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Some of the well-heeled kept apartments here, and it was not unheard of for one of the elevators to open on the ground floor and have, say, a couple of Old English sheepdogs come bounding out, pulling a resident off of the elevator—clearing a path between the regular guests—on their way to the private neighborhood park.
All of this served to give the place the comfortable feeling of home—a very nice home—and Canidy tried to stay here every opportunity he could.
As he entered the hotel lobby, he could see people seated in the oversized armchairs beneath the understated chandelier. There were others moving to catch one of the elevators to the left of the room. And directly ahead of him was the front desk with, to his great disappointment, a line of three people.
He joined them—two young men and a woman a bit older—and began to worry that he had taken too long to get to the hotel. The woman he had spoken to on the telephone had said that there had been only a few rooms left. Now, clearly, there were a few people in front of him, and there was no telling how many had come and gone in the time since he called about an hour ago.
The front desk was actually a massive slab of dark polished stone, some eight feet long, set atop finely milled oak paneling. Filling the wall behind the two clerks working the desk was an impressive honeycomb of at least a hundred cubbyholes, also fashioned of oak, each box about six by six inches, with a brass number affixed to the bottom lip. Visible inside them were room keys, messages, an occasional envelope.
At the head of the line was a young man in a business suit. Canidy heard him give his name and room number and ask if there had been any messages. The clerk turned to the wall of cubbyholes, reached into one, and retrieved a small stack of note-sized messages. The young man took them, thanked the clerk, and turned away as he thumbed through the stack, now leaving two people ahead of Canidy.
Next in line was a woman of about fifty, well-dressed, and when she approached the desk the clerk smiled and warmly greeted her by name.
Canidy overheard her ask the clerk for another key to her room.
“Because,” she said, making a face and turning to gesture at the young man behind her, “my son seems to have locked both my key and his in his room.”
The clerk turned to the cubbyholes, reached in one and then in another, taking a duplicate key from each, and then gave one to the mother and one to the son.
As they left, Canidy sighed with relief.
He stepped up to the desk.
The clerk—his name tag read VICTOR—smiled.
“How may I help you, sir?” Victor said.
“I called a short time ago about a room.”
“Welcome to the Gramercy. One moment, please. I’ll see what we have available.”
Victor went to a wooden, open-topped box filled with five-by-seven-inch index cards. He flipped through the cards, wrinkled his face once, then twice. He pulled out one card, looked at it, then shook his head as he put it back in the box. He flipped farther back. His eyebrows went up suddenly and he smiled.
He turned to Canidy with the card.
“We do have something,” Victor said and smiled again. “A very nice one-bedroom suite.”
“Suite?”
“Yessir,” Victor replied, producing a blank registration card and fountain pen. “It overlooks the park. Very nice.”
Canidy knew that the Gramercy’s rooms were huge, and that the smallest of the huge were on the twelfth floor.
“Nothing smaller? Maybe something on twelve, overlooking Twenty-first?”
The clerk’s eyes brightened a moment, indicating that he caught that this was not Canidy’s first visit. Then he frowned and shook his head. “No, sir. I’m afraid not.”
Canidy did not respond.
What’s a suite going to cost?
What do I care? It’s not my money.
And the OSS has nearly limitless funds.
Still, I don’t like just throwing it away.
“Is there a problem?” Victor said.
