his father for doing what he undoubtedly had. It was their fault- – the lawyers – for holding out hope to him. And they'd darned well better lay off if they knew what was good for them. He'd write 'em a letter that would curl their hair. Or, no, he'd pay them a little visit. He wanted to tell those birds off personally.
Opening the door of the service landing, he entered the lobby, his anger dying and with it the sense of frustration. He paused at the end of the long marble desk untended now except by sour old Bascom – and looked down at the open pages of the room-call ledger.
She was still here, he saw. A bellboy had taken cigarettes and a magazine to her room fifteen minutes ago. Up at 11:45, down at 11.50; just long enough to complete the errand. Not long enough for anything… anything else. And, yes, that was the only boy to go to her room today.
Dusty didn't know why he felt good about it, because of course – she couldn't mean anything to him; he was shying clear of that baby. But somehow he did feel good. Here was proof positive that she wasn't a hooker or spotter, proof that he was the only guy in the place that she had any interest in.
A cab honked at the side door. Grinning unconsciously, Dusty hurried across the lobby and down the steps.
THREE
As modern hotels go, the Manton was not a large place. Its letterheads boasted of 'four hundred rooms, four hundred baths.' Actually, there were three hundred and sixty-two, and since any number of these were linked together into suites, the baths totaled far less than three hundred and sixty-two.
The Manton – or rather the company which operated it – had learned the advantage in renting two rooms to one person rather than two rooms to two persons. It had learned the vast difference in profit between renting two rooms at five dollars and one at ten dollars. It had learned that the man who pays five dollars for a room is apt to be much more demanding than the one who pays ten.
The Manton was seldom rented to capacity. It did not have to be. With only two-thirds of its rooms rented, its income was equal to that of a larger, fully-occupied – and less 'exclusive' – hotel. Also, since the number of a hotel's employees is inevitably geared to the number of its guests, its overhead was much lower.
Bascom was the sole front-office employee after midnight, performing – with Dusty's assistance – the duties of room clerk, key clerk, cashier and night auditor. There was no night house detective. The coffee shop and grille room closed at one o'clock. By two, the lobby porters had completed their mopping and scrubbing and were on their way homeward. At two, the late-shift elevator operator left, and Dusty took care of his infrequent calls from then on.
It was a little before two when Tug Trowbridge came in. While his two companions – you seldom saw him alone – sauntered on a few steps, Tug stopped at the cashier's cage where Dusty and Bascom were working. He was a big,-almost perpetually smiling man, with a shock of red hair and a hearty, booming voice. Now, as Dusty grinned obediently and Bascom smirked nervously, he triggered an enormous forefinger at the clerk.
'Okay, Dusty boy' – he scowled with false menace- 'I've got him covered. Grab the keys and clean out those safety-deposit boxes.'
Dusty stretched his grin into an appreciative laugh. Tug's joke was an old one, but he was the best tipper in the Manton. 'Can't do it, Mr Trowbridge, remember? It takes two different keys for each box.'
'Now, by God!' Tug slapped his forehead in a gesture of dismay. 'Why can't I ever remember that!'
He guffawed, putting a period to the joke. Then, he dug a small, flat key from his vest and shoved it through the wicket. 'A little service, hey, brother Bascom? Got something that's kind of weighing me down.'
'Yes, sir,', said Bascom obsequiously.
There was a ledger, indexing the depositors in the chilled-steel boxes which formed the rear wall of the cashier's cage. But it was unnecessary to consult this, of course, in the case of a regular like Tug Trowbridge. Bascom took a heavy ring of keys from his cash drawer, and selected one with a certain number – a number, incidentally, which did not correspond to the one on Tug's key. Turning to the rear of the enclosure, he found Tug's box number – and this also was different from that of either of the two keys – and unlocked its two locks. He pulled the box out of its niche, and set it in the window in front of Trowbridge.
Dusty averted his eyes, tactfully, but not before he had got a glimpse of the sheaf of bills which Tug casually tossed into the box. It was almost an inch thick, wrapped around at the ends with transparent tape. There was a thousand-dollar bill on top.
Bascom put the box back into place, and carefully relocked it. He returned Tug's key, dropping the others back into the cash drawer.
'Well, Dusty' – Trowbridge gave the bellboy a wink- 'I guess you're right. No use knocking over Bascom here unless we could get a hold of the other keys.'
'No, sir,' Dusty smiled.
'And how we going to do that, hey? How we going to know who's got keys and whether they got anything worth getting?'
'That's right,' said Dusty.
Bascom was trying to smile, but the effort was not very successful. Tug winked at Dusty.
'Looks like we're making our pal a little nervous,' he said. 'Maybe we better lay off before he calls the cops on us.'
'Oh, no,' Bascom protested. He had about as much sense of humor, in Dusty's opinion, as one of the lobby sand-jars. 'It's just that when a man's alone here at night – practically alone all night long – and he's responsible for all this-'
'Sure,' Trowbridge nodded good-humoredly. 'Jokes about holdups aren't very funny.'
'As a matter of fact,' Bascom continued seriously, 'I don't believe there's ever been a successful hold-up of a major hotel. You see-'
'No kidding,' said Trowbridge, his voice faintly sarcastic. 'Well, thanks for letting me know.'
'Oh, I didn't mean that-'
'Sure, sure. I know.' Trowbridge laughed again, but not too jovially. 'Come up to the suite after a while, huh, Dusty? Make it about a half hour. Got some laundry I want you to pick up.'
'Yes, sir,' said Dusty.
Trowbridge rejoined his two companions. Bascom watched them as they proceeded on down the lobby to the bank of elevators beneath the mezzanine. There was a drawn look about his prim humorless face. He was breathing a little heavily, his thin pinched nostrils flaring with annoyance.
Dusty studied him covertly, grinning to himself. Bascom had better watch his step. Tug Trowbridge definitely wasn't a guy you'd want to get down on you.
Back in prohibition days, Tug had headed a statewide bootleg syndicate. His well-earned reputation for toughness was such as to make even the Capones shy away from him. During the war – though he had never been convicted – he had been the brains, and no small part of the muscle, of a group of black-market mobsters, men who specialized in the daylight hijacking of bonded whiskey trucks. At various times in his career, he had been involved – reputedly – in the loan-shark and slot-machine rackets.
These illegal and often, deadly activities, or, more properly, these alleged activities, were now years behind him. His present and obviously profitable enterprises were confined to a juke-box company and a stevedoring firm. Still, and despite his brimming good humor, he obviously was not a man to be trifled with. Dusty knew that from the attitude of the men who accompanied him.
It wasn't likely, of course, that Tug would ever rough up Bascom. He'd be too contemptuous of the clerk, and there was an easier way of showing hi% displeasure.
Tug paid seven hundred and fifty dollars a month rent. His bar and restaurant bills ran at least as much more. Neither he nor his associates ever created a disturbance. He made no special demands on the hotel. In short, he was the Manton's idea of a highly desirable – a 'respectable' – guest; and it would take no more than a word from him to get Bascom discharged.
… Dusty didn't get up to the Trowbridge suite within the half hour suggested. First, he had a hurry-up call for some aspirin from another room. Next, he had to unlock the check room for an early-departing guest, locate a small trunk stored therein and lug it out to the man's car. Then, there was a flurry of elevator traffic, now his responsibility since the operator had gone home.
It was Bascom, however, who was the chief cause of the delay. The clerk had insisted that Dusty give him
