Hotel

by Arthur Hailey

  2

  Number four elevator was acting up again. Cy Lewin, its elderly daytime operator, was getting thoroughly sick of number four and its capriciousness, which had started a week or more ago and seemed to be getting worse.

  Last Sunday the elevator had several times refused to respond to its controls, even though both cage and landing doors were fully closed. The relief man had told Cy that the same thing happened Monday night when Mr. McDermott, the assistant general manager, was in the car.

  Then, on Wednesday, there had been trouble which put number four out of service for several hours. Malfunctioning of the clutch arrangement, Engineering said, whatever that meant; but the repair job had not prevented another hiatus the following day when on three separate occasions number four refused to start away from the fifteenth floor.

  Now, today, number four was starting and stopping jerkily at every floor.

  It was not Cy Lewin’s business to know what was wrong. Nor did he especially care, even though he had heard the chief engineer, Doc Vickery, grumbling about “patching and patching” and complaining that he needed “a hundred thousand dollars to rip the elevators’ guts out and begin again.” Well, who wouldn’t like that kind of money? Cy Lewin himself sure would, which was why every year he scraped together the price of a sweepstake ticket, though a fat lot of good it had ever done him.

  But a St. Gregory veteran like himself was entitled to consideration, and tomorrow he would ask to be moved over to one of the other cars. Why not? He had worked twenty-seven years in the hotel and was running elevators before some of the young whippersnappers now around the place were born. After today, let someone else put up with number four and its contrariness.

  It was a little before ten A.M., and the hotel was becoming busy. Cy Lewin took a load up from the lobby—mostly conventioneers with names on their lapels—stopping at intermediate floors until the fifteenth, which was the top of the hotel. Going down, the car was filled to capacity by the time he reached the ninth, and he highballed the rest of the way to the main lobby. On this latest trip he noticed that the jerkiness had stopped. Well, whatever that trouble was, he guessed it had fixed itself.

  He could not have been more wrong.

  High above Cy Lewin, perched like an eyrie on the hotel roof, was the elevator control room. There, in the mechanical heart of the number four elevator, a small electrical relay had reached the limit of its useful life. The cause, unknown and unsuspected, was a tiny push rod the size of a household nail.

  The push rod was screwed into a miniature piston head which, in turn, actuated a trio of switches. One switch applied and released the elevator brake, a second supplied power to an operating motor; the third controlled a generator circuit. With all three functioning, the elevator car moved smoothly up and down in response to its controls. But with only two switches working—and if the nonworking switch should be that which controlled the elevator motor—the car would be free to fall under its own weight. Only one thing could cause such a failure—the over-all lengthening of the push rod and piston.

  For several weeks the push rod had been working loose. With movements so infinitesimal that a hundred might equal the thickness of a human hair, the piston head had turned, slowly but inexorably unscrewing itself from the push rod thread. The effect was twofold. The push rod and piston had increased their total length. And the motor switch was barely functioning.

  Just as a final grain of sand will tip a scale, so, at this moment, the slightest further twisting of the piston would isolate the motor switch entirely.

  The defect had been the cause of number four’s erratic functioning which Cy Lewin and others had observed. A maintenance crew had tried to trace the trouble, but had not succeeded. They could hardly be blamed. There were more than sixty relays to a single elevator, and twenty elevators in the entire hotel.

  Nor had anyone observed that two safety devices on the elevator car were partially defective.

  At ten past ten on Friday morning, number four elevator was—in fact, and figuratively—hanging by a thread.

  3

  Mr. Dempster of Montreal checked in at half-past ten. Peter McDermott, notified of his arrival, went down to the lobby to extend official greetings. So far this morning, neither Warren Trent nor Albert Wells had appeared on the lower floors of the hotel, nor had the latter been heard from.

  The financial representative of Albert Wells was a brisk, impressive person who looked like the seasoned manager of a large branch bank. He responded to a comment of Peter’s about the speed of events being breathtaking with the remark, “Mr. Wells frequently has that effect.” A bellboy escorted the newcomer to a suite on the eleventh floor.

  Twenty minutes later Mr. Dempster reappeared in Peter’s office.

  He had visited Mr. Wells, he said, and spoken on the telephone with Mr. Trent. The meeting arranged tentatively for eleven-thirty was definitely to proceed. Meanwhile, there were a few people whom Mr. Dempster wished to confer with—the hotel’s comptroller for one—and Mr. Trent had invited him to make use of the executive suite.

  Mr. Dempster appeared to be a man accustomed to exercise authority.

  Peter escorted him to Warren Trent’s office and introduced Christine. For Peter and Christine it was their second meeting of the morning. On arrival at the hotel he had sought her out and, though the best they could do in the beleaguered surroundings of the executive suite was to touch hands briefly, in the stolen moment there was an excitement and an eager awareness of each other.

  For the first time since his arrival, the man from Montreal smiled. “Oh yes, Miss Francis. Mr. Wells mentioned you. In fact, he spoke of you quite warmly.”

  “I think Mr. Wells is a wonderful man. I thought so before …” She stopped.

  “Yes?”

  “I’m a little embarrassed,” Christine said, “about something which happened last night.”

  Mr. Dempster produced heavy-rimmed glasses which he polished and put on. “If you’re referring to the incident of the restaurant bill, Miss Francis, it’s unnecessary that you should be. Mr. Wells told me—and I quote his own words—that it was one of the sweetest, kindest things that was ever done for him. He knew what was happening, of course. There’s very little he misses.”

  “Yes,” Christine said, “I’m beginning to realize that.”

  There was a knock at the outer office door, which opened to reveal the credit manager, Sam Jakubiec. “Excuse me,” he said when he saw the group inside, and turned to go. Peter called him back.

  “I came to check a rumor,” Jakubiec said. “It’s going round the hotel like a prairie fire that the old gentleman, Mr. Wells …”

  “It isn’t rumor,” Peter said. “It’s fact.” He introduced the credit man to Mr. Dempster.

  Jakubiec clapped a hand to his head. “My God!—I checked his credit. I doubted his check. I even phoned Montreal!”

  “I heard about your call.” For the second time Mr. Dempster smiled. “At the bank they were vastly amused. But they’ve strict instructions that no information about Mr. Wells is ever to be given out. It’s the way he likes things done.”

  Jakubiec gave what sounded like a moan.

  “I think you’d have more to worry about,” the man from Montreal assured him, “if you hadn’t checked Mr. Wells’s credit. He’d respect you for doing it. He does have a habit of writing checks on odd bits of paper, which people find disconcerting. The checks are all good, of course. You probably know by now that Mr. Wells is one of the richest men in North America.”

  A dazed Jakubiec could only shake his head.

  “It might be simpler for you all,” Mr. Dempster remarked, “if I explained a few things about my employer.” He glanced at his watch. “Mr. Dumaire, the banker, and some lawyers will be here soon, but I believe we’ve time.”

  He was interrupted by the arrival of Royall Edwards. The comptroller was armed with papers and a bulging brief case. Once more the ritual of introductions was performed.
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br />   Shaking hands, Mr. Dempster informed the comptroller, “We’ll have a brief talk in a moment, and I’d like you to remain for our eleven-thirty meeting. By the way—you too, Miss Francis. Mr. Trent asked that you be there, and I know Mr. Wells will be delighted.”

  For the first time, Peter McDermott had a disconcerting sense of exclusion from the center of affairs.

  “I was about to explain some matters concerning Mr. Wells.” Mr. Dempster removed his glasses, breathed on the lenses and polished them once more.

  “Despite Mr. Wells’ considerable wealth, he has remained a man of very simple tastes. This is in no sense due to meanness. He is, in fact, extremely generous. It is simply that for himself he prefers modest things, even in such matters as clothing, travel, and accommodation.”

  “About accommodation,” Peter said. “I was considering moving Mr. Wells to a suite. Mr. Curtis O’Keefe is vacating one of our better ones this afternoon.”

  “I suggest you don’t. I happen to know that Mr. Wells likes the room he has, though not the one before it.”

  Mentally, Peter shuddered at the reference to the ha-ha room which Albert Wells had occupied before his transfer to 1410 on Monday night.

  “He has no objection to others having a suite—me, for example,” Mr. Dempster explained. “It is simply that he feels no need for such things himself. Am I boring you?”

  His listeners, as one, protested that he was not.

  Royall Edwards seemed amused. “It’s like something from the Brothers Grimm!”

  “Perhaps. But don’t ever believe that Mr. Wells lives in a fairy tale world. He doesn’t, any more than I do.”

  Peter McDermott thought: Whether the others realized it or not, there was a hint of steel beneath the urbane words.

  Mr. Dempster continued, “I’ve known Mr. Wells a good many years. In that time I’ve come to respect his instincts both about business and people. He has a kind of native shrewdness that isn’t taught at the Harvard School of Business.”

  Royall Edwards, who was a Harvard Business School graduate, flushed. Peter wondered if the riposte was accidental or if the representative of Albert Wells had done some swift investigating of the hotel’s senior staff. It was entirely possible that he had, in which case Peter McDermott’s record, including his Waldorf dismissal and subsequent black listing, would be known. Was this the reason, Peter wondered, behind his own apparent omission from the inner councils?

  “I suppose,” Royall Edwards said, “we can expect a good many changes around here.”

  “I’d consider it likely.” Again Mr. Dempster polished his glasses; it seemed a compulsive habit. “The first change will be that I shall become president of the hotel company, an office I hold in most of Mr. Wells’ corporations. He has never cared to assume titles himself.”

  Christine said, “So we’ll be seeing a good deal of you.”

  “Actually very little, Miss Francis. I will be a figurehead, no more. The executive vice-president will have complete authority. That is Mr. Wells’ policy, and also mine.”

  So after all, Peter thought, the situation had resolved itself as he expected. Albert Wells would not be closely involved with the hotel’s management; therefore the fact of knowing him would carry no advantage. The little man was, in fact, twice removed from active management, and Peter’s future would depend on the executive vice-president, whoever that might be. Peter wondered if it was anyone he knew. If so, it could make a great deal of difference.

  Until this moment, Peter reasoned, he had told himself that he would accept events as they came, including—if necessary—his own departure. Now, he discovered, he wanted to remain at the St. Gregory very much indeed. Christine, of course, was one reason. Another was that the St. Gregory, with continued independence under new management, promised to be exciting.

  “Mr. Dempster,” Peter said, “if it isn’t a great secret, who will the executive vice-president be?”

  The man from Montreal appeared puzzled. He looked at Peter strangely, then his expression cleared. “Excuse me,” he said, “I thought you knew. That’s you.”

  4

  Throughout last night, in the slow-paced hours when hotel guests were serenely sleeping, Booker T. Graham had labored alone in the incinerator’s glare. That, in itself, was not unusual. Booker T. was a simple soul whose days and nights were like carbon copies of each other, and it never perturbed him that this should be so. His ambitions were simple too, being limited to food, shelter, and a measure of human dignity, though the last was instinctive and not a need he could have explained himself.

  What had been unusual about the night was the slowness with which his work had gone. Usually, well before time to clock out and go home, Booker T. had disposed of the previous day’s accumulated garbage, had sorted his retrievals, and left himself with half an hour when he would sit quietly, smoking a hand-rolled cigarette, until closing the incinerator down. But this morning, though his time on duty had been complete, the work was not. At the hour when he should have been leaving the hotel, a dozen or more tightly packed cans of garbage remained unsorted and undisposed.

  The reason was Booker T.’s attempt to find the paper which Mr. McDermott wanted. He had been careful and thorough. He had taken his time. And so far he had failed.

  Booker T. had reported the fact regretfully to the night manager who had come in, the latter looking unfamiliarly at the grim surroundings and wrinkling his nose at the all-pervading smell. The night manager had left as speedily as possible, but the fact that he had come and the message he had brought showed that—to Mr. McDermott—the missing paper was still important.

  Regretful or not, it was time for Booker T. to quit and go home. The hotel objected to paying overtime. More to the point: Booker T. was hired to concern himself with garbage, not management problems, however remote.

  He knew that during the day, if the remaining garbage was noticed, someone would be sent in to run the incinerator for an extra few hours and burn it off. Failing that, Booker T. himself would catch up with the residue when he returned to duty late tonight. The trouble was, with the first way, any hope of retrieving the paper would be gone forever, and with the second, even if found, it might be too late for whatever was required.

  And yet, more than anything else, Booker T. wanted to do this thing for Mr. McDermott. If he had been pressed, he could not have said why, since he was not an articulate man, either in thought or speech. But somehow, when the young assistant general manager was around, Booker T. felt more of a man—an individual—than at any other time.

  He decided he would go on searching.

  To avoid trouble, he left the incinerator and went to the time clock where he punched out. Then he returned. It was unlikely that he would be noticed. The incinerator was not a place which attracted visitors.

  He worked for another three and a half hours. He worked slowly, painstakingly, with the knowledge that what he sought might not be in the garbage at all, or could have been burned before he was warned to look.

  By mid-morning he was very tired and down to the last container but one.

  He saw it almost at once when he emptied the bin—a ball of waxed paper which looked like sandwich wrappings. When he opened them, inside was a crumpled sheet of stationery, matching the sample Mr. McDermott had left. He compared the two under a light to be sure. There was no mistake.

  The recovered paper was grease-stained and partially wet. In one place the writing on it had smeared. But only a little. The rest was clear.

  Booker T. put on his grimed and greasy coat. Without waiting to dispose of the remaining garbage, he headed for the upper precincts of the hotel.

  5

  In Warren Trent’s commodious office, Mr. Dempster had concluded his private talk with the comptroller. Spread around them were balance sheets and statements, which Royall Edwards was gathering up as others, arriving for the eleven-thirty meeting, came in to join them. The Pickwickian banker, Emile Dumaire, was first, a trifle flushed w
ith self-importance. He was followed by a sallow, spindly lawyer who handled most of the St. Gregory’s legal business, and a younger New Orleans lawyer, representing Albert Wells.

  Peter McDermott came next, accompanying Warren Trent who had arrived from the fifteenth floor a moment earlier. Paradoxically, despite having lost his long struggle to maintain control of the hotel, the St. Gregory’s proprietor appeared more amiable and relaxed than at any time in recent weeks. He wore a carnation in his buttonhole and greeted the visitors cordially, including Mr. Dempster whom Peter introduced.

  For Peter, the proceedings had a chimeric quality. His actions were mechanical, his speech a conditioned reflex, like responding to a litany. It was as if a robot inside him had taken charge until such time as he could recover from the shock administered by the man from Montreal.

  Executive vice-president. It was less the title which concerned him than its implications.

  To run the St. Gregory with absolute control was like fulfillment of a vision. Peter knew, with passionate conviction, that the St. Gregory could become a fine hotel. It could be esteemed, efficient, profitable. Obviously, Curtis O’Keefe—whose opinion counted—thought so too.

  There were means to achieve this end. They included an infusion of capital, reorganization with clearly defined areas of authority, and staff changes—retirements, promotions, and transplantings from outside.

  When he had learned of the purchase of the hotel by Albert Wells, and its continued independence, Peter hoped that someone else would have the insight and impetus to make progressive changes. Now, he was to be given the opportunity himself. The prospect was exhilarating. And a little frightening.