A Key to the Suite Read Online Free PDF

General Machine.”
    She quickly extracted a card from her index. A slip of cardboard was stapled to the card. She tore it off at the perforation, deftly inserted it behind the transparent plastic of a lapel button. “Here, sir, is your badge. This is your convention program. This is your book of tickets which should be presented at all lunches, dinners and official cocktail parties. You will find one ticket for each event in your book.” She looked at the card again. “There are fourteen in your group?”
    “Yes. Ten in the hotel and four local.”
    “I see the whole group is prepaid, sir, except for the registration fee itself. That will be ten dollars. Do you wish to pick up the badges and programs and booklets for your entire group right now?”
    “Thanks. I’ll have someone else do that a little later, Miss.Uh … on second thought, I’ll get the things for Mr. Hubbard now. Floyd Hubbard.”
    He paid her twenty dollars and walked diagonally across the lobby to the hotel registration desk. There he acquired an envelope. He put Hubbard’s materials in the envelope, hesitated, then scrawled across the front of it, “Welcome aboard!!!! Fred Frick.” He had the envelope placed in the rack for 847.
    He moved along to the next section of the registration desk.
    “Yes sir?”
    “You have a reservation for me? John Dempsey.”
    “Ummmm … yes, Mr. Dempsey. A single. Are you with the convention?”
    “No,” Frick said, filling out the registration card.
    “How long will you be with us?”
    “I’ll leave next Sunday.”
    “We can offer you a choice of …”
    “Put me as far from the convention accommodations as you can get me. A nice room, please, but I don’t have to stare at the ocean.”
    “Ummmm … eleven-oh-two is a nice room, Mr. Dempsey, in the main part of the structure here on the street side. Your luggage is here?”
    “It’ll be along later.”
    “Is this a charge, sir?”
    “Cash. Do you want any right now?”
    After a slight hesitation, appraisal, decision, the clerk smiled and said, “That won’t be necessary, sir. I hope you’ll enjoy your stay with us. Shall I have a boy show you …”
    “Not right now, thanks,” Frick said and pocketed his key and walked away from the desk. It was standard procedure devised a long time ago by Frick and Jesse Mulaney, and they hadpicked a name easy to remember even when drunk. The most predictable aspect of any convention was the certainty that the unpredictable problem would arise. And the availability of an anonymous room far from the turmoil of convention was a handy device. When checkout time came, the room could be billed right along with the rest of the AGM tab.
    He went up to 1102 and found it a pleasant, sizable twin-bed room. It was a few minutes after twelve. He phoned the AGM suite, and Bobby Fayhouser answered.
    “How are you doing, Bobby?”
    “Okay, I guess. I raised some hell, and they’re yanking a big rug out of here and replacing it. Near as I can figure, somebody built a camp fire in the middle of the main room here and put it out with catsup. I had three assistant managers up here clucking about it. Otherwise the place is okay.”
    “How about that little diarama display?”
    “It’s on the way over.”
    “Who have you got there with you?”
    “Charlie and Les.”
    “When can I come make an inspection?”
    “We should be all set by one o’clock anyway, Fred.”
    “Better than I expected. Look, I checked myself in at the convention desk, and I picked up Hubbard’s stuff too. That check you got made out to NAPATAN is for a hundred ’n forty, right? Okay, first chance you get, go down and pick up the crap for the whole group and get twenty cash out of her, which you’ll owe me. If she makes a fuss, tell me. She looks like a little doll who enjoys fussing. One thing I forgot to tell you. Scrounge all the glasses you can. I’ll be around later on.”
    Next he called his home. Bert said, “This is a real