I had a very thrilling experience the other evening. I had just filled
an engagement in a strange city, and retired to my cozy room at the
hotel.
The thunders of applause had died away, and the opera house had been
locked up to await the arrival of an Uncle Tom's Cabin Company. The last
loiterer had returned to his home, and the lights in the palace of the
pork packer were extinguished.
No sound was heard, save the low, tremulous swash of the sleet outside,
or the death-rattle in the throat of the bath-tub. Then all was as still
as the bosom of a fried chicken when the spirit has departed.
The swallow-tail coat hung limp and weary in the wardrobe, and the gross
receipts of the evening were under my pillow. I needed sleep, for I was
worn out with travel and anxiety, but the fear of being robbed kept
me from repose. I know how desperate a man becomes when he yearns for
another's gold. I know how cupidity drives a wicked man to angle his
victim, that he may win precarious prosperity, and how he will often
take a short cut to wealth by means of murder, when, if he would enter
politics, he might accomplish his purpose as surely and much more
safely.
Anon, however, tired nature succumbed. I know I had succumbed, for the
bell-boy afterward testified that he heard me do so.
The gentle warmth of the steam-heated room, and the comforting assurance
of duty well done and the approval of friends, at last lulled me into a
gentle repose.
Anyone who might have looked upon me, as I lay there in that innocent
slumber, with the winsome mouth slightly ajar and the playful limbs
cast wildly about, while a merry smile now and then flitted across the
regular features, would have said that no heart could be so hard as to
harbor ill for one so guileless and so simple.
I do not know what it was that caused me to wake. Some slight sound or
other, no doubt, broke my slumber, and I opened my eyes wildly. The room
was in semi-darkness.
Hark!
A slight movement in the corner, and the low, regular breathing of a
human being! I was now wide awake. Possibly I could have opened my eyes
wider but not without spilling them out of their sockets.
Regularly came that soft, low breathing. Each time it seemed like a sigh
of relief, but it did not relieve me. Evidently it was not done for that
purpose. It sounded like a sigh of blessed relief, such as a woman might
heave after she has returned from church and transferred herself from
the embrace of her new Russia iron, black silk dress into a friendly
wrapper.
Regularly, like the rise, and fall of a wave on the summer sea, it rose
and fell, while my pale lambrequin of hair rose and fell fitfully with
it.
I know that people who read this will laugh at it, but there was nothing
to laugh at. At first I feared that the sigh might be that of a woman
who had entered the room through a transom in order to see me, as I lay
wrapt in slumber, and then carry the picture away to gladden her whole
life.
But no. That was hardly possible. It was cupidity that had driven some
cruel villain to enter my apartments and to crouch in the gloom till the
proper moment should come in which to spring upon me, throttle me, crowd
a hotel pillow into each lung, and, while I did the Desdemona act, rob
me of my hard-earned wealth.
Regularly still rose the soft breathing, as though the robber might be
trying to suppress it. I reached gently under the pillow, and securing
the money I put it in the pocket of my robe de nuit. Then, with great
care, I pulled out a copy of Smith & Wesson's great work on "How to
Ventilate the Human Form." I said to myself that I would sell my life
as dearly as possible, so that whoever bought it would always regret the
trade.
Then I opened the volume at the first chapter and addressed a
thirty-eight calibre remark in the direction of the breath in the
corner.
When the echoes had died away a sigh of relief welled up from the dark
corner. Also another sigh of relief later on.
I then decided to light the gas and fight it out. You have no doubt seen
a man scratch a match on the leg of his pantaloons. Perhaps you have
also seen an absent-minded man undertake to do so, forgetting that his
pantaloons were hanging on a chair at the other end of the room.
However, I lit the gas with my left hand and kept my revolver pointed
toward the dark corner where the breath was still rising and falling.
People who had heard my lecture came rushing in, hoping to find that
I had suicided, but they found that, instead of humoring the public in
that way, I had shot the valve off the steam radiator.
It is humiliating to write the foregoing myself, but I would rather do
so than have the affair garbled by careless hands.