“The hotel dining-room if you know what to order.”
“How do you know what to order?”
“You have to be a detective,” she said.
I let that pass, and after she saw that it had passed, she said, “You go in for a little deduction, and reason by elimination. In other words, you need a licensed guide.”
“Do you,” I asked, “have a licence?”
She glanced over her shoulder towards the partition. “It isn’t quite as bad as that.”
“Aren’t you a member of the Chamber of Commerce?”
“I’m not. The paper is.”
I said, “I’m a stranger in town. You can’t tell. I might be looking for a good manufacturing site. It would be a shame for me to get a false impression of the city.”
Behind the partition the man coughed.