“There’s a man either dying or very ill in No. 222,” I said to the night-porter. He was reading The Evening News, and appeared to be very snug in his basket chair.
“Is that so, sir?” he replied.
“Yes,” I insisted. “I think he’s dying. Hadn’t you better do something?”
“I’ll come upstairs with you,” he answered readily, and without further parley we began the ascent. At the first floor landing the night-porter stopped and faced me. He was a man about forty-five—every hall-porter seems to be that age—and he looked like the father of a family.
“If you think he’s dying, sir, I’ll call up the manager, Mr. Thom.”
“Do,” I said.
The manager slept on the first floor, and he soon appeared—a youngish man in a terra-cotta Jaeger dressing-gown, his eyes full of sleep, yet alert and anxious to do his duty. I had seen him previously in the billiard-room. We all three continued our progress to the fourth floor. Arrived in front of No. 222 we listened intently, but we could only hear a faint occasional groan.
“He’s nearly dead,” I said. The manager called aloud, but there was no answer. Then he vainly tried to open the door. The night-porter departed, and returned with a stout pair of steel tongs. With these, and the natural ingenuity peculiar to hotel-porters, he forced open the door, and we entered No. 222.
A stout, middle-aged man lay on the bed fully dressed in black. On the floor near the bed was a silk hat. As we approached the great body seemed to flutter, and then it lay profoundly and terribly still. The manager put his hand on the man’s head, and held the glass of his watch to the man’s parted grey lips.
“He is dead,” said the manager.