A number of the most fearful men made a dash for the elevator. They were driven back by a torrent of rats climbing up the elevator shaft. Then _fear came--and panic_. With gun and heel, and broken chairs for clubs, they started in to kill rats, and for every one they killed, a hundred fastened to them with chisel teeth. To make it worse, the lights went out, and they were there in the dark, with mutilation as a beginning and death as an ending, and still the rats poured into the room, up the elevator shaft and out of the hole in the wall. * * * * * The Old Man walked across the room, kicking the struggling bodies of his followers out of his pathway. Rats ran up his legs and tried to bite his hands, his face; he swept them off him as a tiger would wipe ants off his fur; at last he came to the window. There was the city of New York in front of him, the city of a million twinkling lights, the tomb of a billion dead hopes; the Morgue of a Nation, covered by laughing, painted faces. He raised the sash and sat on the sill. "Damn Willowby!" he said. "What a fool I was. But I am going to die clean. No rat is going to send me to Hell!" And then he dropped. In the room the struggle kept on--for an hour and then two. At last the screaming ceased, and the only sound was the gnawing of the rats, the crunching of their teeth and their satisfied, little squeaks of pleasure. The next morning Winifred Willowby called on the Chief of the Secret Service of New York. With him were several men from Washington. "I want to tell you something," he said. "A large group of men borrowed my office to have a meeting last night. They wanted privacy and secrecy and they had heard of my place in the Empire Trust Building. So I loaned them the entire floor for the night. But my janitors tell me that something terrible happened. An army of rats invaded the place, as they have been doing with other places in the city, and literally ate every man there; that is, all except one, a fellow by the name of Consuelo, and he preferred to jump out of a window and die clean on the pavement." "Consuelo?" asked the Chief. "Not the Old Man? Not _that_ Consuelo?" "I think that is the one. Here is a list of the men who were there. I thought you might like to look it over before you gave it to the papers." The Chief took the list and read it, puzzled. "Do you mean these men were there last night?" "I understand so." "And now they are dead?" "I think so. Of course, that is for the coroner to say." "Do you know who these men were?" "I suppose they were business associates of Consuelo. At least, that is what he told me."