At the top was a closed door; and this open, Loveland was plunged into the life and movement of the Bat Hotel, appropriately named for its night activities. Behind a grating, which formed a small room, stood the proprietor or manager of the establishment, ready to accept payment, allot beds, inscribe the names of new clients in a book, and deal out keys of lockers or cubicles. This tiny office was cut out of a long narrow room, in which fifty or sixty men were sitting glancing over the newspapers, or writing a last letter before they went to bed. They were grouped at one of several long tables that ran down the length of the room, or assembled round a huge iron stove whose fat body was almost red hot. The crude white light of unshaded electric lamps exaggerated the hollows in tired faces, and brought out a kind of tragic family likeness among them, different as were the types, and features: the likeness born of the same kind of hardships endured without hope of anything better in the world.
There were two windows at front and back of the long room, but they were closed, save perhaps for a furtive crack at the top, and the heated atmosphere was charged with the smell of cheap tobacco (for the men were allowed to smoke, though not to drink, in the Bat Hotel), badly aired clothing and hot humanity. As Bill easily leaned his elbows on a narrow shelf in front of the office grating, explaining his errand to the manager, Loveland wished himself back in the Park again, half drowned in perfumed, moony vapour; but it was too late. He was "in for it" now, he said to himself, as Bill, with a certain pride, announced that "his friend" wanted a room. "A bed for mine," he went on pleasantly. "I'd be glad of 81, if it's free. I always sleep mighty well in 81."
Eighty-one was engaged, but Bill got another number to which he was accustomed, and then his friend's name was asked.
"Anything you like, up to Edward Seventh, or down to J. Smith," whispered Mr. Willing, as he moved away that Loveland might take his place at the grating.
Loveland hesitated for an instant, and then gave the name of P. Gordon, one to which he had a right, among many others.
As Bill was competent to play host, they were given their keys, and allowed to find their own way to their quarters. Loveland's number was on the next floor, but Bill's cheaper lodging was higher up.
At the top of another flight of iron-bound stairs was a row of cubicles, boarded in half-way up to the ceiling, and protected above by thick wire netting, lest some nimble night-prowler, moved by curiosity or a less fanciful motive, should be minded to enter his neighbour's dwelling in spite of lock and key.
The cubicles were not numerous, for such accommodation de luxe was beyond the means, beyond even the ambition of a hundred out of the hundred and sixty men whom the Bat Hotel sheltered each night. The row (called "Fifth Avenue" by those who could not afford to sleep there) was partitioned off from a long room the size of the reading-room below; but here, instead of tables and benches running along the walls, were beds, many beds, placed at small, irregular distances from each other. A faint light revealed them, and the straight dark shapes of the lockers shared, half and half, by the sleepers whom Loveland could dimly see hunched up under their grey blankets.
Some men slept in their clothes for warmth, though the room was not cold. Here and there a hat or cap made a black blot on a thin, flattened pillow, and the turned-up collar of an overcoat appeared above a tightly-wrapped blanket. At the back, dark door-ways led to the washroom; and a few wearily drooping figures flitted to and fro, silently as the bat which lent its name to their lodging. Save for their dragging footsteps, which scarcely sounded on the cement floor, damp with disinfectant, there was no sound in the big dormitory, unless an occasional snore or a word blurted out in sleep.
Bill unlocked the door of Loveland's cubicle for him. "This is pretty complete, ain't it?" he asked in a whisper which respected the slumber of others. "The beds are good enough for mine; but these rooms are fit for a lord."