BY GEORGE GRANTHAM BAIN.
That piece of loose flagging should have been fixed long before. It was one of those wicked, insidious suggesters of temptation which are quite as bad in their moral effect as the temptation itself. Probably not a man or woman stepped on that wobbling piece of stone but thought of the possibilities that lay below it. Directly beneath were the vaults in which were kept the millions on millions of silver and gold dollars belonging to the government Treasury. The first thought that the loose flagging suggested to the mind was always: Suppose it should turn over and drop me into the vault where the gold is kept; and suppose it was as easy to get out as to get in; and suppose—for I do not believe there was any one wicked enough to want to steal the coin—suppose there was no objection on the part of any one to carrying away as much gold as the pockets would hold. What a jolly time one could have with it!
That is what Harry Holt thought every night when he left the Western Union Telegraph Building and started home. He always crossed over to the Treasury Department sidewalk and walked on the loose piece of stone. There was no harm, he thought, in imagining all of the delightful things that he could do with a pocketful of the gold. For he was quite sure that even if the flagging was as loose as it seemed to the pressure of his foot, and even if he could move it—and he was tempted often to stoop and see—the top of the vault below was of heavy steel, and the only thing he would get if the flagging gave way was a good bumping, if not a broken leg. So the loose flagging was only a touchstone to a little world in which Harry lived on his way home each night from his telegraph desk—a world where all the hot summer days were made of trips to Nova Scotia, and the winter of sunny sojourns in the everglades of Florida.
"My wire's clear at both ends; I think I'll go home," said Harry to the chief operator one hot night. It was five minutes before his time for leaving the operating-room, and Western Union orders are strict. The chief operator shook his head and went on. Harry turned sulkily back to his desk and picked up a fan. On a night like this, when every one in the room was steaming with the heat of the overcrowded room, the click of the instrument before him and the hum of the other instruments all about jarred on his nerves. He wanted to get to his little room uptown, where at least he could take a plunge in the bath-tub if his blood was overheated. He hated the slavery of the operating-room, and the set rules that made him only a part of the machine to earn dividends for a lot of New York people in whom he had no interest. Harry was not a philosopher, or he would have said to himself that the surest way of heating his blood still more, and increasing his discomfort on this trying night, was to worry about something, to fret, to be discontented.
Well, five minutes is not a very long time. Harry took his coat on his arm and his hat in his hand; for it was long past the hour when every one but a few night-workers and an occasional policeman had gone to bed. The electric lights sputtered and spit as he came out of the building, and the hot white light dazzled him a little. Then the steam from the overheated asphalt came up into his face as he cut across diagonally toward the Treasury building. It looked cool and comfortable in its dress of white marble, and Harry thought how pleasant the air must be down in the sub-basement, far below the heat of the street. Then he stepped on the loose flagging, his steps turning to it as naturally as though there had been no other path, and the flagging gave way. It was so sudden that he had no chance to struggle or to try to regain the solid ground. Before he could even spread his arms to catch the edges of the stones about the opening, he had fallen below the surface of the sidewalk.
He had an awful consciousness that he was doing something wrong—as though his dreams about that loose flagging had exercised some weird influence on it, and so far loosened it as to make it give way under the weight of his body. And he suddenly remembered that he had read somewhere of a little army of watchmen who guarded the treasure vaults with weapons in hand, and who had been known to shoot first and make inquiries afterward. That would be very awkward, thought Harry; and all of this passed through his mind in the little space of time which it took for a fall of—well, he thought it was one hundred yards, but every one knows that the Treasury vaults have ceilings no higher than the ceiling of your room.
"Hello!" said a voice at his elbow. Harry had alighted somewhere. Just how he had managed to do it after that tremendous fall without breaking a leg he could not understand; but here he was on his feet, with no evidence of any damage done, and opposite him was a pleasant-faced old gentleman with a white beard, wearing a pair of steel-bowed spectacles which gave his face a benevolent aspect. Just behind the old gentleman was a stack of wooden boxes as high as the ceiling—-and Harry saw now that the ceiling was not so very high after all—and lying around the room were white canvas bags with figures stencilled on them. There was a table not far away, with a delightful-looking cold luncheon spread on it, and there was a bowl of lemonade or something that looked like lemonade with a big square piece of ice floating on its surface. Harry's tongue had been parched all evening in the hot operating-room. He longed for a little of that lemonade, but he hesitated to ask the stranger for it.
"You came by the balloon route," said the old gentleman, not inquiringly, but as though he stated a recognized fact.
"I really don't know how I came, sir," said Harry, finding his tongue. "I didn't know I was coming."
"I fancied you came in a hurry. I see you haven't had time to put on your coat," said the old gentleman.