A great many people have wondered to themselves, in print, just where
the little black laundry-studs go after they have been yanked from the
shirt. Others pass this by as inconsequential, but are concerned over
the ultimate disposition of all the pencil stubs that are thrown away.
Such futile rumination is all well enough for those who like it. As
for me, give me a big, throbbing question like this: "Who are the
people that one hears being paged in hotels? Are they real people or
are they decoys? And if they are real people, what are they being
paged for?"
Now, there's something vital to figure out. And the best of it is that
it _can_ be figured out by the simple process of following the page to
see whether he ever finds any one.
In order that no expense should be spared, I picked out a hotel with
poor service, which means that it was an expensive hotel. It was so
expensive that all you could hear was the page's voice as he walked
by you; his footfalls made no noise in the extra heavy Bokhara. It was
just a mingling of floating voices, calling for "Mr. Bla-bla, Mr.
Schwer-a-a, Mr. Twa-a-a."
Out of this wealth of experimental material I picked a boy with a
discouraged voice like Wallace Eddinger's, who seemed to be saying
"I'm calling these names--because that's my job--if I wasn't calling
these--I'd be calling out cash totals in an honor system lunchery--but
if any one should ever answer to one of these names--I'd have a poor
spell."
Allowing about fifteen feet distance between us for appearance's sake,
I followed him through the lobby. He had a bunch of slips in his hand
and from these he read the names of the pagees.
"Call for Mr. Kenworthy--Mr. Shriner--Mr. Bodkin--Mr. Blevitch--Mr.
Kenworthy--Mr. Bodkin--Mr. Kenworthy--Mr. Shriner--call for Mr.
Kenworthy--Mr. Blevitch--Mr. Kenworthy."
Mr. Kenworthy seemed to be standing about a 20 per cent better chance
of being located than any of the other contestants. Probably the boy
was of a romantic temperament and liked the name. Sometimes that was
the only name he would call for mile upon mile. It occurred to me that
perhaps Mr. Kenworthy was the only one wanted, and that the other
names were just put in to make it harder, or to give body to the
thing.
[Illustration: "Sometimes that was the only name he would call for
mile upon mile."]
But when we entered the bar the youth shifted his attack. The name of
Kenworthy evidently had begun to cloy. He was fed up on romance and
wanted something substantial, homely, perhaps, but substantial.
So he dropped Kenworthy and called: "Mr. Blevitch. Call for Mr.
Blevitch--Mr. Shriner--Mr. Bodkin--Mr. Blevitch--"
But even this subtle change of tactics failed to net him a customer.
We had gone through the main lobby, along the narrow passage lined
with young men waiting on sofas for young women who would be forty
minutes late, through the grill, and now had crossed the bar, and no
one had raised even an eyebrow. No wonder the boy's voice sounded
discouraged.
As we went through one of the lesser dining-rooms, the dining-room
that seats a lot of heavy men in business suits holding cigarettes,
who lean over their plates the more confidentially to converse with
their blond partners, in this dining-room the plaintive call drew
fire. One of the men in business suits, who was at a table with
another man and two women, lifted his head when he heard the sound of
names being called.
"Boy!" he said, and waved like a traffic officer signaling, "Come!"
Eagerly the page darted forward. Perhaps this was Mr. Kenworthy! Or
better yet, Mr. Blevitch.
[Illustration: "Anything here for Studz?"]
"Anything here for Studz?" said the man in the business suit, when he
was sure that enough people were listening.
"No, sir," sighed the boy. "Mr. Blevitch, Mr. Kenworthy, Mr. Shriner,
Mr. Bodkin?" he suggested, hopefully.
"Naw," replied the man, and turned to his associates with an air of
saying: "Rotten service here--just think of it, no call for me!"
On we went again. The boy was plainly skeptical. He read his lines
without feeling. The management had led him into this; all he could do
was to take it with as good grace as possible.
He slid past the coat-room girl at the exit (no small accomplishment
in itself) and down a corridor, disappearing through a swinging door
at the end. I was in no mood to lose out on the finish after following
so far, and I dashed after him.
The door led into a little alcove and another palpitating door at the
opposite end showed me where he had gone. Setting my jaw for no
particular reason, I pushed my way through.
At first, like the poor olive merchant in the Arabian Nights I was
blinded by the glare of lights and the glitter of glass and silver.
Oh, yes, and by the snowy whiteness of the napery, too. "By the napery
of the neck" wouldn't be a bad line to get off a little later in the
story. I'll try it.
At any rate, it was but the work of a minute for me to realize that I
had entered by a service entrance into the grand dining-room of the
establishment, where, if you are not in evening dress, you are left to
munch bread and butter until you starve to death and are carried out
with your heels dragging, like the uncouth lout that you are. It was,
if I may be allowed the phrase, a galaxy of beauty, with every one
dressed up like the pictures. And I had entered 'way up front, by the
orchestra.
Now, mind you, I am not ashamed of my gray suit. I like it, and my
wife says that I haven't had anything so becoming for a long time. But
in it I didn't check up very strong against the rest of the boys in
the dining-room. As a gray suit it is above reproach. As a garment in
which to appear single-handed through a trapdoor before a dining-room
of well dressed Middle Westerners it was a fizzle from start to
finish. Add to this the items that I had to snatch a brown soft hat
from my head when I found out where I was, which caused me to drop the
three evening papers I had tucked under my arm, and you will see why
my up-stage entrance was the signal for the impressive raising of
several dozen eyebrows, and why the captain approached me just exactly
as one man approaches another when he is going to throw him out.
(Blank space for insertion of "napery of neck" line, if desired.
Choice optional with reader.)
I saw that anything that I might say would be used against me, and
left him to read the papers I had dropped. One only lowers one's self
by having words with a servitor.
Gradually I worked my way back through the swinging doors to the main
corridor and rushed down to the regular entrance of the grand
dining-salon, to wait there until my quarry should emerge. Suppose he
should find all of his consignees in this dining-room! I could not be
in at the death then, and would have to falsify my story to make any
kind of ending at all. And that would never do.
Once in a while I would catch the scent, when, from the humming depths
of the dining-room, I could hear a faint "Call for Mr. Kenworthy"
rising above the click of the oyster shells and the soft crackling of
the "potatoes Julienne" one against another. So I knew that he had not
failed me, and that if I had faith and waited long enough he would
come back.
And, sure enough, come back he did, and without a name lost from his
list. I felt like cheering when I saw his head bobbing through the
mêlée of waiters and 'bus-boys who were busy putting clean plates on
the tables and then taking them off again in eight seconds to make
room for more clean plates. Of all discouraging existences I can
imagine none worse than that of an eternally clean plate. There can be
no sense of accomplishment, no glow of duty done, in simply being
placed before a man and then taken away again. It must be almost as
bad as paging a man who you are sure is not in the hotel.
The futility of the thing had already got on the page's nerves, and in
a savage attempt to wring a little pleasure out of the task he took to
welding the names, grafting a syllable of one to a syllable of
another, such as "Call for Mr. Kenbodkin--Mr. Shrineworthy--Mr.
Blevitcher."
This gave us both amusement for a little while, but your combinations
are limited in a thing like that, and by the time the grill was
reached he was saying the names correctly and with a little more
assurance.
It was in the grill that the happy event took place. Mr. Shriner, the
one of whom we expected least, suddenly turned up at a table alone. He
was a quiet man and not at all worked up over his unexpected honor. He
signaled the boy with one hand and went on taking soup with the other,
and learned, without emotion, that he was wanted on the telephone. He
even made no move to leave his meal to answer the call, and when last
seen he was adding pepper with one hand and taking soup with the
other. I suspect that he was a "plant," or a plain-clothes house
detective, placed there on purpose to deceive me.
We had been to every nook of the hotel by this time, except the
writing-room, and, of course, no one would ever look there for patrons
of the hotel. Seeing that the boy was about to totter, I went up and
spoke to him. He continued to totter, thinking, perhaps, that I was
Mr. Kenworthy, his long-lost beau-ideal. But I spoke kindly to him and
offered him a piece of chocolate almond-bar, and soon, in true
reporter fashion, had wormed his secret from him before he knew what I
was really after.
The thing I wanted to find out was, of course, just what the average
is of replies to one paging trip. So I got around it in this manner:
offering him another piece of chocolate almond-bar, I said, slyly:
"Just what is the average number of replies to one paging trip?"
I think that he had suspected something at first, but this question
completely disarmed him, and, leaning against an elderly lady patron,
he told me everything.
"Well," he said, "it's this way: sometimes I find a man, and sometimes
I can go the rounds without a bite. To-night, for instance, here I've
got four names and one came across. That's about the average--perhaps
one in six."
I asked him why he had given Mr. Kenworthy such a handicap at the
start.
A faint smile flickered across his face and then flickered back again.
"I call the names I think will be apt to hang round in the part of the
hotel I'm in. Mr. Kenworthy would have to be in the dressy dining-room
or in the lobby where they wait for ladies. You'd never find him in
the bar or the Turkish baths. On the other hand, you'll never find a
man by the name of Blevitch anywhere except in the bar. Of course, I
take a chance and call every name once in so often, no matter where I
am, but, on the whole, I uses my own discretion."
I gave him another piece of chocolate and the address of a good
bootmaker and left him. What I had heard had sobered me, and the
lights and music suddenly seemed garish. It is no weak emotion to feel
that you have been face to face with a mere boy whose chances of
success in his work are one to six.
And I found that he had not painted the lily in too glowing terms. I
followed other pages that night--some calling for "Mr. Strudel," some
for "Mr. Carmickle," and one was broad-minded enough to page a "Mrs.
Bemis." But they all came back with that wan look in their eyes and a
break in their voices.
And each one of them was stopped by the man in the business suit in
the downstairs dining-room and each time he considered it a personal
affront that there wasn't a call for "Studz."
Some time I'm going to have him paged, and when he comes out I shall
untie his necktie for him.