Personal Demons

THE GRAND FINALE HOTEL

'Good Lord In Heaven,' gasped Mr Satardoo, eyeing the great golden lounge clock as he scuttered past it, 'if he cared for us at all he would allow sixty-one minutes in an hour today, just today, and our gratitude for his temporal lassitude would be expressed in renewed endeavour.'

The under-manager's language echoed the convoluted structure of the Delhi civil service, in whose foreign office he had been trained. He had migrated from his native India just after the war and had worked here at the Grand Finale Hotel ever since, longer than most of the house staff, but not so long as the senior housekeeper Mrs Opie, or the septuagenarian manager, General Sullivan.

Mr Satardoo barely slowed his pace as he wheeled into the main hall to inspect his troops.

Before him stood a battalion of chambermaids in crisp monochrome, their caps of fluted white linen seated upon their coiffures like matching baby doves. Beside them a regiment of stiffbacked waiters stood to attention, the diagonal planes of their noses held at exactly forty-five degrees to the icy blue marble floor, their haircuts macassared in perfect geometry, their hooded eyes impossible to catch. The waitresses had their own division, their flared black dresses cut low and short, edged in white to give them the appearance of mischievous angels. Then came a squad of veteran porters as stooped as question marks, their jacket sleeves subtly altered to incorporate an added length of bone caused by lifetimes of lifting great leather cases.

An infantry of bellboys flanked the sides of the sunlit hall, their brass buttons glittering like crocodile eyes, their caps set at an angle that suggested jauntiness without jocularity, disarm without disrespect. Their emerald suits were sectioned with silver piping that ran from collar to spats, a uniform as proudly worn as those of Wellington's men, and much admired by the hotel's female guests, who always watched discreetly as the lads scurried past on their errands.

Mr Satardoo clapped his hands together, and even though the sound was muffled by the white kid gloves he habitually wore, everyone snapped to attention.

The only members of staff not represented in the hall were the cooks, who could not risk leaving the kitchens so close to the hour set aside for luncheon.

'Now,' began Mr Satardoo, 'I want you all to pay careful attention. In a few minutes the Archduke Fernandel Aracino will arrive with his entourage, and it is imperative that he receives the kind of service that a man of his reputation would expect from our hotel. Although it is the first time he has taken a suite here – and of course for every one of our guests who takes a suite it is always the first visit – I want you to make him feel that he is among old friends. Where is Mr Mack?'

'Here, Mr Satardoo.' The little concierge stepped from behind an enormous potted aspidistra and coughed softly into his fist.

'Ah, there you are. I thought perhaps we had lost you in the loamy confines of the foliage.' Mr Satardoo was fond of teasing Mr Mack about his height. The concierge did not mind. He was happy and confident in his job, because he knew that the staff greatly respected him. Even Mr Satardoo would have admitted it, were he not so obsessed with honouring the hierarchy that placed him technically above Mr Mack in the hotel's complex chain of command.

'How long does the Archduke plan to stay with us?' asked Mr Mack.

'As long as it takes, of course.'

'And he has specifically requested the Virginia Woolf Chamber?'

'I am given to understand so.' Five gigantic suites at the top of the hotel were currently available for royal ranks. There was a sixth, but it was permanently reserved for the Princess Arthur of Connaught, in recognition of a great favour once performed by that esteemed house for the hotel's first owner.

Its real name was the Imperial Rex, but the less respectful staff had nicknamed it the Grand Finale Hotel. It had one hundred and fifty rooms, of which forty-seven were themed suites of unrivalled opulence, and like the world's most truly special hotels, it had many more staff than guests. However, the Rex was unlike any other hotel in the world, and for this reason remained hidden from the pages of those glossy volumes listing the finest places to stay. Under certain conditions its bar and restaurant were open to the casual visitor, and its rooms could be booked by families whose tiered generations were well-known to the management. Rooms were occasionally available to newcomers who made it through the deliberately labyrinthine booking procedure, but its special suites were the exclusive province of those who fulfilled more exacting criteria. Despite this seeming elitism the hotel was surprisingly egalitarian in its guest list, and so long as its conditions of stay were followed to the letter, even the poorest struggling artist might eventually be admitted to one of the suites. Its rooms were a different matter; they, and the items on the restaurant menu, remained unpriced, the tacit understanding being that if you had to ask the cost of anything at the Grand Finale, you could not afford it. It was normal for those who booked one of the forty-seven special suites to be served their meals in luxurious privacy. These suites were only full in times of great crisis, after wars, plagues and depressions, and, due to the vicissitudes of modern life, were never entirely empty.

The Rex occupied a rocky bluff overlooking the rolling jade ocean. There was a private beach, and teak-decked motorboats rode the tide in a cave cut into the ivory cliff-face, accessible by a flight of stone steps leading down from the basement. Throughout the years, it remained a dazzling white fortress of taste and calm, with an elegant double bowfront, striped emerald lawns, pergolas and a maze, and garish red and blue flags fluttering brazenly between pyramids of hyacinths all along its battlements. The hotel was simply unique, a home to great joy and sadness. A testimony, Mr Satardoo was fond of saying, to the bravery of the human soul, although there were those who were appalled that such a place should exist at all.

Mr Satardoo checked his watch and dismissed the ranks, but kept Mr Mack behind. 'I fear,' he intimated, 'we shall not be spared the distressing dilemma presented by the Crown Prince of Jhada's recent stay. The Archduke is renowned for harbouring similar proclivities.'

Mr Mack nodded sagely. While it was perfectly usual for royalty to arrive with a small army of personal staff, the Crown Prince had appeared with two dozen of his favourite concubines, giving rise to all manner of problems in protocol. 'I daresay we can solve the problem,' he replied, 'without having to resort to such drastic tactics as before. The Archduke is a man of greater sensitivities.'

'We shall have to see.' Mr Satardoo gave a grim little shake of his head, as if expecting the very worst. 'We shall have to see.' His eagle eye alighted upon the faintest smear of brass polish beneath the dolphin-handle of one of the entrance doors, and he set off with great relish on a mission to box the culprit's ears.

Malcolm Bridget did not come from an old-money family. He was not a knight or a lord or even well-connected, but the Imperial Rex had agreed to rent him a room. True it was one of the smaller chambers to the rear of the building, but it was a room nevertheless, and you could even glimpse the sea by leaning perilously from the bathroom window. Forsaking his former career as a tabloid journalist, Malcolm was now a biographer of international renown, and something about him had appealed to General Sullivan, whose snobbery was only surpassed by his admiration for biographers (it was no secret that the general hoped to persuade someone to transcribe his own history). And so here he was, seated in one of the great plush velvet armchairs in the Disraeli Lounge making surreptitious notes as the Archduke arrived.

First two liveried footmen in ash wigs and gilt epaulettes entered the lobby. They were followed by two young valets and a senior servant dressed in midnight blue. After this arrived a secretary who acted as the Archduke's liaison with the hotel staff. Mr Satardoo, Mr Mack and Mrs Opie headed the welcoming committee which stood to attention in two smart rows flanking the great staircase. The Archduke himself was as tall and frail as a bamboo pole. His white goatee thrust from his bony chin like a spurt of gun smoke, and matched the pale plume of his tricorn hat. He walked with the careful delicacy of a flamingo, an ascetic figure who whispered to his secretary as if he could hardly bring himself to discourse with the outside world. He wore presentation battledress of black and gold, for he had travelled here directly from an inspection of his troops.

Behind him, bearing all the earmarks of discretion that the Crown Prince of Jhada's concubines had lacked, were two demure women in the late bloom of their youth, dressed in matching bonnets and reticulated gowns of deep grey silk. Malcolm noted everything he saw, and was so adept at committing pen to paper that none saw him write. He knew that the Archduke's story was a sad one; he had seen one son shot dead and another blown to pieces in a terrible battle, and within two months had lost his wife during a plague that reached far within the walls of his palace, so far that he himself had only survived by sacrificing his right arm and replacing the appendage with a limb of gleaming steel.

He was ashamed of outliving his children, and of receiving his only injury from an illness instead of a war. He was disappointed by power and tired of the lies of men. So what on earth, wondered Malcolm, brought him here?

As the ladies of the Archduke rustled past and the entourage passed on to the staircase, spreading across it in a rising river, the biographer recapped his pen and sat back among the downy purple cushions, pondering the question. Fernandel Aracino's visit was just part of the puzzle. There was a sense of mystery here, of omission and discretion. The Imperial Rex withheld its true purpose from casual gaze. It went without saying that Mr Satardoo refused to allow him to interview the guests, but he could not even be shown inside any of the suites, and bribing a chambermaid had brought an indignant Mr Mack to his door.

There was something going on in this sunbeam-trellised hotel, this haven of calm and peaceful repose, that earned it a hushed reverence from outsiders. Mention of the hotel's name was enough to create a gap in the conversation, as if a talisman had been evoked. That evening, Malcolm spotted Mr Satardoo in the supper lounge and seized the opportunity to speak with him.

'Ah, Mr Bridget, I trust you do not find the nocturnal ozone too piquant?' he asked, referring, Malcolm assumed, to the fresh wind emanating from the open French windows that led on to the cliffs.

'Not at all, Mr Satardoo.' He seated himself opposite the plump Indian under-manager, who made a little rising gesture to acknowledge his guest. 'I've been meaning to ask you something.'

'Please feel most free to do so.' Mr Satardoo's corsets creaked like sea timbers as he leaned forward in his seat.

'Has no-one ever offered to write a history of this marvellous hotel?'

'The board of directors would, I feel, be less than willing to draw unnecessary attention to our little haven.'

'But many of your rooms are empty. Some good publicity would fill them.'

'Goodness, this hotel was not built simply to turn a profit,' said Mr Satardoo, shocked. 'It was constructed with the purpose of providing an oasis of tranquillity in a world that I fear is tipping into insanity.'

'I appreciate that, but perhaps a discreet brochure, with some tasteful photographs…'

'General Sullivan has indeed spoken of commissioning such a prospectus in the past,' sighed the under-manager, 'but the problem has always lain with authorial suitability.'

'You mean you haven't been able to find someone who could write such a thing to your satisfaction?'

'In a nutshell.'

'Then you need look no further,' said Malcolm. 'I'm your man.'.

Mr Satardoo stared at him for a moment, then emitted an eager squeak. Clearly he saw an opportunity to ingratiate himself with his superior. 'I'll attempt to initiate the introduction of such a proposal into my next conversation with the general,' he informed the biographer with unconcealed delight, 'I am most certain of success.'

He was as good as his word. In the space of an interview that lasted for exactly ten minutes, no more or less, General Sullivan approved Malcolm's appointment on the project, agreed a handsome fee, and instructed Mr Satardoo to provide him with all the information he might require for such a task, with one proviso; that he would not be allowed to interview any of the guests who were staying in the forty-seven special suites, for their privacy was sacrosanct. This seemed reasonable, and Malcolm embarked upon the project with enthusiasm. Truth to tell, although he was enjoying his stay at the Imperial Rex immensely, inactivity made him fractious and caused his mind to dwell on certain morbid preoccupations. He missed his wife, who had divorced him almost a year ago, and had grown increasingly dissatisfied with the world around him, a world that provided poor recompense for his occupation and even less spiritual comfort.

The morning after the general had given his consent to the commission, Malcolm rose early and took breakfast outside on the broad white curve of the first-floor balcony, high above the shimmering green sea. Running his hand lightly over his thinning chestnut hair, he rose as the sedate ladies of the Archduke picked a path between the tables and took their places with the regular guests. Theirs was a gesture of respect to the hotel; the Archduke could have allowed his concubines to remain in the suite with him while he broke fast, but, choosing not to draw attention to their status, sent them instead to observe normal mealtimes in the correct fashion. Malcolm smiled at the stern bodices and severe skirts that gave no hint of the fleshly passions laced within. Mr Satardoo had no need to be alarmed; the Archduke was clearly a gentleman given to the employment of tact and delicacy. He was one more part of a rich dramatic tapestry being daily woven throughout the hotel, both on its public stages and behind the scenes. It seemed a shame that part of the tapestry would remain permanently hidden from the biographer's view.

Malcolm drew up a list of practical questions about the hotel. He was less concerned with facts and figures, which were easily obtained, and more anxious to convey the unique ambience of a stay at the Rex. As the sapphire rawness of the morning tempered itself into a golden windswept summer's day, very possibly the last of the year, he strolled through each of the hotel's public spaces, watching and listening, filling his calfskin notebook with neat square writing.

But the suites which lined the top two floors of the hotel remained forbidden territory, and their exclusion nagged at him. Even the lifts would not go there without a special key. Something was being deliberately hidden from his gaze, and he wanted to know why. What on earth could a hotel such as this have to hide?

Malcolm was a man whose curiosity sometimes extended beyond common sense, and now his former tabloid skills represented themselves. Once he had ascertained the whereabouts of the silver lift keys, it was a simple matter to slip behind Mr Mack's counter and borrow one. That afternoon he had it copied in the town and returned to its hook before nightfall.

By itself, though, such a key was useless without further access to one of the suites, and this could only be gained by breaking the general's rule about fraternising with their occupants. That evening, Malcolm sat down to formulate a plan.

His main problem was finding a point of contact. The suite-guests did not mix with the other residents, and even sunbathed on a separate peninsula of rock away from the hotel's exclusive pebbled beach. The rubescence on the cheeks of the Archduke's concubines suggested that they took a little sun, and as this seemed a good enough place to start, Malcolm set about observing their movements.

He soon saw that there were two sides to Marisia and Therese (as they addressed each other in conversation). They gave courteous smiles as they rose from their morning table, nodding to the waiters and the other guests, but when they felt themselves to be unobserved, their mansuetude faded and expressions of the utmost dolour fell upon them. Indeed, they looked so sad that Malcolm felt ashamed to be spying on them. But his curiosity drove him on.

As the weather began to disappoint, the ladies took to sitting inside the glass-walled sun terrace until luncheon, writing in their commonplace books or demurely reading until the gong sounded. Within the space of a few days Malcolm was a familiar figure to them, always doffing his cap as they passed. Finally he was bold enough to sit beside them one morning as they shielded their eyes from the sun to watch several tiny white yachts cresting the waves.

'The Archduke hopes to sail tomorrow if the fine weather holds,' Marisia told him.

'But it is due to change,' warned Therese. 'Mr Satardoo tells me that the barometer is dropping.'

It was all the information he needed to know. Malcolm continued to work on his history of the hotel that afternoon, and prayed that the pressure would remain high enough for the Archduke to take out a boat.

He awoke next morning to a glorious sunny day. Rising early, he sat in the lobby reading the newspapers until he observed the Archduke and his men leaving. They were dressed in blue and white striped sweaters and flapping cream trousers, unmistakable yachting gear. Malcolm carefully folded away his copy of the Times and made his way to the sun lounge.

'I don't like that man,' Mr Mack confided to Flora, one of the third-floor chambermaids. 'There's something altogether too furry about him, the wispy hair and beard, the woolly jumper and corduroy trousers. He's sly. Forever creeping about behind people's backs, padding around in those horrible brown suede shoes, it's not natural.'

'What, brown suede shoes?' laughed Flora, giving him an affectionate pinch on the bum. 'He's a writer, he watches people for ideas.' She checked to see if her cap was back on straight. The concierge had knocked it awry when he had pulled her into the pantry for a kiss.

'He's up to something.' Mr Mack narrowed his eyes, then let the fronds of the aspidistra fall back in place. 'Well, he may have got around Mr Satardoo, but he won't get around me so easily. Have one of your girls keep an eye on him.'

Malcolm watched the dazzling gold and crimson ranks assemble and launch tipsily into the overture from Orphee Aux Enfers. Marisia and Therese were seated in a pair of striped deckchairs nearest the bandstand. An empty chair stood five feet from them.

'Good morning, ladies,' said Malcolm, tipping his cap as he tugged the spare chair closer. 'Perhaps we'll be lucky with the weather after all.'

'I do hope so.' Therese looked out to sea, where the yachts were bobbing on a fresh swell. 'The Archduke is an enthusiastic sailor but not, I fear, a good one.'

From where he was sitting he could see the suite key lying in the top of Marisia's needlework bag. Malcolm smiled generously as he shuffled closer. 'Please, ladies, do not allow me to interrupt your appreciation of the music.'

The band struck up a languorous piece by Sibelius, the sun reappeared from behind a small cloud and the ladies settled back in their chairs. Within minutes, their eyes were fluttering shut. Malcolm raised himself from the deckchair as quietly as possible and, as he passed Marisia's back, pretended to attend to his shoelace. The ladies usually fell asleep during the day. Presumably their night exertions took a certain toll. With the suite key deftly slipped into his left palm, he quickly walked to the hotel steps.

Malcolm waited until the coast was clear and boarded a lift. The two floors on which the suites were housed were marked by a pair of unlabelled brass buttons. The first took him to a curving blue corridor with recessed doors, but here the numbers fell short of the one on Marisia's key, and a maid eyed him suspiciously as he examined the doors, so he continued up to the second. Alighting, he soon found himself facing the door of the Archduke's suite. With a pounding heart he inserted the key and twisted it in the lock. Surely there had to be something extraordinary within. Why else would the General and his staff have such a need for secrecy? The door swung silently wide, and he stepped into the room.

General Sullivan sat in his office with his head in his hands, as a sense of infinite sadness settled upon him. He supposed it was inevitable that such a thing should happen, that the outside world would finally invade his kingdom. He had been taken in by Malcolm Bridger. A simple routine check on the biographer's background told him that five years ago Bridget had been dismissed from a notorious tabloid newspaper for breaching their code of ethics, such as the publication had. And now he was being allowed to snoop around the hotel, peeping and prying. The general had made his first foolish mistake, and it had to be put right immediately. With a heavy-hearted sigh, he summoned Mr Satardoo.

Malcolm stared about him. Nothing was out of place here – quite the reverse, in fact. The Archduke's suite was luxurious beyond all imagining. The furnishings were more suited to a Moorish summer palace. Great teak-framed windows, swathed in fine gilt silk, ran from floor to ceiling, and the light from the sea threw brilliant undulations on to the arched sapphire walls. The rooms around him swayed blue and gold, gold and blue, like a tropical aquarium in the sky. Each room, it was said, had its own style, one like a winter palace in Samarkand, another like an Egyptian seraglio. Why would the management wish to hide such magnificence? Puzzled, he began a systematic search of the rooms.

Mr Satardoo tipped himself on to the points of his shoes and looked about the sun-lounge. 'I understand our elusive gentleman biographer was briefly sighted here earlier. Have you been vouchsafed such an epiphany?' The head bellboy dreaded being asked anything by Mr Satardoo because he rarely understood a single sentence that issued from the under-manager's lips.

'I'm sorry, sir?'

'Mr Bridger. Have you seen him?'

'Oh yes, sir. He was sitting with the Archduke's ladies, out by the bandstand.'

Mr Satardoo flickered a smile of grim satisfaction and headed outside. His eagerness to please had caused a betrayal of the General's trust, and now it was up to him to win back his reputation.

The lounge contained a dark-mirrored cocktail cabinet better stocked than the American Bar at the Savoy. Malcolm poured himself a small whisky, swilling it around the tumbler as he conducted his investigation. From the window he could see the distant bandstand and the silk dresses of the slumbering concubines. He failed to notice that the weather was changing out to sea, however, and that the yachts were reluctantly returning to their harbour. Allowing the malt liquid to spill around his tongue, he wandered from room to room, his journalist's eye searching for the slightest hint of something untoward.

There was nothing unusual in the bathroom, if one ignored the fact that it was carved from lazurite the colour of a night sky. The bedrooms of the Archduke's courtesans were painted in delicate yellow-green shades of topaz, a gemstone that hung in heavy pendants from the lamps on their writing tables. The master bedroom was similarly opulent, if more alarming. The bed itself was carved in the shape of an enormous black swan, perhaps twelve feet long and as many wide, the mattress covered with a glittering onyx bedspread. It was more like a Stygian vessel than a couch of temporary repose. Frowning, he drew closer.

It was while he was examining this particular item of furniture that he discovered the brass-lined holes, ten of them on either side of the base, and another six set in the headboard of the bed. They were evenly spaced along the wood, none of them more than half an inch across.

What on earth, he wondered, could they be for? He touched them lightly with his forefinger and tried to reason; these rooms were only available to the few clients who met certain criteria demanded by the hotel. Nobody spoke of the situation, but everyone knew it to be true. Why did no-one probe deeper? If something wrong, something bad was going on, why wasn't it exposed?

What was the Imperial Rex trying to hide?'

Elise insists she saw him get out of the lift on the seventh floor, Mr Mack.'

'I don't see how that's possible. He's not in possession of a key.'

'She says she saw one in his hand, sir, not more than ten minutes ago. She didn't think nothing of it, until she saw him searching the door numbers. Was going to ask him what his game was, not being allowed on the floor and all, but he got back in the lift just as she went up to him.'

As Mr Mack listened to the girl, his eyes widened.

Malcolm Bridger racked his brains. What was it about the Archduke that set him aside from other men? Was his stately mantle of melancholia simply an attitude donned with his status? Or was there a deeper purpose that drove him here to the gilt mirrored halls of the world's most luxurious hotel?

Pondering the question, he climbed up upon the great black swan and lay back on the bed, his hands resting lightly on the ebony coverlet. Gulls wheeled past the great curved windows, driven inland by the changing weather. The room grew darker with his thoughts. Lying here, Malcolm found that there was something conducive to introspection. The pulsation of lightwaves on the ceiling, the dull glitter of gold mosaics in the Gustav Klimt murals, the gentle harmonies of musical instruments as delicate as celestial windchimes, the mingled scents of fresh-cut grass and ozone, of a woman's perfume lingering on a warm pale neck…

Women. No more women in my life, he thought, remembering the wife who had left him, the child she would not allow him to see. He asked himself why he had refused to let her into his heart, questioned the path that had finally brought him here. How, he asked himself, did I ever come to be so alone?

And when he raised his head at the noise, he found them all looking at him, Mr Satardoo, Mr Mack, Mrs Opie and the General himself, their faces a mixture of pity, kindness and infinite patience.

'I assume you understand now?' Mr Mack gently asked. Mrs Opie appeared by his side and wiped his eyes with a white linen handkerchief.

'I… I'm not sure.'

'These suites are only for those who are sure,' said Mr Mack as the others quietly left the room, pulling the doors shut behind them. 'They are reserved for guests who have definitely decided. Perhaps you have decided, and don't realise it yet. You are all alone in the world, aren't you? Try to tell me how you feel.'

Malcolm tried to marshal his thoughts. 'I'm tired,' he said finally.

'Then you have come to the right place,' smiled Mr Mack. 'Our lives begin in such high spirits, but once we see the world for what it is, it fatigues us. Disappointment is a tiring emotion, Malcolm. Where we had hoped for understanding, we find only cynicism, where there once was love is only selfishness. Our lives empty out with the passing years, until sometimes there is nothing left but our corporeal form. It is in this state that our special guests arrive, and here find final peace. Just as you shall.'

He walked around to the side of the bed and pressed a switch recessed in the headboard. His voice was a monotone as soothing as a calm sea. 'It is important for you to relax, Malcolm, to find serenity at the end, just as the Archduke will when he is ready, just as hundreds of others have.'

He's right, thought Malcolm, his eyes welling with tears. He felt the pinpricks brush his skin, and his body began to lose its tension. From the ten holes on either side of the bed, and the six in the headboard, the steel filaments had snaked out, piercing his clothes and entering the flesh of his neck, his arms, his torso, his legs, nipping into his veins, pumping fluid in, draining away his fears and doubts, filling his head with visions of tranquillity.

'No more unhappiness, Malcolm, no more uncertainty, and you have the General to thank. He wanted to provide a haven for those who wished to end their lives. He is shocked by the sordid, disordered way too many people reach their final moments. You come into this world in peace and warmth and love. Why is there no provision for leaving it in the same manner? Well, there is, Malcolm, but of course people aren't allowed to decide such things for themselves, and such a wonderful service is deemed not to be in society's best interests. Why not, Malcolm, answer me that? Where is the harm?'

Malcolm was numb. His mind was alert, but all panic had ceased. He realised that from the moment he had lain on the bed, the very air above him had changed. Tiny jets had been triggered by the pressure of his body on the mattress. He remembered his childhood, running in the park with a blue paper kite, being lifted in the air by his father, endless summer days, storms over the downs, the deaths of his parents, the loss of his faith, his wife at the door with her son in her arms, the grey days that had replaced his hopes, and nothing mattered any more. Nothing.

His memories faded into sleep, and the sleep deepened into death.

Mr Mack studied the departed biographer with a sad sigh. He walked to the telephone and rang Mrs Opie. 'Tell the Archduke we're still cleaning his room,' he said, his voice filled with reverence for the departed. 'Have Mr Bridger's bill made up and lose it in the Archduke's dining expenses. And see what you can get for his luggage from the usual source.'

'One hundred and fifty rooms, of which forty-seven are themed suites of unrivalled opulence' reads the new brochure for the Imperial Rex. 'So many guests have found peace with us.'