“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] ”

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.”

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.