CHAPTER IV

"HIS TROUBLE BEGINS!"

Bangs, the red-faced manager of Pinewood Inn, was facing the group of clamoring masculine guests like a rat at bay before a pack of terriers. Every individual man in the crowd was demanding what it meant.

Then, before he could make any audible explanation, they burst out again in a staccato of such observations as:

"It's an outrage! The man should be hung!"

"I never heard the like! Why, my wife says----"

"It's a most abominable imposition! Lights out at half past eight!"

"And the help discharged!"

"And no other hotel open anywhere along this part of the coast! Disgraceful!"

"Not even a cottage open. We can't go and live on these muckers who stay here all winter."

Then a general roar, as they faced Bangs again:

"What do you mean by it?"

"If you'll give me a chance to tell you!" shouted Bangs, shaking both clenched fists in the air. "And if you'll listen to reason perhaps I can make you understand."

Then, as a grumbling silence was accorded him, he added: "At last I can make myself heard! Lemme tell you about it. Giddings, the trustee of the Barnaby estate, the owners of this hotel, and I have had some difficulty over the rental. And because I won't agree to be robbed by him, he has taken this tack----"

"What tack?" asked John Ryder, thrusting in a question which struck at the heart of the business. "You haven't said what he has done."

"He's served me with dispossess papers," said the heated Bangs.

"Then you haven't paid your rent," Ryder observed. "Why don't you pay it and not put your guests to this trouble? Settle with Giddings in the courts."

"He'd beat me--the scoundrel!" cried Bangs. "And the rent is exorbitant. I served him notice three months ago that I could not run this hotel and pay such a price for it. It's an imposition."

"It is a greater imposition on your part to give your guests half an hour's notice to get out. Why, Bangs, it really can't be done, you know," said one man.

But John Ryder, with his clear insight into anything of this kind, again drove right at the heart of the business.

"You have had three months to prepare for this very emergency," he said. "You admit that."

"I don't!" yelled Bangs. "I admit nothing of the kind. They just served me----"

"Then you have several days in which to arrange the matter," Ryder went on. "What about this turning off the lights in half an hour? It is ridiculous."

"That's exactly what it is," chimed in another aggrieved voice. "You can't put your guests out in any such way, Mr. Bangs--and guests who, some of them, have been here long before you were ever manager. My wife and I have been staying here for eight years. I can't be turned out of my home on half an hour's notice."

"Well, you'd have to get out if there was a fire," snarled Bangs.

"A fire would be 'an act of God,' according to the coroner's finding," grimly laughed somebody. "This isn't."

"Quite the contrary. It's a deucedly mean trick."

"It isn't my fault, I tell you," Bangs mendaciously declared. "You can blame that hound, Giddings. I can't be bled any more of all my profits, and I am going to close my connection with this hotel tonight--and in a very few minutes."

"Great heavens, Bangs!" exclaimed one man. "Get out if you want to. We'll none of us weep over your departure. Leave George, here, to run the desk and Al, the steward, to see to the kitchen and the help, and we'll get along all right."

"And who is going to assure the help's wages?" demanded Bangs. "_I'm_ not, you bet! And who'll pay for the lighting and heating? I can tell you gentlemen right now there isn't coal enough in the bins to run the dynamos and boilers till midnight."

At that a howl went up which boded ill for the manager of the Pinewood Inn and he dodged behind the desk before which he had been standing. Several of his guests looked suddenly dangerous to Bangs.

There came, however, an interruption. Somebody said: "Here comes Colonel Brack," and the group parted willingly enough to let in a tall, military figure of a man with drooping gray mustache and goatee, fiery eyes under penthouse brows--a man who walked with the "step-clump, step-clump" of a cripple with an artificial limb.

Nevertheless, Colonel Brack bore himself very erect and stepped with a firmness that betrayed more than ordinary hardihood of character. The other guests who knew him looked upon the old man with evident respect.

"What is this I hear, Bangs?" the ex-military officer demanded in a deep voice. "You sent one of your cubs to my room with a saucy message and I boxed his ears for him. What do you mean by telling me to get out of this hotel, suh?"

"I can't help it, Colonel Brack," declared the manager, backing out of any possible reach of the colonel's long arm. "The hotel's got to close."

"Then close it. But do it decently and in order," the colonel said. "Still, I doubt if the Barnaby estate will allow the house to be shut. They can find somebody else to run it quite as well as you, suh."

"Well, they won't find that other man tonight!" cried Bangs, in a tone that showed he felt impish delight in making all this trouble. "And I am going to close the house now. I've said my last word, gentlemen. If you want to pack your trunks, I'll keep the dynamos running till nine o'clock. There is a combination train leaves here--over the spur track, you understand, at that hour----"

"Confound you! Yes!" cried somebody. "But it only goes as far as the Junction and there is no connection there for New York until five o'clock in the morning. A nice train for ladies to take!"

"And how about those of us who have our autos here?" chimed in another. "The bridge is down. Your own motor bus is out of commission. The other roads are impassable for cars. You ought to be beaten to death, Bangs!"

"Ye-es--" drawled a sleek, dapper little man, whom, so Ryder told himself, one would naturally expect to speak in a crisp, quick tone, quite contrary to the one he used. "Ye-es, suppose we do tha-at same thing. It would not do the gu-uests of this hotel much good just now, perhaps; but it would rid the wo-orld of one rascal. Tha-at would be to the good."

Colonel Brack leaned over the counter and shook a long finger at the manager.

"I have lived in this hotel fourteen years, sub!" he exclaimed. "No manager can dispossess me. I refuse to get out, suh--I refuse to get out!"

[Illustration: "No manager can dispossess me. I refuse to get out"]

"That's right! We all refuse to get out!" was the vociferous chorus.

"Then you'll stay in the dark and without heat and without service," growled Bangs doggedly. "I'm doing my best for you. I'll be liable for no further expense in a house of which I am dispossessed--that's flat!"

Bangs here erased himself from the scene by dodging into the private office and banging the door. The clerk oh duty was instantly besieged by a part of the crowd. He could do absolutely nothing to assist in untangling the difficulty. Like the other hotel employees, he was as much disturbed over his abrupt discharge as the guests were over their dismissal by the manager.

"I shall remain here, even if that rascal shuts off the heat and lights," Colonel Brack loudly declared, in the midst of the group of which John Ryder was one. "It is a preposterous--an impossible situation, suh! Whoever heard the like? A hotel cannot close its doors and turn its guests out upon the streets on half an hour's notice."

"But Bangs will do as he says. I know the dog. When he's ugly, he'll do anything," returned one man gloomily.

"He may turn off the heat and light; but here I stay!" reiterated the colonel, with all the determination of Horatius on the Bridge.

"Not a pleasant prospect," said a drummer. "I reckon I'll go and pack up and take that nine o'clock switchback."

"We cannot all do that," Ryder finally said, with calmness. "It is ridiculous to think of the ladies leaving on such short notice--especially those who have lived here for any length of time."

"And there's one car on that train, a combination day coach and smoker. It wouldn't hold a third of the guests in this house to-night," was the positive declaration of another man.

"Besides," Ryder pursued, "how would we get our baggage away at this hour? If we left it, thieves would ransack every trunk in the house. This Bangs is evidently a slippery customer. He could not be found, it is likely, when it came time to apportion damages."

"You are right, suh," said Colonel Brack. "You are Mr. John Ryder, of New York?"

Ryder acknowledged it. "My wife and I have just arrived, intending to remain a fortnight or so. I don't fancy having our visit spoiled in this way."

"Then, Mr. Ryder," said the colonel pompously, "I wish you would come into the café with a number of us older guests, suh, where we will hold a council of war." The colonel could scarcely conceive of any discussion being official out of sight of a bar. "We cannot be driven out of this hotel in this way. We must plan some means of thwarting Bangs, suh."

"We'd better chip in and pay his rent for him," suggested one compromising individual, bent on cutting the Gordian knot with one simple stroke.

"I understand," said the colonel hastily, "that he is at least three months behind in his rent. That would never do. And it is not because he is unable to pay. The house is well patronized and he collects his money promptly. It is merely a personal fight between him and Giddings, who, I judge, desires to break this fellow's connection with Pinewood Inn. I never did like the dog."

"Giddings should come down here and attend to the matter himself, then," said another of the angry guests.

"I do not presume for a moment," said the colonel, starting for the barroom, "that Giddings dreamed Bangs would do this. No, suh! No gentleman could imagine such a dastardly thing."

"But it seems to have been in the manager's mind for some time," Ryder interposed. "He has allowed his coal to run so low that there is not enough, he now says, to last the night through."

"Maybe he is lying," Jimson suggested.

"No," asserted some one. "He's not lying now, for once in his life. He's telling the truth this time--but only because the truth is meaner than any lie he could possibly concoct."

"He has planned to get back at Giddings and the estate by injuring the reputation of the hotel. Why, gentlemen," pursued the wrathful colonel, all bristling like an enraged turkeycock, "this house has been my home for fourteen years. I am the oldest inhabitant. Mr. Jimson, here, has an invalid wife. She cannot be taken out at this hour of the night. And the house has been her home for eight years. It is brutal--positively brutal!"

"All right! All right!" said Ryder. "But this isn't getting us anywhere. We all know our wrongs. Let's see what can be done to stop the fellow's deviltry."

"By Jove!" exclaimed a man at his elbow. "Here Bangs is turning us out and along come other guests. What do you know about that?"

"How could anyone get here at this hour with that bridge in that condition?" queried Jimson. "Couldn't get an auto over it."

"Oh, anyone that was eager enough to come could get punted over the inlet. Must have come down on that train that does not stop at Barr, though, and motored back from the first stop below--unless a big enough party was on to make a special stop possible."

But it was a single guest only who entered the foyer and office of the hotel. This man had no luggage and he stood for a moment nervously drawing off his gloves as his glance swept swiftly the faces of those in sight.

George, the clerk, stepped to the turntable on which the register rested. It was not a grateful task to inform the man who had just come what the situation of affairs was.

Ryder noticed the stranger only casually at first. The group of excited men, whom he was tailing toward the café, were slow in leaving the vicinity of the hotel desk.

When the clerk had explained the situation as well as he was able the disappointed guest stood back, nervously rolling his gloves and with an expression of indetermination upon his face. Finally he asked George a question in a low voice.

"No, sir. Nobody by that name in the house, sir," the clerk said.

One of the boys came through the foyer intoning the name of a guest: "Mr. White's wanted. Mr. White! Mr. White!"

Nobody gave the boy any attention at first, and he approached the desk still singsonging the name of the man wanted.

"Who's wanted?" asked George, the clerk, briskly.

"Message for Mr. White. His wife wants him upstairs--Suite Three."

"White?" repeated the clerk. "What White's that? I didn't know----"

Just then Ryder, looking back over his shoulder, chanced to see again the face of the last comer to the hotel. He was as pale as death; Ryder could see the drops of perspiration standing on his broad, high brow. He was staring at the bellboy as though in the latter he beheld a ghost.

Suddenly, while the puzzled clerk bent over the register evidently in search of the name "White" among those of the new arrivals at Pinewood Inn, the stranger darted at the bellboy. "Who--who is asking for Mr. White?" Ryder heard the man gasp.

"Mrs. White. She wants him. Suite Three," repeated the boy. "Mr. John B. White."

The emotions displayed in succession upon the stranger's countenance ran the gamut of human expression. Amazement, incredulity, rage, determination--a dozen different feelings evidently gripped the man's mind and soul. Ryder had his own attention recalled with difficulty by Colonel Brack, who stuck his head out of the swinging door of the café, crying:

"We're waiting for you, suh! Mr. Ryder, what'll you take, suh? And I'd like your opinion on this important matter. It will cost us, severally and collectively, some money to keep this house open. I, for one, will assume my share of the obligation and trust to getting back at Bangs afterward. What do you say, Mr. Ryder?"

The discussion of ways and means claimed the attention of John Ryder. Yet he glanced back at the stranger again as he entered the café. The latter was moving toward the stairway clutching the bellboy firmly by the shoulder. Back in the mind of Ryder was this comment:

"Odd about that fellow. Acts strange. White? Don't know anyone of the name--that I remember. Suite Three? Why--what's the number of our suite? I thought that was Number Three. Must be Number Two. Odd----"