"There's not another hotel open in Pinewood, I understand. The bridge is down. That fellow says traffic to the west is barred by the condition of the roads. The dickens!" Ruth had paid no attention to his mutterings. She was quite unconscious of his perplexity, or of its cause. He came to a quick decision. "I'm going downstairs a moment, dear," he said. "All right." "All right, what? Haven't you a name for me?" he inquired, drawing her to him. "All right--hubby," she replied, blushing slightly, and he kissed her and then shot out of the room and dashed down the single flight of stairs to join the excited crowd already milling about the hotel desk. CHAPTER IV "HIS TROUBLE BEGINS!" Bangs, the red-faced manager of Pinewood Inn, was facing the group of clamoring masculine guests like a rat at bay before a pack of terriers. Every individual man in the crowd was demanding what it meant. Then, before he could make any audible explanation, they burst out again in a staccato of such observations as: "It's an outrage! The man should be hung!" "I never heard the like! Why, my wife says----" "It's a most abominable imposition! Lights out at half past eight!" "And the help discharged!" "And no other hotel open anywhere along this part of the coast! Disgraceful!" "Not even a cottage open. We can't go and live on these muckers who stay here all winter." Then a general roar, as they faced Bangs again: "What do you mean by it?" "If you'll give me a chance to tell you!" shouted Bangs, shaking both clenched fists in the air. "And if you'll listen to reason perhaps I can make you understand." Then, as a grumbling silence was accorded him, he added: "At last I can make myself heard! Lemme tell you about it. Giddings, the trustee of the Barnaby estate, the owners of this hotel, and I have had some difficulty over the rental. And because I won't agree to be robbed by him, he has taken this tack----" "What tack?" asked John Ryder, thrusting in a question which struck at the heart of the business. "You haven't said what he has done." "He's served me with dispossess papers," said the heated Bangs. "Then you haven't paid your rent," Ryder observed. "Why don't you pay it and not put your guests to this trouble? Settle with Giddings in the courts." "He'd beat me--the scoundrel!" cried Bangs. "And the rent is exorbitant. I served him notice three months ago that I could not run this hotel and pay such a price for it. It's an imposition." "It is a greater imposition on your part to give your guests half an hour's notice to get out. Why, Bangs, it really can't be done, you know," said one man. But John Ryder, with his clear insight into anything of this kind, again drove right at the heart of the business. "You have had three months to prepare for this very emergency," he said. "You admit that." "I don't!" yelled Bangs. "I admit nothing of the kind. They just served me----"