'Oh yes. I notice it about most people. That's an hotel-man's first job. I think the Lord God must in His omnipotent way be a little like the head of a big hotel-chain. Well, if our guests are good and safely dead, I think I'll go back to sleep. Good night, son--you're all right--don't worry one second--you've got Dolph Charian and me behind you.'
'Yes? And doing what?' muttered Myron, as Pye swaggered away.
In five minutes Sheriff Everett Beasy was running upstairs, followed by a deputy, in private life a garageman, and by a Black Thread doctor. Myron turned them over to Dutch Linderbeck and staggered down to the office.
Gritzmeier, the chef, stopped him there. 'Heard about it, Chief. Doesn't matter. Everybody'll forget it in two weeks. Look. I knew you'd be worried, and I've made you a cup of coffee, myself. Come out to the kitchen and drink it. Do you good.'
'Thanks. Terribly good of you, but I couldn't touch a thing.'
'Oh yes, you can, Chief!' Gritzmeier chuckled. 'Here!' From under the shelter of the office desk he whisked a highball. Myron drained it and, 'Yes! That does feel better. Good night, and thanks!'
He wavered, in a trance, across the gardens to his own cottage. He could do no more. Suddenly all strength and patience and desire had gone clean out of him, and he was more dead than that smashed boy sunk in the armchair.
It was a quarter of three, but there were lights in his cottage.
'Effie, poor kid! I wonder what blazing fool woke her up to tell her? She'll be all busted up.'
He heard music. When he swayed into the cottage living-room, Effie May was at the mechanical player-piano, producing the popular ballad, 'Don't you worry, little pet. Hey you kid, I'll get you yet. Life is all a bed of roses, when wise guys like us rub noses.' Leaning against the player-piano, waving a gin fizz, was Ora, grinning laxly while he sang the pretty thing.
'For God's sake stop that abomination!' snapped Myron.
Ora protested, 'What the hell's the matter with you? Have you always got to be glum, even on the opening night of your ole Inn?'
'Opening--and closing. Son of a U.S. Senator killed himself and his mistress.'
'Shot himself?'
'Yes.'
'Good Lord! Good Lord! Why didn't you send over and let me know? Oh, I could murder you for being so thoughtless! Why didn't you let me know, early? I've never seen a man that's just been killed. I could've made a swell short story out of it!'
It was Effie May who was turning on Ora: 'Shut up, will you! Oh, Myron, my poor lamb, with the Inn that you loved so!'
She held him, and his head rested on her bosom. He felt safe again. But in his daze he did not know that it was on Effie May's breast that he had found refuge. He thought that it was the breast of his mother.
He was just nerving himself to go up to bed when a ring sent him weaving to the door.
Benny Rumble, the little press-agent, was on the step, panting, 'They just told me about the tragedy! It's awful! Why, it'll just ruin my reputation to be mixed up with a place where things like that happen! Couldn't you tell everybody that I quit yesterday, before it happened? Oh! What Mrs. Van Gittels will say I can't conceive!'
Myron slept till ten in the morning.
That was late enough for him to learn, when he went across to the Inn, that the Brass Institute had already voted to cut its convention short, that the president of the Institute had fled, and that most of the other guests were going that afternoon.
30
Cdn't you grow oysters, clams, crabs, saltwater fish etc., nr Chi, Detroit, Cleveland, etc. to have fresh for hotels & restaurants in artificial s.w. pools? Possible 3 methods get s.w., (1) have it analyzed, and synthesize on spot, (2) bring actual s.w. out in tank cars or (3) evap s.w. of ocean and add resultant salts to fresh water before it flows into pool? Remem. ask chemist.
The account in the weekly news-magazine, Time, began: 'Sin in Inn.'
'Boniface Myron Weagle strode the floor of the Royal Suite, whisky & soda in hand. "Let's drink a toast to my new hotel, the Black Thread (Conn.) Inn, the best lil ole inn in the world," he indicated. Tycoon B. F. Vince, president & founder of the Brass Institute, price-fixing and high-talk-slinging organization of Yankee pot-manufacturers, answered, "Brother, I'm with you". The six magnates present, and Mine Host Weagle, drank jovially. It was four o'clock on the morning of June 11th, after a successful opening of the Inn. As they swung into "For He's a Jolly Good Fellow," they heard a pistol shot & another. They stopped, aghast. It was merely an incident of conducting a successful roadhouse, however. Nothing had happened save that the motor-boat-racing only son of Former United States Senator Burnside Farragut Colquhoun (pron. Cahoon), celebrated advocate of the Christian virtues, had murdered self & lady, Cinemactress Paxton.
'Denizens of Black Thread Centre, small agricultural centre on the Housatonic River, do not know the name of their own town. They assume that its present designation refers to some imaginary textile mill once producing black mourning stuffs for unfortunate widows of Mexican & Civil Wars. The name should be Black Threat. It was historically a black threat to early Connecticut settlers, when it was an Indian encampment, and apparently it is now a more serious black threat to young motor-racers seeking a refuge for self & lady.'
The tabloid newspapers had little text but many pictures, showing the actual site of the tragedy, with the corpses--as obligingly posed by a male and a female cinema extra, in a room at the Gaiety Hotel on Broadway. They also were able, through the process of combining two pictures, to show the terrace of the Black Thread Inn crowded with chorus-girls in negligible bathing-suits; and they had dozens of views of Myron, Effie May, and Luke together. For days Myron was driving photographers out of the shrubs about his cottage. And it was one of the tabloid papers which gave to the Inn the name of 'Murder Tavern'.
On the noon after the murder, when the bodies had been taken away and Myron had already sent scrubwomen and painters to redecorate Number 97, Sheriff Beasy amiably called upon Myron in his office, and brought Dutch Linderbeck in with him.
'Well, my boy, this whole affair has certainly been tough! Little did we think, when we were having a good lively time with the newspaper boys just last evening, that anything like this would happen! I tell you, my boy, it certainly is a lesson about how little we know what Fate has in store for us! Yessir, it certainly makes a fellow stop and think! But don't you worry one bit, my boy. I'm going to do everything I possibly can, with the reporters and at the inquest and everything, to cover you up, and keep folks from thinking this is a tough joint. Now I never was one to say "I told you so", but don't it beat the dickens how just the other day I was telling you how necessary it is for you to stand in with the authorities? Now this bootlegger I was telling you about, Purvis, his name is, he's a fellow . . .'
'I get your idea, Sheriff! I don't worry about breaking the law in selling booze. It's just that bathtub gin and fine food and good service don't mix.'
'Well, do murder and suicide mix any better?'
'None of that!'
'Oh, I didn't mean to be fresh. But you'll see reason--just can't run a backwoods joint like this without sufficient likker on hand, convenient. I've talked this all over with your hotel dick here, and he agreed with me. How about it, Dutch?'