Hotel

4

Some fifteen minutes earlier, when Peter McDermott had left the elevator on his way to the Presidential Suite, the bellboy grinned at Christine. "Doing a bit of detectiving, Miss Francis?"

"If the chief house officer was around," Christine told him, "I wouldn't have to."

The bellboy, Jimmy Duckworth, a balding stubby man whose married son worked in the St. Gregory accounting department, said contemptuously, "Oh, him!"

A moment later the elevator stopped at the fourteenth floor.

"It's 1439, Jimmy," Christine said, and automatically both turned right.

There was a difference, she realized, in the way the two of them knew the geography of the hotel: the bellboy through years of ushering guests from the lobby to their rooms; herself, from a series of mental pictures which familiarity with the printed plans of each floor of the St. Gregory had given her.

Five years ago, she thought, if someone at the University of Wisconsin had asked what twenty-year-old Chris Francis, a bright co-ed with a flair for modern languages, was likely to be doing a lustrurn later, not even the wildest guess would have had her working in a New Orleans hotel. That long ago her knowledge of the Crescent City was of the slightest, and her interest less. She had learned in school about the Louisiana Purchase and had seen A Streetcar Named Desire. But even the last was out of date when she eventually came. The streetcar had become a diesel bus, and Desire was an obscure thoroughfare on the east side of town, which tourists seldom saw.

She supposed, in a way, it was this lack of knowledge which brought her to New Orleans. After the accident in Wisconsin, dully and with only the vaguest of reasoning, she had sought a place where she could be unknown and which, as well, was unfamiliar to herself. Familiar things, their touch and sight and sound, had become an ache of heart - all encompassing - which filled the waking day and penetrated sleep. Strangely - and in a way it shamed her at the time - there were never nightmares; only the steady procession of events as they had been that memorable day at Madison airport. She had been there to see her family leave for Europe: her mother, gay and excited, wearing the bon voyage orchid which a friend had telegraphed; her father, relaxed and amiably complacent that for a month the real and imagined ailments of his patients would be someone else's concern. He had been puffing a pipe which he knocked out on his shoe when the flight was called.

Babs, her elder sister, had embraced Christine; and even Tony, two years younger and hating public affection, consented to be kissed.

"So long, Hami" Babs and Tony had called back, and Christine smiled at the use of the silly, affectionate name they gave her because she was the middle of their trio sandwich. And they had all promised to write, even though she would join them in Paris two weeks later when term ended. At the last her mother had held Chris tightly, and told her to take care. And a few minutes later the big prop-jet had taxied out and taken off with a roar, majestically, though it barely cleared the runway before it fell back, one wing low, becoming a whirling, somersaulting Catherine wheel, and for a moment a dust cloud, and then a torch, and finally a silent pile of fragments-machinery and what was left of human flesh.

It was five years ago. A few weeks after, she left Wisconsin and had never returned.

Her own footsteps and the bellboy's were muffled in the carpeted corridor.

A pace ahead, Jimmy Duckworth ruminated, "Room 1439-that's the old gent, Mr. Wells. We moved him from a comer room a couple of days ago."

Ahead, down the corridor, a door opened and a man, well dressed and fortyish, came out. Closing the door behind him, and ready to pocket the key, he hesitated, eying Christine with frank interest. He seemed about to speak but, barely perceptibly, the bellboy shook his head. Christine, who missed nothing of the exchange, supposed she should be flattered to be mistaken for a call girl. From rumors she heard, Herbie Chandler's list embraced a glamorous membership.

When they had passed by she asked, "Why was Mr. Wells's room changed?"

"The way I heard it, miss, somebody else had 1439 and raised a fuss. So what they did was switch around."

Christine remembered 1439 now; there had been complaints before. It was next to the service elevator and appeared to be the meeting place of all the hotel's pipes. The effect was to make the place noisy and unbearably hot. Every hotel had at least one such room - some called it the ha-ha room - which usually was never rented until everything else was full.

"If Mr. Wells had a better room why was he asked to move?

The bellboy shrugged. "You'd better ask the room clerks that."

She persisted, "But you've an idea."

"Well, I guess it's because he never complains. The old gent's been coming here for years with never a peep out of him. There are some who seem to think it's a bit of a joke." Christine's lips tightened angrily as Jimmy Duckworth went on, "I did hear in the dining room they give him that table beside the kitchen door, the one no one else will have. He doesn't seem to mind, they say."

Christine thought grimly: Someone would mind tomorrow morning, she would guarantee it. At the realization that a regular guest, who also happened to be a quiet and gentle man, had been so shabbily treated, she felt her temper bristle. Well, let it. Her temper was not unknown around the hotel and there were some, she knew, who said it went with her red hair.

Although she curbed it mostly, once in a while it served a purpose in getting things done.

They turned a corner and stopped at the door of 1439. The bellboy knocked.

They waited, listening. There was no acknowledging sound and Jimmy Duckworth repeated the knock, this time more loudly. At once there was a response: an eerie moaning that began as a whisper, reached a crescendo, then ended suddenly as it began.

"Use your pass key," Christine instructed. "Open the door - quickly!"

She stood back while the bellboy went in ahead; even in apparent crisis a hotel had rules of decorum which must be observed. The room was in darkness and she saw Duckworth snap on the ceiling light and go around a corner out of sight. Almost at once he called back, "Miss Francis, you'd better come."

The room, as Christine entered, was stiflingly hot, though a glance at the air-conditioning regulator showed it set hopefully to "cool." But that was all she had time to see before observing the struggling figure, half upright, half recumbent in the bed. It was the birdlike little man she knew as Albert Wells. His face ashen gray, eyes bulging and with trembling lips, he was attempting desperately to breathe and barely succeeding.

She went quickly to the bedside. Once, years before, in her father's office she had seen a patient in extremis, fighting for breath. There were things her father had done then which she could not do now, but one she remembered. She told Duckworth decisively, "Get the window open. We need air in here."

The bellboy's eyes were focused on the face of the man in bed. He said nervously, "The window's sealed. They did it for the air conditioning."

"Then force it. If you have to, break the glass."

She had already picked up the telephone beside the bed. When the operator answered, Christine announced, "This is Miss Francis. Is Dr. Aarons in the hotel?"

"No, Miss Francis; but he left a number. If it's an emergency I can reach him."

"It's an emergency. Tell Dr. Aarons room 1439, and to hurry, please. Ask how long he'll take to get here, then call me back."

Replacing the phone, Christine turned to the still-struggling figure in the bed. The frail, elderly man was breathing no better than before and she perceived that his face, which a few moments earlier had been ashen gray, was turning blue. The moaning which they had heard outside had begun again; it was the effort of exhaling, but obviously most of the sufferer's waning strength was being consumed by his desperate physical exertion.

"Mr. Wells," she said, trying to convey a confidence she was far from feeling, "I think you might breathe more easily if you kept perfectly still." The bellboy, she noticed, was having success with the window. He had used a coat hanger to break a seal on the catch and now was inching the bottom portion upward.

As if in response to Christine's words, the little man's struggles subsided. He was wearing an old-fashioned flannel nightshirt and Christine put an arm around him, aware of his scrawny shoulders through the coarse material. Reaching for pillows, she propped them behind, so that he could lean back, sitting upright at the same time. His eyes were fixed on hers; they were doe-like, she thought, and trying to convey gratitude. She said reassuringly, "I've sent for a doctor. He'll be here at any moment." As she spoke, the bellboy grunted with an extra effort and the window, suddenly freed, slid open wide. At once a draft of cool fresh air suffused the room. So the storm had moved south, Christine thought gratefully, sending a freshening breeze before it, and the temperature outside must be lower than for days. In the bed Albert Wells gasped greedily at the new air. As he did the telephone rang. Signaling the bellboy to take her place beside the sick man, she answered it.

"Dr. Aarons is on his way, Miss Francis," the operator announced. "He was in Paradis and said to tell you he'll be at the hotel in twenty minutes."

Christine hesitated. Paradis was across the Mississippi beyond Algiers.

Even allowing for fast driving, twenty minutes was optimistic. Also, she sometimes had doubts about the competence of the portly, Sazerac-drinking Dr. Aarons who, as house physician, lived free in the hotel in return for his availability. She told the operator, "I'm not sure we can wait that long. Would you check our own guest list to see if we have any doctors registered?"

"I already did that." There was a touch of smugness in the answer, as if the speaker had studied stories of heroic telephone operators and was determined to live up to them. "There's a Dr. Koenig in 221, and Dr. Uxbridge in 1203."

Christine noted the numbers on a pad beside the telephone. "All right, ring 221, please." Doctors who registered in hotels expected privacy and were entitled to it.

Once in a while, though, emergency justified a break with protocol.

There were several clicks as the ringing continued. Then a sleepy voice with a Teutonic accent answered, "Yes, who is it?"

Christine identified herself. "I'm sorry to disturb you, Dr. Koenig, but one of our other guests is extremely ill." Her eyes went to the bed. For the moment, she noticed, the blueness around the face had gone, but there was still an ashen-gray pallor, with breathing as difficult as ever. She added, "I wonder if you could come."

There was a pause, then the same voice, soft and agreeable: "My dearest young lady, it would be a matter of utmost happiness if, however humbly, I could assist. Alas, I fear that I could not." A gentle chuckle. "You see, I am a doctor of music, here in your beautiful city to 'guest conduct' - it is the word, I think - its fine symphony orchestra.

Despite the urgency, Christine had an impulse to laugh. She apologized,

"I'm sorry for disturbing you."

"Please do not concern yourself. Of course, if my unfortunate fellow guest becomes - how shall I put it? - beyond the help of the other kind of doctors, I could bring my violin to play for him." There was a deep sigh down the telephone. "What finer way to die than to an adagio by Vivaldi or Tartini - superbly executed."

"Thank you. I hope that won't be necessary." She was impatient now to make the next call.

Dr. Uxbridge in 1203 answered the telephone at once in a no-nonsense tone of voice. In reply to Christine's first question he responded, "Yes, I'm a doctor of medicinean internist." He listened without comment while she described the problem, then said tersely, "I'll be there in a few minutes."

The bellboy was still at the bedside. Christine instructed him, "Mr. McDermott is in the Presidential Suite. Go there, and as soon as he's free ask him to come here quickly." She picked up the telephone again.

"The chief engineer, please."

Fortunately there was seldom any doubt about the chief's availability.

Doc Vickery was a bachelor who lived in the hotel and had one ruling passion: the St. Gregory's mechanical equipment extending from foundations to the roof. For a quarter century, since leaving the sea and his native Clydeside, he had overseen the installation of most of it and, in lean times when money for replacement equipment was scarce, had a way of coaxing extra performance out of tired machinery. The chief was a friend of Christine's, and she knew that she was one of his favorites. In a moment his Scottish burr was on the line.

"Aye?"

In a few words she told him about Albert Wells. "The doctor isn't here yet, but he'll probably want oxygen. We've a portable set in the hotel, haven't we?"

"Aye, we've oxygen cylinders, Chris, but we use them just for gas welding."

"Oxygen is oxygen," Christine argued. Some of the things her father had told her were coming back. "It doesn't matter how you wrap it. Could you order one of your night people to have whatever's necessary sent up?"

The chief gave a grunt of agreement. "I will; and soon as I get my breeks on, lassie, I'll be along mysel'. If I don't, some clown will likely open an acetylene tank under your man's nose, and that'll finish him for sure."

"Please hurry!" She replaced the phone, turning back to the bed.

The little man's eyes were closed. No longer struggling, he appeared not to be breathing at all.

There was a light tap at the opened door and a tall, spare man stepped in from the corridor. He had an angular face, and hair graying at the temples. A dark blue suit, conservatively cut, failed to conceal beige pajamas beneath. "Uxbridge," he announced in a quiet, firm voice.

"Doctor," Christine said, "just this moment . ."

The newcomer nodded and from a leather bag, which he put down on the bed, swiftly produced a stethoscope. Without wasting time he reached inside the patient's flannel nightshirt and listened briefly to the chest and back. Then, returning to the bag, in a series of efficient movements he took out a syringe, assembled it, and snapped off the neck of a small glass vial. When he had drawn the fluid from the vial into the syringe, he leaned over the bed and pushed a sleeve of the nightshirt upward, twisting it into a rough tourniquet. He instructed Christine, "Keep that in place; hold it tightly."

With an alcohol swab Dr. Uxbridge cleansed the forearm above a vein and inserted the syringe. He nodded to the tourniquet. "You can release it now." Then, glancing at his watch, he began to inject the liquid slowly.

Christine turned, her eyes seeking the doctor's face. Without looking up, he informed her, "Aminophylline; it should stimulate the heart." He checked his watch again, maintaining a gradual dosage. A minute passed. Two. The syringe was half empty. So far there was no response.

Christine whispered, "What is it that's wrong?"

"Severe bronchitis, with asthma as a complication. I suspect he's had these attacks before."

Suddenly the little man's chest heaved. Then he was breathing, more slowly than before, but with fuller, deeper breaths. His eyes opened.

The tension in the room had lessened. The doctor withdrew the syringe and began to disassemble it.

"Mr. Wells," Christine said. "Mr. Wells, can you understand me?"

She was answered by a series of nods. As they had been earlier, the doe-like eyes were fixed on her own.

"You were very ill when we found you, Mr. Wells. This is Dr. Uxbridge who was staying in the hotel and came to help."

The eyes shifted to the doctor. Then, with an effort: "Thank you." The words were close to a gasp, but they were the first the sick man had spoken. A small amount of color was returning to his face.

"If there's anyone to thank it should be this young lady." The doctor gave a cool, tight smile, then told Christine, "The gentleman is still very sick and will need further medical attention. My advice is for immediate transfer to a hospital."

"No, no! I don't want that." The words came - a swift and urgent response - from the elderly man in the bed. He was leaning forward from the pillows, his eyes alert, hands lifted from beneath the covers where Christine had placed them earlier. The change in his condition within the space of a few minutes was remarkable, she thought. He was still breathing wheezily, and occasionally with effort, but the acute distress had gone.

For the first time Christine had time to study his appearance. Originally she had judged him to be in his early sixties; now she revised the guess to add a half dozen years. His build was slight, and shortness, plus thin peaked features and the suggestion of a stoop, created the sparrowlike effect she remembered from previous encounters. His hair, what little was left of it, was usually combed in sparse gray strands, though now it was disarranged, and damp from perspiration. His face habitually held an expression which was mild and inoffensive, almost apologetic, and yet underneath, she suspected, was a ridge of quiet determination.

The first occasion she had met Albert Wells had been two years earlier. He had come diffidently to the hotel's executive suite, concerned about a discrepancy in his bill which he had been unable to settle with the front office. The amount involved, she recalled, was seventy-five cents and while - as usually happened when guests disputed small sums - the chief cashier had offered to cancel the charge, Albert Wells wanted to prove that he had not incurred it at all. After patient inquiry, Christine proved that the little man was right and, since she herself sometimes had bouts of parsimony - though alternating with wild feminine extravagance - she sympathized and respected him for his stand. She also deduced - from his hotel bill, which showed modest spending, and his clothes which were obviously ready-to-wear-that he was a man of small means, perhaps a pensioner, whose yearly visits to New Orleans were high points of his life.

Now Albert Wells declared, "I don't like hospitals. I never have liked them."

"If you stay here," the doctor demurred, "you'll need medical attention, and a nurse for twenty-four hours at least. You really should have intermittent oxygen too."

The little man insisted, "The hotel can arrange about a nurse." He urged Christine, "You can, can't you, miss?"

"I suppose we could." Obviously Albert Wells's dislike of hospitals must be strong. For the moment it had overcome his customary attitude of not wishing to cause trouble. She wondered, though, if he had any idea of the high cost of private nursing.

There was an interruption from the corridor. A coveralled mechanic came in, wheeling an oxygen cylinder on a trolley. He was followed by the burly figure of the chief engineer, carrying a length of rubber tubing, some wire and a plastic bag.

"This isn't hospital style, Chris," the chief said. "I fancy it'll work, though." He had dressed hurriedly - an old tweed jacket and slacks over an unbuttoned shirt, revealing an expanse of hairy chest. His feet were thrust into loose sandals and beneath his bald, domed head a pair of thickrimmed spectacles were, as usual, perched at the tip of his nose.

Now, using the wire, he was fashioning a connection between the tube and plastic bag. He instructed the mechanic who had stopped uncertainly, "Set up the cylinder beside the bed, laddie. If you move any slower, I'll think it's you should be getting the oxygen."

Dr. Uxbridge seemed surprised. Christine explained her original idea that oxygen might be needed, and introduced the chief engineer. With his hands still busy, the chief nodded, looking briefly over the top of his glasses. A moment later, with the tube connected, he announced, "These plastic bags have suffocated enough people. No reason why one shouldna' do the reverse. Do you think it'll answer, Doctor?"

Some of Dr. Uxbridge's earlier aloofness had disappeared. "I think it will answer very well." He glanced at Christine. "This hotel appears to have some highly competent help."

She laughed. "Wait until we mix up your reservations. You'll change your mind."

The doctor returned to the bed. "The oxygen will make you more comfortable, Mr. Wells. I imagine you've had this bronchial trouble before."

Albert Wells nodded. He said throatily, "The bronchitis I picked up as a miner. Then the asthma came later." His eyes moved on to Christine.

"I'm sorry about all this, miss.'.

"I'm sorry too, but mostly because your room was changed."

The chief engineer had connected the free end of the rubber tube to the green painted cylinder. Dr. Uxbridge told him, "We'll begin with five minutes on oxygen and five minutes off." Together they arranged the improvised mask around the sick man's face. A steady hiss denoted that the oxygen was on.

The doctor checked his watch, then inquired, "Have you sent for a local doctor?"

Christine explained about Dr. Aarons.

Dr. Uxbridge nodded approval. "He'll take over when he arrives. I'm from Illinois and not licensed to practice in Louisiana." He bent over Albert Wells. "Easier?" Beneath the plastic mask the little man moved his head confirmingly.

There were firm footfalls down the corridor and Peter McDermott strode in, his big frame filling the outer doorway. "I got your message," he told Christine. His eyes went to the bed. "Will he be all right?"

"I think so, though I believe we owe Mr. Wells something." Beckoning Peter into the corridor, she described the change in rooms which the bellboy had told her about. As she saw Peter frown, she added, "If he does stay, we ought to give him another room, and I imagine we could get a nurse without too much trouble."

Peter nodded agreement. There was a house telephone in a maid's closet across the hallway. He went to it and asked for Reception.

"I'm on the fourteenth," he informed the room clerk who answered. "Is there a vacant room on this floor?"

There was a perceptible pause. The night room clerk was an old-timer, appointed many years ago by Warren Trent. He had an autocratic way of doing his job which few people ever contested. He had also made known to Peter McDermott on a couple of occasions that he resented newcomers, particularly if they were younger, senior to himself, and from the north.

"Well," Peter said, "is there a room or isn't there?"

"I have 1410," the clerk said with his best southern planter's accent, "but I'm about to allocate it to a gentleman who has this moment checked in." He added, "In case you're unaware, we are very close to a full house."

Number 1410 was a room Peter remembered. It was large and airy and faced St. Charles Avenue. He asked reasonably, "If I take 1410, can you find something else for your man?"

"No, Mr. McDermott. All I have is a small suite on five, and the gentleman does not wish to pay a higher rate."

Peter said crisply, "Let your man have the suite at the room rate for tonight. He can be relocated in the morning. Meanwhile I'll use 1410 for a transfer from 1439, and please send a boy up with the key right away."

"Just one minute, Mr. McDermott." Previously the clerk's tone had been aloof; now it was openly truculent. "It has always been Mr. Trent's policy...

"Right now we're talking about my policy," Peter snapped. "And another thing: before you go off duty leave word for the day clerks that tomorrow I want an explanation of why Mr. Wells was shifted from his original room to 1439, and you might add that the reason had better be good."

He grimaced at Christine as he replaced the phone.