By this time Mr. Hartz and his clerks had picked themselves up and were looking with blanched faces at the fallen visitor, down whose pale countenance trickled a thin stream of blood, from which they seemed to infer that the big man had succeeded in destroying himself.
The shot had aroused all the offices along the corridor, and brokers, clerks, visitors, and others came rushing out.
Nobody knew exactly whence the report had come, but somebody opened Hartz’s door and looked in, and he saw enough to satisfy him of the true state of affairs.
Others crowded in after him, and soon the intelligence flew through the building that a man had committed suicide in Broker Hartz’s office.
“Gentlemen! Gentlemen!” cried Hartz, waving his arms. “Please don’t crowd in here. Schultz,” to a clerk, “telephone to the precinct station for an officer and a doctor. Gentlemen, I beg of you to stand back.”
Jack, kneeling beside the big man, wiped the blood away from the scalp wound.
“He’ll be all right in a minute or two,” said the boy to the excited broker, who seemed to have lost his head over the affair.
“He didn’t kill himself, eh?” said Hartz, in shaky tones.
“No; I grabbed the revolver in the nick of time.”
“Where did the bullet go?”