Abruptly Dodo giggled. As the two men turned their beads involuntarily, she remarked, "Maybe they won't have one. I mean, all those conveyor things, who needs it?"
Curtis O'Keefe glanced at her sharply. There were moments occasionally when he wondered if Dodo were perhaps a little brighter than generally she allowed herself to seem.
At Dodo's reaction Warren Trent had flushed with embarrassment. Now he assured her in his most courtly manner, "I apologize, my dear lady, for an unfortunate choice of words."
"Gee, don't mind me." Dodo seemed surprised. "Anyway, I think this is a swell hotel." She turned her wide and seemingly innocent eyes toward O'Keefe. "Curtie, why'll you have to pull it down?"
He answered testily, "I was merely reviewing a possibility. In any event, Warren, it's time you were out of the hotel business."
Surprisingly, the response was mild compared with the asperity of a few minutes earlier. "Even if I was wishing to be, there are others to consider beside myself. A good many of my old employees rely on me in the same way I've relied on them. You tell me your plan is to replace people with automation. I couldn't walk out realizing that. I owe my staff that much, at least, in return for the loyalty they've given me."
"Do you? Is any hotel staff loyal? Wouldn't all or most of them sell you out this instant if it meant an advantage to themselves?"
"I assure you no. I've ran this house for more than thirty years and in that time loyalty builds. Or possibly you'd had less experience in that direction."
"I've formed some opinions about loyalty." O'Keefe spoke absently.
Mentally he was leafing through the report of Ogden Bailey and the younger assistant Sean Hall which he had read earlier. It was Hall whom he had cautioned against reporting too many details, but one detail which might now prove useful had been included in the written summary. The hotelier concentrated. At length he said, "You've an old employee, havent you, who runs your Pontalba Bar?"
"Yes - Tom Earlshore. He's been working here almost as long as I have myself." In a way, Warren Trent thought, Tom Earlshore epitomized the older St. Gregory employees whom he could not abandon. He himself had hired Earlshore when they were both young men, and nowadays, though the elderly head barman was stooped, and slowing in his work, he was one of those in the hotel whom Warren Trent counted as a personal friend. As one would a friend, he had helped Tom Earlshore too. There had been the time when the Earlshores' baby daughter, born with a deformed hip, had been sent north to Mayo Clinic for successful corrective surgery through arrangements made by Warren Trent. And afterward he had quietly paid the bills, for which Tom Earlshore had long ago declared undying gratitude and devotion. The Earlshore girl was now a married woman with children of her own, but the bond between her father and the hotel operator stiff remained. "If there's one man I'd trust with anything," he told Curtis O'Keefe now, "it's Tom."
"You'd be a fool if you did," O'Keefe said crisply. "I've information that he's bleeding you white."
In the shocked silence O'Keefe recited the facts. There were a multiplicity of ways in which a dishonest bartender could steal from his employer - by pouring short measure to obtain an extra drink or two from each bottle used; by failing to ring every sale into the cash register; by introducing his own privately purchased liquor into the bar, so that an inventory check would show no shortage, but the proceeds - with substantial profit - would be taken by the bartender himself. Tom Earlshore appeared to be using all three methods. As well, according to Sean Hall's informed observations over several weeks, Earlshore's two assistants were in collusion with him. "A high percentage of your bar profit is being skimmed off," O'Keefe declared, "and from the look of things generally, I'd say it's been going on a long time."
Throughout the recital Warren Trent had sat immobile, his face expressionless, though behind it his thoughts were deep and bitter.
Despite his long-standing trust of Tom Earlshore, and the friendship he had believed existed, he had not the least doubt that the information provided was true. He had learned too much of chain hotel espionage methods to believe otherwise, nor would Curtis O'Keefe have made the charge without assurance of his facts. Warren Trent had long ago assumed that O'Keefe undercover men had infiltrated the St. Gregory in advance of their chief's arrival. But what he had not expected was this searing and personal humiliation. Now he said, "You spoke of 'other things generally.' What did it mean?"
"Your supposedly loyal staff is riddled with corruption. There's scarcely a department in which you aren't being robbed and cheated. Naturally, I haven't all the details, but those I have you're welcome to. If you wish I'll have a report prepared."
"Thank you." The words were whispered and barely audible.
