“We’re there!” he thought to himself. “The city at last!”
But his task was only begun. Ordinarily he would have delivered his mail to a truck driver. The driver would carry it to the post office and his responsibility would end. But to-night he was late. An emergency existed. Knowing the great need, he was obliged to decide whether or not to take matters in his own hands. Should he rip open the locked sack and deliver the three parcels in person?
In such a course he realized there would be a grave element of risk. Tampering with the mail is serious business. Should one package escape from his hands before it was delivered, he would be held responsible. The loss of one precious package would mean a loss to his company. The company alone was responsible for the mail until it was received by the postal authorities.
“A slip would mean loss of position—disgrace,” he told himself.
He looked at his watch. It was well past midnight. “The last post office messenger boy leaves at 11 o’clock,” he told himself. “Had the emergency existed in the beginning I might have phoned in and had a mail clerk stay until I arrived. Now there is only one chance. I must take matters in my own hands or wait for the office to open in the morning. And that may be too late.” For a moment he hesitated.
He was tired. The way had been long. His comfortable bed awaited him. It would be so easy to report the whole affair, send planes and pilots for his abandoned mail plane, and then turn over the special sack to the office and go home.
“A fellow isn’t responsible for that which he is not supposed to know,” he told himself stoutly. “Mr. Wiseman had no real right to tell me about those packages. I—”
But now rose the picture of a child tossing in pain, of a father pacing the floor waiting for medicine that did not come. Then a second picture came to haunt him: hundreds of eager-eyed crippled children waiting in vain for the celestial notes of a marvelous violin played by a master’s hands.
“The law of the need of those who suffer is higher than any other law,” he told himself stoutly. “I will take the risk. I will deliver them in person.”
Five minutes later, after having reported the astonishing affair to the night director of the airport, he plunged into the darkness that is a great city’s outer borders at night, with the precious sack still under his arm. Written on the tablets of his mind was the address of the home where the sick girl lay.