Артур Хейли – Hotel / Отель (страница 8)

“Thanks, Sam.” Christine felt relieved, knowing that Jakubiec could be helpful and sympathetic. She recrossed the main lobby, acknowledging “good mornings” from bellboys, the florist, and one of the assistant managers. Then, bypassing the elevators, she ran lightly up the central stairway to the main mezzanine.

Since last night Christine had found herself thinking about Peter a good deal. She wondered if the time they had spent together had produced the same effect in him. At several moments she caught herself wishing that this was true. Over the years in which she had learned to live alone there had been men in Christine's life, but none she had taken seriously. At times, it seemed as if instinct were protecting her from renewing the kind of close relationship which five years ago had been broken so savagely. All the same, at this moment she wondered where Peter was and what he was doing. Well, she decided practically, sooner or later in the course of the day their ways would cross.

Back in her own office in the executive suite, Christine looked briefly into Warren Trent's, but the proprietor had not yet come down from his fifteenth-floor apartment. The morning mail was stacked on her own desk, and several telephone messages required attention soon. She decided first to complete the matter which had taken her downstairs. Lifting the telephone, she asked for room 1410. A woman's voice answered – presumably the private duty nurse. Christine identified herself and inquired politely after the patient's health.

“Mr. Wells passed a comfortable night,” the voice informed her, “and his condition is improved.”

Wondering why some nurses felt they had to sound like official bulletins, Christine replied, “In that case, perhaps I can drop in.”

“Not for some time, I'm afraid. Dr. Aarons will be seeing the patient this morning, and I wish to be ready for him.”

It sounded, Christine thought, like a state visit. The idea of the pompous Dr. Aarons being attended by an equally pompous nurse amused her. Aloud she said, “In that case, please tell Mr. Wells I called and that I'll see him this afternoon.”

The conference in the owner's suite left Peter McDermott in a mood of frustration. Striding away down the fifteenth-floor corridor he reflected that his meetings with Warren Trent always went the same way. As he had on other occasions, he wished that he could have six months and a free hand to manage the hotel himself.

Near the elevators he stopped to use a house phone, asking Reception what accommodation had been reserved for Mr. Curtis O'Keefe's party. There were two adjoining suites on the twelfth floor, and Peter used the service stairway to descend the two flights. Like all big hotels, the St. Gregory pretended not to have a thirteenth floor, naming it the fourteenth instead.

All four doors to the two reserved suites were open and, from within, the noise of a vacuum cleaner was heard. Inside, two maids were working under the critical eye of Mrs. Blanche du Quesnay, the St. Gregory's sharp-tongued but highly competent housekeeper. She turned as Peter came in, her bright eyes flashing.

“I might have known that one of you men would be checking up to see if I'm capable of doing my own job.”

Peter grinned. “Relax, Mrs. Q. Mr. Trent asked me to drop in.” He liked the middle-aged red-haired woman, one of the most reliable department heads. The two maids were smiling. He winked at them, adding for Mrs. du Quesnay, “If Mr. Trent had known you were giving this your personal attention he'd have wiped the whole thing from his mind[78].”

“And if we run out of soft soap in the laundry we'll send for you,” the housekeeper said.

He laughed, then inquired, “Have flowers and a basket of fruit been ordered?” The magnate, Peter thought, probably grew tired of the inevitable fruit basket – standard salutation of hotels to visiting VIPs. But its absence might be noticed.

“They're on the way up.” Mrs. du Quesnay looked up and said pointedly, “From what I hear, though, Mr. O'Keefe brings his own flowers, and not in vases either.”

It was a reference – which Peter understood – to the fact that Curtis O'Keefe was seldom without a feminine escort on his travels. He ignored it.

Both suites, Peter saw as he walked through them, had been gone over thoroughly. There was nothing else to be done, Peter thought.

Then a thought struck him. Curtis O'Keefe, he remembered, prayed frequently, sometimes in public. One report claimed that when a new hotel interested him he prayed for it as a child did for a Christmas toy; another, that before negotiations a private church service was held which O'Keefe executives attended dutifully.

The thought prompted Peter to check the Bibles – one in each room. He was glad he did.

As usually happened when they had been in use for any length of time, the Bibles' front pages were dotted with call girls' phone numbers, since a Bible – as experienced travelers knew – was the first place to seek that kind of information. Peter showed the books silently to Mrs. du Quesnay. “Mr. O'Keefe won't be needing these, now will he? I'll have new ones sent up.”

Taking the Bibles under her arm, she regarded Peter questioningly. “I suppose what Mr. O'Keefe likes or doesn't is going to be important to people keeping their jobs around here.”

He shook his head. “I honestly don't know, Mrs. Q. Your guess is as good as mine.”[79]

Mrs. du Quesnay, he knew, supported an invalid husband and any threat to her job would be cause for anxiety. He felt a genuine sympathy for her as he rode an elevator to the main mezzanine.

In the event of a management change, Peter supposed, most of the younger and brighter staff members would have an opportunity to stay on. He imagined that most would take it since the O'Keefe chain had a reputation for treating its employees well. Older employees, though, had a good deal more to worry about.

As Peter McDermott approached the executive suite, the chief engineer, Doc Vickery, was leaving it. Stopping, Peter said, “Number four elevator was giving some trouble last night, chief. I wondered if you knew.”

The chief nodded his bald head. “It's a poor business when machinery that needs money spending on it doesna' get it.”

“Is it really that bad?” The engineering budget, Peter knew, had been cut down recently, but this was the first he had heard of serious trouble with the elevators.

The chief shook his head. “If you mean shall we have a big accident, the answer's no. But we've had small breakdowns and sometime there'll be a bigger one.”

Peter nodded. He inquired, “What is it you need?”

“A hundred thousand dollars to start. With that I'd rip out most of the elevator guts and replace them, then some other things as well.”

Peter whistled softly.

“I'll tell you one thing,” the chief observed. “Good machinery's a lovely thing, and most times it'll do more work than you think it could. But somewhere along there's a death point you'll never get by, no matter how much you – and the machinery – want to.”

Peter was still thinking about the chief's words when he entered his own office. What was the death point, he wondered, for an entire hotel?

There was a pile of mail, memos and telephone messages on his desk. Another thing: he must drop in soon to see Christine. There were several small matters requiring decisions from Warren Trent. Then, grinning, he told himself: Stop rationalizing! You want to see her, and why not?

As he debated which to do first, the telephone bell shrilled. It was Reception, one of the room clerks. “I thought you'd want to know,” he said. “Mr. Curtis O'Keefe has just checked in.”

Curtis O'Keefe marched swiftly into the busy lobby. Glancing around, his experienced man's eye noticed the signs. Small signs, but significant: a newspaper left in a chair and uncollected; a half-dozen cigarette butts in a sand urn by the elevators; a button missing from a bellboy's uniform; two burned-out light bulbs in the chandelier above.

In a hotel of the O'Keefe chain, there would have been whip-cracking action[80], and perhaps dismissals. But the St. Gregory isn't my hotel, Curtis O'Keefe reminded himself. Not yet.

He headed for Reception, a slender, six-foot figure in a pressed gray suit, moving with dance-like steps. His lithe athlete's body had been his pride through most of his fifty-six years.

At the marble-topped counter, barely looking up, a room clerk pushed a registration pad forward. The hotelier ignored it. He announced evenly, “My name is O'Keefe and I have reserved two suites, one for myself, the other in the name of Miss Dorothy Lash.” Now he could see Dodo entering the lobby: all legs and breasts, radiating sex like a pyrotechnic. Heads were turning, as always happened. He had left her at the car to supervise the baggage. She enjoyed doing things like that occasionally. Anything requiring more cerebral strain[81] passed her by.

His words had the effect of a thrown grenade. The room clerk stiffened, straightening his shoulders. As he faced the cool gray eyes which seemed to bore into him, the clerk's attitude changed from indifference to respect. With nervous instinct, a hand went to his tie.