Four and Twenty Beds. Nancy Casteel Vogel
I call upon you tonight?" I heard him ask. A truck thundered past and I couldn't hear her reply, but I watched them as they walked together toward their cars. Her birdlike head was fluttering in agreement with the remarks he was making, and his steps were jaunty.
I turned my attention to the desk, to put the date and the cabin number on each of the two registration cards. About to pick up a pencil, suddenly I gasped and jumped backward. There, leering at me with strangely human eyes, was an enormous black spider, motionless on one of the registration cards.
I would have called Grant, but I knew he was behind the rear cabins, cleaning out the incinerator. I was on my own.
I picked up a newspaper that was on one edge of the desk, moving quietly and carefully, and folded it until it was narrow and stiff.
I hated to think of having squashed spider all over the top of the desk, but I hated even more to think of letting the huge, loathsome creature escape. I raised the folded newspaper, with grim slowness, and then I brought it crashing down on the registration card.
I sighed with relief. There, that would fix him! I lifted the paper, preparing to clean up the mess.
There, still watching me mockingly, sat the spider, still motionless–and completely unharmed!
About that time it began to dawn on me that this was a very strange spider, indeed. I had seen every imaginable sort of insect since we came to Banning, including black widows, but I had never in all my life seen anything resembling this.
I moved a little closer and, bending down, looked the spider over carefully. Then I laughed and picked him up in my hand. He was made of rubber. Either Miss Nestleburt or Mr. Hawkins must have left him there, since he was on top of the registration cards.
I put him in the cash drawer, where he would give Grant a shock.
I went back into our cabin and set to work on a "Vacancy" sign I was making, to hang up just outside the office door under the neon sign that said "Office."
We had been thinking of getting a neon "vacancy" sign, but we were afraid it would be too expensive. One night the "Moonrise Motel" sign had begun to flicker on and off, so we telephoned Oian Rosco, the only neon expert within fifty miles. Grant was disgusted at the idea of having to hire anyone to fix something for him, but neon signs are one thing–probably about the only thing–he doesn't know how to fix.
While Rosco, a small man with an innocent-looking round face, was fixing our sign, we asked him how much a neon "vacancy" sign would cost. He told us he'd figure it out and let us know when he brought back the parts for our broken sign.
When he returned with the parts, he not only gave us an estimate of the cost, but brought along a penciled sketch of the sign as he planned it, in its full size.
It was very attractive, and he could make it for us in a very short time, but it would cost a little more than we wanted to spend, with what neighboring motel owners called the "late summer slump" due at almost any time. We'd think it over, though, we told him.
He left the penciled sketch for us to consider, assuring us, his round eyes guileless, that he had no use for it.
We decided that, even though we didn't feel that we could afford a neon sign, we should have a "vacancy" sign of some kind to hang under the "office" sign. It would catch the eyes of the minority of people who look toward the office, instead of at the big sign in front of a motel, to determine whether or not accommodations are available.
"I'll get a board the size of the 'office' sign," Grant, the ever resourceful, said: "I'll paint it white, and you can put the letters on carefully with pencil. Then we'll paint the letters black."
"A good idea," I agreed, glancing at the paper Rosco had left, and at the beautiful, perfect lettering on it.
When Grant put the dry, white-painted board before me a few days later, I had a battle with my conscience. Should I take a ruler and painstakingly create my own letters, or should I cut out Rosco's letters and trace them onto the board?
The latter course seemed the most practical. Still, a stern inner voice told me, Rosco had put his time and work into that sample sign with the hope of selling us its counterpart in neon, not so that we might make use of his labor by tracing his letters and making a sign ourselves, thereby pushing ourselves still further out of the market for the neon sign he might have sold us.
I finally decided that the only honorable thing to do would be to start from scratch. Pushing his sign aside, I set laboriously to work making new letters. If I cast an occasional glance at the formation of his lettering as I worked, it was accidental.
I was intently studying the proportions of his "Y" when the office bell rang. I put aside my work guiltily and hurried to the door.
It was Miss Nesdeburt. She gave me a timid smile.
"My cabin is just lovely," she said, her tiny white hands fluttering up to her glasses. She took them off, as though she could see me better without a barrier of glass between us; "it's really lovely," she continued. "I was wondering if I could borrow a pencil? I'd like to write some postcards and tell every one I've found a cabin, and I seem to have forgotten to bring a pen or pencil."
"Certainly. We've got dozens of them," I said lightly. I opened the cash drawer and put my hand into it.
Then I shrieked and leaped backward. There, in the drawer, sat a huge black spider!
Then I remembered, and I could feel the color flooding into my face. I had been taken in by my own trick–and before an audience, too!
"It's just–just an artificial spider, made of rubber. I forgot, for a minute, that I'd put him in there. I was going to play a little joke on my husband, you know. But I guess the joke was on me." I produced a laugh that was meant to be hearty, but which actually was sickly and aggrieved.
Miss Nestleburt's sparkling blue eyes had never left my face. Her expression was sad and horrified. "Et tu, Brute?" she asked, with more pathos than Caesar could possibly have squeezed into the three words.
"What do you mean?" I asked uneasily.
"Why, what kind of a den of practical jokers have I gotten myself into?" she wanted to know. "First Mr. Hawkins, now you."
"Oh, but I'm not really a practical joker," I assured her hastily. "In fact, it must have been Mr. Hawkins who left this spider to scare me, and I just thought as long as I had it anyway I'd scare my husband. I'm not in the habit of doing things like that. Did Mr. Hawkins scare you with a spider too?"
She shuddered daintily. "Mais non! It was worse than that."
I leaned across the desk eagerly.
"I'll–I'll tell you when I know you better," she said in confusion. "Really, it was quite a dreadful thing. Maybe I shouldn't let him come to call tonight after all."
She took the pencil I handed her, smiled her thanks, and went thoughtfully out the office door.
We hadn't been in the motel business long before we discovered that the proper name for customers is "clients" or "guests"–not the common, vulgar "customers" that came so naturally to our lips. In spite of the good example set by practically all the other motel owners we knew, who were careful not to use the uncouth word, we continued calling our customers what they were–customers.
Grant, falling as easily and competently into the role of motel owner as he had into his many former roles, must have convinced our customers from his very first day that he was a veteran of the motel business. His every action, his every remark led people to believe he had been in this part of the country, at this work, for years. He freely employed such words and phrases as "usually," "generally in the summer here," and "every winter." If a customer were to ask him, "Isn't it warmer than usual here?" he'd reply something like, "Nope, it always gets pretty hot here, this time of year. In a month or so it'll get cool, though; there'll even be snow on those mountains."
The sweating customer, glancing at the close, towering mountains to the north and south, would mention that it didn't seem possible, and Grant would say, "Yep, it's a surprise, every winter, when the desert heat turns into snow and cold wind. It happens, though." Of course it does happen, too, but at the time he had