Sextus Rollo Forsyte, a gifted hotel manager with a ruinous drinking habit and a preference for solitude, arrives on the West Coast hoping to disappear after being blacklisted back East. Instead, he lands a surprising new post as general manager of the Mahoney-Plaza, a hotel whose modest exterior conceals a lavish interior, ten elevators, and a staff that greets him with open hostility. From the moment he steps inside, he senses that this "small" hotel is anything but ordinary. Forsyte's blunt authority quickly collides with the building's unruly workforce: he offends a bellboy, fires him on the spot, and clashes with the bell captain. When his summoned department heads refuse to appear, he takes the insult in stride, drinks, and begins to probe the hotel's hidden depths. Beneath the public floors, he discovers a sprawling underground world of machinery and labor that keeps the place running. As crises start pouring in from the kitchen, lobby, and detective staff, Forsyte realizes he has found a familiar kind of chaos—and, against expectation, a place where he may belong. This edition has been fully restored with modern typesetting, custom cover design.