"I'll shutter it," Jack said.
They went down to the second floor where there were more rooms and even more twists and turns in the corridor. The light from the windows had begun to fade appreciably now as the sun went behind the mountains. Mr. Ullman showed them one or two rooms and that was all. He walked past 217, the one Dick Hallorann had warned him about, without slowing. Danny looked at the bland number-plate on the door with uneasy fascination.
Then down to the first floor. Mr. Ullman didn't show them into any rooms here until they had almost reached the thickly carpeted staircase that led down into the lobby again. "Here are your quarters," he said. "I think you'll find them adequate."
They went in. Danny was braced for whatever might be there. There was nothing.
Wendy Torrance felt a strong surge of relief. The Presidential Suite, with its cold elegance, had made her feel awkward and clumsy-it was all very well to visit some restored historical building with a bedroom plaque that announced Abraham Lincoln or Franklin D. Roosevelt had slept there, but another thing entirely to imagine you and your husband lying beneath acreages of linen and perhaps making love where the greatest men in the world had once lain (the most powerful, anyway, she amended). But this apartment was simpler, homier, almost inviting. She thought she could abide this place for a season with no great difficulty.
"It's very pleasant," she said to Ullman, and heard the gratitude in her voice.
Ullman nodded. "Simple but adequate. During the season, this suite quarters the cook and his wife, or the cook and his apprentice."
"Mr. Hallorann lived here?" Danny broke in.
Mr. Ullman inclined his head to Danny condescendingly. "Quite so. He and Mr. Nevers." He turned back to Jack and Wendy. "This is the sitting room."
There were several chairs that looked comfortable but not expensive, a coffee table that had once been expensive but now had a long chip gone from the side, two bookcases (stuffed full of Reader's Digest Condensed Books and Detective Book Club trilogies from the forties, Wendy saw with some amusement), and an anonymous hotel TV that looked much less elegant than the buffed wood consoles in the rooms.
"No kitchen, of course," Ullman said, "but there is a dumb-waiter. This apartment is directly over the kitchen." He slid aside a square of paneling and disclosed a wide, squarer tray. He gave it a push and it disappeared, trailing rope behind it.
"It's a secret passage!" Danny said excitedly to his mother, momentarily forgetting all fears in favor of that intoxicating shaft behind the wall. "Just like in Abbott and Costello Meet the Monsters!"
Mr. Ullman frowned but Wendy smiled indulgently. Danny ran over to the dumbwaiter and peered down the shaft.,
"This way, please."
He opened the door on the far side of the living room. It gave on the bedroom, which was spacious and airy. There were twin beds. Wendy looked at her husband, smiled, shrugged.
"No problem," Jack said. "We'll push them together."
Mr. Ullman looked over his shoulder, honestly puzzled. "Beg pardon?"
"The beds," Jack said pleasantly. "We can push them together."
"Oh, quite," Ullman said, momentarily confused. Then his face cleared and a red flush began to creep up from the collar of his shirt. "Whatever you like."
He led them back into the sitting room, where a second door opened on a second bedroom, this one equipped with bunk beds. A radiator clanked in one corner, and the rug on the floor was a hideous embroidery of western sage and cactus-Danny bad already fallen in love with it, Wendy saw. The walls of this smaller room were paneled in real pine.
"Think you can stand it in here, doc?" Jack asked.
"Sure I can. I'm going to sleep in the top bunk. Okay?"
"If that's what you want."
"I like the rug, too. Mr. Ullman, why don't you have all the rugs like that?"
Mr. Ullman looked for a moment as if he had sunk his teeth into a lemon. Then he smiled and patted Danny's head. "Those are your quarters," he said, "except for the bath, which opens off the main bedroom. It's not a huge apartment, but of course you'll have the rest of the hotel to spread out in. The lobby fireplace is in good working order, or so Watson tells me, and you must feel free to eat in the dining room if the spirit moves you to do so." He spoke in the tone of a man conferring a great favor.
"All right," Jack said.
"Shall we go down?" Mr. Ullman asked.
"Fine," Wendy said.
They went downstairs in the elevator, and now the lobby was wholly deserted except for Watson, who was leaning against the main doors in a rawhide jacket, a toothpick between his lips.
"I would have thought you'd be miles from here by now," Mr. Ullman said, his voice slightly chill.