"Sir?" replied the desk-clerk alertly. All the employes of the Hotel
Cosmopolis were alert. It was one of the things on which Mr. Daniel
Brewster, the proprietor, insisted. And as he was always wandering
about the lobby of the hotel keeping a personal eye on affairs, it
was never safe to relax.

"I want to see the manager."

"Is there anything I could do, sir?"

Archie looked at him doubtfully.

"Well, as a matter of fact, my dear old desk-clerk," he said, "I
want to kick up a fearful row, and it hardly seems fair to lug you
into it. Why you, I mean to say? The blighter whose head I want on a
charger is the bally manager."

At this point a massive, grey-haired man, who had been standing
close by, gazing on the lobby with an air of restrained severity, as
if daring it to start anything, joined in the conversation.

"I am the manager," he said.

His eye was cold and hostile. Others, it seemed to say, might like
Archie Moffam, but not he. Daniel Brewster was bristling for combat.
What he had overheard had shocked him to the core of his being. The
Hotel Cosmopolis was his own private, personal property, and the
thing dearest to him in the world, after his daughter Lucille. He
prided himself on the fact that his hotel was not like other New