Hotel

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.