The voice was a harsh croak, a rasping gasp, metallic and unhuman. The bell-hop pushed open the door cautiously and peered in. The room looked as if a whirlwind had struck it. Sheets, rugs, pillow-cases were thrown helter-skelter about the place, and at the moment James Craig was on his knees before a suit-case. Where he had looked carefree and at peace with the world, he now looked ghastly. His face was a pasty, chalky white. His eyes seemed to have sunk into his head, and they stared at the bell-hop with a strange deadness.
“I’ve been robbed!” he croaked harshly. “I’ve been robbed!”
The bell-hop ducked instinctively.
“Bress Gawd!” he gasped. “Y’ don’ mean it!”
A choked sob burst from the throat of the chalky-faced man.
“I’ve been robbed!” he repeated in a certain strange calm. Then he sobbed again, his whole body writhing with the sound. “My God! Eighty thousand dollars!”
The bell-hop jumped a foot in the air at mention of that sum and departed swiftly. The result of his flight was seen a moment later in a pale and worried desk-clerk who came hurriedly into the room. Craig was moving dumbly about, looking hopelessly here, there—everywhere.
“You—you’ve been robbed, sir?”
“Eighty thousand dollars!” Craig seemed stunned by the calamity. “I’m ruined! Ruined! Eighty thousand dollars!”
He sat down suddenly in a chair and stared before him with lack-lustre eyes. The desk-clerk, alarmed as he was for the reputation of the house, could not but feel sympathy for the man who had changed so absolutely in so few minutes. His very lips were gray. His eyes seemed to have retreated deep into his skull. His voice was a pitiable parody of a living man’s voice. It was dead, harsh, lifeless.