him that the visitors he was expecting are here?"

It was Frank Chester who spoke early the next day, as the boys, in
response to Lathrop's letter, stood at the Waldorf desk. The clerk
looked at them a little disdainfully. Frank and Harry Chester were
not the sort of boys who devoted much time to thinking about clothes
and while they both wore dark neat-fitting suits they certainly did
look a little out of place among the pasty-faced, cigarette-smoking
youths in loud-looking garments who constituted most of the young
men with whom the clerk was in the habit of coming in contact.

"I don't think that Mr. Beasley can see you now, call later," he
began, superciliously turning round to the letter-rack and sorting
out the mail and putting each guest's letters in the proper box.

For a second an angry flush rose to Frank's face. The man's manner
was enough to irritate any high spirited boy. But Frank Chester was
not given to what Bill Barnes called "flying off the handle." He
calmly took another card from his pocket and in a rather sharp
voice, though his tones were even enough said:

"Are you going to send that card up at once or shall I call the room
on the telephone?"

The clerk faced quickly about. The two youths he had looked upon as
rather awkward country bumpkins, judging as he did from their tanned
faces and broad shoulders, were evidently not to be trifled with. He
glanced at the card as he rolled it up and handed it to a boy to be
placed in a pneumatic tube and shot up to the fourth floor, on which
Mr. Beasley and his party had taken rooms.