p.m.

Now with a peppermint bottle held close to alternately sniffing nostrils
Sadie Corn was running her eye over the complex report sheet of the
floor clerk who had just gone off watch. The report was even more
detailed and lengthy than usual. Automobile Show Week meant that the
always prosperous Magnifique was filled to the eaves and turning them
away. It meant twice the usual number of inside telephone calls anent
rooms too hot, rooms too cold, radiators hammering, radiators hissing,
windows that refused to open, windows that refused to shut, packages
undelivered, hot water not forthcoming. As the human buffers between
guests and hotel management, it was the duty of Sadie Corn and her
diplomatic squad to pacify the peevish, to smooth the path of the
paying.

Down the hall strolled Donahue, the house detective--Donahue the
leisurely. Donahue the keen-eyed, Donahue the guileless--looking in his
evening clothes for all the world like a prosperous diner-out. He smiled
benignly upon Sadie Corn, and Sadie Corn had the bravery to smile back
in spite of her neuralgia, knowing well that men have no sympathy with
that anguishing ailment and no understanding of it.

"Everything serene, Miss Corn?" inquired Donahue.

"Everything's serene," said Sadie Corn. "Though Two-thirty-three
telephoned a minute ago to say that if the valet didn't bring his pants
from the presser in the next two seconds he'd come down the hall as he
is and get 'em. Perhaps you'd better stay round."

Donahue chuckled and passed on. Half way down the hall he retraced his
steps, and stopped again before Sadie Corn's busy desk. He balanced a
moment thoughtfully from toe to heel, his chin lifted inquiringly: "Keep
your eye on Two-eighteen and Two-twenty-three this morning?"

"Like a lynx!" answered Sadie.

"Anything?"

"Not a thing. I guess they just scraped acquaintance in the Alley after
dinner, like they sometimes do. A man with eyelashes like his always
speaks to any woman alone who isn't pockmarked and toothless. Two
minutes after he's met a girl his voice takes on the 'cello note. I know
his kind. Why, say, he even tried waving those eyelashes of his at me
first time he turned in his key; and goodness knows I'm so homely that
pretty soon I'll be ripe for bachelor floor thirteen. You know as well
as I that to qualify for that job a floor clerk's got to look like a
gargoyle."

"Maybe they're all right," said Donahue thoughtfully. "If it's just a