If he had had his way, Peter McDermott thought, he would have fired the chief house detective long ago. But he had not had his way and now, once more, the obese ex-policeman was missing when he was needed most.

McDermott leaned down from his husky six-and-a-half feet and jiggled the desk telephone impatiently. "Fifteen things break loose at once," he told the girl by the window of the wide, broadloomed office, "and nobody can find him."

Christine Francis glanced at her wrist watch. It showed a few minutes before eleven P.M. "There's a bar on Baronne Street you might try."

Peter McDermott nodded. "The switchboard's checking Ogilvie's hangouts." He opened a desk drawer, took out cigarettes and offered them to Christine.

Coming forward, she accepted a cigarette and McDermott lit it, then did the same for himself. He watched as she inhaled.

Christine Francis had left her own smaller office in the St. Gregory Hotel executive suite a few minutes earlier. She had been working late and was on the point of going home when the light under the assistant general manager's door had drawn her in.

"Our Mr. Ogilvie makes his own rules," Christine said. "It's always been that way. On W. T.'s orders."

McDermott spoke briefly into the telephone, then waited again. "You're right," he acknowledged. "I tried to reorganize our tame detective force once, and my ears were properly pinned back."

She said quietly, "I didn't know that."

He looked at her quizzically. "I thought you knew everything."

And usually she did. As personal assistant to Warren Trent, the unpredictable and irascible owner of New Orleans' largest hotel, Christine was privy to the hotel's inner secrets as well as its day-to-day affairs. She knew, for example, that Peter, who had been promoted to assistant general manager a month or two ago, was virtually running the big, bustling St. Gregory, though at an ungenerous salary and with limited authority. She knew the reasons behind that, too, which were in a file marked Confidential and involved Peter McDermott's personal life.

Christine asked, "What is breaking loose?"

McDermott gave a cheerful grin which contorted his rugged, almost ugly features. "We've a complaint from the eleventh floor about some sort of sex orgy; on the ninth the Duchess of Croydon claims her Duke has been insulted by a room-service waiter; there's a report of somebody moaning horribly in 1439; and I've the night manager off sick, with the other two house officers otherwise engaged."

He spoke into the telephone again and Christine returned to the office window which was on the main mezzanine floor. Head tilted back to keep the cigarette smoke from her eyes, she looked casually across the city. Directly ahead, through an avenue of space between adjoining buildings, she could see into the tight, crowded rectangle of the French Quarter. With midnight an hour away, it was early yet for the Quarter, and lights in front of late night bars, bistros, jazz halls, and strip joints -- as well as behind darkened shutters -- would burn well into tomorrow morning.

Somewhere to the north, over Lake Pontchartrain probably, a summer storm was brewing in the darkness. The beginnings of it could be sensed in muted rumblings and an occasional flash of light. With luck, if the storm moved south toward the Gulf of Mexico, there might be rain in New Orleans by morning.

The rain would be welcome, Christine thought. For three weeks the city had sweltered in heat and humidity, producing tensions all around. There would be relief in the hotel too. This afternoon the chief engineer had complained again, "If I canna' shut down part of the air conditioning soon, I willna' be responsible for my bearings."

Peter McDermott put down the telephone and she asked, "Do you have a name for the room where the moaning is?"

He shook his head and lifted the phone again. "I'll find out. Probably someone having a nightmare, but we'd better make sure."

As she dropped into an upholstered leather chair facing the big mahogany desk, Christine realized suddenly how very tired she was. In the ordinary way she would have been home at her Gentilly apartment hours ago. But today had been exceptionally full, with two conventions moving in and a heavy influx of other guests, creating problems, many of which had found their way to her desk.

"All right, thanks." McDermott scribbled a name and hung up. "Albert Wells, Montreal."

"I know him," Christine said. "A nice little man who stays here every year. If you like, I'll check that one out."

He hesitated, eyeing Christine's slight, trim figure.

The telephone shrilled and he answered it. "I'm sorry, sir," the operator said, "we can't locate Mr. Ogilvie."

"Never mind. Give me the bell captain." Even if he couldn't fire the chief house detective, McDermott thought, he would do some hell raising in the morning. Meanwhile he would send someone else to look after the disturbance on the eleventh and handle the Duke and Duchess incident himself.

"Bell captain," the phone said, and he recognized the flat nasal voice of Herbie Chandler. Chandler, like Ogilvie, was another of the St. Gregory's old-timers and reputedly controlled more sideline rackets than anyone else on staff.

McDermott explained the problem and asked Chandler to investigate the complaint about an alleged sex orgy. As he had half expected, there was an immediate protest. "That ain't my job, Mr. Mac, and we're still busy down here." The tone was typical Chandler -- half fawning, half insolent.

McDermott instructed, "Never mind the argument, I want that complaint attended to." Making another decision: "And something else: send a boy with a pass key to meet Miss Francis on the main mezzanine." He replaced the phone before there could be any more discussion.

"Let's go." His hand touched Christine's shoulders lightly. "Take the bellboy with you, and tell your friend to have his nightmares under the covers."

Copyright © 2000 by Arthur Hailey