But Teddy did not double on his tracks in Nassau Street, for the reason
that, in again looking over his shoulder, he saw that Flynn had taken
one side of that thoroughfare and Jackman the other. They were burly
men, who moved heavily, while he, in spite of his stocky build, glided
in and out among the pedestrians with the agility of a squirrel. He was
putting distance between himself and them, and five minutes' leeway
would be enough for him. All he needed was the space and privacy in
which to shoot himself.
At the corner of John Street he turned to the left and made toward
Broadway. They would expect him to do this, his chief hope being that
among the homing swarms they would already have lost sight of him. His
mind was not working. He was not looking ahead, even over the few
minutes he had still to live. All his instincts were fused into the fear
of the hand of the law on his person. It was like Jennie's terror of the
hand of a man she didn't love--a frenzy for physical sanctity stronger
than the fear of death.
At the same time, he couldn't run the risk of being more noticeable than
the majority of people going his way. As he pushed and dodged, a young
man whom he had jostled called out, in ironic good humor, "Say, is the
cop after you?" at which Teddy almost lost his head. He expected a crowd
to gather, and three or four men to hold him by the arms till Jackman
and Flynn came up. But nothing happened. The protesting young man was
lost in the scramble, and he, Teddy, found himself in Broadway.
Paying no heed to the jam of street cars, lorries, private cars, and
motor trucks, he dashed into the interlaced streams of traffic. He
dashed--and was held up. He dashed again--and was held up a second time.
He was held up a third time, a fourth, and a fifth. With every spurt of
two or three feet, cries warned him and curses startled him. "Say,
sonny, your ma must have lost you," came from a jocose chauffeur beside
whose machine Teddy had been brought to a halt. "I'd damn well like to
run over you," shouted the driver of a van who had narrowly escaped
doing it. Teddy wished he had. If he could only be sure of being killed,
it might have been the easiest way out.
Reaching the opposite pavement, he had time to see that Jackman had
crossed lower down and more easily than he, and was lumbering toward him
from the downtown direction. Jackman could have shouted to the
passers-by to lay hold of Teddy, only that, from a distance and among
such numbers, he couldn't indicate his victim. Being younger than Flynn
and of lighter build, he could move in his own way almost with Teddy's
rapidity. The boy didn't dare to run, because the action would have
marked him out, but he started again on his snakelike gliding between
pedestrians. He must gain some doorway, some cellar, some hole of any
sort, in which to draw his pistol. He would have drawn it there and
then, only that a hundred hands would have seized him.
All at once he saw the open portal of a great mercantile building,
leading to a vast interior with which he was familiar. There were
several exits and many floors. Once he had turned in here, he could
cross the scent. In he went, with scores who were doing likewise,
passing scores who were coming out. His first intention was to avoid the
conspicuous exit toward Dey Street and make for the less obvious one
into Fulton Street; but in doing that, he passed a line of some twenty
lifts, of which one was about to close its door. He slipped into it like
a hare into its warren. The door clanged; the lift moved upward with an
oily speed. Among his companions he was hot, flurried, breathless, and
yet not more so than any other young clerk who had been doing an errand
against time.
There were nearly thirty floors, and he got off at the twenty-third. He
chose the twenty-third so as not to get off too soon, and yet not call
attention to himself by remaining in the lift when most of its occupants
had left it. The floor was spacious and almost empty. A few people were
waiting for a lift to take them down; a few were going in and out of
offices, but otherwise he had the place to himself.
Mechanically he walked to a window and looked out. He seemed to be up in
the sky, with only the tops of a few giant cubes on a level with
himself. "Skyscrapers" they were called, and skyscrapers they seemed up
here even more than down below. The tip of the great city, the stretches
of the bay, the green slopes of Staten Island, and the far-off colossal
woman with a torch were all within his vision, with the oblique strip
that was Broadway, a tiny, ugly gash in which bacteria were squirming,
deep down and cutting across the foreground.
Except for the dull roar that came up and the clang of an occasional
footstep along the hallways, it was so still and pleasant that the need
to shoot himself seemed for the minute less insistent. It would have to
be done sooner or later, but when it comes to suicide, even a few
minutes' respite is something. He could have done the thing right there
and then by the window, where the few people within hearing would have
run to him at sound of the shot. If the shot didn't kill him, they would
keep him from firing another. Publicity, distasteful in itself, might
lead to ineffectuality.
He must find a lavatory, and so began walking up and down the corridors,
looking at doors discreetly placed in corners. When he came to his
objective, it was locked. Again it was reprieve. The same door would be
on other floors, but he was not ready for the moment to forsake his
shelter. It was true that at any minute Flynn and Jackman might emerge
from the lift, but there were nearly thirty chances that if they had
followed him so closely they would not select this landing. Even more
were the chances that they had not seen him slip into the building at
all.
Fevered and thirsty, he stooped to drink at the fountain crowning the
head of a little bronze woman with a pair of dolphins on her shoulders.
She seemed to be of Maya type, and a uniformed guardian had once told
him that a great modern sculptor had molded her. With a difference in
dolphins, she was repeated on every floor, forever diademed in water.
Teddy's mind had so far suspended operation as to his immediate plight
that he went back to the morning, seven or eight months previously, when
an errand from Mr. Brunt had brought him into the great ground-floor
atrium, revealing the Basilica Julia or the Basilica Emilia of _Ancient
Rome Restored_ right there in lower Broadway. Simplicity, immensity, the
awesome beauty of mere form! The wide spaces, the mighty columns, the
tempered white light of majestic Roman windows! The absence of striving
for effect! The peace, the restfulness, the cheerfulness, when striving
for effect are abandoned, dwarfing the magnitude of crowds and reducing
their ebbings and flowing to mere vanity! Like Jennie with her emotions,
like Pansy with her intuitions, Teddy had no words for these
impressions; but the Scarborough tradition, nursed on _Ancient Rome
Restored_, vibrated to their music.
"And here I am, trapped like a rat in a hole!"
So he came back to it. He wondered if he were awake. Was it possible
that ten or fifteen minutes could have transformed him from a
hard-working, home-loving boy into a fugitive who had no choice left but
to shoot himself? As for facing the disgrace, he did not consider it. To
stand before his mother charged with theft, even if it was on her
behalf, was not to be thought of. He couldn't do it, and there was an
end to it. Still less could he go through the other incidentals,
handcuffs, a cell, the court, the sentence, Bitterwell, and the lifetime
that would come after his release. He could put the pistol to his heart
and, if necessary, he could burn in hell--if there was a hell; but he
couldn't do the other thing.
And yet to put the pistol to his heart and burn in hell formed a
lamentable choice on their side.
"I'm not a thief," he protested, inwardly. "I took the money--how could
I help it, with dad sick and ma at the end of everything?--but _I'm not
a thief_."
He was sure of that. It became a formula, not perhaps of comfort, but of
justification. Had he been a thief, he told himself, he could have faced
the music; but it was precisely because he had taken money while
preserving his inner probity that he refused to be judged by the
standards of men. Once more he couldn't express it in this way to
himself; but it was the conclusion to which his instincts leaped. Only
one tribunal could discern between the good and evil in his case; so he
was resolved to go before it.
In a quiet corner he began to cry. He was only a boy, with a boy's
facility of emotion, especially of distress. He cried at the thought of
his mother and the girls, with no one to fend for them, and no Teddy
coming home in the evenings. It was true that, apart from his filchings,
he had been able to fend for them only to the extent of eighteen per,
but there was always a chance of better days ahead. Even at the worst of
times, they had a good deal of fun among themselves, and now....
Now his mother would be in the kitchen, beginning to get supper, and
each of the girls would be making her way back to Indiana Avenue.
Pansy's dog clock would tell her when to watch for them, and the loving
little creature would be eying the door, ready to welcome each of them
in turn. If she had a preference, it was for himself, and the feeling of
her gentle paws against his shin was connected with the tenderest things
he knew.
No; it wasn't possible. He couldn't be skyed on that twenty-third floor,
unable to come down, unable to go home. It _must_ be a nightmare. Such
things didn't happen. He was Teddy Follett, a good boy at heart, with an
honorable record in the navy. He had never meant to steal, but what
could he do? The money was there, to be stacked in the vaults of
Collingham & Law's, not to be touched for months, very likely, and the
home needs imperative. He couldn't see his father and mother turned out
of house and home because they couldn't pay their taxes. It was not in
common sense. Nothing was in common sense. That he should be dragged
into court, that his mother should break her heart, that shame should be
showered on his sisters was ridiculous. Somewhere in the universe there
was a great big principle that was on his side, though he didn't know
what it was.
What he did know was that crying was unmanly. Sopping up his tears and
trying not to think, he jumped into the first lift that stopped and got
out at floor eleven. There he went straight to the lavatory, which he
now knew how to place, and once more found the door locked.
Though again it was reprieve, it was reprieve almost unwelcome. The
first passing lift was going upward, and so he ascended to floor
seventeen. Here again the lavatory was locked, as it was on floors
nineteen and twenty-five, both of which he tried. He began to understand
that they were locked according to a principle, and that for those
seeking privacy in which to shoot themselves they offered no resource.
Moreover, offices were closing and the great building emptying itself
rapidly. The rush was all to the lifts going downward. He, too, must go
downward. To be found skulking in corridors where he had no business
would expose him to suspicion. After nearly an hour spent above he
descended to the atrium, where Flynn and Jackman might be watching the
cages disgorge, knowing that in time he must appear from one of them.
But he walked out without interference. A far hint of twilight was
deepening the atmosphere round the heads of the great columns, and the
waning sunshine spoke of workers seeking rest. Streams of men and women,
mostly young, were setting toward each of the exits, to Broadway, to
Fulton Street, to Dey Street; and he had only to drop into one of them.
He chose that toward Dey Street, finding himself in the open air, in
full exercise of his liberty.
Once more it was hard to believe that there was a difference between
this day and other days. It would have been so natural to go to the gym
for a plunge or a turn with the foils, and then home to supper. He
discussed with himself the possibility of a last night with the family,
recoiling only from the fact that it was precisely there that they would
look for him. Much reading of criminal annals had printed that detail on
his brain--the poor wretch torn from the warm shelter of his home, with
his wife's arms round him and the baby sleeping in the cradle. There was
no wife or baby in this case; but to have the thing happen to himself,
with his mother and the girls vainly trying to stay the course of the
law, would be worse than going to the chair.
He was in the uptown subway, with no outward difference between himself
and the scores of other young men scanning the evening papers. Because
he didn't know what else to do, he got out at Chambers Street. He got
out at Chambers Street because there was a ferry there which would take
him over to New Jersey. He went over to New Jersey because it was his
habit at this hour of the day, and to follow his habit somehow preserved
his sanity. To be on the same side of the river as his home was a faint,
futile consolation.
And while on the ferryboat a new idea came to him. In the Erie station
he should find a telephone booth from which he could ring up his mother
and inform her that he was not to be home that night. Though it would do
no good in the end, it would at least save her from immediate alarm.
Flynn and Jackman were unknown by face to the family, and if they rang
at the door in search of him they would probably not tell their tale.
Before he reached the other side he had concocted a story of which his
only fear was as to his ability to tell it on the wire without breaking
down.
It was a bit of good luck to be answered by Gladys, whom he could
"bluff" more easily than the rest of them.
"Hello, Gladys! This is Ted. Tell ma I'm in Paterson and shall not get
home to-night or to-morrow night."
He could hear Gladys calling into the interior of the house:
"Well, _what_ do you know about that? Ted's at Paterson and not coming
home to-night or to-morrow night." Into the receiver she said, "But,
Ted, what'll they say at the bank?"
"I may not go back to the bank. This is a new job. You remember the
fellow I was working for on the side? Well, he's put me into this, and
perhaps I'm going to make money."
"Oh, Ted," Gladys called, delightedly, "how many plunks?"
"It--it isn't a salary," he stammered. "I--I may be in the firm.
To-morrow I may have to go to Philadelphia. Tell ma not to worry--and
not to miss me. I'll try to call up from Philadelphia, but if I
can't--Well, anyhow, give my love to ma and everybody, and if I'm not
home the day after to-morrow, don't think anything about it."
He put up the receiver before Gladys could ask any more questions, and
felt ready to cry again. In order not to do that, he walked out of the
station into the street, where the presence of the crowds compelled him
to self-control. Having nothing to do and nowhere to go, he walked on
and on, getting some relief from his desolation by the mere fact of
movement.
So he walked and walked and walked, headed vaguely toward the outskirts
of the town. There were vast marshes there into which he could stray and
be lost. The rank grasses in this early August season were almost as
high as his shoulders, so that he could lie down and be beyond all human
ken. His body might not be found for weeks, might never be found at all.
Teddy Follett would simply disappear, his fate remaining a mystery.
Toward seven o'clock, the shabby suburbs began to show their
primrose-colored lights--a twinkle here, a twinkle there, stringing out
in longer streets to scattered bits of garland. Teddy felt hungry.
Counting his money and finding that he had two dollars and thirty-one
cents, he was sorry not to be able to transmit the two dollars to his
mother.
Growing more and more hungry, and knowing he must keep up his nerve, he
spied a little bread-and-pastry shop just where the houses were thinning
out and the marshes invading the town, as the ocean invaded the marshes.
On entering, he asked for two tongue sandwiches and half a dozen
doughnuts. The woman who wrapped up the sandwiches and dropped the
doughnuts into a paper bag was an English-speaking foreigner of the
Scandinavian type, blond, dumpy, with a row of bad teeth and piercing
blue eyes. As she performed her task, she seemed not to take her eyes
from off him, though her smile was kind, and she called his attention to
the fact that she was giving him seven doughnuts for his six.
"You don't lif rount here?" she asked, in counting out the change for
his dollar.
"No; just going up the road."
"Well, call again," she said, politely, as he took his parcels and went
out.
Having eaten his two sandwiches, he felt better, in the sense of being
stronger and more able to face the thing that had to be done. He was not
quite out on the marshes, the long, flat road cutting straight across
them to the nearest little town. The lights were rarer, but still there
were lights, their saffron growing more and more luminous as the colors
of the sunset paled out. An occasional motor passed him, but never a man
on foot.
He could have turned in anywhere, and perhaps for that reason he put off
doing so. It would be easier, he argued, to shoot himself after dark. It
was not dark as yet--only the long August gloaming. Moreover, the
tramping was a relief, soothing his nerves and working off some of his
horror. He wished he could go on with it, on and on, into the unknown,
where he would be beyond recognition. But that was just where the
trouble was. For the fugitive from justice recognition always lay in
wait. He had often heard his father say that in the banking business you
could get away with a thing for years and years, and yet recognition
would spring on you when least expected. As for himself, recognition
could meet him in any little town in New Jersey. They would have his
picture in the paper by to-morrow--and, besides, what was the use?
The dark was undeniably falling when he noticed on the right a lonely
shack with nothing but the marsh all round it. Coming nearly abreast of
it, he detected a rough path toward it through the grass. He had no need
of a path, no need of a shack, but, the path and the shack being there,
they offered something to make for. Since he was obliged to turn aside,
he might as well do it now.
So aside he turned. The path was hardly a path, and had apparently not
been used that year. Wading through the dank grasses which caught him
about the feet, he could hear small living things hopping away from his
tread, or a marsh bird rise with a frightened whir of wings. Water
gushed into his shoes, but that, he declared, wouldn't matter, as he
would so soon be out of the reach of catching cold.
The building proved to be all that fire had left of a shanty knocked
together long ago, probably for laborers working on the road. The walls
were standing, and it was not quite roofless. There was no door, and the
window was no more than a hole, but as he ventured within he found the
flooring sound. At least, it bore his weight, and, what was more amazing
still, he tripped over a rough bench which the fire had spared and the
former occupants had not thought worth the carting away.
It was the very thing. Shooting oneself was something to be performed
with ritual. You lay down, stretched yourself out, and did it with a
hint of decency.
Teddy groped his way. First he drew the pistol from his hip pocket,
laying it carefully on the floor and within reach of his hand. Next he
sat down for a minute, but, fearing he would begin to think, lifted his
feet to the bench, lowered his back, and straightened himself to his
full, flat length. Putting down his hand, he found he could touch the
pistol easily, and therefore let it lie. He let it lie only because he
had not yet decided where to fire--at his heart or into his temple.
Outside the hut there was a hoarse, sleepy croak, then another, and
another, and another. The dangers of light being past, the frogs were
waking to their evening chant. Teddy had always loved this dreamy,
monotonous lullaby, reminiscent of spring twilights and approaching
holidays. He was glad now that it would be the last sound to greet his
ears on earth. Since he had to go, it would croon to him softly, cradle
him gently, letting the night of the soul come down on him consolingly.
He was not frightened; he was only tired--oddly tired, considering where
he was. It would be easier to fall asleep than do anything else,
listening to the co-ax, co-ax, co-ax, with which the darkness round was
filled.
----
And right at that minute, Flynn, with low chuckles of laughter, was
telling Mrs. Flynn of the extraordinary adventure of the afternoon.
"We didn't have nothin' on the young guy at all till we seen him look
over at us scared-like, and he tuck to his heels."
It was a cozy scene--Flynn, in his shirt sleeves and slippers, smoking
his pipe in the dining-room of a Harlem apartment, while his wife, a
plump, pretty woman, was putting away the spoons and forks in the drawer
of the yellow-oak sideboard. The noisy Flynn children being packed off
to bed, the father could unbend and become confidential.
"It's about three weeks now since Jackman put me wise to money leakin'
from Collingham & Law's, and we couldn't tell where the hole was. First
we'd size up one fella, and then another; but we'd say it couldn't be
him or him. We looked over this young Follett with the rest, but only
with the rest, and found but wan thing ag'in' him."
"Didn't he lose his father a short while back?"
"Yes; and that was what made us think of him. Old Follett was fired from
the bank eight or nine months ago, and yet the family had gone on livin'
very much as they always done."
"That'd be to their credit, wouldn't it?" Mrs. Flynn suggested, kindly.
"It'd be to some one's credit; and the thing we wanted to know was if it
was to Collingham & Law's. But we hadn't a thing on him. We found out
he'd paid for the old man's funeral, and the grave, and all that; but
whether old Follett had left a little wad or whether the young guy'd
found it lyin' around loose, we couldn't make out at all. And then this
afternoon, as Jackman and me was talkin' it over on the other side o'
Broad Street, who should come out but me little lord! Well, wan look
give the whole show away. The third degree couldn't ha' been neater. The
very eyes of him when he seen us on the other side o' the street says,
'My God! they've got me!' So off he goes--and off we goes--up Broad
Street--into Wall Street--across to Nassau Street--up Nassau
Street--round the corner into John Street--up to Broadway--over
Broadway--and then we lost him. But we've done the trick. To-morrow,
when he comes to the bank, we'll have him on the grill. Sooner or later
he'd ha' been on the grill, anyhow."
"But suppose he doesn't come?"
"That'll be a worse give-away than ever."
She turned from the drawer, asking of the Follett family and learning
whatever he had to tell.
"And you say he's a fine boy of about twenty-one."
"That'd about be his age. Yes, a fine, upstanding lad--and very pop'lar
with Jackman he's always been."
She waited a minute before saying, "Oh, Peter, I wish you'd let him
off."
"Ah, now, Tessie," he expostulated, "there you go again! If you had your
way, there'd be no law at all."
"Well, I wish there wasn't."
He laughed with a jolly guffaw.
"If there was no law, and no one to break it, where'd your trip to the
beach be this summer, and the new Ford car I'm goin' to get for the
boys? Anyhow, even if we do get him with the goods on him, which we're
pretty sure o' doin' now, he'll be recommended to mercy on account of
his youth, and p'raps be let off with two years."
"Yes--and what'll he be when he comes out?"
Getting up, he pulled her to him, with his arm across her shoulder.
"Ah, now, Tessie, don't be lookin' so far ahead. That's you all over."
And he kissed her.
----
Gladys, that evening, kissed her mother, in the hope of kissing away her
foreboding. Lizzie had not been satisfied with Teddy's story on the
telephone.
"I don't understand why he didn't ask to speak to me," she kept
repeating.
"Oh, momma," Gussie explained to her, "don't you see? It was a
long-distance call. Three minutes is all he was allowed, and of course
he didn't want to pay double. Here's his chance to make money that we've
all been praying for since the year one; and you pull a long face over
it. Cheer up, momma, _do_! Smile! Smile more! There! That's better. Ted
said himself that you were not to miss him."
So Lizzie did her best to smile, only saying in her heart, "I don't
understand his not speaking to _me_."