Observing the strain in the hotel proprietor's face, she found herself concerned for him, and noticed that he walked stiflly, a sure sign that sciatica was causing him pain.

At half-past two, leaving word with one of the secretaries in the outer office, Christine left to visit Albert Wells.

She took an elevator to the fourteenth floor then, turning down the long corridor, saw a stocky figare approaching. It was Sam Jakubiec, the credit manager. As he came nearer, she observed that he was holding a slip of paper and his expression was dour.

Seeing Christine, he stopped. "I've been to see your invalid friend, Mr. Wells."

"If you looked like that, you couldn't have cheered him up much."

"Tell you the truth," Jakubiec said, "he didn't cheer me up either. I got this out of him, but lord knows how good it is. "

Christine accepted the paper the credit manager had been holding. It was a soiled sheet of hotel stationery with a grease stain in one comer. On the sheet, in rough sprawling handwriting, Albert Wells had written and signed an order on a Montreal bank for two hundred dollars.

"In his quiet sort of way," Jakubiec said, "he's an obstinate old cuss.

Wasn't going to give me anything at first. Said he'd pay his bill when it was due, and didn't seem interested when I told him we'd allow some extra time if he needed it."

"People are sensitive about money," Christine said. "Especially being short of it."

The credit man clucked his tongue impatiently. "Hell! Most of us are short of money. I always am. But people go around thinking it's something to be ashamed of when if they'd only level, a lot of the time they could be helped out."

Christine regarded the improvised bank draft doubtfully. "Is this legal?"

"It's legal if there's money in the bank to meet it. You can write a check on sheet music or a banana skin if you feel like it. But most people who have cash in their accounts at least carry printed checks.

Your friend Wells said he couldn't find one."

As Christine handed the paper back, "You know what I think," Jakubiec said, "I think he's honest and he has the money - but only just and he's going to put himself in a hole finding it. Trouble is, he already owes more than half of this two hundred, and that nursing bill is soon going to swallow the rest."

"What are you going to do?"

The credit manager rubbed a hand across his baldness.

"First of all, I'm going to invest in a phone call to Montreal to find out if this is a good check or a dud."

"And if it isn't good, Sam?"

"He'll have to leave - at least as far as I'm concerned. Of course, if you want to tell Mr. Trent and he says differently" - Jakubiec shrugged - "that's something else again."

Christine shook her head. "I don't want to bother W.T. But I'd appreciate it if you'd tell me before you do anything."

"Be glad to, Miss Francis." The credit manager nodded, then, with short vigorous steps, continued down the corridor.

A moment later Christine knocked at the door of room 1410.

It was opened by a uniformed, middle-aged nurse, serious-faced and wearing heavy horn-rimmed glasses. Christine identified herself and the nurse instructed, "Wait here, please. I'll inquire if Mr. Wells will see you."

There were footsteps inside and Christine smiled as she heard a voice say insistently, "Of course I'll see her. Don't keep her waiting."

When the nurse returned, Christine suggested, "If you'd like to have a few minutes off, I can stay until you come back."

"Well . . ." The older woman hesitated, thawing a little.

The voice from inside said, "You do that. Miss Francis knows what she's up to. If she didn't I'd have been a goner last night."

"All right," the nurse said. "I'll just be ten minutes and if you need me, please call the coffee shop."

Albert Wells beamed as Christine came in. The little man was reclining, diminutively, against a mound of pillows. His appearance - the scrawny figure draped by a fresh old-fashioned nightshirt - still conveyed the impression of a sparrow, but today a perky one, in contrast to his desperate frailness of the night before. He was still pale, but the ashen pallor of the previous day had gone. His breathing, though occasionally wheezy, was regular and apparently without great effort.

He said, "This is good of you to come 'n see me, miss."

"It isn't a question of being good," Christine assured him. "I wanted to know how you were."

"Thanks to you, much better." He gestured to the door as it closed behind the nurse. "But she's a dragon, that one."

"She's probably good for you." Christine surveyed the room approvingly.

Everything in it, including the old man's personal belongings, had been neatly rearranged. A tray of medication was set out efficiently on a bedside table. The oxygen cylinder they had used the previous night was still in place, but the improvised mask had been replaced by a more professional one.

"Oh, she knows what she's up to all right," Albert Wells admitted, "though another time I'd like a prettier one."

Christine smiled. "You are feeling better." She wondered if she should say anything about her talk with Sam Jakubiec, then decided not. Instead she asked, "You said last night, didn't you, that you started getting these attacks when you were a miner?"

"The bronchitis, I did; that's right."

"Were you a miner for very long, Mr. Wells?"

"More years'n I like to think about, miss. Though there's always things to remind you of it - the bronchitis for one, then these." He spread his hands, palms uppermost, on the counterpane and she saw they were gnarled and toughened from the manual work of many years.

Impulsively she reached out to touch them. "It's something to be proud of, I should think. I'd like to hear about what you did."

He shook his head. "Sometime maybe when you've a lot of hours and patience. Mostly, though, it's old men's tales, 'n old men get boring if you give 'em half a chance."

Christine sat on a chair beside the bed. "I do have patience, and I don't believe about it being boring."

He chuckled. "There are some in Montreal who'd argue that."