Arthur Hailey - Hotel

The life would be far from unpleasant. And yet there were other, conflicting pressures affecting the choice to go or stay.

"I haven't thought about it much," he lied. "Maybe I'd better."

Warren Trent reflected: all things, large and small, were changing, most of them abruptly. In his mind he had not the least doubt that Royce would leave him soon, just as control of the St. Gregory had finally eluded him. His sense of aloneness, and now of exclusion from the mainstream of events, was probably typical of people who had lived too long.

He informed Royce, "You can go, Aloysius. I'd like to be alone for a while."

In a few minutes, he decided, he would call Curtis O'Keefe and officially surrender.

5

Time magazine, whose editors recognized a newsy story when they read it in their morning papers, had hopped nimbly onto the St. Gregory civil rights incident. Their local stringer - a staffer on the New Orleans "States-Item" was alerted and told to file everything he could get on local background. Time's Houston bureau chief had been telephoned the previous night, soon after an early edition of the Herald Tribune broke the story in New York, and had flown in on an early flight.

Now both men were closeted with Herbie Chandler, the bell captain, in a cramped, main floor cubbyhole. Loosely known as a press room, it was sparsely furnished with a desk, telephone, and hat stand. The Houston man, as became his status, had the solitary chair.

Chandler, respectfully aware of Time's liberality to those who smoothed its way, was reporting on a reconnaissance from which he had just returned.

"I checked about the dentists' meeting. They're closing it up tighter'n a drum. They've told the head floor waiter no one's to get in except members, not even wives, and they'll have their own people at the door checking names.

Before the meeting starts all the hotel help has to leave and doors'll be locked."

The bureau chief nodded. An eager, crewcut young man named Quaratone, he had already interviewed the dentists' president, Dr. Ingram. The bell captain's report confirmed what he had been told.

"Sure we're having an emergency general meeting," Dr. Ingram had said.

"It was decided by our executive board last night, but it's to be a closed-door deal. If it was my say - so, son, you and anybody else could come in, and welcome. But some of my colleagues see it the other way. They think people'll speak more freely if they know the press isn't there. So I guess you'll have to sit that one out."

Quaratone, with no intention of sitting anything out, had thanked Dr. Ingram politely. With Herbie Chandler already purchased as an ally, Quaratone's immediate idea had been to employ an old ruse and attend the meeting in a borrowed bellboy's uniform. Chandler's latest report showed the need for a change of scheme.

"The room where the meeting will be held," Quaratone queried; "is at a good size convention hall?"

Chandler nodded. "The Dauphine Salon, sir. Seats three hundred. That's about how many they're expecting."

The Time man considered. Any meeting involving three hundred people would obviously cease to be secret the instant it finished. Afterward he could easily mingle with the emerging delegates and, by posing as one of them, learn what happened. That way, though, he would miss most of the minutiae of human interest which Time and its readers thrived on.

"Does the hot-sit saloon have a balcony?"

"Mere's a small one, but they've already thought of it. I checked. There'll be a couple of convention people up there. Also, the p.a. microphones are being disconnected."

"Hell!" the local newspaperman objected. "What's this outfit afraid of - saboteurs?"

Quaratone said, thinking aloud, "Some of them want to speak their piece but avoid getting it on the record. Professional people - on racial issues anyway - don't usually take strong stands. Here they've already got themselves in a box by admitting to a choice between the drastic action of walking out or making a token gesture, just for appearance sake. To that extent I'd say the situation's unique." It was also, he thought, why there might be a better story here than he had supposed at first. More than ever he was determined to find a way of getting into the meeting.

Abruptly, he told Herbie Chandler, "I want a plan of the convention floor and the floor above. Not just a room layout, you understand, but a technical plan showing walls, ducts, ceiling spaces, all the rest. I want it fast because if we're to do any good we've less than an hour."

"I really don't know if there is such a thing, sir. In any case ..."

The bell captain stopped, watching Quaratone who was peeling off a succession of twenty-dollar bills.

The Time man handed five of the bills to Chandler. "Get to somebody in maintenance, engineering or whatever. Use that for now. I'll take care of you later. Meet me back here in half an hour, earlier if possible."

"Yessir!" Chandler's weasel face screwed into an obsequious smile.

Quaratone instructed the New Orleans reporter, "Carry on with the local angles, will you? Statements from city hall, leading citizens; better talk to the N.A.A.C.P. You know the kind of thing."

"I could write it in my sleep."

"Don't. And watch for human interest. Might be an idea if you could catch the mayor in the washroom. Washing his hands while he gave you a statement. Symbolic. Make a good lead."

"I'll try hiding in a toilet." The reporter went off cheerfully, aware that he too would be generously paid for his spare-time work.

Quaratone himself waited in the St. Gregory coffee shop. He ordered iced tea and sipped it absently, his mind on the developing story. It would not be a major one, but providing he could find some refreshing angles, it might rate a column and a half in next week's issue. Which would please him because in recent weeks a dozen or more of his carefully nurtured stories had either been rejected by New York or squeezed out during makeup of the magazine. This was not unusual and writing in a vacuum was a frustration which Time-Life staffers learned to live with. But Quaratone liked to get into print and be noticed where it counted.

He returned to the undersized press room. Within a few minutes Herbie Chandler arrived, shepherding a youngish, sharp-featured man in coveralls. The bell captain introduced him as Ches Ellis, a hotel maintenance worker. The newcomer shook hands diffidently with Quaratone, then, touching a roll of whiteprints under his arm, said uneasily, "I have to get these back."

"What I want won't take long." Quaratone helped Ellis roll out the plans, weighting the edges down. "Now, where's the Dauphine Salon?"

"Right here."

Chandler interjected, "I told him about the meeting, sir. How you want to hear what's happening without being in."

The Time man asked Ellis, "What's in the walls and ceilings?"

"Walls are solid. Tliere's a gap between the ceiling and the next floor above, but if you're thinking of getting in there, it wouldn't work.

You'd fall through the plaster."

"Check," said Quaratone, who had been considering just that. His finger stubbed the plan. "What are these fines?"

"Hot air outlet from the kitchen. Anywhere near that you'd roast."

"And this?"

Ellis stooped, studying the whiteprint. He consulted a second sheet.

"Cold-air duct. Runs through the Dauphine Salon ceiling."

"Are there outlets to the room?"

"Three. Center and each end. You can see them marked."

"How big is the duct?"

The maintenance man considered. "I reckon about three feet square."

Quaratone said decisively, "I'd like you to get me in that duct. I want to get in it, and crawl out so I can hear and see what's going on below."

It took surprisingly little time. Ellis, at first reluctant, was prodded by Chandler into obtaining a second set of coveralls and a tool kit. The Time man changed quickly into coveralls and hoisted the tools. Then nervously, but without incident, Ellis shepherded him to an annex off the convention floor kitchen. The bell captain hovered discreetly out of sight. Quaratone had no idea how much of the hundred dollars Chandler had passed over to Ellishe suspected not all - but it was evidently enough.