He was surprised at a certain note in the clerk’s reply, something between the tone in which a man addresses a great lady advanced in years and that in which he would address (were addresses paid to such things) a unicorn or any other apparition; and the voice using these tones said quite low, so that no one around should hear, and with a certain thrill of reverence displayed and of astonishment controlled:
“Mr. John K. Petre?”
Mr. Petre nodded rapidly. It was no good seeking for the real Christian names: these would do as well as any other for the time being.
He was relieved to see the right spelling coming out from the tip of the clerk’s pen in the register: “John K. Petre.” No place of residence followed. The clerk knew too much for that. He made an inclination that was nearly a bow as he sent for the boy in buttons, and begged Mr. Petre in a still lower voice to let him know if the suite he had chosen would do: it had only three rooms, he said, but it was the best unoccupied and over the garden. Two hundred dollars—forty pounds.
“... As though he were a Unicorn.”
Mr. Petre recollected the £63 he had upon him and the very strange condition under which he was attacking this stronghold. He firmly refused anything but a plain bedroom and bathroom. He would not even have a sitting-room, and the clerk this time really did bow, as a worshiper might incline to a saint who was beyond the pale of mortal kind. He whispered rather than spoke the number “44,” and Mr. Petre, before going to the lift, said:
“One moment, I have no luggage.” He said it in the over-emphatic tone which men use to say anything startling that has to be forced down; he repeated it in that same firm voice in which the slight American accent was emphasised: “I have no luggage.”
The clerk showed no surprise at all. If Mr. John K. Petre chose to travel without luggage, it seemed to be in the clerk’s eyes but one more evidence of more than human greatness.