Section 209. Certain sales after eighteen months

Any keeper of a hotel,
  motel,  apartment   hotel,   inn,   boarding-house,   rooming-house   or
  lodging-house,  except  an immigrant lodging-house, whose lien for fare,
  lodging, accommodation or board upon any goods, baggage or other chattel
  property, shall not have been paid for a period of eighteen months,  may
  sell such property at public auction for cash to the highest bidder upon
  mailing  a  notice  inclosed  in  a  securely  closed  postpaid wrapper,
  directed to the person who left such property with such keeper,  at  the
  post  office  of  the  ctiy,  town  or  village where such hotel, motel,
  apartment hotel, inn, boarding-house, rooming-house or lodging-house  is
  situated,  such notice to contain a statement of the time and place when
  and where such goods, baggage or other chattel property will be sold and
  such notice shall be mailed at least fifteen days before such sale shall
  take place. Such keeper shall, out of the proceeds of such sale,  retain
  the amount of his lien and the expense of selling such property, and, if
  there  be  any  surplus, he shall, within ten days after such sale, upon
  demand, pay over such surplus to the person whose property was sold.  In
  case  such  surplus  shall not be demanded and paid as aforesaid, within
  said ten days, then within five days thereafter, such keeper  shall  pay
  such  surplus  to  the  treasurer  of the county or chamberlain or other
  chief fiscal officer of the city in which  such  sale  took  place,  and
  shall,  at the same time, file with said treasurer, chamberlain or other
  chief fiscal officer a statement in writing containing the name  of  the
  person whose property was sold, the price at which it was sold, the date
  of  such  sale and by whom sold. Such surplus shall be kept and disposed
  of in the manner provided in section  two  hundred  and  eight  of  this
  chapter.  Nothing  contained  in  this  article shall preclude any other
  remedy now existing for the enforcement and satisfaction of  a  lien  of
  the  keeper  of  a  hotel,  motel, apartment hotel, inn, boarding-house,
  rooming-house or lodging-house, except an immigrant  lodging-house,  nor
  bar  his  right  to recover for so much of the debt as shall not be paid
  through such sale.