Hotel

"It was a hotel detective. He insists on coming here in an hour. "

"Then he knows! My God - he knows!"

"Obviously he's aware of something. He didn't say what."

Unexpectedly the Duke of Croydon straightened, his head moving upright and shoulders squaring. His hands became steadier, his mouth a firmer line. It was the same chameleon change he had exhibited the night before.

He said quietly, "It might go better, even now, if I went . .

if I admitted . . ."

"No! Absolutely and positively no!" His wife's eyes flashed. "Understand one thing. Nothing you can possibly do could improve the situation in the slightest." There was a silence between them, then the Duchess said broodingly, "We shall do nothing. We will wait for this man to come, then discover what he knows and intends."

Momentarily it seemed as if the Duke would argue. Then, changing his mind, he nodded dully. Tightening the scarlet robe around him, he padded out to the adjoining room. A few minutes later he returned carrying two glasses of neat Scotch. As he offered one to his wife she protested, "You know it's much too early . . ."

"Never mind that. You need it." With a solicitousness she was unused to, he pressed the glass into her hand.

Surprised, yet yielding, she held the glass and drained it. The undiluted liquor burned, snatching away her breath, but a moment later flooded her with welcome warmth.

9

"Whatever it is can't be all that bad."

At her desk in the outer office of the managing director's suite, Christine Francis had been frowning as she read a letter in her hand. Now she looked up to see Peter McDermott's cheerful rugged face peering around the doorway.

Brightening, she answered, "It's another sling and arrow. But with so many already, what's one more?"

"I like that thought." Peter eased his big frame around the door.

Christine regarded him appraisingly. "You appear remarkably awake, considering how little sleep you must have had."

He grinned. "I had an early morning session with your boss. It was like a cold shower. Is he down yet?"

She shook her head, then glanced at the letter she had been reading.

"When he comes he won't like this."

"Is it secret?"

"Not really. You were involved, I think."

Peter seated himself in a leather chair facing the desk.

"You remember a month ago," Christine said, "- the man who was walking on Carondelet Street when a bottle dropped from above. His head was cut quite badly."

Peter nodded. "Damn shame! The bottle came from one of our rooms, no question of that. But we couldn't find the guest who did it."

"What sort of a man was he - the one who got hit?"

"Nice little guy, as I recall. I talked to him after, and we paid his hospital bill. Our lawyers wrote a letter making clear it was a goodwill gesture, though, and not admitting liability."

"The goodwill didn't work. He's suing the hotel for ten thousand dollars.

He charges shock, bodily harm, loss of earnings and says we were negligent."

Peter said flatly, "He won't collect. I guess in a way it's unfair. But he hasn't a chance."

"How can you be so sure?"

"Because there's a raft of cases where the same kind of thing has happened. It gives defending lawyers all kinds of precedents they can quote in court."

"Is that enough to affect a decision?"

"Usually," he assured her. "Over the years the law's been pretty consistent. For example, there was a classic case in Pittsburgh - at the William Penn. A man was hit by a bottle which was thrown from a guest room and went through the roof of his car. He sued the hotel."

"And he didn't win?"

"No. He lost his case in a lower court, then appealed to the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania. They turned him down."

"Why?"

"The court said that a hotel - any hotel - is not responsible for the acts of its guests. The only exception might be if someone in authority - say, the hotel manager - knew in advance what was going to happen but made no attempt to prevent it." Peter went on, frowning at the effort of memory.

"There was another case - in Kansas City, I think. Some conventioneers dropped laundry bags filled with water from their rooms. When the bags burst, people on the sidewalk scrambled to get out of the way and one was pushed under a moving car. He was badly injured. After-ward he sued the hotel, but couldn't collect either. There are quite a few other judgments - all the same way.",

Christine asked curiously, "How do you know all this?'

"Among other things, I studied hotel law at Cornell."

"Well, I think it sounds horribly unjust."

"It's hard on anyone who gets hit, but fair to the hotel. What ought to happen, of course, is that the people who do these things should be held responsible. Trouble is, with so many rooms facing a street it's next to impossible to discover who they are. So mostly they get away with it."

Christine had been listening intently, an elbow planted on her desk, chin cupped lightly in the palm of one hand. Sunlight, slanting through half-opened venetian blinds, touched her red hair, highlighting it. At the moment a fine of puzzlement creased her forehead and Peter found himself wanting to reach out and erase it gently.

"Let me get this straight," she said. "Are you saying that a hotel isn't responsible legally for anything its guests may do - even to other guests?"

"In the way we've been talking about, it certainly isn't. The law's quite clear on that and has been for a long time. A lot of our law, in fact, goes back to the English beginning with the fourteenth century."

"Tell me."

"I'll give you the shortened version. It starts when the English inns had one great hall, warmed and lighted by a fire, and everyone slept there.

While they slept it was the landlord's business to protect his guests from thieves uad murderers."

"That sounds reasonable."

"It was. And the same thing was expected of the landlord when smaller chambers began to be used, because even these were always shared - or could be - by strangers."

"When you think about it," Christine mused, "it wasn't much of an age for privacy."

"That came later when there were individual rooms, and guests had keys.

After that the law looked at things differently. The innkeeper was obliged to protect his guests from being broken in upon. But beyond that he had no responsibility, either for what happened to them in their rooms or what they did."

"So the key made the difference."

"It still does," Peter said. "On that, the law hasn't changed. When we give a guest a key it's a legal symbol, just as it was in an English inn.

It means the hotel can no longer use the room, or quarter anyone else there. On the other hand, the hotel isn't responsible for the guest once he's closed the door behind him." He pointed to the letter which Christine had put down. "That's why our friend from outside would have to find whoever dropped the bottle on him. Otherwise he's out of luck."

"I didn't know you were so encyclopedic."

"I didn't mean to sound that way," Peter said. "I imagine W.T. knows the law well enough, though if he wants a list of cases I have one somewhere."

"He'll probably be grateful. I'll clip a note on the letter." Her eyes met Peter's directly. "You like all this, don't you? Running a hotel; the other things that go with it."

He answered frankly, "Yes, I do. Though I'd like it more if we could rearrange a few things here. Maybe if we'd done it earlier we wouldn't be needing Curtis O'Keefe now. By the way, I suppose you know he's arrived."