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Read Ebook: Forsyte's Retreat by Marks Winston K Winston Kinney Freas Kelly Illustrator

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Ebook has 265 lines and 12108 words, and 6 pages

Sextus cut off. Two lights on the intercom were blinking at him. One call was from the kitchen. The first chef had just heaved a cleaver at the steward, and the head salad girl was in hysterics.

Sextus said he'd be right down. The second call was from the chief house-detective. He had caught a bell-hop peddling marijuana to the waitresses. What was the manager's new policy? Sextus told him to hold the boy in the locker room for him. Then one of the room clerks rang to say that Gary Gable, the movie star, was raising hell in the lobby because he couldn't get the bridal suite and demanded to see the manager.

Sextus smiled. These things were the routine of running a large hotel. He stopped at the bar for a quick one and then started for the kitchen.

The day passed pleasantly enough, and he looked forward to retiring to his quiet rooms upstairs. He thought to get some intelligent answers from his assistant manager when he walked in promptly at five P. M., but he turned out to be a university student from Southern Cal, working days on his master's degree in business administration and nights at the hotel. No wonder he hadn't been promoted. Not that he wasn't bright--just not experienced.

Sextus formally offered his hand and introduced himself. The lad said, "I'm Horace Smith the phone is ringing excuse me." He snatched the phone with a harried look.

Somehow the phone never stopped ringing. Sextus gave up and retired to dress for dinner. He finished his fifth of whiskey and descended to the hotel's swank Oceania Room, where he made himself known to the maitre d'hotel. That frenzied little moustachioed person sniffed Sextus' breath and seated him behind a potted palm.

Discreetly avoiding the wine list, Sextus dined well, noting several movie stars and other vip's in the crowded dining room. He couldn't escape the illusion that he was dining at the Ambassador or the Waldorf Astoria--instead of in a five-story rat-trap. Where did they all come from?

As he awaited the elevator, he was approached by the bell-captain. "Mr. Forsyte?" Sextus nodded stiffly. "Here's an envelope Mr. Patterson left for you. He was the last G. M. Incidentally, sorry I was a little rough on the phone, but you can see our situation here. Understaffed and overcrowded. It gets thick, real thick, brother."

Sextus felt his belly muscles tighten. "Confusion is never improved by discourtesy or insubordination," he said coldly.

At that moment a bellman rushed up to the rebuffed captain who was regarding Sextus with a restrained loathing. "The guy in C332 keeps screaming for his beer, but the service elevator to 'C' vector keeps dumping me off in 'F'."

The captain said, "Try riding to fourth on 'C' and then walk down a deck and come out through the linen room."

"Can't I just ride up the guest elevator, Jack?"

The captain stared at Sextus. "Our Mr. Forsyte wouldn't approve. Now, move!"

He turned to Sextus and said acidly, "Just one of our little extra problems." He moved off with a disgusted shake of his carefully barbered head.

His cage arrived and he returned to his suite. He removed his shoes, stripped to the waist and sank gratefully into the soft bed, nestling the last bottle of his suitcase reserve in the crook of his bare arm.

He considered the sealed envelope marked: TO MY SUCCESSOR. URGENT MATTERS.

First he opened a fresh bottle and then the envelope. He flipped through the papers. There were some tax reports ready for signature, two union contracts up for renegotiation and an estimate on re-doing 520 rooms in vectors "B" and "F". Vectors? Did they mean "Wings"?

The last paper was a personal letter, apparently addressed to him. Before he could begin it the phone at his bedside jangled. Operator said, "Would you take this, please, Mr. Forsyte? I dispatched a house man, but the guest is hysterical."

Without awaiting his permission she cut in the woman. "Hello, manager? There's a man in my bed!"

"What is your room number, madame?" Sextus asked with drowsy detachment.

"I'm in H-408," she said, and on the "8" her voice ran up the scale in a quivering crescendo that launched Sextus briskly from his bed. H-408 was his floor and his wing, luckily. He tore out of the suite and down the hall without shirt or shoes.

The door stood ajar, and he pushed it open. In the middle of the floor, still gabbling into the phone, stood a lumpy, pallid woman about his own age, naked except for a pillow which she hugged fiercely to her navel. Her bleached hair was a frayed bird's-nest.

In bed, decently clad in a pair of blue and white striped pajamas, was a rather distinguished, gray-haired gentleman of about fifty, leaning on one elbow and watching the woman with an expression of mild astonishment and interest. To Sextus' practiced eye, the man was guilty of nothing.

The house detective arrived at that moment, but Sextus dismissed him with a wave of his hand. He went in alone.

"I'm the manager, madam," he assured her. He noted that despite her excited wails, her eyes drooped half shut. A bottle of sleeping pills on the table was uncapped.

"Thizz man, thizz man, thizz man!" she kept repeating and pointing her elbow at the bed. The man in question raised his eyebrows and shook his head.

"Damndest sensation I ever felt," he said. "I'm Johnathan P. Turner, attorney. Before I tell you my story, please check with the desk and verify that I was assigned this room."

Sextus took the phone from the woman's pudgy hand which darted to rescue the sagging pillow. The room-clerk reported that Mr. J. P. Turner was registered to room 408, but in "J" vector, not "H".

Sextus' eyes swept the room. It was an unexplainable mess. Two sets of luggage were jumbled on and around the baggage rack at the foot of the bed. Rinsed out nylons hung from the shower rod, but a man's shaving kit occupied the shelf over the lavatory. Despairing of ever arriving at a sensible explanation, Sextus went to work.

Although hampered somewhat without his shirt, coat and tie, Sextus managed to get Turner and his belongings transferred peaceably to another room and the woman quieted down in bed with another sleeping pill.

Sextus grasped at a straw. "How many did you have to drink this evening, Mr. Turner?"

The attorney squirmed uncomfortably. "Well, quite a few, maybe, but not enough to--"

Sextus shrugged one shoulder and turned to leave. "Understand, we don't blame you a bit, sir. You know how these middle-aged women can carry on when they get out on the town. You must have dozed off before she slipped in."

"But my door was locked! I think," he added uncertainly.

"We won't breathe a word of it, Mr. Turner. Rest well!"

Sextus padded silently back to his room in his stocking feet and took a long pull at the whiskey. Funny thing, this. People often got into the wrong hotel beds, but rarely with such impalpable excuses. He sighed and picked up the letter from his predecessor again. It read:

Welcome to the Phony-Plaza. You will be the fifth manager in 30 days. If you need the job as much as I thought I did you will probably ignore my advice, but here goes, anyway: RESIGN! BAIL OUT! SKIDOO! I can't tell you where they've got the 2600 rooms in this haunted ant-hill, but believe me, they are there, and you'll be sorry if you hang around long enough to prove it.

It's all quite neat and economical, what with the cost per front foot of this beach area zoned for business, and you'll find a dandy profit on the books, but start worrying, fellow! Things are beginning to happen. The maintenance engineer, who, incidentally, is quitting, too, says that the equipment in the shafts is wearing out, and the fields are pulsating or decaying or some damned thing. And we can't contact Dr. Bradford, who took the service manual with him.

Maybe you are more experienced in this hotel business than I am, but I couldn't stand the gaff. One more mess like I barely managed to clean up this week and someone's going to the pokey. It won't be me.

Good luck, if you insist on staying, but I warned you.

Thornton K. Patterson

P.S. The fire-marshall is on our necks because the windows are all sealed, but for God's sake, DON'T UNSEAL THEM!

Sextus tossed the fantastic communication aside in disgust, but his mind began to unreel a picture of the confusion he had witnessed down in the service quarters: Bellboys and room-service waiters fighting for service elevators; chambermaids trundling their little carts on the dead run; the overworked laundry staff, laboring in a veritable sweatshop of steamy chaos, swamped in a billowing backlog of sheets and towels. It all pointed to a large hotel operation.

If so, where were the rooms? Refusing to argue further with himself, he got undressed. Hyperspace or not, the people apparently were there, and it was his job to serve them. He got a bucket of ice from room-service, mixed an ice and whiskey highball and retreated into his private little world between crisp sheets and the pages of a twenty-five-cent mystery novel.

Arising early, he was girded for the summons from Miss Genevieve Hafner in room H-408. He went to her room. Fully dressed and in the daylight she was still a hollow-eyed mess. The only visible improvement was in the bleached bird's-nest, now a prim, rolled circle on her unlovely pate.

"What amends," she demanded, "do you intend to make for my terrible experience last night? Is that horrid creature in jail?"

"Experience? Jail?" Sextus asked innocent-eyed. He asked that she tell him about it. Exasperated, she went over the details. When she finished he patted her hand and pointed to the sleeping pills. "You should see your doctor."

He bent and kissed the revolting hand. "You are much too lovely a lady to have escaped from such a predicament as you describe without suffering--shall we say, a more romantic--fate?"

Miss Hafner blushed at the thought and wavered between outrage and ecstasy for a dangerous moment. With time-tested genius, Sextus withdrew quietly and left her to her thoughts.

He slipped the key into his own door and entered his suite. He took two brisk strides into his bedroom, tripped over a lady's overnight case and sprawled into his unmade bed. Even as he landed he realized it had an occupant, a gorgeous, strangely familiar blonde creature, touselled and asleep hugging her pillow with a creamy arm. A crash from the bathroom brought his head bouncing off the silken coverlet even as the girl awakened with a scream and tangled them both with the bed clothes.

Gary Gable charged from the bathroom, face dripping and a tuft of lather under each ear. "What in the Goddam hell--" He leaped for Sextus with his internationally famous shoulders knotted into bunches of muscular menace.

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