“Excuse me, sir. I’m looking for the Elliott Hotel. Can you tell me—”
“Right here,” said the florid man Simon had accosted. “Want to go in?” He took the Saint’s arm and guided him up the steps to the door. “Okay now?”
“Thank you, sir. God bless you,” Simon said, and the florid man, who does not hereafter appear in this record, vanished into the Chicago evening.
The Saint stood in a broad, high-ceilinged hall. There were doors and a drab carpet and merciless light bulbs overhead. Fresh paint could not disguise the essential squalor of the place. A few framed mottoes told any interested unfortunates it might concern that there was no place like home, that it was more blessed to give than to receive, that every cloud had a silver lining, and that a fixed and rigid smile was, for some unexplained reason, an antidote to all ills. The effect of these bromides was to create a settled feeling of moroseness in the beholder, and Simon had no difficulty in maintaining his patiently resigned expression beneath the dark glasses.
Through an open door at the Saint’s left a radio was playing. At the back of the hall were closed doors, and facing Simon was the desk clerk’s cubby-hole, occupied now by an inordinately fat woman who belonged in a freak show, though not for her obesity. The Saint greatly admired the woman’s beard. It was not so black as a skunk’s nor so long as Monty Woolley’s, but ’twas enough, ’twould serve.
The woman said, “Well?”
Simon said tremulously, “I’m looking for Miss Green. Miss Hazel Green.”
“Big Hazel Green?”
“Yes — yes, that’s right.”
“You’re talking to her,” the woman said, placing enormous forearms on the counter and leaning forward to stare at the Saint. “What is it?”