"Then you have several days in which to arrange the matter," Ryder went on. "What about this turning off the lights in half an hour? It is ridiculous." "That's exactly what it is," chimed in another aggrieved voice. "You can't put your guests out in any such way, Mr. Bangs--and guests who, some of them, have been here long before you were ever manager. My wife and I have been staying here for eight years. I can't be turned out of my home on half an hour's notice." "Well, you'd have to get out if there was a fire," snarled Bangs. "A fire would be 'an act of God,' according to the coroner's finding," grimly laughed somebody. "This isn't." "Quite the contrary. It's a deucedly mean trick." "It isn't my fault, I tell you," Bangs mendaciously declared. "You can blame that hound, Giddings. I can't be bled any more of all my profits, and I am going to close my connection with this hotel tonight--and in a very few minutes." "Great heavens, Bangs!" exclaimed one man. "Get out if you want to. We'll none of us weep over your departure. Leave George, here, to run the desk and Al, the steward, to see to the kitchen and the help, and we'll get along all right." "And who is going to assure the help's wages?" demanded Bangs. "_I'm_ not, you bet! And who'll pay for the lighting and heating? I can tell you gentlemen right now there isn't coal enough in the bins to run the dynamos and boilers till midnight." At that a howl went up which boded ill for the manager of the Pinewood Inn and he dodged behind the desk before which he had been standing. Several of his guests looked suddenly dangerous to Bangs. There came, however, an interruption. Somebody said: "Here comes Colonel Brack," and the group parted willingly enough to let in a tall, military figure of a man with drooping gray mustache and goatee, fiery eyes under penthouse brows--a man who walked with the "step-clump, step-clump" of a cripple with an artificial limb. Nevertheless, Colonel Brack bore himself very erect and stepped with a firmness that betrayed more than ordinary hardihood of character. The other guests who knew him looked upon the old man with evident respect. "What is this I hear, Bangs?" the ex-military officer demanded in a deep voice. "You sent one of your cubs to my room with a saucy message and I boxed his ears for him. What do you mean by telling me to get out of this hotel, suh?" "I can't help it, Colonel Brack," declared the manager, backing out of any possible reach of the colonel's long arm. "The hotel's got to close." "Then close it. But do it decently and in order," the colonel said. "Still, I doubt if the Barnaby estate will allow the house to be shut. They can find somebody else to run it quite as well as you, suh."