Arthur Hailey - Hotel

"It so happens," Peter said quietly, "that I agree with what he said."

"Why so, Mr. McDermott?" Royce taunted. "'You think it'd be better for business? Make your job easier?"

"Those are good reasons," Peter said. "If you choose to think they're the only ones, go ahead."

Warren Trent slammed down his hand hard upon the chair arm. "Never mind the reasons! What matters is, you're being damn fools, both of you."

It was a recurring question. In Louisiana, though hotels with chain affiliations had nominally integrated months before, several

independents - spearheaded by Warren Trent and the St. Gregory - had resisted change. Most, for a brief period, complied with the Civil Rights Act, then, after the initial flurry of attention, quietly reverted to their long-established segregation policies. Even with legal test cases pending, there was every sign that the hold-outs, aided by strong local support, could fight a delaying action, perhaps lasting years.

"No!" Viciously, Warren Trent stubbed out his cigar. "Whatever's happening anywhere else, I say we're not ready for it here. So we've lost the union conventions. All right, it's time we got off our backsides and tried for something else."

From the living room, Warren Trent heard the outer door close behind Peter McDermott, and Aloysius Royce's footsteps returning to the small book-lined sitting room which was the young Negro's private domain. In a few minutes Royce would leave, as he usually did around this time of day, for a law-school class.

It was quiet in the big living room, with only a whisper from the air conditioning, and occasional stray sounds from the city below, which penetrated the thick walls and insulated windows. Fingers of morning sunshine inched their way across the broadloomed floor and, watching them, Warren Trent could feel his heart pounding heavily - an effect of the anger which for several minutes had consumed him. It was a warning, he supposed, which he should heed more often. Yet nowadays, it seemed, so many things frustrated him, making emotions hard to control and to remain silent, harder still. Perhaps such outbursts were mere testiness - a side effect of age. But more likely it was because he sensed so much was slipping away, disappearing forever beyond his control. Besides, anger had always come easily - except for those few brief years when Hester had taught him otherwise: to use patience and a sense of humor, and for a while he had. Sitting quietly here, the memory stirred him. How long ago it seemed! More than thirty years since he had carried her, as a new, young bride, across the threshold of this very room. And how short a time they had had: those few brief years, joyous beyond measure, until the paralytic polio struck without warning. It had killed Hester in twenty-four hours, leaving Warren Trent, mourning and alone, with the rest of his life to live - and the St. Gregory Hotel.

There were few in the hotel who remembered Hester now, and even if a handful of old-timers did, it would be dimly, and not as Warren Trent himself remembered her: like a sweet spring flower, who had made his days gentle and his life richer, as no one had before or since.

In the silence, a swift soft movement and a rustle of silk seemed to come from the doorway behind him. He turned his head, but it was a quirk of memory. The room was empty and, unusually, moisture dimmed his eyes.

He rose awkwardly from the deep chair, the sciatica knifing as he did.

He moved to the window, looking across the gabled rooftops of the French Quarter - the Vieux Carre as people called it nowadays, reverting to the older name - toward Jackson Square and the cathedral spires, glinting as sunlight touched them. Beyond was the swirling, muddy Mississippi and, in midstream, a line of moored ships awaiting their turn at busy wharves.

It was a sign of the times, he thought. Since the eighteenth century New Orleans had swung like a pendulum between riches and poverty. Steamships, railways, cotton, slavery, emancipation, canals, wars, tourists . . . all at intervals had delivered quotas of wealth and disaster. Now the pendulum had brought prosperity - though not, it seemed, to the St. Gregory Hotel.

But did it really matter - at least to himself? Was the hotel worth fighting for? Why not give up, sell out - as he could, this week - and let time and change engulf them both? Curtis O'Keefe would make a fair deal. The O'Keefe chain had that kind of reputation, and Trent himself could emerge from it well. After paying the outstanding mortgage, and taking care of minor stockholders, there would be ample money left on which he could live, at whatever standard he chose, for the remainder of his life.

Surrender: perhaps that was the answer. Surrender to changing times.

After all, what was a hotel except so much brick and mortar? He had tried to make it more, but in the end he had faded. Let it go!

And yet ... if he did, what else was left?

Nothing. For himself there would be nothing left, not even the ghosts that walked this floor. He waited, wondering, his eyes encompassing the city spread before him. It too had seen change, had been French, Spanish, and American, yet had somehow survived as itself - uniquely individual in an era of conformity.

No! He would not sell out. Not yet. While there was still hope, he would hold on. There were still four days in which to raise the mortgage money somehow, and beyond that the present losses were a temporary thing. Soon the tide would turn, leaving the St. Gregory solvent and independent.

Matching movement to his resolution, he walked stifily across the room to an opposite window. His eyes caught the gleam of an airplane high to the north. It was a jet, losing height and preparing to land at Moisant Airport. He wondered if Curtis O'Keefe was aboard.

3

When Christine Francis located him shortly after 9:30 a.m., Sam Jakubiec, the stocky, balding credit manager, was standing at the rear of Reception, making his daily check of the ledger account of every guest in the hotel. As usual, Jakubiec was working with the quick, nervous haste which sometimes deceived people into believing he was less than thorough. Actually there was almost nothing that the credit chief's shrewd, encyclopedic mind missed, a fact which in the past had saved the hotel thousands of dollars in bad debts.

His fingers were dancing now over the machine accounting cards - one for each guest and room - as he peered at names through his thick-lensed spectacles, glancing at the itemized accounts and, once in a while, making a notation on a pad beside him. Without stopping, he glanced up briefly, then down again. "I'll be just a few minutes, Miss Francis."

"I can wait. Anything interesting this morning?"

Without pausing, Jakubiec nodded. "A few things."

"For instance?"

He made a new note on the pad. "Room 512, H. Baker. Check-in 8: 10 a.m.. At 8:20 a bottle of liquor ordered and charged."

"Maybe he likes to brush his teeth with it."

His head down, Jakubiec nodded. "Maybe."

But it was more likely, Christine knew, that H. Baker in 512 was a deadbeat. Automatically the guest who ordered a bottle of liquor a few minutes after arrival aroused the credit manager's suspicion. Most new arrivals who wanted a drink quickly - after a journey or a tiring day - ordered a mixed drink from the bar. The immediate bottle orderer was often starting on a drunk, and might not intend to pay, or couldn't.

She knew, too, what would follow next. Jakubiec would ask one of the floor maids to enter 512 on a pretext and make a check of the guest and his luggage. Maids knew what to look for: reasonable luggage and good clothes, and if the guest had these the credit manager would probably do nothing more, aside from keeping an eye on the account. Sometimes solid, respectable citizens rented a hotel room for the purpose of getting drunk and, providing they could pay and bothered no one else, that was their own business.