The Empty Sack Part 35

And all that day Teddy lay crouched in his lair with his eye glued more or less faithfully to the peephole. Except from hunger, he had suffered but little, and the minutes had been too exciting to seem long in going by. It was negative excitement, springing from what didn't happen; but because something might happen, and happen at any instant, it was excitement. From morning to midday, and from midday on into the afternoon, cars, carts, and pedestrians traveled in and out of Jersey City, each spelling possible danger. Now and then a man or a vehicle had paused in the road within calling distance of the shanty. For two minutes, for five, or for ten at a time, Teddy lay there wondering as to their intentions and trying to make up his mind as to his own course.

Whether to shoot himself or make a bolt for it, or if he shot himself whether it should be through the temple or the heart, were points as to which he was still undecided. He would get inspiration, he told himself, when the time came. He had often heard that in crises of peril the brain worked quicker than in moments of tranquillity; and perhaps, after all, a crisis of peril might not lie before him.

In a measure, he was growing used to his situation as an outlaw; he was growing used to the separation from the family. It was not that he loved them less, but that he had moved on and left them behind. He could think of them now without the longing to cry he had felt yesterday, while the desperation of his plight centered his thought more and more upon himself. If he didn't have to shoot himself, he planned, in as far as plans were possible, to sneak away into the unknown and become a tramp.

He couldn't do it yet, because the roads were probably being watched for him; but by and by, when the hunt had become less keen....

Seven doughnuts swallowed without a drop of water being far from the nourishment to which he was accustomed, he waited with painful eagerness for nightfall. When the primrose-colored lights up and down the road and along the ragged fringe of the town were deepening to orange, he crept forth cautiously. Even while half hidden by the sedgy gra.s.ses, he felt horribly exposed, and when he emerged into the open highway, the eyes of all the police in New York seemed to spy him through the twilight.

Nevertheless, he tramped back toward the dwellings of men, doing his best to hide his face when motor lights flashed over him too vividly.

Unable to think of anything better than to return to the friendly woman who had given him seven doughnuts for his six, he found her behind her counter, in company with a wispy little girl.

"Ah, good-evening. Zo you'f come ba-ack. You fount my zandwiches naice."

Teddy replied that he had, ordering six, with a dozen of her doughnuts.

Her manner was so affable that he failed to notice her piercing eyes fixed upon him, nor did he realize how much a young man's aspect can betray after twenty-four hours without water to wash in, as well as without hairbrush or razor. He thought of himself as presenting the same neat appearance as on the previous evening; but the woman saw him otherwise.

"I wonder if I could have a gla.s.s of water?" he asked, his throat almost too parched to let the words come out.

"But sairtainly." She turned to the child, whispering in a foreign language, but using more words than the command to fetch a gla.s.s of water would require.

When the child came back, Teddy swallowed the water in one long gulp.

The woman asked him if he would like another gla.s.s, to which he replied that he would. More instructions followed, and while the woman tied up the sandwiches the little girl came back with the second gla.s.s. This Teddy drank more slowly, not noticing as he did so that the little girl slipped away.

Nor did he notice as he left the shop and turned westward into the gloaming, that the child was returning from what seemed like a hasty visit to a neighbor's house across the street. Still less did he perceive, when the comforting loneliness of the marshes began once more to close round him, that a big, husky figure was stalking him. It had come out of one of the tenements over the way from the pastry shop, apparently at a summons from the wispy little girl. Like the men whom Jennie had seen eying the house in the afternoon, he suggested the guardianship of law, even though he was, so to speak, in undress uniform. His duties for the day being over, he had plainly been taking his ease in slippers, trousers, and shirt. Even now he was bareheaded, pulling on his tunic as he went along.

He didn't go very far, only to a point at which he could see the boy in front of him turn into the unused path that led to the old shack.

Whereupon he nodded to himself and turned back to his evening meal.

CHAPTER XIX

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 embarra.s.sing.

But she had grown since the previous afternoon, and embarra.s.sment 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 doc.u.ments in their hands, and there was a distant click of typewriters. People pa.s.sed 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 Rudd.i.c.k." 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 Rudd.i.c.k, 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 Rudd.i.c.k 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 Rudd.i.c.k 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 Rudd.i.c.k 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 Rudd.i.c.k and pa.s.s 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 Rudd.i.c.k 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 ident.i.ty 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 rest.i.tution. 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.