Текст книги "Отель / Hotel"

5

“You must have been insane,” the Duchess of Croydon protested after Peter McDermott’s departure, carefully closing the inner door behind her.

“I’m sorry, old girl. Couldn’t hear the fellow. Thought he’d left.”

“You make it sound as if it’s all some sort of game.”

The Duchess went on accusingly, “I was doing the best I could. I even invented a walk that we went for in case anyone saw us come in. And then you announce you left your cigarettes in the car.”

“Only one heard me.”

“He noticed. I was watching his face.” She continued, “We’d be suspected. That’s why I made that trouble with the waiter. It isn’t an alibi but it’s the next best thing. Going gambling tonight was madness; and to take that woman…”

“We have already discussed that,” the Duke said wearily. “Exhaustively. On our way back. Before it happened.” The Duke of Croydon sipped his drink. “Why’d you marry me?”

“I suppose it was mostly that you stood out in our circle as someone who was doing something worthwhile.”

“Washington?” The word was a question.

“We could manage it,” the Duchess said. “If I could keep you sober and in your own bed.”

“Aha!” Her husband laughed. “A cold bed it is. Ever wondered why I married you?” He drank again, as if for courage, “Wanted you in that bed. Fast. Legally.”

“I’m surprised you bothered. With so many others to choose from – before and since.”

“Didn’t want others. Wanted you. Still do. Magnificent. Savage. Passionate.”

“Stop it! Stop it!” Her face was white, her voice high pitched. “I don’t care if the police catch you! I hope they do! I hope you get ten years!”

6

After making the necessary arrangements, Peter McDermott returned to 1439 and asked for Dr. Uxbridge’s permission to transfer the patient to another room on the same floor.

The doctor who had responded to Christine’s emergency call nodded.

Then McDermott turned to Christine, “We’ll let Dr. Aarons arrange nursing care.”

“I’m worried about that. I don’t think he has much money.” When she was concentrating, Peter noticed, Christine’s nose had a charming way of crinkling. He was aware of her closeness and a faint, fragrant perfume.

“Oh well,” he said, “we’ll let the credit department look into it then. Now let’s get Mr. Wells to 1410.” But the doorway, they discovered, was an inch too narrow for the bed.

“Never mind,” Peter said. “There’s a quicker way – if you’re agreeable, Mr. Wells.”

The other smiled, and nodded. Peter bent down, put a blanket around the elderly man’s shoulders and picked him up.

“You’ve strong arms, son,” the little man said.

Peter smiled. Then, as easily, as if his burden were a child[3]3
  as if his burden were a child – словно его ношей был ребёнок


[Закрыть], he strode down the corridor and into the new room.

Fifteen minutes later all was functioning. The oxygen equipment had been successfully transferred, the air conditioning made the air sweeter. The resident physician, Dr. Aarons, had arrived, and accepted Dr. Uxbridge’s offer to drop in the following day. A private duty nurse had been telephoned was on the way. Albert Wells was sleeping gently.

Walking with Peter toward the elevators, Christine said, “I’m glad we let him stay. Some places wouldn’t. All they want is people to check in, check out, and pay the bill.”

“A real hotel is for hospitality if a guest needs it. Unfortunately, too many people in hotel business have forgotten it.”

“You think we’ve forgotten here?”

“You’re damn right we have! A lot of the time, anyway. If I had my way there’d be a good many changes…” He stopped, embarrassed. The St. Gregory was inefficient in many ways. Currently the hotel was facing a financial crisis. “But W.T. isn’t keen on new ideas.”

“That’s no reason for giving up.”

He laughed. “You sound like a woman.”

“I am a woman.”

“I know,” Peter said. “I’ve just begun to notice.”

For most of the time he had known Christine – since his own arrival at the St. Gregory – he had taken her for granted. Recently, though, he had started to notice how attractive she was.

“I didn’t have dinner tonight; too much going on. If you feel like it, how about joining me for a late supper?”

Christine said, “I love late suppers.”

“There’s one more thing I want to check. I sent Herbie Chandler to look into that trouble on the eleventh but I don’t trust him. Will you wait on the main mezzanine?”

His hands were surprisingly gentle for his size. It was an interesting face as well, with a hint of determination, she thought.

“All right,” she agreed. “I’ll wait.”

7

Marsha Preyscott wished she had spent her nineteenth birthday some other way. It had been a mistake to come here. But as always, and rebelliously, she had sought something different, which was what Lyle Dumaire had promised.

She had known that boy for years and dated occasionally. His father was president of one of the city’s banks as well as a close friend of her own father. Without thinking about it, she said yes, when he asked whether she wanted to come with him upstairs to the small, crowded suite 1126-7. There were more people than she expected, and some of the boys were already very drunk. One of the girls had passed out.

Something was happening in the adjoining room, to which the door was closed, though a group of boys, whom Lyle Dumaire had joined – leaving Marsha alone – was there. She heard a question, “What was it like?” but the answer was lost in a shout of laughter. When she realized, or at least suspected, what was happening, disgust made her want to leave.

If her father had come home as he promised, she would not have been here now[4]4
  If her father had come home as he promised, she would not have been here now. – Если бы её отец приехал домой, как и обещал, она бы не была сейчас здесь.


[Закрыть]. Instead, there would have been a birthday celebration at home. But he had not come home. Instead, he had telephoned from Rome. Perhaps, there were some things in Rome, which he wouldn’t tell her about, just as she would never tell him what was happening in room 1126 now.

Youth was a dull time, Marsha often thought, especially when you had to share it with others the same age as yourself. There were moments – and this was one – when she longed for companionship that was more mature. She would not find it though in Lyle Dumaire.

Others were beginning to leave the suite. One of the older boys whom she knew as Stanley Dixon came out from the other room, “… girls said they’re going.”

“Why not somebody from here?” It was Lyle Dumaire’s voice, much less under control than it had been earlier.

“Yeah, but who?”

Marsha ignored them. The suite was almost cleared. If Lyle planned to escort her, Marsha thought, she would turn him down.

Then she heard the outer door close. Stanley Dixon was standing in front of it, his hands behind him. The lock clicked.

“Hey, Marsha,” Lyle Dumaire said. “What’s the big rush?”

Marsha had known Lyle since childhood, but now there was a difference.

“I’m going home.”

“Aw, come on. Have a drink.”

“No, thank you.”

“You’re going to be a good girl, aren’t you?”

“Some of us have had a good time already. It’s made us want more of the same,” said Dixon. The other two, whose names she didn’t know, were grinning.

“I’m not interested in what you want.” Though her voice was firm, she was aware of an underlying note of fear.

“Listen, Marsha,” Lyle blustered. “We know you want to. All girls want to. Eh, fellas?”

They began to move closer.

“If you touch me I shall scream.”

Suddenly, without seeming to move, Dixon was behind her, clapping a big sweaty hand across her mouth, another holding her arms. She struggled, and tried to bite the hand, but without success.

“Listen, Marsha,” Lyle said, “you’re going to get it, so you might as well enjoy it.”

Lyle had the other arm and together they were forcing her toward the adjoining bedroom.

“Somebody grab her feet.” The remaining boy took hold. With a sense of unreality Marsha felt herself being carried through the bedroom doorway.

“Get her things off,” someone said.

There were twin beds in the room. Resisting wildly, Marsha was forced backward onto the nearest. A moment later she lay across it, her head pressed back cruelly. All she could see was the ceiling above.

Dixon was half sitting on the bed, near her head. She felt hands holding her. She attempted to kick but her legs were pinned down. Someone tore her dress.

“I’m first,” Stanley Dixon said. “Somebody take over here.”

Her legs were still held firmly, but Dixon’s hand on her face was moving, another taking its place. It was an opportunity. As the new hand came over, Marsha bit fiercely. She felt her teeth go into flesh, meeting bone.

Inflating her lungs, Marsha screamed. “Help! Please help me!”

Only the last word was cut off by Stanley Dixon’s hand. She heard him snarl, “You fool! You stupid goon!”

“She bit me!”

There was a knock on the outside door.

“Christ! Somebody did hear.”

“What do we do?”

The knocking was repeated.

“I’ll go,” said Dixon. He murmured to one of the others, “Hold her down and this time don’t make any mistake.”

The lock clicked.

“Excuse me, sir. I’m an employee of the hotel. I happened to be passing and heard someone cry out.”

“Well, thanks. But it was only my wife having a nightmare.”

Twisting her body sideways, Marsha freed her mouth. “Help!” she called before she could be stopped.

She heard the new voice say, “I’d like to come in, please.”

“This is a private room. I told you my wife is having a nightmare.”

“I’m sorry, sir; I don’t believe you.”

The hands upon Marsha removed themselves. A young Negro was entering. In his early twenties, he had an intelligent face and was neatly dressed. “Let the young lady go.”

“Take a look, fellas,” Dixon said. “Take a look at who’s giving orders. You asked for it, nigger boy.” His right fist blow would have felled the young Negro, but in a single movement the other moved sideways. In the same instant the Negro’s own left fist landed with a crack at the side of his attacker’s face.

A hand on his cheek, Dixon said, “Let’s get him!”

Assaulted by three, the Negro went down. Marsha heard the thud of blows and also a growing hum of voices in the corridor. The others heard the voices as well and hurried out of the room hastily.

The young Negro was rising from the floor, his face bloody.

Outside, a new, authoritative voice asked. “Where is the disturbance, please?”

“In there.”

The door opened wide and then closed from the inside.

Peter McDermott asked, “What happened?”

Marsha’s body was shivering with sobs. She attempted to stand, but fell back weakly: “Tried… rape…”

McDermott’s looked at the young Negro.

“No! No!” called Marsha. “It wasn’t him! He came to help!”

The young Negro put the handkerchief away from his face, “Why don’t you go ahead, Mr. McDermott, and hit me. You could always say afterward it was a mistake.”

McDermott had a profound dislike of Aloysius Royce who combined the role of personal valet to the hotel owner, Warren Trent, with the study of law at Loyola University, and whom Peter found too arrogant.

“There were four of them. Four nice white young gentlemen. I recognized two of them.”

Peter crossed to the telephone beside the nearer bed.

“Who you calling?”

“The city police.”

There was a smile on the young Negro’s face. “I wouldn’t do it. For one thing, I’d have to be a witness. And no court in Louisiana is gonna take a nigger boy’s word in a white rape case. Not when four young white gentlemen say the nigger boy is lying. Not even if Miss Preyscott supports the nigger boy, which I doubt her pappy’d let her.”

Peter put down the receiver as what Royce had said was true. “Did you say ‘Miss Preyscott’?”

Unhappily, Marsha nodded.

“Miss Preyscott,” Peter said, “did you know the people who were responsible for what happened?”

“Yes.”

“And did you come here with them to this suite?”

Again a whisper. “Yes.”

“It’s up to you, Miss Preyscott, whether you make an official complaint or not. Whatever you decide, the hotel will go along with. But I’m afraid Royce is right about publicity.” He added: “Of course, it’s really something for your father to decide.”

Marsha raised her head, looking directly at Peter for the first time. “My father’s in Rome. Don’t tell him, please, ever.”

Peter was startled to see how much of a child Marsha was, and how very beautiful. “Is there anything I can do now?”

“I don’t know.” She began to cry again.

Uncertainly, Peter took out a white linen handkerchief, which Marsha accepted.

“Thank you.”

“I think you should rest a while.”

“I don’t want to stay here. I couldn’t.”

He nodded understandingly. “In a little while we’ll get you home.”

“No! Not that! Please, isn’t there somewhere else… in the hotel?”

Peter hesitated. “There’s 555, I suppose.” He glanced at Royce.

Room 555 was a small one, which went with the assistant general manager’s job. Peter rarely used it, except to change. It was empty now.

“It’ll be all right,” Marsha said. “As long as someone phones my home. Ask for Anna the housekeeper.”

“I’ll go get the key,” Royce offered.

As the young Negro opened the outer door, voices filtered in, with a barrage of eager questions. McDermott heard Royce’s answers, quietly reassuring, then the voices fade.

Marsha murmured, “You haven’t told me who you are.”

“I’m sorry.” He told her his name and his connection with the hotel.

She was taken to 555 in a service elevator and shown to the bathroom. There were men’s pajamas there prepared for her, in dark blue, and too large. She put them on.

Hands helped her into bed. She was aware of Peter McDermott’s calm voice once more. It was a voice she liked, Marsha thought – and its owner also. “Royce and I are leaving now, Miss Preyscott. The door to this room is self-locking and the key is beside your bed. You won’t be disturbed.”

“Thank you.” Sleepily she asked, “Whose pajamas?”

“They’re mine. I’m sorry they’re so big.”

“No matter… nice…” It was her final thought.

8

It had been a full evening, Peter thought – with its share of unpleasantness – though not exceptional for a big hotel. When the elevator arrived he told the operator, “Lobby, please.” Christine was waiting on the main mezzanine, but his business on the main floor would take only a few minutes.

He noted with impatience that although the elevator doors were closed, they had not yet started down.

“Are you sure the gates are fully closed?”

“Yes, sir, they are. It isn’t that, it’s the connections I think, either here or up top,” the operator explained.

With a jerk the mechanism took hold and the elevator started down.

Peter made a mental note to ask the chief engineer exactly what was wrong.

It was almost half-past-twelve by the lobby clock as he stepped from the elevator. Peter turned right toward Reception, but had gone only a few paces when he was aware of an obese figure approaching him. It was Ogilvie, the chief house officer. As always, he was accompanied by an odor of stale cigar smoke.

“I hear you were looking for me,” Ogilvie said.

Peter felt some of his earlier anger return. “I certainly was. Where were you?”

“Doing my job, Mr. McDermott. I was over at police headquarters reporting some trouble we had here. There was a suitcase stolen from the baggage room today.”

“Police headquarters! Which room was the poker game in?”

“Maybe you should speak to Mr. Trent about it.”

Warren Trent would never take action against Ogilvie, who had been at the St. Gregory as long as the hotel proprietor himself. There were some who said that the fat detective knew where a body or two was buried, and thus had a hold over Warren Trent.

“Well, you’ve missed a couple of emergencies,” Peter said. Perhaps after all, he reflected, it was good that Ogilvie had not been available.

The night clerk whom he had telephoned earlier to ask for a room was at the desk. “Thank you for helping me out with that problem on the fourteenth. We have Mr. Wells in 1410. Dr. Aarons is arranging nursing care, and the chief has brought up oxygen. But I am concerned why Mr. Wells was moved into that other room earlier.”

“I’ll find that out.”

“We’ve had some trouble on the eleventh, too. Do you mind telling me whose name 1126-7 is in?[5]5
  Do you mind telling me whose name 1126-7 is in? – Не подскажете мне, на чьё имя записан номер 1126-7?


[Закрыть]”

The room clerk flipped through his records and produced a card. “Mr. Stanley Dixon. He’s the car dealer’s son. Mr. Dixon senior is often in the hotel.”

“Thank you. Have his bill sent to me tomorrow, and I’ll write a letter. There’ll be a claim for damages.”

“Very well, Mr. McDermott. And as I understand it, the suite is available now.”

“Yes.” With a friendly “good night” to the room clerk he crossed the lobby to an unoccupied desk, used in daytime by one of the assistant managers. He found Mark Preyscott at a Garden District address in a phone book.

The ringing tone continued for some time before a woman’s voice answered sleepily. Identifying himself, he announced, “I have a message for Anna from Miss Preyscott.”

“This is Anna. Is Miss Marsha all right?”

“She’s all right, but she asked me to tell you that she will stay the night at the hotel.”

The housekeeper’s voice said, “Who did you say that was again?”

“Look,” he said, “if you want to check, why don’t you call back? It’s the St. Gregory, and ask for the assistant manager’s desk in the lobby.”

In less than a minute they were reconnected. “It’s all right,” she said, “now I know who it is for sure. We worry about Miss Marsha.”

He decided he would have a talk with Marsha Preyscott tomorrow to find out what happened before the attempted rape occurred.

This time he rode up one floor only, to the main mezzanine.

Christine was waiting in his office.

“Don’t marry a hotel man,” he told her. “There’s never an end to the work.”

“I hadn’t told you, but I’ve a crush on that new sous-chef. The one who looks like Rock Hudson. Do we have more troubles?”

“Other people’s, mostly. I’ll tell you as we go.”

“Where to?”

“Anywhere away from the hotel. We’ve both had enough for one day.”

Christine considered. “We could go to the Quarter. There are plenty of places open. Or if you want to come to my place, I prepare perfect omelets.”

They went to the door where Peter switched off the office lights. “An omelet,” he declared, “is what I really wanted and didn’t know it.”

9

A sleepy parking attendant brought down Christine’s Volkswagen and they climbed in. She reminded him, “You were going to tell me what happened.”

He frowned, bringing his thoughts back to the hotel, then in short sentences told her what he knew about the attempted rape of Marsha Preyscott. Christine listened in silence, heading the little car northeast as Peter talked, ending with the suspicion that Herbie Chandler, the bell captain, had ignored the incident intentionally. “He always knows more than he says.”

“That’s why he’s been around a long time.”

“Being around isn’t the answer to everything.”

In the St. Gregory, a good deal of organization was unwritten, with final judgments depending upon Warren Trent, and made by the hotel owner in his own capricious way. In ordinary circumstances, Peter – a brilliant graduate of Cornell University’s School of Hotel Administration – would have made a decision months ago to seek more satisfying work elsewhere. But circumstances were not ordinary.

At the Waldorf, where he had gone to work after graduation as a junior assistant manager, Peter McDermott had been the bright young man who seemed to hold the future in his hand. At a time when he was supposedly on duty, he was discovered in a bedroom with a woman guest. He might have escaped retribution. Good-looking young men who worked in hotels got used to flirting with lonely women. A warning from the management was usually the highest possible punishment for such relationships. Two factors, however, happened to be against Peter. The fact that it was the woman’s husband, aided by private detectives, who discovered them, and a messy divorce case, which resulted in publicity hotels abhorred. The end result was unofficial blacklisting by the major chain hotels. Only at the St. Gregory, an independent house, had he been able to obtain work.

Moreover, three years before the Waldorf case, Peter McDermott had married impulsively and the marriage, soon after, ended in separation. To an extent, his loneliness had been a cause of the incident in the hotel.

Christine said, “There’s something I think you should know. Curtis O’Keefe is arriving in the morning. “

It was the kind of news that he had feared, yet half expected.

Curtis O’Keefe, head of the world-wide O’Keefe hotel chain, he bought hotels as other men chose ties and handkerchiefs.

Peter asked, “Is it a buying trip?”

“It could be. W.T. doesn’t want it that way. But it may turn out there isn’t any choice.” She was about to add that the last piece of information was confidential, but checked herself. Peter would realize that. “There are problems about refinancing.”

Peter wondered if he had reached the point where a hotel chain, such as O’Keefe, might consider him rehabilitated and worth employing. He doubted it. Eventually it could happen, but not yet.

He decided to worry about new employment when it happened.

“When shall we know for sure?”

“One way or the other by the end of this week.”

“That soon!”

They were headed north on Elysian Fields, when abruptly a flashing white light, waving from side to side, loomed directly ahead. Christine braked and, as the car stopped, a uniformed traffic officer walked forward. Christine lowered her window as the officer came to her side of the car.

“You’ll have to detour. Drive slowly through the other lane, and the officer at the far end will wave you back into this one.”

“What is it?” Peter said.

“Hit and run. Happened earlier tonight.”

Christine asked, “Was anyone killed?”

The policeman nodded. “Little girl of seven.” Responding to their shocked expressions, he told them, “Walking with her mother. The mother’s in the hospital. Whoever was in the car drove right on. Bastards!”

They were silent as Christine drove slowly through the detour and, at the end of it, was waved back into the regular lane. Somewhere in Peter’s mind was a half-thought he could not define. He supposed the incident itself was bothering him, as sudden tragedy always did, but a vague uneasiness kept him preoccupied until, with surprise, he heard Christine say, “We’re almost home.”

“If all else fails,” Peter said cheerfully, “I can go back to bartending.” He was mixing drinks in Christine’s living room to the sound of breaking eggshells from the kitchen adjoining.

“Were you ever one?”

“For a while.” He measured three ounces of rye whiskey, dividing it two ways. “Sometime I’ll tell you about it.”

When he took the drinks to the kitchen, Christine was emptying beaten eggs from a mixing dish into a softly sizzling pan.

“Three minutes more,” she said, “that’s all.”

He gave her the drink and they clinked glasses.

The omelet proved to be everything she had promised – light, fluffy, and seasoned with herbs. “The way omelets should be,” he assured her, “but seldom are.”

“I can boil eggs too.”

“Some other breakfast,” he smiled.

Afterward they returned to the living room and Peter mixed a second drink. It was almost two a.m. Sitting beside her on the sofa, he pointed to the odd-appearing clock. “I get the feeling that thing is staring at me.”

“Perhaps it is,” Christine answered. “It was my father’s. He was a doctor and the clock used to be in his office where patients could see it. It’s the only thing I saved.”

Once before Christine had told him, matter-of-factly, about the airplane accident in Wisconsin. Now he said gently, “After it happened, you must have felt desperately alone.”

She said simply, “I wanted to die. Though you get over that, of course – after a while. That part – wanting to die – took just a week or two.”

“And – after?”

“When I came to New Orleans,” Christine said, “I tried to concentrate on not thinking. For a while I considered going back to university, then decided not. It seemed as if I’d grown away from it all.”

Christine sipped her drink, her expression pensive. “Anyway,” she went on, “one day I saw a sign, which said ‘Secretarial School.’ I thought – that’s it! I’ll learn what I need to, then get a job involving endless hours of work. In the end that’s exactly what happened.”

“Why the St. Gregory?”

“I was staying there. I had since I came from Wisconsin. Then one morning I saw in the classifieds that the managing director of the hotel wanted a personal secretary. It was early, so I thought I’d be first. In those days W.T. arrived at work before everyone else. When he came, I was waiting in the executive suite.”

“He hired you on the spot?”

“Not really. Actually, I don’t believe I ever was hired. It was just that, when W.T. found out why I was there, he called me in and began dictating letters. By the time more applicants arrived I’d been working for hours, and I told them the job was filled. About three days later I left a note on his desk. ‘My name is Christine Francis,’ and I suggested a salary. I got the note back without comment – just initialed, and that’s all there’s ever been.”

“It makes a good bedtime story.” Peter rose from the sofa, stretching his big body. “That clock of yours is staring again. I guess I’d better go.”

“It isn’t fair,” Christine objected. “All we’ve talked about is me.” She found herself wondering what it would be like to be carried in his arms.

“Anyway, there’ll be other times.” He stopped, regarding her directly. “Won’t there?”

As she nodded in answer, he leaned forward, kissing her lightly.

Already in a taxi to his own apartment he decided that whatever, if anything, developed between Christine and himself should happen slowly, with caution on his own part.