It is true that his figures did not agree with those kept through the years by Myron. Always, Myron had been willing to let 'the kid' have money when in need, but he had never been able to keep himself from setting down the exact sums in his private account book--along with every five cents he had ever spent for an apple. But Ora did not know this, and Myron did not tell him, even when Ora chuckled (in the presence of Myron's secretary), 'The joke of it is that you've always thought I was too much of a wild, dreamy poet to be accurate, and you've always hammered me for it, whereas, you can see, the fact is that I'm much more considerate and exact than you are.'
Indeed, as he said, Ora was considerate. For he waited till the secretary was gone before he added, 'You're an interesting case, Myron. Take this matter of your going haywire at the Inn, and getting sore at others because you failed! You spent half your life doing things for people out of weak good-nature, and now, apparently, you're going to spend the next half, out of weak resentment, kicking about their doing you!'
Myron did not answer. He did not, though he longed to, shake Ora as he had shaken Dick Pye. He was tired of quarrelling.
'Am I losing all my grip?' he whispered to himself. 'I'm cranky to guests. I can't get myself to care when some fool woman complains her chambermaid has been rude. I'm suspicious of Fiesel, who's a decent enough old codger, after all. I'm getting lazy, I guess.'
He was kept from too much fretting by his routine duties--and actually, he rarely was 'cranky to guests'. The routine duties were about all he could find, so frozen was the Fiesel Hotel in Fiesel's cold breath. The principal changes he could make were to add his old sergeants, Gritzmeier and Clark Cleaver, to the staff.
Even in these days of 1929, the height of prosperity (yet obviously only the beginning of a new and unexampled prosperity, now that America had secured the financial leadership of the world) Gritzmeier and Cleaver were going badly, and were glad to come to the Fiesel for no great salaries. They were of doubtful repute, for Mr. Richard Pye had let it be known that they had 'let him down' at the Black Thread Inn. Myron felt responsible for them and, in interminable nagging correspondence, made Fiesel pay them quite a percentage of what they were worth.
And Myron went on, day after day, with the details of middle-class hotel-keeping which he had thought to give up forever. Yet if by some miracle Fiesel should decide to stay in California permanently, he could make something a little different and interesting of the hotel.
He was just beginning a day's work with plans for a children's playroom, to tempt parents who come to New York for shopping, when he was conscious of someone standing by his desk, waiting, and looked up to see the goat-like smile of Henry Fiesel.
'Why, I thought you were . . .'
Myron got no farther. Fiesel tittered, 'Yeh, I been here since six this morning. I came in by the delivery entrance. They bought some new ash-cans when they could of repaired the old ones. I caught a chambermaid eating candy in a linen-room. That new clerk, Cleaver, was two minutes late. I checked up on some of the stock in the storeroom. They was two boxes of corn flakes shorter than their figures. There's too many floor-brushes in the broom-closet on the twelfth floor. There's six guests that--I know their financial standing--they're paying four dollars for rooms that you could get five dollars from 'em, and what I always say is, hotel-keeping ain't a charity.'
He giggled, laid his umbrella on Myron's desk, sat down, carefully pulling up his faded old blue serge trousers, fondly stroked a small wart on his chin, and rattled on: 'This high-toned new Dutch chef of yours, Gritzmeier, ain't so good. He's only had hash on the breakfast bill of fare twice in ten days, and what I always tell my boys is, Hash is what pays the taxes. You been advertising too much in charity programs. The hotel detective smokes Havana cigars--where'd he get the money, that's what I want to know. There's a busted soap-dish in the bathroom in 676. There's a cobweb in elevator seven. That Dutch chef of yours uses too many mushrooms in a mushroom omelet. The Do Not Disturb card in 892 has fly specks on it. Your tie ain't quite straight. Way I figger it, it's details that make good hotel-keeping. Probably you up-and-coming young swells never think of it that way, but it's attention to details that does it, and that means work and hours and not going out dancing or looking at theatre shows every night. Good morning. I'll be seeing you.'
He was gone, and Myron's chief concern was that he had not shown resentment of this snooping driveller, as he would have done in days when he was more sure of himself.
Never, from that morning, did he quite feel himself manager of the Fiesel. The old man--he lived now in an apartment in Jackson Heights--came in anywhere from once a week to thrice a day, any time from four in the morning to one in the morning, and he never failed to find flaws, no difficult feat of scholarship in a hotel of nine hundred and fifty rooms which he deliberately kept a little understaffed. He used his criticisms as a water-dripping torture to keep Myron nervous and busy--only he, who always and most tediously boasted of possessing a 'kind of gift for seeing right through folks' did not see that this was not the best method of getting the most labour out of the particular sort of wage-slave that Myron was.
Myron did not want to resign again, not so soon. But he thought about it enough.
Then the catastrophe.
Fiesel dashed into Myron's office, shrieking, 'You hired this Gritzmeier!'
'Yes. Why?'
'Yes! Why! That's what I want to know--why! Max Sussman, of Sussman Brothers, the wholesale butchers, has been to see me. God! I've known Max for years. He's an honest man. If he gives a commission to a steward or a chef, it's only what's customary. And your Gritzmeier has been trying to hold him up for five per cent over the right amount of graft! I heard it this morning, and I've been looking around. Gritzmeier and your other man, Cleaver, have been stealing from me by juggling their food accounts. Cleaver worked the cheque in the front office. And them two have padded the kitchen pay-roll and drew down money for help that don't exist! Well, Mr. Smarty Manager, you and your pets, what do you propose to do about it?'
Myron knew that Fiesel was not the kind of fool to have his accusation wrong.
'What do their stealings come to?' he said heavily.
'I figure about thirty-seven hundred dollars, so far.'
'I'll fire them, of course. And I'll see the money is paid back.'
'Oh, ain't that sweet of you! But that ain't enough, Mr. Manager! I'll not rest till I see those two dirty crooks behind the bars! Stealing from me!'
'Then you'll never get the money back. I didn't know they were stealing. I don't know what they've done with the swag. But I do know they're both clean broke. It isn't worth all that money to you to see them in jail. Three--thousand--seven--hundred--dollars!'
'Well, yes, mebbe something to what you say. But no man ever put nothing over on Henry Fiesel! No, sir, I . . .'
'I understand just how you feel, sir, but three thousand, seven hundred dollars!'
'Well. All right. I'll be merciful. I'll be merciful if you guarantee the return of the money, personal.'
'I do.'
'All right. Have 'em in, and I'll give 'em such a talking to . . .' Fiesel rubbed his dry hands together so that they rasped.
'No, I've got to see them alone. Otherwise I can't be responsible. Who's got the exact dope, if I need it?'
'The hotel dick and that public stenographer on the mezzanine.'
'All right. Let me talk to them.' For the first time his tone said distinctly to Fiesel, 'Now get out.'