The manager questioned the boy in his native tongue, studying him the while. The boy replied politely in the same tongue.
The manager scribbled a note, gave it to him, then nodded toward the door at the back of the lobby.
The boy went back. Half an hour later he might have been found dressed in a dark brown suit trimmed in gold braid, clearing dishes from the tables in the grill. He had been given a position as bus boy.
The building in which the club was located rose only a single story from the ground. Did it have a basement? To all appearances it did not. The heating plant was situated back of the billiard room. There were no outside entrances to the place save the one at the front. There were no stairways leading down.
The grillroom possessed one slightly unusual feature. Six telephone booths, standing in a row, occupied one corner of the large grillroom. One would have said that one, or at most two booths, would have sufficed for such a place. But no; here were six. And, if one judged by the number of people who entered the booths, one might have said there were not too many, for people were constantly entering and leaving them.
Two things were strange about these booths. They were not constructed as other booths are. True, they were just as broad and just as tall; but they contained far less glass. The windows were narrow and high. In fact, once a person was inside and had closed the door, nothing at all could be seen of him.
This, one would say, was an improvement, for who wishes to be seen grinning and gesturing at a telephone, as one is forever doing?
The other feature was far more startling. It was a thing you might not notice until you had dined there many times. Did the new bus boy take cognizance of it on that first night of service?
If one were to hazard a guess one would answer, “He probably did.” That guess, however, might easily be wrong; for, during the entire evening the boy rendered faultless service. He did not drop a dish, spill a glass of water, nor do any of those things one is so likely to do when startled.
The peculiarity of these six booths was that they did not always disgorge the identical persons who had entered them.