PAGE 2
The Hooker-Up-The-Back
by
It was six thirty p.m. on Monday of Automobile Show Week when Sadie Corn came on watch. She came on with a lively, well-developed case of neuralgia over her right eye and extending down into her back teeth. With its usual spitefulness the attack had chosen to make its appearance during her long watch. It never selected her short-watch days, when she was on duty only from eleven a.m. until six-thirty p.m.
Now with a peppermint bottle held close to alternately sniffing nostrils Sadie Corn was running her eye over the complex report sheet of the floor clerk who had just gone off watch. The report was even more detailed and lengthy than usual. Automobile Show Week meant that the always prosperous Magnifique was filled to the eaves and turning them away. It meant twice the usual number of inside telephone calls anent rooms too hot, rooms too cold, radiators hammering, radiators hissing, windows that refused to open, windows that refused to shut, packages undelivered, hot water not forthcoming. As the human buffers between guests and hotel management, it was the duty of Sadie Corn and her diplomatic squad to pacify the peevish, to smooth the path of the paying.
Down the hall strolled Donahue, the house detective–Donahue the leisurely. Donahue the keen-eyed, Donahue the guileless–looking in his evening clothes for all the world like a prosperous diner-out. He smiled benignly upon Sadie Corn, and Sadie Corn had the bravery to smile back in spite of her neuralgia, knowing well that men have no sympathy with that anguishing ailment and no understanding of it.
“Everything serene, Miss Corn?” inquired Donahue.
“Everything’s serene,” said Sadie Corn. “Though Two-thirty-three telephoned a minute ago to say that if the valet didn’t bring his pants from the presser in the next two seconds he’d come down the hall as he is and get ’em. Perhaps you’d better stay round.”
Donahue chuckled and passed on. Half way down the hall he retraced his steps, and stopped again before Sadie Corn’s busy desk. He balanced a moment thoughtfully from toe to heel, his chin lifted inquiringly: “Keep your eye on Two-eighteen and Two-twenty-three this morning?”
“Like a lynx!” answered Sadie.
“Anything?”
“Not a thing. I guess they just scraped acquaintance in the Alley after dinner, like they sometimes do. A man with eyelashes like his always speaks to any woman alone who isn’t pockmarked and toothless. Two minutes after he’s met a girl his voice takes on the ‘cello note. I know his kind. Why, say, he even tried waving those eyelashes of his at me first time he turned in his key; and goodness knows I’m so homely that pretty soon I’ll be ripe for bachelor floor thirteen. You know as well as I that to qualify for that job a floor clerk’s got to look like a gargoyle.”
“Maybe they’re all right,” said Donahue thoughtfully. “If it’s just a flirtation, why–anyway, watch ’em this evening. The day watch listened in and says they’ve made some date for to-night.”
He was off down the hall again with his light, quick step that still had the appearance of leisureliness.
The telephone at Sadie’s right buzzed warningly. Sadie picked up the receiver and plunged into the busiest half hour of the evening. From that moment until seven o’clock her nimble fingers and eyes and brain and tongue directed the steps of her little world. She held the telephone receiver at one ear and listened to the demands of incoming and outgoing guests with the other. She jotted down reports, dealt out mail and room-keys, kept her neuralgic eye on stairs and elevators and halls, her sound orb on tube and pantry signals, while through and between and above all she guided the stream of humanity that trickled past her desk–bellhops, Polish chambermaids, messenger boys, guests, waiters, parlour maids.
Just before seven there disembarked at floor two out of the cream-and-gold elevator one of those visions that have helped to make Fifth Avenue a street of the worst-dressed women in the world. The vision was Two-eighteen, and her clothes were of the kind that prepared you for the shock that you got when you looked at her face. Plume met fur, and fur met silk, and silk met lace, and lace met gold–and the whole met and ran into a riot of colour, and perfume–and little jangling, swishing sounds. Just by glancing at Two-eighteen’s feet in their inadequate openwork silk and soft kid you knew that Two-eighteen’s lips would be carmined.