roo
JASCHA KESSLER
waiter. He reached out and tore at it in an excess of passion. The
shaft was empty, the ropes still. Well, after all, what else should he
have expected? He had to admit frankly he didn't know, but he
could guess. Tugging at the pull rope, Acker brought this too-handy
means of conveyance up--and found that, for him, the dumbwaiter
had no story to tell: he saw nothing but the bare old box. Despite
this disappointment, Acker was convinced that at some time very
recently it had contained all his troubles. And would again, tomor–
row night perhaps, though it would be of no use to him to
be
able
to demonstrate that fact to anyone, for by then Mr. Pinkerton
would have tied him to it, with the goods together. What he badly
needed, right now, more than a glass of something to quench his
thirst, more even than a couple of his anacins and a cold shower,
was proof-proof, proof,
proof!
And he knew just where to get what
he needed. Closing the dumbwaiter up carefully, as
if
it could make
any difference, Acker pulled the light cord and backed out of the
closet and started right for the attic-without even pausing to
prepare his imagination to cope with what he thought he was sure
to find.
He gained the topmost floor with a celerity he had not believed
himself anymore capable of tonight. Throwing open the firedoor,
Acker walked into an atmosphere so very hot and dry that it smote
his face like the blast from a furnace, and confronted a scene he
could not believe quite real. Not in all his experience, not in thirty
years in hotels, he said to himself out loud, had he ever seen, let
alone heard of, such a thing! He stood at the head of the attic hall,
which ran the whole length of the Metropole's seventh floor. It was
an uncomfortably high-ceilinged, sharp-pitched passage that might
have been a nave designed in a superfluous moment of fancy, for
it never could have been intended for any serious architectural use.
Here and there the ancient plaster had dropped off the walls,
where great patches of broken lathing were left bare. Nothing
but rats' nests in there. Who knew how long ago it had
last been whitewashed? Down its wretchedly illuminated length
were the help's low little rooms, on both aisles, looking much like
cells because they had no doors. And ranged along both sides of
this fake basilica, as far as he could see clearly, which was not more
than half way down, were dozens and dozens of gallon tin cans-
