‘I’m a bit disappointed in Milton,’ said Mr Lee-Mittison. ‘I didn’t take him for that sort of fellow. I don’t think I’ll ask him to come with us again.’

‘Perhaps better not,’ said Mrs Lee-Mittison.

7

Out of Order

THE LIFT WAS out of order. Mrs Hillier, who was in a hurry, had for some time been pushing the third-floor button unavailingly: the lift did not even tremble. She then pushed the second- and fourth-floor buttons as an experiment, but to this also there was no response. She slid back the iron gates again and stepped out into the lounge so suddenly and so angrily that Miss Fitzgerald, who had been watching sympathetically, was quite frightened.

‘The lift is out of order,’ she said tersely. ‘Where can the concierge be?’

‘He is always out at this hour. They say he has a wife in the town.’

‘I do not see why we should be prevented from going to our rooms because the concierge happens to be married.’

‘Anyhow, he is no good with the lift. They ought to keep a boy who thoroughly understands it.’

‘He would have an attachment, too,’ said Mrs Hillier, who was really a cheerful and humorous person. With renewed determination she got back into the lift, and Miss Fitzgerald, getting in also for company, sat down beside her on the narrow seat. This was the most comfortable, intimate and exclusive corner of the Hotel and Miss Fitzgerald dreamily desired it. It was the kind of place in which one could have talked. They pushed each button successively, and even struck chords of two or three at a time. A wire twanged somewhere above and a chain rattled, but one did not move an inch.

‘At any rate,’ said Miss Fitzgerald, ‘it is better than to be taken half-way up and then stuck between two of the floors. My friend told me she once saw that happen to some ladies in a hotel at Switzerland. They were there for more than half an hour with their feet just visible below the ceiling of the lounge. The hotel was full of foreigners and it was most unpleasant.’

‘Dreadful,’ said the Anglo-Indian lady. She at all events could congratulate herself on her feet. ‘Oh!’ she cried, peering bird-like through the bars of the gate, ‘can’t some of you help us?’

Colonel Duperrier and a Mr Miller had risen and were approaching politely from different corners of the lounge. The ladies got out of the lift and the gentlemen, getting in, assured themselves that there was really something very wrong indeed.

‘I cannot see,’ said Mrs Hillier mutinously, ‘why I should have to do without my scissors.’

Colonel Duperrier felt very sorry for her, she seemed to be beating her wings. ‘Couldn’t I –?’ he began.