“I'm sorry, sir, but that room is taken. I can give you--” “Taken!” said Tom, in such a disappointed tone that the clerk deigned to explain sympathetically: “Engaged by telegraph.” “Who engaged it?” Tom asked this so peremptorily that the clerk looked at him icily with raised eyebrows, turned his back on the New-Yorker, made a pretense of once more looking at the index of rooms and guests, and said to him with a cold determination in his voice: “I made a mistake. I thought we had a vacant room on the eighth floor. I find we have no vacant room anywhere. I'm sorry, sir. Nothing left.” He marked something after Tom's name on the register and turned away. He evidently considered the incident closed. Tom was too surprised to be angry. Then he recovered himself. His business in Boston was to get a certain room in this hotel. He was a son of his father; so he said, with a quiet determination that disturbed the clerk: “I must have Room 77 on the seventh floor! The price is of no consequence. I am Mr. Merriwether.” “I told you it was engaged.” “And I told you I must have it. Don't you understand English?” “Don't you?” said the clerk, trying to disguise his growing uneasiness with a sneer. This made Tom calm. He said, quietly: “Will you be good enough to send my card to Mr. Starrett, the owner of this hotel? He knows who I am and who my father is; but if he should have forgotten, say that he is to call up Major Wilkinson, of Pierce, Wilkinson & Company, the bankers, or Mr. Blandy, of the Moontucket National Bank, or anybody who knows where New York is on the map. Good heavens! there must be somebody in Boston who hasn't been asleep for the last twenty years!” The clerk decided to be polite. The name Merriwether had a familiar sound, but he could not associate it. He said, more politely: “I am sorry, Mr. Merriwether, but the room you want--and three others with it--have been engaged.” “By whom?” “You are asking me to break one of our rules.” “Well, can you tell me whether it has been engaged since yesterday?” “Oh, longer than that!” He disappeared, consulted a book, and came back with the triumphant expression human beings put on when they do not wish to say “I told you so,” aloud, “Engaged and paid for since the eighth, Mr. Merriwether. That's nine days ago. So, you see, we can't do what you ask us to. Sorry!” Wherever he went, Tom thought he was confronted by crude attempts at mystery. To send him to this particular room, 77 on the seventh floor, was merely the same as an effort to impress children by using the magical number seven. Who had engaged the room? Was it an accomplice or some stranger guiltless of participation in the rather juvenile joke? Still, Tom was in Boston to do a particular thing; and, though much of the spring restlessness had gone from his veins, there remained the desire to see the affair through to the end, whether the end should be a smile or a mild oath. Therefore, after a pause, Tom said to the clerk: