title: Funny in Parts: The Diary of a Foreign Service Officer
author:  John J. Eddy 
description: John Eddy was a career U.S. Foreign Service officer for 28 years. He reached the personal rank of Minister Counselor. He won the U.S. Department of State's Superior Honor Award twice, its Meritorious Honor Award once, and its John Jacob Rogers Award for distinguished service. He graduated from Boston College, the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, and the National Defense University. The Office of the Inspector General has continued to send him in retirement to inspect U.S. diplomatic posts in countries such as China, Russia, Egypt, Vietnam, Indonesia, Denmark, Iceland, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Djibouti, Laos, and Malaysia. He lives in Rochester, Vermont with his wife of 44 years, Armona Badenes Eddy, originally from Spain. They have four children, five grandchildren, and one step-grandchild.
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  ##### www.blackmask.com
  
  
  # How He Left the Hotel
  
  
  ### Louisa Baldwin
  
  
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  I used to work the passenger lift in the Empire Hotel, that big
  
  
  block of building in lines of red and white brick like streaky bacon,
  
  
  that stands at the corner of Bath Street. I'd served my time in the
  
  
  army and got my discharge with good conduct stripes, and how I got the
  
  
  job was in this way.
  
  
  The hotel was a big company affair, with a managing committee of
  
  
  retired officers and such like, gentlemen with a bit o' money in the
  
  
  concern and nothing to do but fidget about it, and my late Colonel was
  
  
  one of 'em. He was as good tempered a man as ever stepped when his will
  
  
  wasn't crossed, and when I asked him for a job, "Mole," says he,
  
  
  "you're the very man to work the lift at our big hotel. Soldiers are
  
  
  civil and business-like, and the public like 'em only second best to
  
  
  sailors. We've had 