“It's the way them arrears come onto the bill, Mr. Gooley, that has got me sore. About a week before you come here again to live, Mr. Gooley, there was a fellow stole fifteen dollars worth of my gas all at once. He went and killed himself, Mr. Gooley, and he used my gas to do it with. It leaked out of two jets for forty-eight hours up on the top floor, before the door was busted in and the body was found, and it came to fifteen dollars, and all on account of that man's cussedness, Mr. Gooley, I will likely get turned out into the street, and me sixty years old and no place to turn.”
Mr. Gooley sat up in bed feebly and looked at her. She was in real trouble—in about as much trouble as he was. The cockroach walked meditatively up and down the footboard, as if thinking it over very seriously.
Mrs. Hinkley finally rose.
“Mr. Gooley,” she said, regarding him sharply, “you look kind o' done up!”
“Uh-huh,” said Mr. Gooley.
She lingered in the room for a few seconds more, irresolutely, and then departed.
Mr. Gooley thought. Gas was barred to him now. He couldn't bring himself to do it with gas. There was still a chance that the old woman might get hold of the gas money and the rent money, too, and go on for a few years, but if he selfishly stole twelve or fifteen dollars' worth of gas from her this afternoon it might be just the thing that would plunge her into immediate destitution. At any rate, it was, as she had said, like stealing money from her pocketbook. He thought of what her life as a rooming-house keeper must have been, and pitied her. He had known many rooming houses. The down-and-outers know how to gauge the reality and poignancy of the troubles of the down-and-out. No, he simply could not do it with gas.
He must think of some other method. He was on the fourth floor. He might throw himself out of the window onto the brick walk at the back of the building, and die. He shuddered as he thought of it. To jump from a twentieth story, or from the top of the Woolworth Tower, to a certain death is one thing. To contemplate a fall of three or four stories that may maim you without killing you, is another.
Nevertheless, he would do it. He pulled the paper out of the crevice between the window sashes, opened the window and looked down. He saw the back stoop and there was a dirty mop beside it; there was an ash can, and there were two garbage cans there. And there was a starved cat that sat and looked up at him. He had a tremor and drew back and covered his face with his hands as he thought of that cat—that knowing cat, that loathsome, that obscene cat.
He sat down on the edge of the bed to collect his strength and summon his resolution. The cockroach had crawled to the head of the bed and seemed to wish to partake of his thoughts.