In the last three or four years Sadie Corn had taken to wearing a little lavender-and-white crocheted shawl about her shoulders on cool days, and when Two-fifty-seven, who was a regular, caught his annual heavy cold late in the fall, Sadie would ask him sharply whether he had on his winter flannels.  On his replying in the negative she would rebuke him scathingly and demand a bill of sizable denomination; and when her watch was over she would sally forth to purchase four sets of men’s winter underwear.  As captain of the Magnifique’s thirty-four floor clerks Sadie Corn’s authority extended from the parlours to the roof, but her especial domain was floor two.  Ensconced behind her little desk in a corner, blocked in by mailracks, pantry signals, pneumatic-tube chutes and telephone, with a clear view of the elevators and stairway, Sadie Corn was mistress of the moods, manners and morals of the Magnifique’s second floor.

It was six thirty p.m. on Monday of Automobile Show Week when Sadie Corn came on watch.  She came on with a lively, well-developed case of neuralgia over her right eye and extending down into her back teeth.  With its usual spitefulness the attack had chosen to make its appearance during her long watch.  It never selected her short-watch days, when she was on duty only from eleven a.m. until six-thirty p.m.

Now with a peppermint bottle held close to alternately sniffing nostrils Sadie Corn was running her eye over the complex report sheet of the floor clerk who had just gone off watch.  The report was even more detailed and lengthy than usual.  Automobile Show Week meant that the always prosperous Magnifique was filled to the eaves and turning them away.  It meant twice the usual number of inside telephone calls anent rooms too hot, rooms too cold, radiators hammering, radiators hissing, windows that refused to open, windows that refused to shut, packages undelivered, hot water not forthcoming.  As the human buffers between guests and hotel management, it was the duty of Sadie Corn and her diplomatic squad to pacify the peevish, to smooth the path of the paying.

Down the hall strolled Donahue, the house detective—­Donahue the leisurely.  Donahue the keen-eyed, Donahue the guileless—­looking in his evening clothes for all the world like a prosperous diner-out.  He smiled benignly upon Sadie Corn, and Sadie Corn had the bravery to smile back in spite of her neuralgia, knowing well that men have no sympathy with that anguishing ailment and no understanding of it.

“Everything serene, Miss Corn?” inquired Donahue.

“Everything’s serene,” said Sadie Corn.  “Though Two-thirty-three telephoned a minute ago to say that if the valet didn’t bring his pants from the presser in the next two seconds he’d come down the hall as he is and get ’em.  Perhaps you’d better stay round.”

Donahue chuckled and passed on.  Half way down the hall he retraced his steps, and stopped again before Sadie Corn’s busy desk.  He balanced a moment thoughtfully from toe to heel, his chin lifted inquiringly:  “Keep your eye on Two-eighteen and Two-twenty-three this morning?”