I inquired for Mr. Schnitzel, and the clerk, who apparently knew him by
that name, said he was in his room, number eighty-two.
"But he has a caller with him now," he added. "A gentleman was waiting
for him, and's just gone up."
I wrote on my card why I had called, and soon after it had been born
skyward the clerk said: "I guess he'll be able to see you now. That's
the party that was calling on him, there."
He nodded toward a man who crossed the rotunda quickly. His face was
twisted from us, as though, as he almost ran toward the street, he were
reading the advertisements on the wall.
He reached the door, and was lost in the great tide of Broadway.
I crossed to the elevator, and as I stood waiting, it descended with a
crash, and the boy who had taken my card flung himself, shrieking, into
the rotunda.
"That man--stop him!" he cried. "The man in eighty-two--he's murdered."
The clerk vaulted the desk and sprang into the street, and I dragged the
boy back to the wire rope and we shot to the third story. The boy shrank
back. A chambermaid, crouching against the wall, her face colorless,
lowered one hand, and pointed at an open door.
"In there," she whispered.
In a mean, common room, stretched where he had been struck back upon the
bed, I found the boy who had elected to meddle in the "problems of two
governments."
In tiny jets, from three wide knife-wounds, his blood flowed slowly.
His staring eyes were lifted up in fear and in entreaty. I knew that he
was dying, and as I felt my impotence to help him, I as keenly felt a
great rage and a hatred toward those who had struck him.