I put on some clothes, and went into the corridor. The corridor seemed to stretch away into illimitable distance; and far off, miles off, a solitary electric light glimmered. My end of the corridor was a haunt of gloomy shadows, except where the open door allowed the light from my bedroom to illuminate the long monotonous pattern of the carpet. I proceeded to the door next my own--the door of No. 222, and put my ear against the panel. The sound of groans was now much more distinct and more terrifying. Yes. I admit that I was frightened. I called. No answer. “What’s the matter?” I inquired. No answer. “Are you ill, or are you doing this for your own amusement?” It was with a sort of bravado that I threw this last query at the unknown occupant of the room. No answer. Then I tried to open the door, but it was fast. “Yes,” I said to myself; “either he’s dying or he’s committed a murder and is feeling sorry for it. I must fetch the night-porter.” Now, hotel lifts are not in the habit of working at three a.m., and so I was compelled to find my way along endless corridors and down flights of stairs apparently innumerable. Here and there an electric light sought with its yellow eye to pierce the gloom. At length I reached the hall, and I well recollect that the tiled floor struck cold into my slippered but sockless feet. “There’s a man either dying or very ill in No. 222,” I said to the night-porter. He was reading _The Evening News_, and appeared to be very snug in his basket chair. “Is that so, sir?” he replied. “Yes,” I insisted. “I think he’s dying. Hadn’t you better do something?” “I’ll come upstairs with you,” he answered readily, and without further parley we began the ascent. At the first floor landing the night-porter stopped and faced me. He was a man about forty-five--every hall-porter seems to be that age--and he looked like the father of a family. “If you think he’s dying, sir, I’ll call up the manager, Mr. Thom.” “Do,” I said. The manager slept on the first floor, and he soon appeared--a youngish man in a terra-cotta Jaeger dressing-gown, his eyes full of sleep, yet alert and anxious to do his duty. I had seen him previously in the billiard-room. We all three continued our progress to the fourth floor. Arrived in front of No. 222 we listened intently, but we could only hear a faint occasional groan. “He’s nearly dead,” I said. The manager called aloud, but there was no answer. Then he vainly tried to open the door. The night-porter departed, and returned with a stout pair of steel tongs. With these, and the natural ingenuity peculiar to hotel-porters, he forced open the door, and we entered No. 222. A stout, middle-aged man lay on the bed fully dressed in black. On the floor near the bed was a silk hat. As we approached the great body seemed to flutter, and then it lay profoundly and terribly still. The manager put his hand on the man’s head, and held the glass of his watch to the man’s parted grey lips.