place along the corridor. The uproar
began to attract visitors from other corridors, and soon the whole
place was jammed with excited guests, in attire so varied and
insufficient that one lady, who had insisted on her husband
accompanying her to see what had happened, immediately sent him back to
his room that his eyes might not be outraged by the lavish display of
ankles and bare arms.

The more nervous among the women guests had immediately assumed fire to
be the cause of the disturbance, and thinking of their lives rather
than of modesty and decorum, had rushed precipitately from their rooms.

"It might be a Turkish bath for all the clothes they're wearin',"
Bindle whispered to the exquisite youth, who with his two fellow-guests
had left the Office of Works. "Ain't women funny shapes when they
ain't braced up!"

The youth looked at Bindle reproachfully. He had not yet passed from
that period when women are mysterious and wonderful.

At the doors of several of the rooms heated arguments were in progress
as to who was the rightful occupant. Inside they were all practically
the same, that was part of the scheme of the hotel. The man with the
monocle was still engaged in a fierce altercation with the man in the
bath-robe, who was trying to enter No. 18.

"My wife's in there," cried the man in the bath-robe fiercely.

At this moment the deputy-manager appeared, a man whose face had
apparently been modelled with the object of expressing only two
emotions, benignant servility to the guests and overbearing contempt to
his subordinates. As if by common consent, the groups broke up and the
guests hastened towards him. His automatic smile seemed strangely out
of keeping with the crisis he was called upon to face. Information and
questions poured in upon him.

"There's a girl in my bed."

"There's a man in my room."

"Somebody's got into my room."

"Is it fire?"

"It's a public scandal."

"This man has tried to take my trousers."

"Look here, I can't go about in this kit."

"I left my wife in room 18, and I can't find her."

"I shall write to _The Times_."

"I protest against this indecent exhibition."

The more questions and remarks that poured down upon him, the more
persistently the deputy-manager smiled. He looked about him
helplessly. Hitherto in the whole of his experience all that had been
necessary for him to do was to smile and promise attention, and bully
his subordinates. Here was a n