His first thought was to put him in the room next to the three sporting men who played poker and told questionable stories of their own exploits after two o'clock every night, but that hardly seemed adequate. The room adjoining the elevator popped into his head. Every time the old gentleman fell asleep _bang_ would go that elevator door or _bzzzz_ would start off the bell so suddenly that it would leave him unnerved and frantic in the morning. But what was that? What John Boler yearned for was to make the punishment fit the crime, and, after all these years of planning and wishing for the chance, here it was, and he felt that he could think of nothing, absolutely nothing, bad enough.
So with a fine satire which was wholly lost upon his victim, Mr. Boler ordered him taken to the very best room in the house, and made up his mind that after disarming all suspicion in that way he would set about his revenge, which should take some exquisitely torturous form.
All this had run through his mind with great rapidity while the old gentleman talked. Then Mr. Boler turned the register around, wrote "98" opposite the name. Said he should be delighted to show his own mettle to one of his father's old guests, called out "Front," and transferred his attention to a sweet-faced girl who stood waiting her turn to register.
"A small room, please," she said in a voice scarcely above a whisper. Mr. Boler knew just what it meant in an instant. He knew that she was not used to hotels--that she was uncertain what to do, and that she wanted her living to cost her as little as possible. She was evidently a lady, and quite as evidently from some small town.
"Front," he called again. "Show this lady to 96. Step lively." Front grinned. Ninety-six was a mere closet with no window except one facing a dark shaft. Indeed, it had once been the dressing-room and clothes press for the adjoining suite, and so far as Front could remember had never been used as a sleeping apartment by any one except the valet of a certain French gentleman who once occupied 98.
"Took my revenge on the wrong person that time," mused Mr. Boler as he saw the lady enter the elevator. "Now I wonder why I did that?" But Mr. John Boler had his little superstition, as most of us have, and whenever he was moved by a perfectly blind impulse to do a thing, he always believed that "something would come of it sure," as he expressed it. "Never knew it to fail. Of course I don't believe in such things; but--" and then he would laugh and go on believing in it as implicitly as ever.