“No,” said Striker, “looks like it only happens to singles. When there’s two in the room nothing ever happens.”

“You never heard of anyone committing suicide in the presence of a second party, did you?” the clerk pointed out not unreasonably. “That’s one thing they gotta have privacy for.”

Maybe it had been, as Perry insisted, just a gruesome coincidence. “But if it happens a third time,” Striker vowed to himself, “I’m going to get to the bottom of it if I gotta pull the whole place down brick by brick!”

The Legend, meanwhile, had blazed up high and furious with the employees; even the slowest-moving among them had a way of hurrying past Room 913 with sidelong glances and fetish mutterings when any duty called them to that particular hallway after dark. Perry raised hell about it, but he was up against the supernatural now; he and his threats of discharge didn’t stack up at all against that. The penalty of repeating the rumor to a guest was instant dismissal if detected by the management. If.

Then just when the legend was languishing from lack of any further substantiation to feed upon, and was about to die down altogether, the room came through a third time!

The calendar read Friday, July 12th, 1935, and the thermometers all read ninety-plus. He came in mopping his face like everyone else, but with a sort of professional good humor about him that no one else could muster just then. That was one thing that tipped Striker off he was a salesman. Another was the two bulky sample cases he was hauling with him until the bellboy took them over. A third was his ability to crack a joke when most people felt like eggs in a frying pan waiting to be turned over.

“Just rent me a bath without a room,” he told Dennison. “I’ll sleep in the tub all night with the cold water running over me.”

“I can give you a nice inside room on the fourth.” There were enough vacancies at the moment to offer a choice, these being the dog days.

The newcomer held up his hand, palm outward. “No thanks, not this kind of weather. I’m willing to pay the difference.”

“Well, I’ve got an outside on the sixth, and a couple on the ninth.”

“The higher the better. More chance to get a little circulation into the air.”

There were two on the ninth, 13 and 19. Dennison’s hand paused before 13, strayed on past it to 19, hesitated, came back again. After all, the room had to be sold. This was business, not a kid’s goblin story. Even Striker could see that. And it was ten months now since—There’d been singles in the room since then, too. And they’d lived to check out again.

He gave him 913. But after the man had gone up, he couldn’t refrain from remarking to Striker: “Keep your fingers crossed. That’s the one with the jinx on it.” As though Striker didn’t know that! “I’m going to do a little more than that,” he promised himself privately.