Hotel

Near the end of breakfast there was a telephone call which Dodo answered first - from Hank Lemnitzer, Curtis O'Keefe's personal representative on the West Coast. Halfsuspecting the nature of the call, he took it in his own suite, closing the communicating door behind him.

The subject he had expected to be raised came up after a routine report on various financial interests - outside the hotel business - on which Lemnitzer astutely rode herd.

"There's one thing, Mr. O'Keefe" - the nasal Californian drawl came down the telephone. "It's about Jenny LaMarsh, the doll ... er, the young lady you kindly expressed interest in that time at the Beverly Hills Hotel.

You remember her?"

O'Keefe remembered well: a striking, rangy brunette with a superb figure, coolly amused smile, and a quick mischievous wit. He had been impressed both with her obvious potential as a woman and the range of her conversation. Someone had said, he seemed to recall, that she was a Vassar graduate. She had a contract of sorts with one of the smaller movie studios.

"Yes, I do."

"I've talked with her, Mr. O'Keefe - quite a few times. Anyway, she'd be pleased to go along with you on a trip. Or two."

There was no need to ask if Miss LaMarsh knew the kind of relationship her trip would entail. Hank Lemnitzer would have taken care of that. The possibilities, Curtis O'Keefe admitted to himself, were interesting.

Conversation, as well as other things with Jenny LaMarsh, would be highly stimulating. Certainly she would have no trouble holding her own with people they met together. Nor would she be torn by indecisions about things as simple as choosing fruit juice.

But, surprising himself, he hesitated,

"There's one thing I'd like to ensure, and that's Miss Lash's future."

Hank Lemnitzer's voice came confidently across the continent. "Don't give it a thought. I'll take care of Dodo, same's I did all the others."

Curtis O'Keefe said sharply, "That isn't the point." Despite Lemnitzer's usefulness, at times there were certain subtleties he lacked.

"Just what is the point, Mr. O'Keefe?"

"I'd like you to line up something for Miss Lash specifically. Something good. And I want to know about it before she leaves."

The voice sounded doubtful. "I guess I could. Of course, Dodo isn't the brightest . . ."

O'Keefe insisted, "Not just anything, you understand. And take your time if necessary."

"What about Jenny LaMarsh?"

"She doesn't have anything else ... ?"

"I guess not." There was the grudging sense of concession to a whim, then, breezily once more: "Okay, Mr. O'Keefe, whatever you say. You'll be hearing from me."

When he returned to the sitting room of the other suite, Dodo was stacking their used breakfast dishes on the roomservice trolley. He snapped irritably, "Don't do that! There are hotel staff paid for that kind of work."

"But I like doing it, Curtie." She turned her eloquent eyes upon him and momentarily, he saw, there was a bewildered hurt. But she stopped all the same.

Unsure of the reason for his own ill humor, he informed her, "I'm going to take a walk through the hotel." Later today, he decided, he would make amends to Dodo by taking her on an inspection of the city. There was a harbor tour, he recalled, on an ungainly old stern-wheeler called the S.S. President. It was usually packed with sightseers and was the kind of thing she would enjoy.

At the outer doorway, on impulse, he told her about it. She responded by flinging her arms around his neck. "Curtie, it'll be endsville! I'll fix my hair so it doesn't blow in the wind. Like this!"

She removed one lissome arm and with it pulled the flowing ash-blond hair back from her face, twisting it into a tight, profiling skein. The effect - her face tilted upward, her unaffected joy - was of such breathtaking, simple beauty that he had an impulse to change his immediate plans and stay. Instead, he grunted something about returning soon and abruptly closed the suite door behind him.

He rode an elevator down to the main mezzinine and from there took the stairway to the lobby where he resolutely put Dodo out of his mind.

Strolling with apparent casualness, he was aware of covert glances from passing hotel employees who, at the sight of him, seemed affected with sudden energy. Ignoring them, he continued to observe the physical condition of the hotel, comparing his own reactions with those in Ogden Bailey's undercover report. His opinion of yesterday that the St. Gregory required a firm directing hand was confirmed by what he saw. He also shared Bailey's view about potential new sources of revenue.

Experience told him, for example, that the massive pillars in the lobby were probably not holding anything up. Providing they weren't, it would be a simple matter to hollow out a section of each and rent the derived space as showcases for local merchants.

In the arcade beneath the lobby he observed a choice area occupied by a florist shop. The rent which the hotel received was probably around three hundred dollars monthly. But the same space, developed imaginatively as a modern cocktail lounge (a riverboat theme! - why not?) might easily gross fifteen thousand dollars in the same period. The florist could be relocated handily.

Returning to the lobby, he could see more space that should be put to work.

By eliminating part of the existing public area, another half-dozen sales counters - air lines, car rental, tours, jewelry, a drugstore perhaps - could be profitably squeezed in. It would entail a change in character, naturally; the present air of leisurely comfort would have to go, along with the shrubbery and thick pile rugs. But nowadays, brightly lighted - lobbies with advertising everywhere you looked were what helped to make hotel balance sheets more cheerful.

Another thing: most of the chairs should be taken away. If people wanted to sit down, it was more profitable that they be obliged to do so in one of the hotel's bars or restaurants.

He had learned a lesson about free seating years ago. It was in his very first hotel - a jerry-built, false-fronted fire trap in a small Southwestern city. The hotel had one distinction: a dozen pay toilets which at various times were used - or seemed to be - by every farmer and ranch hand for a hundred miles around. To the surprise of young Curtis O'Keefe, the revenue from this source was substantial, but one thing prevented it becoming greater: a state law which required one of the twelve toilets to be operated free of charge, and the habit, which thrifty minded farm hands had acquired - of lining up to use the free one.

He solved the problem by hiring the town drunk. For twenty cents an hour and a bottle of cheap wine the man had sat on the free toilet stoically through every busy day. Receipts from the others had soared immediately.

Curtis O'Keefe smiled, remembering.

The lobby, he noticed, was becoming busier. A group of new arrivals had just come in and were registering, preceding others still checking baggage that was being unloaded from an airport limousine. A small line had formed at the reception counter. O'Keefe stood watching.

It was then he observed what apparently no one else, so far, had seen.

A middle-aged, well-dressed Negro, valise in hand, had entered the hotel.

He came toward Reception walking unconcernedly as if for an afternoon stroll. At the counter he put down his bag and stood waiting, third in line.

The exchange, when it came, was clearly audible.

"Good morning," the Negro said. His voice - a Midwestern accent - was amiable and cultured. "I'm Dr. Nicholas, you have a reservation for me." While waiting he had removed a black Homburg hat revealing carefully brushed iron-gray hair.

"Yes, sir, if you'll register, please." The words were spoken before the clerk looked up. As he did, his features stiffened. A hand went out, withdrawing the registration pad he had pushed forward a moment earlier.

"I'm sorry," he said firmly, "the hotel is full."

Unperturbed, the Negro responded smilingly. "I have a reservation. The hotel sent a letter confirming it." His hand went to an inside pocket, producing a wallet with papers protruding, from which he selected one.

"There must have been a mistake. I'm sorry." The clerk barely glanced at the letter placed in front of him. "We have a convention here."

"I know." The other nodded, his smile a shade thinner than before. "It's a convention of dentists. I happen to be one."

The room clerk shook his head. "There's nothing I can do for you."

The Negro put away his papers. "In that case I'd like to talk with someone else."

While they had been speaking still more new arrivals had joined the line in front of the counter. A man in a belted raincoat inquired impatiently,

"What's the hold-up here?" O'Keefe remained still. He had a sense that in the now crowded lobby a time bomb was ticking, ready to explode.

"You can talk to the assistant manager." Leaning forward across the counter, the room clerk called sharply, "Mr. Bailey!"

Across the lobby an elderly man at an alcove desk looked up.

"Mr. Bailey, would you come here, please?"

The assistant manager nodded and, with a suggestion of tiredness, eased himself upright. As he walked deliberately across, his fined, pouched face assumed a professional greetees smile.

An old-timer, Curtis O'Keefe thought; after years of room clerking he had been given a chair and desk in the lobby with authority to handle minor problems posed by guests. The title of assistant manager, as in most hotels, was mainly a sop to the public's vanity, allowing them to believe they were dealing with a higher personage than in reality. The real authority of the hotel was in the executive offices, out of sight.

"Mr. Bailey," the room clerk said, "I've explained to this gentleman that the hotel is full.,"

"And I've explained," the Negro countered "that I have a confirmed reservation."

The assistant manager beamed benevolently, his manifest good - will encompassing the line of waiting guests. "Well," he acknowledged, "we'll just have to see what we can do." He placed a pudgy, nicotine-stained hand on the sleeve of Dr. Nicholas's expensively tailored suit. "Won't you come and sit down over here?" As the other allowed himself to be steered toward the alcove: "Occasionally these things happen, I'm afraid.

When they do, we try to make amends."

Mentally Curtis O'Keefe acknowledged that the elderly man knew his job.

Smoothly and without fuss, a potentially embarrassing scene had been eased from center stage into the wings. Meanwhile the other arrivals were being quickly checked in with the aid of a second room clerk who had joined the first. Only a youthful, broad-shouldered man, owlish behind heavy glasses, had left the line-up and was watching the new development.

Well, O'Keefe thought, perhaps there might be no explosion after all. He waited to see.

The assistant manager gestured his companion to a chair beside the desk and eased into his own. He listened carefully, his expression noncommittal, as the other repeated the information he had given the room clerk.

At the end the older man nodded. "Well, doctor" - the tone was briskly businesslike - "I apologize for the misunderstanding, but I'm sure we can find you other accommodation in the city." With one hand he pulled a telephone toward him and lifted the receiver. The other hand slid out a leaf from the desk, revealing a list of phone numbers.