"I heard the--the engines," said the guest apologetically.
"Doesn't amount to anything," said the clerk again. And then, "Nervous about fire?"
"Who? Me? Why should I be nervous about fire? No! No! No!" He beat a sudden retreat. "I was just asking--just asking," he threw back over his shoulder.
"Old duck's scared of fire and ashamed to own it," mused the clerk, watching him out of the lobby.
The old party went back to his room, and there one of the first things he saw was a copy of the Bible lying on the bureau. There is an organization which professes for its object the placing of a Bible in every hotel room in the land. The old party had his own Bible with him. As if reminded of it by the one on the bureau, he took it out of his suitcase and sat down and began to turn the leaves like a person familiar with the book--and like a person in need of comfort, as indeed he was.
There was a text in Matthew that he sought--where was it? Somewhere in the first part of Matthew's gospel--ah, here it is: The twelfth chapter and the thirty-first verse:
"All manner of sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven unto men...."
There is a terrible reservation in the same verse. He kept his eyes from it, and read the first part over and over, forming the syllables with his lips, but not speaking aloud.
"All manner of sin--all manner of sin-------"
And then, as if no longer able to avoid it, he yielded his consciousness to the latter clause of the verse:
"But the blasphemy against the Holy Ghost shall not be forgiven unto men."
What was blasphemy against the Holy Ghost? Could what he had done be construed as that? Probably if one lied to God in his prayers, that was blasphemy against the Holy Ghost--one form of it. And had he been lying to God these last two weeks when he had said over and over again in his prayers that it was all a mistake? It hadn't been all a mistake, but the worst part of it had been a mistake.
He went out for his dinner that evening, but he was in again before ten o'clock. He could not have slept well. At two o'clock in the morning he appeared in front of the desk.
"See here," said the night clerk, appraising him, as the day clerk had done, as a rube who had been seldom to the city and was nervous about fire, "you don't need to be worried. If anything should happen near here we'd get all the guests out in a jiffy."