"You are a clever man, Mr. Ames, and I have every confidence that you will not only solve the mystery of the library chimney but find the ghost that switched off the lights on the stair last night. I prefer that you should accomplish these feats without any help from the plans. I myself have no suggestions. I am gratified that you are meeting the emergencies that have risen here with so much determination, but it is what I should expect of the son of Arnold Ames of Hartford. Opportunity is all that any of us need to find ourselves truly great, and if, in the ordinary course of our lives, the gate does not open freely, we are justified in picking the lock. When I determined to seek adventures in my old age, I resolved that I should miss no chance, and that I should be prepared for any beckoning of the hand of fate. An odd fancy struck me at the beginning of my new life that Boston would some day be the starting-point of some interesting experience. This has not yet developed, but in order that I may be prepared for anything that may occur I keep a blue-silk umbrella constantly checked at the Parker House. The presence of the little brass check in my purse is a constant reminder that Boston may one day call me."
A discussion of the Parker House umbrella followed, Cecilia and I joining, and it proved so fruitful a topic that it carried us to our coffee.
Coffee-making, in a machine she had herself contrived, was always attended with rites that required deliberation, and while she performed them Miss Hollister continued to amuse us.
"You may not know," she remarked, in one of her charming irrelevant outbursts, "that the most important furniture transactions effected in this country are those negotiated daily by the head-waiters of the Fifth Avenue restaurants. Such is, I assure you, the fact. These gentlemen, who have attained front rank among our predatory rich, allow no one to dine at the inns they dominate who does not first purchase a table and chairs at a profit of at least two hundred per cent over the original Grand Rapids cost, the furniture thus purchased reverting in every case to the party of the first part after the purchasers have eaten to their satisfaction. The Fifth Avenue head-waiters are not only the most absolute autocrats of our time, but the most acute students of human nature among us. The sale of the tables by the lords of the dining-rooms is alone worth a fortune every season at our fashionable victualing houses and, in addition, the humbler members of the minor orders of waiters, who merely fetch and carry, are obliged to share their gratuities with their august chiefs."
"The system is iniquitous," I declared. "It's enough to pay two prices for the food without buying the hotel furniture."
"The system, Mr. Ames, is wholly admirable, if you will pardon me for expressing a difference of opinion. We cannot do less than admire the austere genius before which mere plutocrats and men of affairs meekly bow. In making my own investments I would rather have the advice of Alphonse at the Hotel Pallida than that of the president of the strongest trust company on Manhattan Island. The varying size of the sums he receives for the dining-room furniture is the best possible indication of the condition of the market. When a citizen of Pittsburg will pay no more than one hundred dollars for the use of a table to eat from at the Pallida you may be sure that a panic impends. By the way, I proposed to Alphonse last winter the organization of a limited company of leading head-waiters to control the waiting industry of Fifth Avenue. It was my idea that some special forms of torture might be devised for calculating persons—usually readers of New York letters in provincial newspapers—who think a waiter entitled to only ten per cent of the bill, and this could best be managed by an arrangement between the five or six magnates who control the more gilded and imposing refectories. I suggested the placing of a special mark in the hats of the ten-per-cent fiends, so that wherever they dine the symbol of their indiscreet frugalities would be apparent to the initiated eye. It is another of my notions that the head-waiter and his humble slave should present a formal bill for their services, while the hotel or restaurant should merely be tipped. In this way the more important service would receive its due consideration. The sole office of the proprietor is to provide the head-waiter a place in which to follow his profession. Alphonse is impressed with my ideas, and has even offered to make me a director of the company."
"I suppose that you won the regard of Alphonse, the magnificent, only by the most princely tips through many years of acquaintance, Miss Hollister."
"On the other hand, Mr. Ames, I never gave him a cent in my life; but last Christmas, in recognition of his friendliness in warning me against an alligator-pear salad, at a moment when that vegetable was at the turn of the season, I knit him a pair of blue worsted bed-room slippers, which he received with the liveliest expressions of delight."
Three suitors were announced at this moment, and I slipped away without excuses, while Miss Octavia and Cecilia adjourned to the library.
The ghost, I had sworn, should not baffle me another night.