Jennie's chief hesitation was as to cashing the checks, not because the
teller at the Pemberton National Bank didn't know her, but because he
did. To present a demand for money made out to Jane Scarborough Follett,
and signed, "R. B. Collingham, Jr.," was embarrassing.
But she had grown since the previous afternoon, and embarrassment sat on
her more lightly. Like Teddy marooned on the marshes, she seemed to have
moved on, leaving her old self behind. Now she had things to do rather
than things to think about. One fact was a relief to her; she was no
longer under the necessity of betraying Bob.
So she cashed her checks, and counted her money, finding that she had
two hundred and forty-five dollars. She didn't know how much Teddy had
taken from the bank; possibly more than this, possibly not so much; but
whatever the sum, this would go at least part of the way toward meeting
it. If she could meet it altogether, then, she argued, the law couldn't
touch him.
On arriving at the bank her first sensation was one of confusion. There
seemed to be no one in particular to whom to state her errand. Men were
busy in variously labeled cages, and more men beyond them sat at desks
within pens. Two or three girls moved about with documents in their
hands, and there was a distant click of typewriters. People passed in
and out of the bank, occupied with their own affairs, and everyone,
clerk and client alike, had apparently a definite end in view. It was
like coming up against a blank wall of business, leaving no opening
through which to slip in.
The weakest point seemed to be at a counter beneath the illuminated
sign, "Statements," where two ladies waited for custom, conversing in
the interim. Jennie stood unnoticed while the speaker for the moment
finished her narration, bringing it to its conclusion plaintively.
"So when mother called in the doctor, it turned out to be a very bad
case of ty-_phoid_. Statement?"
The question at the end being directed toward Jennie, the latter asked
if she could see Mr. Collingham. The reply was sharp; the tone quite
different from that of the domestic anecdote of which she had just heard
a portion.
"Next floor. Take the elevator. Ask for Miss Ruddick." The voice resumed
its plaintiveness. "So we had him moved into the corner bedroom, and
sent for a trained nurse--"
On getting out of the lift, Jennie found herself in a sort of lobby
where applicants for interviews sat with the hangdog look which such
postulants generally wear. A brisk little Jewess seated at a desk
murmured the name of each newcomer into a telephone, after which there
was nothing to do but take a chair and wait upon events. Now and then
some one came out from his conference, whereupon a messenger girl,
generally of Slavic or Hebraic type, would summon his successor.
It was nearly an hour before Jennie was called to the office of Miss
Ruddick, who, with her practiced method of dealing with the importunate,
prepared to put her rapidly through her paces and land her again at the
lift. This Miss Ruddick did, not so much with the minimum of courtesy as
with the maximum of conscientiousness. Her aim was to save Jennie's time
as well as her own, in the altruistic spirit of Mr. Bickley's
principles.
"How do you do? Are you the daughter of the Mr. Follett who used to be
with us here? So sorry for your loss, though it may be a release for
him, poor man. We never know, do we? Now what is it I can do for you?"
Jennie said again that she hoped to see Mr. Collingham.
"I think you'd better tell your errand to me."
"I couldn't. I can only tell it to him."
In saying this she supposed Miss Ruddick would understand the reference
to be to Teddy, whose story must by this time be ringing through the
bank. In spite of what Jackman had said on the previous afternoon, they
couldn't keep so serious a crime secret for more than a matter of hours.
But Miss Ruddick only seemed displeased by Jennie's insistence,
answering coldly,
"If it's a job you're looking for, the best person to see would be--"
And just then the communicating door opened and Collingham himself came
out. He was about to give some order to Miss Ruddick and pass on when
Jennie rose in such a way that his eye fell upon her. When a man's eye
fell upon Jennie his attention was generally arrested. In this case, it
was the more definitely arrested, for the reason that Jennie, timidly
and tremblingly, gave signs of having a request to make.
"You wish to speak to me?"
At this condescension Miss Ruddick was amazed, but, the responsibility
being taken off her hands, she was already capturing the minutes by
being "back on her job," according to her favorite expression. Jennie
could hardly speak for awe. She recalled what Mrs. Collingham had
said--a hard, stern, ruthless man, who kept her, her son, and her
daughter as puppets on his string. If he so treated his own flesh and
blood, how would he treat her?
Following him into the private office, she reminded herself that she
must keep her head. She had come on a specific business, and to that
business she must confine herself. Her other relations with this
terrible man she must leave to his son to deal with.
"Your name is--"
His tone was courteous. They were both seated now--he at his desk, she
in a small chair at a respectful distance. The question surprised her,
for the reason that in her confusion she supposed that her identity was
known to him.
"I'm Jennie Follett." His visible start did not make her situation
easier. She remembered that Mrs. Collingham had said that if he knew of
the tie between herself and Bob he would disinherit him on the spot.
Just what was implied by that she didn't understand, but it suggested
all that was most dramatic in the movies. To disarm his suspicions in
this direction, she hurried on to add, "I came about my brother."
He relaxed slightly, leaning on the desk and examining her closely.
"Oh, your brother!"
"Yes, sir. I don't know how much money he's been taking from the bank--"
Collingham's brows contracted.
"Wait a minute. Has your brother been taking money from the bank?"
At the thought that she might be making a false step, Jennie was
appalled.
"Oh, don't you know that yet, sir?"
"Don't I know it yet? I don't know what you're talking about at all."
So the whole thing had to be explained. Two men had appeared on the
previous afternoon in Indiana Avenue, accusing Teddy of systematic
robbery. Teddy had so far corroborated the charge that he had absented
himself from home and work. He had called up once, nominally from
Paterson, but the two detectives didn't believe that it was. In any
case, she had a little money of her own--her very own--two hundred and
forty-five dollars it was--and as far as it would go she had come to
make restitution. If it wasn't enough, they would sell the house as soon
as they could get it on the market and pay up the balance, if he would
only give the order that Teddy shouldn't be sent to jail.
Emboldened by his concentration on her story and herself, she took out
the roll of bills from her bag, enlarging on her plea.
"You see, sir, it was this way. After my father had to leave the bank
last fall, Teddy had to be our chief support, just on his eighteen a
week. My two little sisters left school and went to work; but that
didn't bring in much. Then there were the taxes, and the mortgages, and
the expenses of my father's funeral, besides six of us having to eat--"
"You were working, too, weren't you?"
"Yes, sir; I was posing. But I only earned six a week."
"Only?"
Based on a memory of his own of something Junia had said--"a mousey
little thing with a veneer of modesty, but mercenary isn't the word for
her"--there was an implication in this "Only?" which escaped Jennie's
simplicity.
"Yes, sir; that was all. Somehow I couldn't get the work. Nobody seemed
to want me."
He pointed at her roll of bills.
"Then where did you get the money you're holding in your hand?"
The question was unexpected and confounding. She must either answer it
truly or not answer it at all. If she answered it truly, she not only
exposed Bob, but she exposed herself to the utmost rigor of his wrath.
She didn't care about herself; she didn't care much about Bob; she cared
only about Teddy. The utmost rigor of this man's wrath would send him to
jail as easily as she could brush a fly through an open window. She
could say nothing. She could only look at him helplessly, with lips
parted, eyes shimmering, and the hot color flooding her face pitiably.
It was the kind of situation in which no man with the heart of a man
could be hard on any little girl; besides which, Collingham looked on
this silent confession as providential. It would enable him to reason
with Bob, if it ever came to that, and tell him what he, the father,
knew at first hand and from his own experience. Otherwise he brought no
moral judgment to bear on poor Jennie, and condemned her not at all.
"Just wait a minute," he said, in a kindly tone, getting up as he spoke.
"I'll go and straighten the thing out."
Left alone, Jennie had these concluding words to strengthen her. He
would straighten the thing out. That meant probably that Teddy wouldn't
have to go to jail, and beyond this relief she didn't look. It would be
everything. Nothing else would matter. He might be dismissed from the
bank; they might starve; but the great thing would be accomplished.
It was a half hour or more before he returned, and when he did he looked
worried. "Troubled" would perhaps be a better word, since even Jennie
could see that his thoughts were farther away and deeper down than the
incidents on the surface. He spoke almost absent-mindedly.
"I find there's been a leakage for some little time past, and they've
had difficulty in fixing where the trouble was. Now I'm sorry to say it
looks as if it was your brother. There's hardly any doubt about that--"
"You see, sir," she pleaded, "it was so hard for him not to be able to
do anything when my father was so ill and my mother worried and the
bills piling up--they stopped our credit nearly everywhere--and the tax
people--they were the worst of all."
"Yes, yes; I quite understand. And I've told them not to press the
matter further. Flynn and Jackman, the two men you saw yesterday, are
out for the minute; but when they come in they are to report to me. I
don't suppose we can take your brother back; but I'll see what I can do
for him elsewhere." He rose to end the interview, so that Jennie rose,
too. "You can keep that money," he added, nodding toward her roll of
bills. "You were not responsible, and there's no reason at all why you
should pay."
When Jennie protested, he merely escorted her to the door, which he held
open.
"No, don't thank me," he insisted. "Please! Just make your mind easy as
to your brother. The matter shall not go any farther. I don't know what
I can do for him as yet--the circumstances make it difficult; but I
shall find something."
So, blinded with tears, Jennie made her way toward the lift, calling
down on Bob's father as well as on his mother all the blessings she was
able to invoke.
----
Late that afternoon, Teddy, on the floor of his hut, woke with a start
from a doze. He hadn't meant to doze, but he had slept little on the
preceding night, and was lulled, moreover, by a sense of his security.
The day had not been as exciting as the day before. Nothing having
happened during all those hours, he was growing convinced that nothing
would. In its way, safety was becoming irksome. He began to ask himself
whether the spirit of adventure didn't summon him to go forth as a tramp
that night.
So he dozed--and so he waked, with a start. The start was possibly due
to a consciousness even in his sleep that there were people in the road.
He was frightened before he could put his eye again to the peephole.
Luckily the pistol was at hand, and _the other thing_ might now have to
be done.
As a matter of fact it seemed likely. Two burly figures had already left
the highway, Flynn tramping along the flicker of path, and Jackman
picking his steps through the oozy mud a little to Flynn's right and a
little behind him. There was no secrecy about their approach, and
apparently no fear.
"They don't suspect that I've got a gun," Teddy commented to himself.
"Lobley can't have told them."
They were talking to each other, and, though Teddy could not make out
their words, he heard Flynn's gurgle of a laugh. To his fevered
imagination, it was a diabolic laugh, suggestive of handcuffs and
torture.
The thought of handcuffs frenzied him. Of the sacrilegious touch on his
person, the links set the final mark. Rather than submit to them he
would shoot anyone, preferably himself. For shooting himself the minute
had come, and he decided to do it through the temple. The aim through
the heart might miscarry; there was no chance of miscarriage through the
brain. All that remained for him now was to know the moment when.
"Don't shoot till you see the whites of their eyes."
Some trick of memory brought the tag back to him. He knew that it
applied to the shooting of an enemy, but in this case it suited himself.
He couldn't see the whites of their eyes as yet, for through the grasses
and over the slimy ground they advanced but slowly. That gave him the
longer to live. He might live for three minutes, possibly for five. Even
a minute was something.
But he was ready. He couldn't say that he had no fear, because he was
all fear; but for the very reason that he was all fear, he was frozen,
numb. Only, the hand that held the pistol shook. He couldn't control it.
All the more, then, must he do it through the brain, since he found by
experiment that he could steady the muzzle against his temple. He didn't
dare so to hold it long, lest that impulse of acting before he thought
might deprive him of these last precious seconds of life. So he let the
thing rest on the peephole, pointing outward, like a gun on board ship.
He found, too, that this steadied his eye. He could squint along the
barrel right at the two big figures lumbering through the morass.
"Don't shoot till you see the whites of their eyes."
Flynn looked up, a laugh on his lips at this absurd adventure. The boy
saw the whites of his eyes, and, as far as he himself knew, his mind
went blank. He always declared that he heard no sound. He only saw Flynn
throw up his arms with a kind of stifled shout--stagger--try to regain
his lost balance--and go tumbling, face downward, into the long grass.
Jackman fell, too, though not so prone but that he could partially raise
himself, half supported by his left arm, while, without being able to
face toward the road, he waved his right to the motors flashing by.
For Teddy mind-action ceased. He was nothing but mad instinct. He knew
he must have fired--must have fired twice--that the hand that was to
shoot into his temple had betrayed him. He knew, too, that he couldn't
shoot into his temple--that great as was his terror of the handcuffs,
his terror of this thing was worse. Flinging the pistol across the
floor, his one impulse was to save himself.
As he had foreseen, his mind, once it began to work, worked quickly. He
saw that the grass growing up to the door of the shack was tall, and
hardly beaten down by his footsteps. Lying flat like a lizard, he
wriggled his way into it. The very yielding of the swampy bottom beneath
his weight was in his favor. By a sense, such as that which had waked
him up, he knew that motors were stopping in the road, that people were
leaping out, that Flynn and Jackman were the objects of everyone's
concern, and that, in the mystery as to what had happened to them, no
one's attention was as yet directed to himself. He made for the back of
the shack, writhing his way round the two corners, and heading out
toward the center of the marsh. It was needful to do this, since the
shanty and its neighborhood would soon be explored, and he must, if
possible, be lost in the swampy tracklessness.
Though progress of necessity was slow, he was amazed at the distance he
was putting between himself and danger. Oh, if it was only night! If a
thundercloud would only come up and darken the sky! But it was the
brilliant, pitiless sunshine of an August afternoon, with not a shred of
atmosphere to help him. Still he writhed and writhed and writhed his way
onward, making the pace of a snake when half of its body is dead. He was
no longer Teddy Follett; he was no longer so much as an animal. He was
one big agony of mind, which becomes an agony of body; and yet he was
eager to live.
He began to think that he might live. He seemed as far away from the
peril behind him as the woods thing that gives its hunter the slip in
the green depths of the covert. Dogs might be able to track him, but not
men alone; and while they were bringing up the bloodhounds he might....
And then he heard a shout that struck through him like paralysis.
"There he is! I see him!"
"Where? Where?"
"That line behind the shack--don't you see?--a little streak right
through the grass."
"No; I don't see anything."
"Come along and I'll show you. Come along, boys. We'll get him. He's
only going on his belly."
"Yes, and be croaked, like this poor guy! Don't forget that the bird
over there can give you a dose of lead."
So Flynn was dead! That was the meaning of that. Teddy had killed a man.
Perhaps he had killed two men. He hadn't taken time to think of it
before; but now that he did, he lay stricken in every muscle of his
frame, his face in the mud, and his fingers dug into the queachy roots
of the sedges.