Hotel

THURSDAY
1

If he expected to be alert for a new day's work, Peter McDermott supposed he had better head home and get some sleep.

It was a half hour past midnight. He had walked, he thought, for a couple of hours, perhaps longer. He felt refreshed and agreeably tired.

Walking at length was an old habit, especially when he had something on his mind or a problem which defied solution.

Earlier tonight, after leaving Marsha, he had returned to his downtown apartment. But he had been restless in the cramped quarters and disinclined for sleep, so he had gone out walking, toward the river. He had strolled the length of the Poydras and Julia Street Wharves, past moored ships, some dimly lighted and silent, others active and preparing for departure. Then he had taken the Canal Street ferry across the Mississippi and on the far side walked the lonely levees, watching the city lights against the darkness of the river. Returning, he made his way to the Vieux Carre and now sat, sipping cafe-au-lait, in the old French market.

A few minutes earlier, remembering hotel affairs for the first time in several hours, he had telephoned the St. Gregory. He inquired if there was any more news concerning the threatened walkout of the Congress of American Dentistry convention. Yes, the night assistant manager informed him, a message had been left shortly before midnight by the convention floor head waiter. So far as the head waiter could learn, the dentists' executive board, after a six-hour session, had reached no firm conclusion. However, an emergency general meeting of all convention delegates was to be held at 9:30 a.m. in the Dauphine Salon. About three hundred were expected to attend. The meeting would he in camera, with elaborate security precautions, and the hotel had been asked to assist in assuring privacy.

Peter left instructions that whatever was asked should be done, and put the matter from his mind until the morning.

Apart from this brief diversion, most of his thoughts had been of Marsha and the night's events. Questions buzzed in his head like pertinacious bees. How to handle the situation with fairness, yet not clumsily or hurting Marsha in doing so? One thing, of course, was clear: her proposal was impossible. And yet it would be the worst kind of churlishness to dismiss offhandedly an honest declaration. He had told her: "If more people were honest like you ...

There was something else - and why be afraid of it if honesty was to be served both ways? He had been drawn to Marsha tonight, not as a young girl but as a woman. If he closed his eyes he could see her as she had been. The effect was still like heady wine.

But he had tasted heady wine before, and the taste had turned to bitterness he had vowed would never come his way again. Did that kind of experience temper judgment, make a man wiser in his choice of women? He doubted it.

And yet he was a man, breathing, feeling. No selfimposed seclusion could, or should, last forever. The question: When and how to end it?

In any case, what next? Would he see Marsha again? He supposed - unless he severed their connection decisively, at once - it was inevitable he should.

Then on what terms? And what, too, of their differences in age?

Marsha was nineteen. He was thirty-two. The gap between seemed wide, yet was it? Certainly if they were both ten years older, an affair - or marriage - would not be thought of as extraordinary. Also, he doubted very much if Marsha would find close rapport with a boy her own age. The questions were endless. But a decision as to whether, and in what circumstances, he would see Marsha again had yet to be made.

In all his reasoning, too, there remained the thought of Christine.

Within the space of a few days he and Christine seemed to have drawn closer together than at any time before. He remembered that his last thought before leaving for the Preyscott house last evening had been of Christine. Even now, he found himself anticipating keenly the sight and sound of her again.

Strange, he reflected, that he, who a week ago had been resolutely unattached, should feel torn at this moment between two women! Peter grinned ruefully as he paid for the coffee and rose to go home.

The St. Gregory was more or less on the way and instinctively his footsteps took him past it. When he reached the hotel it was a few minutes after one a.m..

There was still activity, he could see, within the lobby. Outside, St. Charles Avenue was quiet, with only a cruising cab and a pedestrian or two in sight. He crossed the street to take a short cut around the rear of the hotel. Here it was quieter still. He was about to pass the entry to the hotel garage when he halted, warned by the sound of a motor and the reflection of headlight beam approaching down the inside ramp. A moment later a low-slung black car swung into sight. It was moving fast and braked sharply, tires squealing, at the street. As the car stopped it was directly in a pool of light. It was a Jaguar, Peter noticed, and it looked as if a fender had been dented; on the same side there was something odd about the headlight too. He hoped the damage had not occurred through negligence in the hotel garage. If it had, he would hear about it soon enough.

Automatically he glanced toward the driver. He was startled to see it was Ogilvie. The chief house officer, meeting Peter's eyes, seemed equally surprised. Then abruptly the car pulled out of the garage and continued on.

Peter wondered why and where Ogilvie was driving; and why a Jaguar instead of the house officer's usual battered Chevrolet? Then, deciding that what employees did away from the hotel was their own business, Peter continued on to his apartment.

Later, he slept soundly.