Part 35 (1/2)

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 guardians.h.i.+p 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 s.h.i.+rt. 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 cas.h.i.+ng 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.