Отель / Hotel

Хейли Артур

Curtis O’Keefe would arrive today and there was not the slightest doubt that he was fully briefed on the St. Gregory’s financial woes.

Warren Trent switched his thoughts to more immediate affairs. “You’re on the night report,” he told Aloysius Royce.

“I know,” Royce said. “I read it.” Complaint of excessive noise in room 1126, and then, in Peter McDermott’s handwriting, Dealt with by A. Royce and P. McD. “Miss Marsha Preyscott – daughter of the Mr. Preyscott – was almost raped. Do you want me to tell you about it?”

Royce and Warren Trent’s casual relationship was based upon the example of Aloysius Royce’s father. The elder Royce, who served Warren Trent first as body servant and later as companion and privileged friend, had always spoken out with disregard of consequences, which, in their early years together, drove Trent to white hot fury and later had made the two inseparable. Aloysius was a little boy when his father had died over a decade ago, but he had never forgotten Warren Trent’s face, grieving and tear stained, at the old Negro’s funeral. They had walked away from the cemetery together after Trent’s words, “You’ll stay on with me at the hotel. Later we’ll work something out.” The “something” had turned out to be college followed by law school, from which he would graduate in a few weeks’ time. In the meanwhile, Aloysius performed personal services, which Warren Trent accepted. At other times, they argued heatedly. And yet Aloysius Royce was conscious of a border never to be crossed [6] . Now he said, “The young lady called for help. I happened to hear.” He described his own action and Peter McDermott’s intervention, which he neither praised nor criticized.

6

And yet Aloysius Royce was conscious of a border never to be crossed. –

Однако Алоисиус Ройс знал, что есть граница, которую никогда не стоит переступать.

Warren Trent listened, and at the end said, “McDermott handled everything properly. Why don’t you like him?”

Royce was surprised by the old man’s perception. “Perhaps I don’t like big white football players proving how kind they are by being nice to colored boys.”

“Your father had an instinct for people. But he was a lot more tolerant than you.”

The elder Royce had always accepted cheerfully whatever life brought, without question or complaint. Knowledge of affairs beyond his own limited horizon rarely disturbed him. And yet he had an insight into fellow human beings too deep to be overlooked.

“You’d better tell young McDermott to come and see me. Ask him to come here. I’m a little tired this morning.”

“Mark Preyscott’s in Rome, eh? I suppose I ought to telephone him,” said Mr. Trent instead of greeting Peter McDermott.

“His daughter insists that we shouldn’t. And there was no rape as it was prevented.”

Warren Trent sighed and waved a hand in dismissal. “You deal with it all.” His tone made clear that he was already tired of the subject. There would be no telephone call to Rome.

“Something else I’d like to deal with concerns the room clerks.” Peter described the Albert Wells incident.

“We should have closed off that room years ago.”

“I don’t think we should close it if we tell the guest what he’s getting into.”

Warren Trent nodded. “Attend to it.”

Now Peter said, “I thought you should know about the Duke and Duchess of Croydon. The Duchess asked for you personally.” He described the incident and the differing version of the waiter Sol Natchez.

Warren Trent grumbled, “I know that damn woman. She won’t be satisfied unless the waiter’s fired.”

“I don’t believe he should be fired.”

“Then tell him to go fishing for a few days with pay. And warn him from me that next time he spills something, to be sure it’s boiling and over the Duchess’s head.”

Abruptly changing the subject, Warren Trent announced, “Curtis O’Keefe is checking in today. He wants two adjoining suites. You’d better make sure that everything’s in order.”

“Will Mr. O’Keefe be staying long?”

“I don’t know. It depends on a lot of things.”

For a moment Peter felt a surge of sympathy for the older man.

The hotel proprietor asked, “What’s our convention situation?”

“About half the chemical engineers have checked out; the rest will leave by today. Coming in – Gold Crown Cola is in and organized. They’ve taken three hundred and twenty rooms, which is better than we expected, and we’ve increased the lunch and banquet figures accordingly. The Congress of American Dentistry begins tomorrow, though some of their people checked in yesterday and there’ll be more today. They should take close to two hundred and eighty rooms.”

Warren Trent gave a satisfied grunt. At least the news was not all bad.

“We had a full house last night,” Warren Trent said. He added, “Can we handle today’s arrivals?”

“It’ll be close. Our over-bookings are a little high.”

Like all hotels, the St. Gregory accepted more reservations than it had rooms available. It gambled on the certain foreknowledge that some people who made reservations would fail to show up, so the problem resolved itself into guessing the true percentage of non-arrivals. Most times, experience and luck allowed the hotel to come out with all rooms occupied – the ideal situation.

But once in a while an estimate went wrong.

In Peter’s own experience the worst occasion was when a baker’s convention, meeting in New York, decided to remain an extra day so that some of its members could take a moonlight cruise around Manhattan. Two hundred and fifty bakers and their wives stayed on without telling the hotel, which expected them to check out so an engineers’ convention could move in. Hundreds of angry engineers and their women waited in the lobby that night, some waving reservations made two years earlier. In the end, the city’s other hotels being already filled, the new arrivals were dispersed to motels in outlying New York until next day when the bakers went innocently away. But the monumental taxi bills of the engineers were paid by the hotel and exceeded the profit on both conventions.

Peter said, “I talked with the Roosevelt. If we’re in a jam tonight, they can help us out with maybe thirty rooms.” Even fiercely competitive hotels aided each other in that kind of crisis, never knowing when the roles would be reversed.

“All right,” Warren Trent said, a cloud of cigar smoke above him, “now what’s the outlook for the fall?”

“It’s disappointing. The two big union conventions have been cancelled.”

“Why?”

“It’s the same reason I warned you about earlier. We’ve continued to discriminate. We haven’t complied with the Civil Rights Act, and the unions resent it.” Involuntarily, Peter glanced toward Aloysius Royce who had come into the room.