"I think I am," returned Hurstwood.
"Well, you'd better go sit down, then."
This he did, but soon grew rapidly worse. It seemed all he could do to crawl to his room, where he remained for a day.
"That man Wheeler's sick," reported one of the lackeys to the night clerk.
"What's the matter with him?"
"I don't know. He's got a high fever."
The hotel physician looked at him.
"Better send him to Bellevue," he recommended. "He's got pneumonia."
Accordingly, he was carted away.
In three weeks the worst was over, but it was nearly the first of May before his strength permitted him to be turned out. Then he was discharged.
No more weakly looking object ever strolled out into the spring sunshine than the once hale, lusty manager. All his corpulency had fled. His face was thin and pale, his hands white, his body flabby. Clothes and all, he weighed but one hundred and thirty-five pounds. Some old garments had been given him—a cheap brown coat and misfit pair of trousers. Also some change and advice. He was told to apply to the charities.
Again he resorted to the Bowery lodging-house, brooding over where to look. From this it was but a step to beggary.
"What can a man do?" he said. "I can't starve."
His first application was in sunny Second Avenue. A well-dressed man came leisurely strolling toward him out of Stuyvesant Park. Hurstwood nerved himself and sidled near.
"Would you mind giving me ten cents?" he said, directly. "I'm in a position where I must ask someone."
