The Empty Sack

by Basil King

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."