This time I bypassed the spa entrance and went around to the front, up wide concrete stairs to the wraparound porch. A row of chaise longues lent the veranda the look of a ship's deck. Under a canopy of oaks, the ground sloped down gradually, leveling out then for a hundred yards until it met the road. On my left, in an area cleared of trees, I caught a glimpse of the deserted swimming pool in a flat oblong of sunlight. Two tennis courts occupied the only other portion of the property graced with sun. The surrounding fence was screened by shrubs, but the hollow pok... pok suggested that at least one court was in use.

I pushed through a double-wide door of carved mahogany, the upper half inset with glass. The lobby was built on a grand scale, rimmed with wooden balustrades, flooded with light from two translucent glass skylights. The main salon was currently undergoing renovation. The carpeting was obscured by yards of gray canvas dropcloth, speckled with old paint. Scaffolding erected along two walls suggested that the wood paneling was in the process of being sanded and refinished. Here, at least, the harsh smell of varnish overrode the pungent aroma of the mineral springs that burbled under the property like a cauldron.

The registration desk ran the width of the lobby, but there was no one in evidence. No reception clerk, no bellman, no painters at work. The silence had a quality about it that caused me to glance back over my shoulder, scanning the second-floor gallery. There was no one visible. Shadows hung among the eaves like spiderwebs. Wide, carpeted hallways extended on either side of the desk back into the gloomy depths of the hotel. I waited a decent interval in the silence. No one appeared. I pivoted, doing a one-eighty turn while I surveyed the place. Time to nose around, I thought.

Casually, I ambled down the corridor on the right, my passage making no sound on the densely carpeted floors. Halfway down the hall, glass-paned doors opened into a vast semicircular dining room with a wooden floor, furnished with countless round oak dining tables and matching ladder-backed chairs. I crossed to the bay windows on the far side of the room. Through the watery ripples of old glass, I saw the tennis players leave the courts, heading my way.

There were two sets of wooden swinging doors down to my left. I tiptoed the length of the room and peered into the hotel kitchen. A dull illumination from the kitchen windows cast a gray light against the expanses of stainless-steel counter. Stainless-steel fixtures, chrome, old linoleum. Heavy white crockery was stacked on open shelves. The room might have been a museum exhibit – the "moderne" style revisited, the kitchen of the future, circa 1966. I moved back toward the corridor. The murmur of voices.