"
To say the truth, Charles was beside himself with anger. He took
the elevator down to the "Bureau," as they call it, and complained
to the manager. The manager, a sharp-faced New Yorker, smiled as
he remarked in a nonchalant way that guests with valuables were
required to leave them in charge of the management, in which case
they were locked up in the safe and duly returned to the depositor
on leaving. Charles declared somewhat excitedly that he had been
robbed, and demanded that nobody should be allowed to leave the
hotel till the dispatch-box was discovered. The manager, quite cool,
and obtrusively picking his teeth, responded that such tactics might
be possible in an hotel of the European size, putting up a couple
of hundred guests or so; but that an American house, with over a
thousand visitors--many of whom came and went daily--could not
undertake such a quixotic quest on behalf of a single foreign
complainant.
That epithet, "foreign," stung Charles to the quick. No Englishman
can admit that he is anywhere a foreigner. "Do you know who I am,
sir?" he asked, angrily. "I am Sir Charles Vandrift, of London--a
member of the English Parliament."
"You may be the Prince of Wales," the man answered, "for all I care.
You'll get the same treatment as anyone else, in America.
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