“Pay it.”
Dave drew out his money. The young man grumbled at having to change a five dollar but that was soon got through with. Then he handed Dave a key with an iron strip to it, that prevented lodgers from putting it in their pockets and forgetting to return it.
“Room 58, fourth floor,” advised the young man, and lounged back into his chair again. “Be sure to put out your light when you go to bed.”
Dave climbed up two more flights of rickety stairs. The air of the place was close. One floor was divided up into as many as a hundred little bunks, and the snoring was disturbing.
“I wish I hadn’t come here,” thought Dave, but he kept on to the fourth floor, made out 58 on a door, and unlocked it and entered a room with one window.
The light in the hall showed a lamp on a table. There were two narrow beds in the room, and they did not look particularly uncomfortable. When he lighted the lamp, Dave glanced over at the cot that was occupied.
Near it was a chair, and over this hung some shabby garments. Dave had a plain view of the sleeping inmate of the bed, and he did not like the face at all. It had a red scar on one cheek, the hair was straggling and untidy, and, taken altogether, the boy made Dave think of a crowd of young roughs who had run up against him and tried to provoke him into a quarrel in his early midnight wanderings.
Dave opened the window of the room to let in fresh air, then he undressed. He drew a chair up against his bed and folded his clothes across it. Then he blew out the light.
“Feels good to stretch out human like once more, sure enough,” said Dave contentedly.
Then he groped about on the chair until he found his coat and drew out the pocket book belonging to Robert King, Aviator.