Yes, Sextus Forsyte had sought his solitude in that remotest of all places, the large city hotel. His career of smiling at strange faces, welcoming famous people and snapping crisp commands to assistant managers had provided the near-perfect isolation from normal society. To the transient eye he was the poised, gregarious greeter. Actually he lived in a deep well of introversion. Of course, this was no affair of the succession of boards of directors who had uttered the harsh charges of "dipsomania" and fired him. But then boards of directors are never notable for their sympathy or understanding. And finally word got around the eastern seaboard about Sextus. "A competent man, yes. Drinks on the job. Wouldn't have him as a busboy." Worse than the mere prospect of unemployment was the notoriety. Coldly sober, Sextus had fled panic-stricken to the west coast, vaguely determined to become a beach-comber or an oyster-fisherman or whatever they did out there. He stared now at the blue slip and turned in to a florist shop. He broke his last five-dollar bill to buy a pink carnation for his buttonhole then headed down the sunny walk to the hotel. It was a fine December morning in the little beach town, such as only Florida and California can advertise. He breathed the salt air and turned an appreciative ear to the gentle wash of the Pacific surf. He felt so good he might even take a little breakfast before his first drink of whiskey of the day. * * * * * At the bus depot he traded his baggage checks for two old, but fine leather, two-suiters. Then he taxied the remaining two blocks to the Mahoney-Plaza. He paused at the entrance, stepped from under the marquis and looked up mystified. The frontage indicated a rather small hostelry to pay such munificent salary to its general manager. Only five stories high, it was squeezed in by low office buildings on either side like an ancient, narrow-chested old man. He handed his bags to a bell-hop and stepped into a spacious lobby. It was decorated with fine furniture, thick carpets and throngs of expensively undressed people. The boy put his bags down before a remarkably long room-desk manned by three white-suited clerks, but Sextus touched his arm. "Just take them up to the manager's suite, please." The boy eyed him from carnation to dusty shoes. "Right off a park bench. It figures, though." He got a key from the desk clerk, picked up the bags again and they started for the elevator alcove. Sextus' practiced eye vacuumed details from the lobby, the well-swept carpets, freshly emptied sand-jars and the modern elevators. The place seemed well-ordered and enjoying convention-magnitude business. He started into the first elevator, but the operator warned, "To Wing 'A' only!" with such a question in his voice that Sextus looked back for his bellman. That person, a sandy-haired stripling of some five-feet-four, was trying to wave him on with his head.