But there were other gadgets less common: A scale with the dial flush with the bathroom floor, for guests anxious about daily increase of weight. An electric door-bolt, controlled by tiny levers beside the bed. A package of cigarettes free in the morning, and fruit brought in every evening when the bed was turned down. A device which Myron had discovered in Switzerland and in which he poetically rejoiced: an automatic electrical arm-clock for morning calls. When he went to bed, the guest plugged in at the desired rising hour, and in the morning the alarm rang until he turned it off. There was thus no argument with the desk as to the time at which the guest had asked to be called, nor did the telephone girls go mad from trying to call forty rooms simultaneously at seven-thirty and eight and eight-thirty.
And by each bed were three buttons, for chambermaid, bell-boy, and room-waiter--though if the guest considered it a patriotic principle to telephone to room-service, he could do so. There was a breakfast kitchen on each floor, and no charge for meals in rooms.
He would have been glad, had he thought about it, that Ora was not with him on his tour. Ora would have remarked that the colours of blankets and of bathroom tiles, the number of ash-trays in a bedroom, and the convenience of Swiss automatic clocks were, judiciously considered, perhaps the most ludicrously unimportant details in the world, at least to one who gave earnest attention to such really important matters as whether, in a Western, it is sweeter to begin with a murder, a rodeo, or the arrival of the grouchy old ranchman's niece at Helenhighwater Forks.
There were yet other rare delights for Myron to gloat upon, and in particular the kitchen, with its stainless steel and surfaces of copper and nickel alloy, its cork floor, its charcoal and electric grills. He was, to his wonder, hungry, and realized that he had been too excited at dinner-time to eat even fresh brook trout. With a visage of solemn beatitude, a look of happy childishness uncommon in so plodding an adult, he sat at the end of a work table, admiring a steam cooker and sucking up soda crackers and milk.
He descended by the back stairs to the basement, stopping to admire the particularly large and numerous fire-extinguishers which he had planted all over the Inn. Huh! How many ghastly times it had happened that hotels had burned down on the very night of their opening! Nothing could happen to his inn! For he had taken pains--he had trained the staff before opening, he had provided all these fire extinguishers, he had proven that, by thoughtfulness and care, a man could make his handiwork perfect!
In the basement he gazed reverently on the oil furnaces, the laundry machinery, the store-rooms, the tile-and-marble barber-shop, the club room with its billiard tables, and then slowly, wearily, most triumphantly happy, he clumped up the front stairs from the basement to the office.
He heard a clamour. He hastened his step and in the entrance-hall he found the night-clerk, and Dutch Linderbeck, the hotel detective, listening to the night watchman, who was shouting, waving his arms. Alarmed guests were coming down the stairs, led by the president of the Brass Institute, in dressing-gown, and a sharp young Bridgeport reporter in top-coat over his pyjamas.
'What is it? What is it?' raged Myron.
'They're not married!' said Linderbeck. 'They're not Mr. and Mrs. Wood of Springfield, as they registered. The fellow is the son of U.S. Senator Colquhoun, and apparently she's Mardie Paxton, that professional alimony hound.'
'But my God, what of it? Why all this damn fool row?'
'Because they're dead! Looks like he shot her, and then killed himself. Anyway, they're dead as Moses. Shall I 'phone the sheriff, Boss, or will you? My managers have always said I did a good job on 'phoning the cops when a couple mess up an hotel room with blood.'
29
Myron fled up the stairs to Room 97, followed by Dutch Linderbeck, a growing push of frightened guests--and fifteen newspaper reporters, charmed that they had been invited to stay the night.
Mardie Paxton, a celebrated habituée of roadhouses, lay on the bed in 97, blood on the breast of her scant silk nightgown. The son of Senator Colquhoun was lurched down in a flowery new armchair by the clean, white, new fireplace, and his right temple was torn away, and blood had slavered on chair and hearth.
'What proof you got they're who you say?' the oldest New York reporter demanded of Dutch Linderbeck.
'Here's letters to both of 'em, from their baggage, and the young fellow's address-book. Look here!'
'God, it's a lulu of a story! Senator Colquhoun is the old gink that was always protecting the domestic hearth against naughty films and books!' exulted the reporter.
Said Myron, impersonally, not very loud, 'Yes, it's a good story for the reporters. A front-page story. And it's the end of my Inn! On the opening night!'
'Say, Weagle, can I use that statement?' shrieked the youngest of the reporters, who a fortnight ago had been covering nothing more journalistic than piles of gents' suitings at closing-hour.
'Oh God!' said the other reporters.
Myron ordered, 'Will all of you except the staff and the newspaper-men kindly return to your rooms? There is nothing you can do.'
The blanket-shawled guests glared at him, but he pushed them back, closed the door.
'You stand here at the door and keep everybody out,' he ordered Dutch Linderbeck.
'Yes, but . . .'
'Yes but hell! Do what I tell you! I always did hate yes-butters!' stormed Myron. 'Everybody out of this corridor, right now! And you reporters, I'll have the two 'phone girls out of bed immediately, and you can all put in your calls to your papers from your own rooms.'
'I want to see the letters these two bozos had in their stuff,' said the oldest reporter.
'When the sheriff gets here, he'll decide whether you can or not. I certainly won't let you.'
'You look here, Weagle! If you want us to give you a break . . .'
'The only break you boys could give me would be to revoke this Act of God, and I don't believe even the press could do that! Beat it, everybody! Out of this hall! Beat it!'
He stood at the end of the corridor, looking toward the stairs down to the office. He ought, he felt, to be doing something. All his life, whenever he had been in distress, he had been able to bounce to his stove or silver-closet or desk and importantly do things. And now he could see nothing to do, save look from the stairs to Dutch Linderbeck, on guard, and back again.
Dick Pye was marching up stairs, leisurely, completely dressed--except that he had forgotten his trousers. He yawned, 'Well, Weagle, I hear we've had bad luck. Glad you were around, to stop any panic.'
'I don't know. I don't think I was so good!'
'What the devil! Don't sound so guilty! You didn't kill 'em--or did you?--not that I care much!'
'No, but I wish I had, before they got here and registered. Why is it that almost every swine who wants to commit suicide gets so much pleasure out of ruining the business of some innocent hotel-man? Swine!' Then Myron laughed. 'I thought I'd open this place right. I'm a good deal of a fool, Pye. Ever notice it?'