At the Marquis I am among friends.
I found Duran, the house copper, on the mezzanine floor, and asked him:
“Who is 761?”
Duran is a white-haired old-timer who looks, talks, and acts like the president of an exceptionally strong bank. He used to be captain of detectives in one of the larger Middle Western cities. Once he tried too hard to get a confession out of a safe-ripper, and killed him. The newspapers didn’t like Duran. They used that accident to howl him out of his job.
“761?” he repeated in his grandfatherly manner. “That is Mr. Maurois, I believe. Are you especially interested in him?”
“I have hopes,” I admitted. “What do you know about him?”
“Not a great deal. He has been here perhaps two weeks. We shall go down and see what we can learn.”
We went to the desk, the switchboard, the captain of bellhops, and upstairs to question a couple of chambermaids. The occupant of 761 had arrived two weeks ago, had registered as “Edouard Maurois, Dijon, France,” had frequent telephone calls, no mail, no visitors, kept irregular hours and tipped freely. Whatever business he was in or had was not known to the hotel people.
“What is the occasion of your interest in him, if I may ask?” Duran inquired after we had accumulated these facts. He talks like that.