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eyes.
    From his position behind the front desk he had a clear view of the glass doors before him, through which he could see a strip of awning and the clattering traffic on Broadway. He also commanded a view of the great lobby stretching away to the left and, in an alcove of the lobby, the newsstand and an edge of the cigar stand. Everything about the cigar stand irritated Martin: the choice of cigars, the display, the dullness or indifference of old man Hendricks, who never offered customers advice and sat on a stool reading a newspaper through small square spectacles worn low on his nose. Once or twice Martin had tried to strike up a conversation with him, in an effort to win his confidenceand offer a suggestion or two, but the old man had looked up from his paper with red-rimmed hostile eyes. After that, Martin had no qualms about sending cigar-smoking guests to Dressler’s Cigars and Tobacco, conveniently located just down the block. He wondered how the concession could possibly pay, though of course it was more convenient for a guest to step out of an elevator and walk three steps to purchase a morning paper and a so-so cigar than to leave the hotel for even a short walk down the street. The hotel rented lobby space to three other concessions—the newsstand, a florist’s shop, and a railway ticket agency—all of which seemed to Martin to be operated far more skillfully than the cigar stand. When he asked the assistant manager whether the hotel couldn’t enforce higher standards, since it owned the space, Mr. Henning looked at him with amusement. He said that there had been no complaints, that the hotel wasn’t in the cigar business, and that so far as the lobby concessions were concerned, the hotel was simply a landlord, who demanded from the concessionaires only the rent check and behavior appropriate to the reputation of the Vanderlyn Hotel. Martin argued that the Vanderlyn was in the business of attracting guests, and that the lobby concessions were part of that business, and that therefore—but here Mr. Henning laughed and said that all this talk about cigars was making him hungry for a smoke, and if it made Martin feel better, there was talk that old man Hendricks would be giving up the concession when the lease ran out at the end of the year. “Then I’ll take itover myself,” Martin said irritably. Mr. Henning burst out laughing, then looked at him sharply. “Go easy, lad. One thing at a time.”
    The old man gave notice before the end of the year: John Babcock said he was moving out to Brooklyn to live with his widowed sister, a milliner who owned the house over her shop and took in boarders. And Martin, after thinking things out for two months, explained his plan to his father, presented it in detail to Mr. Westerhoven, the hotel manager, and took over the cigar concession. For the past two years Martin had been giving half his salary to his father and putting the other half in the bank; although he had saved enough money for a month’s rent, he needed his father’s signature as guarantor of the lease, which ran for one year. His father agreed to advance Martin a sum of money good for six months’ rent, after which Martin had to pay the rent himself or give up the lease. And Martin, who had no intentipn of giving up either the lease or his post as day clerk, had in addition to pay the salary of the cigar vendor. He wanted someone young and vigorous, someone who knew cigars, and Otto Dressler had just the man for him: Wilhelm Baer, the twenty-year-old son of Gustav Baer, a cigarmaker on Forsyth Street in the old neighborhood. Wilhelm, who had no trace of a German accent and called himself Bill, had worked as a cigarmaker and a packer before clerking in a cigar store on Third Avenue under the El; he was out of work and would jump at the chance. Martin took an immediate liking to Bill Baer, a friendly man withalert blue eyes and copper-colored hair brushed hard to the side. He seemed grateful for the