The Brand of Silence | Page 9

went from the office,
a puzzled and angry man. There probably was some mistake, he told
himself. He'd meet Griffin during the day and tell him about the
adventure.
He was anxious to meet some of the men with whom he had worked
ten years before, but he did not know where to find them. He'd have to
wait and ask Griffin what had become of them. Then, too, he wanted to
transfer his funds.
Prale got another taxicab and started making the rounds of the banks he
knew to be solid institutions. Within a few hours he had made
arrangements to transfer the account, using four financial institutions.
He said nothing, except that the money had been transferred to the trust
company from Honduras, because the company had a correspondent
there.

His funds secure, Prale went back uptown and to the hotel. The clerk
handed him a note with his key. Prale tore it open after he stepped into
the elevator. This time it was a sheet of paper upon which a message
had been typewritten.
"You can't dodge the law of compensation. For what you have done,
you must pay."
Sidney Prale gasped when he read that message, and went back to the
ground floor.
"Who left this note for me?" he demanded of the clerk.
"Messenger boy."
"You don't know where he came from?"
"No, sir."
Prale turned away and started for the elevator again. A bell hop stopped
him.
"Manager would like to see you in his office, sir," the boy said. "This
way, sir."
Prale followed the boy, wondering what was coming now. He found
the manager to be a sort of austere individual who seemed impressed
with his own importance.
"Mr. Prale," he said, "I regret to have to say this, but I find that it
cannot be avoided. When you arrived yesterday, the clerk assigned you
to a suite on the fifth floor. He made a mistake. We had a telegraphic
reservation for that suite from an old guest of ours, and it should have
been kept for him. You appreciate the situation, I feel sure."
"No objection to being moved," Prale said. "I have unpacked scarcely
any of my things."
"But--again I regret it--there isn't a vacant suite in the house, Mr.

Prale."
"A room, then, until you have one."
"We haven't a room. We haven't as much as a cot, Mr. Prale. We
cannot take care of you, I'm afraid. So many regular guests, you
understand, and out-of-town visitors."
"Then I'll have to move, I suppose. You may have the suite within two
hours."
"Thank you, Mr. Prale."
Prale was angry again when he left the office of the manager. It seemed
that everything was conspiring against his comfort. He got a cab, drove
to another hotel, inspected a suite and reserved it, paying a month in
advance, and then went back to the big hotel on Fifth Avenue to get his
baggage. He paid his bill at the cashier's window, and overheard the
room clerk speaking to a woman.
"Certainly, madam," the clerk was saying. "We will have an excellent
suite on the fifth floor within half an hour. The party is just vacating it.
Plenty of suites on the third floor, of course, but, if you want to be up
higher in the building----"
Sidney Prale felt the blood pounding in his temples, felt rage welling
up within him. He felt as he had once in a Honduras forest when he
became aware that a dishonest foreman was betraying business secrets.
He hurried to the office of the manager, but the stenographer said the
manager was busy and could not be seen.
Prale whirled away, going through the lobby toward the entrance. He
met Kate Gilbert face to face. She did not seem to see him, though he
was forced to step aside to let her pass.
CHAPTER IV
A FOE AND A FRIEND

After settling himself in the other hotel, Prale ate a belated luncheon.
For the first time that day, he looked at the newspapers. He had
remembered that a New Yorker reads the papers religiously to keep up
to the minute; whereas, in Honduras, it was the custom for busy men to
let the papers accumulate and then read a week's supply at a sitting.
Aside from his name in the list of arrivals, Prale found no word
concerning himself, though there was mention of other men who had
come on the Manatee, and who had no special claim to prominence.
"I don't amount to much, I guess," said Prale to himself. "Don't care for
publicity, anyway, but they might let the world know a fellow has come
home."
He went for another walk that afternoon, returned to the hotel for
dinner, and decided that, instead of going to