CHAPTER VI

BUSINESS METHODS

The members of the committee had regathered and were awaiting their chairman. Matters had been found to be in a much worse condition than the guests had really believed.

From the steward they had learned that the whole kitchen was disorganized, and had been so for some days. He had had the greatest difficulty in preventing an eruption there.

"Why?" demanded Ryder, having been told this.

"They are afraid they will lose their pay. These French and Italians are easily excited anyway," explained Jimson, who was not a little excited himself. "The waiters and the upstairs help are in a blue funk for the same reason."

"How about the coal?" Ryder asked another man.

"It's every whit as bad as Bangs said. There is only a little furnace coal. If they use the coal intended for the kitchen fires there would not be enough to keep the boilers warm until daylight."

"Hang that Bangs!"

"With all my heart," agreed Ryder, grimly. "But that will not get us any coal tonight--nor keep the hotel warmed and lighted."

"The scoundrel certainly deserves to figure in a necktie party," growled one man. "My wife's in hysterics upstairs right now."

"Let us interview this Bangs before he gets away," Ryder said. "I understand he has really given orders to shut everything down at nine o'clock, and it only lacks ten minutes of that time now."

The committee moved in a body on the private office. The door was closed, but Ryder did not give the manager a chance to refuse them admittance. He entered without knocking and the other determined men filed in. Bangs sat at his desk scratching off a letter at a furious pace. But he dropped his pen and turned toward them with a snarl.

"Well, what is it now?"

"We want your attention for a few moments, Mr. Bangs," John Ryder said quietly.

"Who the deuce are you?" demanded the hotel manager. "You're not like Brack and Jimson and these other old stagers, who have been here so long they think they own the house. I never remember of seeing you before."

Ryder handed him his card. "That is my name," he said, "and I came into this house for the first time tonight. That, however, is quite aside from the matter we have come to discuss.

"We, the guests of this hotel, cannot be treated in this cavalier manner, Mr. Bangs. We will not stand for it. There will be damage suits after this night's work if you dare follow out your program--damage suits against the Barnaby estate of course. But I, for one, shall not be satisfied until I see you properly punished unless you immediately change your attitude."

He spoke so firmly, and the threatening attitude of his co-workers was so impressive, that the manager began to cower.

"I tell you I can't do a thing!" he began; but John Ryder stopped him with raised hand.

"We demand your co-operation in keeping the hotel force together until the owners can be communicated with and until they send somebody to take charge here in your place."

"I'll be hanged if I will!" cried Bangs, jumping up.

"And you may be hanged if you don't," declared another of the committee, putting a rather broad back against the office door.

Again Bangs cowered. These five men might do him bodily injury if they wished to.

"I can't do a thing, I tell you," he whined. "There's no coal----"

"We know all about that," Ryder interrupted sternly. "And we know why there is none. You knew this dispossessory proceeding was pending, and you made your plans to checkmate Giddings by shutting up the hotel in this way. Without regard for the comfort of your guests or the rights of your employees, you have tried to whip your enemy, Giddings, over our shoulders.

"Now we, the guests, have taken the affair into our hands inasmuch as we propose to keep the hotel open and make the ladies and children, at least, as comfortable as may be. And we shall not let you leave, Mr. Bangs, until you have done all in your power to repair the damage you have already done."

"What can I do?" snarled the manager. "I'm not going to pay for heat and light and for service in a hotel which I no longer manage."

"You are legally in charge here until the Court puts you out."

"I'll not run this hotel for that Giddings after he's served me in dispossess proceedings," Bangs said, turned sullen.

"You will help us make the house as comfortable as possible until we can communicate with this Giddings and inform him of what has occurred," said Ryder quietly but severely. "You have given orders for everything to shut down at nine o'clock. You must rescind that command."

"You can none of you get away after that hour," Bangs said.

"Nor at that time," said Ryder promptly. "If any of your guests are going on that jerkwater train they are already over there at the station. But the stampede of the help must be stopped."

"What do you want me to do?" growled Bangs, rather afraid of this determined John Ryder.

"To tell the engineers to keep the dynamos and boilers running as long as they have a shovelful of coal. Likewise to send word throughout the building for all employees who wish to retain their situations under the new management----"

"What new management?" cried Bangs, leaping up again.

"The management which will follow your régime," Ryder told him coolly. "You do not suppose for a moment, do you, that the owners of this property will allow the hotel to close?"

Bangs grinned like an angry dog. "I don't care a hang what they do," he said. "I only know I'm out of it."

"You're not out of it yet, Mr. Bangs," Ryder grimly said. "Telephone to the engine room at once."

The manager picked up the receiver with bad grace. "You are intimidating me," he complained.

"You bet we are!" exclaimed the man with his back to the door. "And thank your lucky stars we don't manhandle you in the bargain."

Ryder raised his hand for silence and the manager gave the order to the engineer. "Now," said Ryder, "call the head chef and have him inform the kitchen help that the hotel will not be closed and that their wages will be paid."

"Who's going to pay 'em?" demanded Bangs.

"You do as you are told. The courts will decide that."

Bangs began to bluster; then he caught the look in the eye of the man with his back against the door and he once more subsided. Together, Ryder and the burly committeeman were too much for Bangs' courage.

The steward was called in; likewise George, the clerk on duty. The two were told, Bangs agreeing doggedly, that the employees of the hotel were to be pacified and the guests to be made as comfortable as possible until Giddings could be communicated with.

Then the committee of five went back to the crowd in the foyer and reported progress. Colonel Brack led in acclaiming them public benefactors. But their work was not yet finished.

Those who knew, declared there was no possibility of finding even a small supply of coal without considerable delay. The hotel manager had had an arrangement with the railroad company to furnish coal by the carload, and the local dealers would not put themselves out to accommodate the hotel now. Indeed, Bangs had made himself locally disliked.

"The best we can do is to send our committee over to Cal Crabtree's store and buy up all the lamps and oil stoves he's got in stock," Colonel Brack said. "I'd head such a foraging party if it wasn't for my artificial limb. I'm afraid I'll get rheumatism in that if I go out at night," and the jovial colonel chuckled.

But when it was vociferously agreed that the already elected committee, of which John Ryder was chairman, should do this purchasing and it had started out to do what Colonel Brack suggested, one of them observed:

"Now, isn't that the colonel all over? That bum peg of his keeps him out of a lot of trouble. He's off this committee because some of us will have to put up money and then run the risk of getting it back from the estate, or from that slippery Bangs. The colonel gets cold in that artificial foot plaguey easy if the cards go against him at poker."

And indeed, before they got to the general store, the committee was in a wrangle over this very thing. Who was going to put up the money for the lamps and stoves? Nobody seemed to care to step info the breech. John Ryder listened and said nothing at first. Finally he suggested:

"Let's divide it among us. Think of the ladies----"

"Let those who have got 'em, think of 'em," snapped one bachelor. "That's nothing in my young sweet life."

"Oh, I say, Long, you wouldn't mind putting up a share for Mrs. Judson, would you?" chuckled another.

"By jove! that's what I am afraid of," declared the bachelor. "If the widow ever heard I put up money to buy her an oil heater, she'd have me in court in breach of promise proceedings."

It was evident the large lady was a standing joke among the men at the hotel. Ryder frowned. He was sorry that she had forced her society on Ruth.

Meanwhile, the four other members of the committee agreed that they would not put their hands in their pockets. On the very steps of the store they halted and vociferously stated this decision.

"Let's go back and take up a collection," said the bachelor member. "I know those ginks back there. There are more hard boiled eggs in that bunch at Pinewood Inn than you could find anywhere else along the coast. I'm not going to be nicked for more than my share."

With this his brother-committeemen seemed to agree. All but Ryder. The latter looked at his watch. It was already half after nine. There was every sign as they came along the street that the villagers were retiring for the night; and as they stood discussing the matter the proprietor of the store began to put out his lights.

"You can go back and ask for further instructions if you wish to, gentlemen," said Ryder in disgust. "But I will go in and see what I can do. There is no time to waste."

"At your peril, Mr. Ryder," said one. "Don't drag us into it."

"I never forced a man into a deal yet--especially if he was a bad loser," declared John Ryder, and turned his back on the others to enter the store alone.

He found the proprietor, a shrewd, long-headed countryman, ready to be affable, or businesslike, as the case might be. Ryder knew well how to tackle such a character. He had been doing business with all kinds of men all his life. He went directly to the point of the matter.

"I want every oil lamp you've got in the shop, and all your candles, and those oil heaters yonder. If you have oil, I want a barrel. And I want you to find me a truckman right now to cart 'em over to the hotel. I'll give you cash, or my check, in full for the whole amount. What say?"

"It's a bargain," laconically said the storekeeper, and there was little haggling either, over the price of the articles bought. Ryder did not believe that Crabtree was over-reaching him on that point, for he seemed to sympathize with the situation of the people in the hotel.

"That bridge breaking down is a bad business. Foolish, too," Crabtree agreed. "The Highway Department of this town is about as useful as a left-handed boot to a man who's only got a wooden leg on that side of him. And let me tell you, Mr. Ryder, the bridge won't be repaired again in a hurry. Nothing ever is done in a hurry by our road menders and bridge builders."

Ryder was more intimately interested in the supplies he could buy. There were two full boxes of so-called "waxlights" and a box of tallow candles of the double-six size. There were over a hundred lamps of all kinds and sizes, and the oil stoves numbered twenty-three. The check Ryder made out was a substantial one.

In half an hour he was back at the hotel where the guests were wrangling in the foyer over how the bill for supplies should be apportioned. The other members of the committee were finally instructed to pay for the goods out of a collection of about two hundred dollars that had been grudgingly made.

"Here's Ryder!" exclaimed Colonel Brack, red-faced and excited. "He should head this committee again. He is a chap who _does_ things. Ryder forever!"

The colonel's evening potations began to show upon him. Ryder tried to brush by on his way to the desk.

"You're just the man we want on this committee," reiterated the colonel, following him.

"What committee?" the business man asked.

"The committee on buying supplies."

"It discharged itself half an hour ago," said Ryder, bruskly. "And now there is nothing for it to do."

"Why not?" gasped several, including the colonel, who asked the question truculently.

John Ryder bit off the end of his cigar and lit it calmly.

"As far as I know, gentlemen, I've bought up every lamp, every oil stove, every candle, and all the surplus supply of oil in this village tonight. I bought them on to my own private account. If I decide to resell them I'll let you know later."