"They treating you all right over at the Stockmen's Hotel?" the magnate inquired.
* * * * * * * * * *
I'm assuming "the magnate" is Scarsdale Vibe because I think I know how books work. He's asking this question not because he cares about the answer but because he wants to rub it in that Heino is staying at some working class hotel probably full of immigrants. I tried to look up the Stockmen's Hotel but thanks to the Stockmen's Hotel and Casino in Elko, Nevada, it's practically impossible to find anything else on the Internet in the full minute I was willing to bother. But I'm sure the name derives from the people who stay there: workers at The Stockyards who have maybe only recently arrived in Chicago, or who are itinerant, probably husbands needing work who have travelled to one of the few places they could find a job to send money back home to the family.
Scarsdale Vibe would be basking in the chasm created between the two men's statuses by this simple question asked within the confines of his expensive and luxurious room at the Palmer House, complete with its own elevator and telephone (probably!).
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