A Swell-Looking Babe Read Free Page B

practically as much as he was now… Hire a housekeeper? Well, how would that help? Thirty-five or forty bucks a week in salary, and you'd have to feed her besides. Anyway, dammit, it just wasn't necessary. None of this nonsense, which kept him drained of money, was necessary. His father was sharp enough when he chose to be. He'd proved that tonight. The trouble was that he, Dusty, had just babied and humored the old man so much that…
    "Hey, Rhodes! How about it?" It was the day captain, shouting down from the top of the service steps.
    Dusty shouted, "Coming!" and left the locker room. But he ascended the long stairway unhurriedly, wrapped in thought.
    His father couldn't be losing and mislaying and generally mismanaging to the extent that he appeared to be. He must be spending the money on something. But what in the world would a man his age-Suddenly, Dusty knew. The answer to the riddle was so damned obvious. Why the hell hadn't he thought of it before this?
    The day bellboys swept past him on the steps. Lighting cigarettes, peeling out of their jackets and collars as they hastened toward the locker room, A few spoke or nodded to him. They got no greeting in return. He was too choked up, blind with anger.
    Those lawyers, those dirty thieving shysters! That was where the money was going.
    Well, he'd put a stop to that. There would be no use in jumping his father about it; he couldn't really blame his father for doing what he undoubtedly had. It was their fault- – the lawyers – for holding out hope to him. And they'd darned well better lay off if they knew what was good for them. He'd write 'em a letter that would curl their hair. Or, no, he'd pay them a little visit. He wanted to tell those birds off personally.
    Opening the door of the service landing, he entered the lobby, his anger dying and with it the sense of frustration. He paused at the end of the long marble desk untended now except by sour old Bascom – and looked down at the open pages of the room-call ledger.
    She was still here, he saw. A bellboy had taken cigarettes and a magazine to her room fifteen minutes ago. Up at 11:45, down at 11.50; just long enough to complete the errand. Not long enough for anything… anything else. And, yes, that was the only boy to go to her room today.
    Dusty didn't know why he felt good about it, because of course – she couldn't mean anything to him; he was shying clear of that baby. But somehow he did feel good. Here was proof positive that she wasn't a hooker or spotter, proof that he was the only guy in the place that she had any interest in.
    A cab honked at the side door. Grinning unconsciously, Dusty hurried across the lobby and down the steps.

THREE
    As modern hotels go, the Manton was not a large place. Its letterheads boasted of "four hundred rooms, four hundred baths." Actually, there were three hundred and sixty-two, and since any number of these were linked together into suites, the baths totaled far less than three hundred and sixty-two.
    The Manton – or rather the company which operated it – had learned the advantage in renting two rooms to one person rather than two rooms to two persons. It had learned the vast difference in profit between renting two rooms at five dollars and one at ten dollars. It had learned that the man who pays five dollars for a room is apt to be much more demanding than the one who pays ten.
    The Manton was seldom rented to capacity. It did not have to be. With only two-thirds of its rooms rented, its income was equal to that of a larger, fully-occupied – and less "exclusive" – hotel. Also, since the number of a hotel's employees is inevitably geared to the number of its guests, its overhead was much lower.
    Bascom was the sole front-office employee after midnight, performing – with Dusty's assistance – the duties of room clerk, key clerk, cashier and night auditor. There was no night house detective. The coffee shop and grille room closed at one o'clock. By two, the