P. G. Wodehouse 
Indiscretions of Archie 

“I say, laddie!” said Archie. “Sir?” replied the desk-clerk alertly. All the employes of the Hotel Cosmopolis were alert. It was one of the things on which Mr. Daniel Brewster, the proprietor, insisted. And as he was always wandering about the lobby of the hotel keeping a personal eye on affairs, it was never safe to relax. “I want to see the manager.” “Is there anything I could do, sir?” Archie looked at him doubtfully. “Well, as a matter of fact, my dear old desk-clerk, ” he said, “I want to kick up a fearful row, and it hardly seems fair to lug you into it. Why you, I mean to say? The blighter whose head I want on a charger is the bally manager.” At this point a massive, grey-haired man, who had been standing close by, gazing on the lobby with an air of restrained severity, as if daring it to start anything, joined in the conversation. “I am the manager, ” he said. His eye was cold and hostile. Others, it seemed to say, might like Archie Moffam, but not he. Daniel Brewster was bristling for combat. What he had overheard had shocked him to the core of his being.