It was useless for Mr. Cone to explain that with the plumbers striking for living wages and the furniture repairers behind with their work, it had been impossible to attend immediately to these matters.
Ruin confronted Mr. Cone as he argued and begged them not to act hastily. But something of the mob spirit had taken possession of the guests in front of the desk who stood and glowered at him, and his conciliatory attitude, his obsequiousness, only added to it.
If nothing else had happened to strain Mr. Cone's self-control further, he and his guests might have separated with at least a semblance of good feeling, but the fatal word which he had feared in his forebodings came from Mrs. J. Harry Stott, who majestically descended the broad staircase carrying before her a small reddish-brown insect impaled on a darning-needle. She walked to the desk and presented it for Mr. Cone's consideration. It was a most indelicate action, but the knowledge that it was such did not lessen the horror with which the guests regarded it.
Aghast, speechless, Mr. Cone, one of whose proudest boasts had been of the hotel's cleanliness, could not have been more shocked if he had learned that he was a leper.
There were shudders, ejaculations, and a general determination to leave even sooner than anticipated.
"Where did you find it?" Mr. Cone finally managed to ask hoarsely.
"Walking on my pillow!" replied Mrs. Stott, dramatically. "And I think there are others! If you will see that my trunks get off on the 4:17 I shall be obliged to you."
Mr. Cone knew it was coming. He felt the symptoms which warned him that he was going to "fly off the handle." He leaned over the counter. Mrs. Stott's eyes were so close together that, like Cyclops, she seemed to have but one, and they had the appearance of growing even closer as Mr. Cone looked into them.
"Do not give yourself any concern on that score, madam. Your trunks will be at the station as soon as they are ready and it will please me if you will follow them.
"For twelve years I have been pretending not to know that you used the hotel soap to do your washing in the bath-tub, and it is a relief to mention it to you.