She glanced toward the kitchen. "I didn't--I didn't notice before that the place had a kitchen." Her voice was a little less like a foghorn.
"Nope. You've never been here, before," Grant said. "The number of the police department is 3322."
Her bosom seemed to shrink a trifle.
"And I don't remember any Venetian blinds in the place. Maybe we got twisted, driving around in a strange town, you know, when we got our malt. Maybe it was the front cabin of another motel. I--well..." She eased her bulk back toward the door. "I guess I made a mistake."
"Yep. But not such a big one as your husband made," Grant said, as he shut the outer door.
My first story for the newspaper was an account of the initial meeting of the Banning Motel Owners' Association. (I omitted the encounter with the host's wife!) The editor, Grandma, Grant, and most of the members of the association were pleased with the quality of my first venture into newspaper reporting.
I had closed the article with a list of the names of the motel owners who had attended the meeting, and it turned out that one member of the organization was not in the least happy over the situation.
I found that out the afternoon of the day the paper was published. Mr. Featherbrain stormed into the office, spluttered for a while, and finally came to the point.
"Durned old paper," he raged. "Durned old article. Who writ it, anyways?"
I still remembered acutely l'affaire de water faucet. "I wrote it," I replied coldly. "So what?"