'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. But if you're Sir Charles Vandrift,' he went on, examining his books, 'how does it come you've registered as Mr. Peter Porter?'
Charles grew red with embarrassment. The difficulty deepened.
