Arthur Hailey - Hotel

"Thank you." The words were whispered and barely audible.

"You've too many fat people working for you. It was the first thing I noticed when I arrived. I've always found it a warning sign. Their bellies are full of hotel food, and here they've battened on you every other way."

There was a stillness in the small, intimate dining room, broken only by the subdued ticking of a Dutch canopy clock upon the wall. At last, slowly and with a trace of weariness, Warren Trent announced, "What you have told me may make a difference to my own position."

"I thought it might." Curtis O'Keefe seemed about to rub his hands together, then restrained himself. "In any case, now we've reached that point I'd like to have you consider a proposal."

Warren Trent said drily, "I imagined you'd get to it."

"It's a fair proposition, particularly in the circumstances. Incidentally, I should tell you that I'm familiar with your current financial picture."

"I'd have been surprised if you were not."

"Let me summarize: Your personal holdings in this hotel amount to fifty-one per cent of all shares, giving you control."

"Correct."

"You refinanced the hotel in 1939 a four-million-dollar mortgage. Two million dollars of the loan is still outstanding and due in its entirety this coming Friday. If you fail to make repayment the mortgagees take over."

"Correct again."

"Four months ago you attempted to renew the mortgage. You were turned down.

You offered the mortgagees better terms which were still rejected. Ever since you've been looking for other financing. You haven't found it. In the short time remaining there is no chance whatever that you will.

Warren Trent growled, "I can't accept that. Plenty of refinancings are arranged at short notice."

"Not this kind. And not with operating deficits as large as yours."

Apart from a tightening of the lips, there was no rejoinder.

"My proposal," Curtis O'Keefe said, "is a purchase price for this hotel of four million dollars. Of this, two millions will be obtained by renewing your present mortgage, which I assure you I shall have no difficulty in arranging."

Warren Trent nodded, sourly aware of the other's complacency.

"The balance will be a million dollars cash, enabling you to pay off your minority stockholders, and one million dollars in O'Keefe Hotels stock - a new issue to be arranged. Additionally, as a personal consideration you will have the privilege of retaining your apartment here for as long as you live, with my assurance that should rebuilding be undertaken we will make other and mutually satisfactory arrangements."

Warren Trent sat motionless, his face neither revealing his thoughts nor his surprise. The terms were better than he had expected. If accepted, they would leave him personally with a million dollars, more or less - no small achievement with which to walk away from a lifetime's work. And yet it would mean walking away; walking away from all he had built and cared about, or at least - he reflected grimly - that he thought he cared about until a moment or two ago.

"I should imagine," O'Keefe said, with an attempt at joviality, "that living here, with no worries, and your man to take care of you, would be moderately endurable."

There seemed no point in explaining that Aloysius Royce would shortly graduate from law school and presumably have other ideas affecting his own future. It was a reminder, though, that life in this eyrie, atop a hotel he no longer controlled, would be a lonely one.

Warren Trent said abruptly, "Suppose I refuse to sell. What are your plans?"

"I shall look for other property and build. Actually, I think you'll have lost your hotel long before that happens. But even if you don't, the competition we'll provide will force you out of business."

The tone was studiedly indifferent, but the mind behind it astute and calculating. The truth was: the O'Keefe Hotel Corporation wanted the St. Gregory very much, and urgently. The lack of an O'Keefe affiliate in New Orleans was like a missing tooth in the company's otherwise solid bite on the traveling public. It had already entailed a costly loss of referral business to and from other cities - the sustaining oxygen of a successful hotel chain. Disquietingly too, competitive chains were exploiting the gap. The Sheraton Charles was long established. Hilton, as well as having its airport inn, was building in the Vieux Carre. Hotel Corporation of America had the Royal Orleans.

Nor were the terms which Curtis O'Keefe had offered Warren Trent other than realistic. The St. Gregory mortgagees had already been sounded out by an O'Keefe emissary and were uncooperative. Their intention, it quickly became evident, was first to obtain control of the hotel and later hold out for a big killing. If the St. Gregory was to be bought reasonably, the crucial moment was now.

"How much time," Warren Trent asked, "are you willing to allow me?"

"I'd prefer your answer at once."

"I'm not prepared to give it."

"Very well." O'Keefe considered. "I've an appointment in Naples, Saturday. I'd like to leave here no later than Thursday night. Suppose we set a deadline of noon Thursday."

"That's less than forty-eight hours!"

"I see no reason to wait longer."

Obstinacy inclined Warren Trent to hold out for more time. Reason reminded him: he would merely advance by a day the Friday deadline he already faced. He conceded, "I suppose if you insist . . ."

"Splendid!" Smiling expansively, O'Keefe pushed back his chair and rose, nodding to Dodo who had been watching Warren Trent with an expression close to sympathy. "It's time for us to go, my dear. Warren, we've enjoyed your hospitality." Waiting another day and a half, he decided, was merely a minor nuisance. After all, there could be no doubt of the eventual result.

At the outer doorway Dodo turned her wide blue eyes upon her host.

"Thanks a lot, Mr. Trent."

He took her hand and bowed over it. "I don't recall when these old rooms have been more graced."

O'Keefe glanced sharply sideways, suspecting the compliment's sincerity, then realized it was genuinely meant. That was another strange thing about Dodo: a rapport she achieved at times, as if instinctively, with the most unlikely people.

In the corridor, her fingers resting lightly on his arm, he felt his own senses quicken.

But before anything else, he reminded himself, he must pray to God, giving appropriate thanks for the way the evening had gone.

14

"There's something downright exciting," Peter McDermott observed, "about a girl fumbling in her handbag for the key to her apartment."

"It's a dual symbol," Christine said, still searching. "The apartment shows woman's independence, but losing the key proves she's still feminine. Here! - I've found it."

"Hang on!" Peter took Christine's shoulders, then kissed her. It was a long kiss and in course of it his arms moved, holding her tightly.

At length, a shade breathlessly, she said, "My rent's paid up. If we are going to do this, it might as well be in private."

Taking the key, Peter opened the apartment door.

Christine put her bag on a side table and subsided into a deep settee.

With relief she eased her feet from the constriction of her patent-leather pumps.

He sat beside her. "Cigarette?"

"Yes, please."

Peter held a match flame for them both.

He had a sense of elation and lightheadedness; an awareness of the here and now. It included a conviction that what was logical between them could happen if he chose to make it.

"This is nice," Christine said. "Just sitting, talking."

He took her hand. "We're not talking."

"Then let's."

"Talking wasn't exactly .."

"I know. But there's a question of where we're going, and if, and why."