All afternoon he was besieged by thirsty guests, horrified at the drying up of their well-loved oasis. He solemnly gave each of them a free drink and a blessing. Few of them came back to bother him.
At nine-thirty he was facing the entire staff, in the dining-room, which had the cool, lifeless smell of second-rate hotel dining-rooms everywhere; of slightly rotted woodwork, and old flour paste behind the wall-paper, and lemon pie and cold tomato soup and butter, and the yellow pasteboard of menus.
'Sit down, ladies and gentlemen--no, not back there, come up to these tables nearest me.'
The white office-staff anxiously took the table nearest Myron; the tables behind were edged with dark faces that looked shy but cheerful. Myron held up his hand, deliberately histrionic, till the rustle of whispering had stopped, and he spoke sharply and loud. He saw Tansy Quill's kind face among the chambermaids, but he put the thought of her from him as he made oration:
'Gentlemen and ladies, all of you know, probably better than I do, that this hotel has been going very badly--bad service, bad food, bad collection, and too much drinking. Something severe must be done. I am the new manager, the head boss, understand me? My orders go, and no one else's, understand? And I'm starting by firing you, all of you, every single person! You're all fired!'
A universal gasp trembled in air, like a sudden breeze rising on a still afternoon. Myron was conscious of Tansy's pitiful face, of the fury of the sleek Jamaican chef, of the horror of the coloured head bartender who, just that morning, had been a revered authority on mint juleps and the confidant of white Wall Street financiers.
'When I've finished, I'll be in my private office--formerly Mr. Barrow's--till midnight. I'll be glad to see any of you, and some of you I may hire back, provided you understand there's a complete new deal! I do not, however, include the following; none of them will be rehired under any circumstances: chef, second, steward, storekeeper, head bartender, housekeeper, bell captain, head waiter, or any of the office help. I don't want to see any of you again--ever!--except that you can come to me and get your money tomorrow morning. That's all. Those that want to talk to me can form in line in front of my office, right away. Good evening!'
The polished chef, who had been such a cultural success that in his few weeks here he had already been elected president of the Drama and Fraternal Insurance League of the village of Tippecanoe, rose to ask suavely, 'Boss, am I permitted to say one word?'
'Yes--just about one!'
'Has it occurred to you that with no cook and a few other lacks, the guests are not going to enjoy this place particularly--are excessively likely to leave?'
'It has, praise the Lord, brother. You're all dismissed!'
He faced them for an uncomfortable minute, and inside he was thoroughly frightened. There were whispers; there were angry faces. He wished that he had summoned a couple of deputy sheriffs, and then he was glad that he had not done anything so silly. He perceived, coldly watching his own hot inner fear, that he was bluffing; that he was depending on his position of authority, like a policeman outstaring a mob who, accustomed to be ruled by symbols and formulae, see before them only the blue uniform and brass buttons and not the scared young rookie inside the brass and blue.
Their eyes shifted from his, and he walked out through them.
When he reached the lobby, he realized that the back of his neck was iron-stiff with anxiety.
Most of the staff, save the leaders whom he had discharged without right of appeal, came humbly enough into his office before midnight, begging for their jobs and assuring him that he always had been the apple of their eyes and their notion of a little white father. He rehired perhaps four out of six. He had a moment of relief from troubled responsibility when Tansy Quill hesitated in.
'Would you . . .' she began.
'You're the one person I wanted to be sure to keep, Tansy--only you're raised to assistant housekeeper. I'm sorry I had to include you when I fired everybody. Otherwise I'd have spoiled the show, you understood. Good girl! Of course I want you.'
He patted her hot hand--the only time he ever touched her, except for shaking hands at parting, when Tippecanoe Lodge closed, the coming April.
Otherwise, his one-man court martial was fairly horrible to him, with the necessity of discharging poor men who needed the job. He wanted to weaken, to retain everybody. But he was part of a machine, as helpless as they, and if he kept on anyone who had been too thoroughly trained in the methods of Fred Barrow, they would all be fired, himself along with them, and possibly Elphinstone would close the place entirely. So he brusquely halted the pleading of timidly smiling man after man, the while he was sickeningly aware that it meant debt and hunger for a family.
Near midnight, when he had almost completed his ordeal--and theirs--a guest shouldered through the line of applicants and, bulking over Myron's desk, demanded, 'Have you had enough of your damn-fool, silly melodrama, Weagle? When are you going to open the bar? I'd suggest right now, if a mere guest has any influence in this crazy hole!'
'It will be open at noon to-morrow, provided this place is a little sobered up by then, Mr. Fanton.'
'And I also hear that you've fired every flunkey in the place. What are we to eat? Florida air?'
'Breakfast will be rather slim, but there will be a complete staff again before dinner. By the way, while you're spreading rumours about my madness, Mr. Fanton, just let the guests know that to-morrow morning I shall lock the room of everybody who owes for more than ten days, and their baggage will be held till they pay. Your own bill, if I remember, has now run for three weeks!'
'By God, I have never in my life . . .'
'"Heard such impertinence from a counter-jumping glorified hotel-clerk"! I know. You wait. You haven't even heard the beginning! And don't tell me that everybody will pay up and leave. That's too good to be true! Good night, Mr. Fanton. I'll have your bill put under your door in the morning.'
It was so done. But Myron did not 'have it put'. There was no bell-boy left to put it. Myron himself made out a new (perhaps the third) copy of Mr. Fanton's bill, and slipped it under the door before he went to bed, at three.
It took a certain amount of resolution for him not to lock his door, that night.
Of course nothing happened.
By the following evening he had an inefficient but astoundingly willing staff at work; he had collected every overdue bill, except four belonging to guests who considered the amount of their debt greater than the value of their sequestered baggage and who blithely walked over to Tippecanoe village to catch a train. Out of the hundred and fifty-two happy guests who had been with them the morning before, Myron had lost sixty-five.
He had expected to lose more. But those who remained seemed slowly to decide that, though Myron meanly expected them to pay for what they had, and though the grave new head bartender did not encourage them to melody and to confidences about sexual experimentation, still, they could get down as many highballs as ever, and on the whole it was agreeable to have better food, cleaner floors, and service that actually bustled up and served.
And Myron, his staff working, was utilizing everything he had painfully learned about cost-accounting and auditing at St. Louis and in his furnished room at New Haven on evenings after work. He slapped his face with cold water to keep sufficiently awake to give attention to dancing figures along dizzy lines. He was checking the books of the former steward, chef, and storekeeper. He was discovering how many hundreds a month they had stolen from the hotel in purchasing materials and selling left-overs. He was devising new systems so that weak mortal flesh would not have a chance to be so careless again. And when the kitchen reports came to his desk, daily, he actually read them, unlike Fred Barrow, who had demanded reports but had felt that to go so far as to look at them would be carrying accuracy to a point of pedantry.