He gave a gasp and jerked back from the window. Once again the crowd roared at me.
I started to move forward again. When I reached the window I peered in, the gun pushed
forward. The room was empty. The door stood open.
I had twenty feet to go before I reached the shelter of the corner stone. I moved more
quickly. Behind me I heard a shout, but I didn’t look round. I kept on, expecting to hear a
shot and feel a bullet smash into me, but nothing happened.
209
I reached the corner stone and gripped hold of one of its projections. Even then I wouldn’t
look down.
For a moment or so I stood there, trying to get my breath looking at the buildings opposite:
the windows crammed with staring faces, not more than fifty yards from me.
“Get back you fool!” a man shouted at me. “What do you think you’re doing?”
I put the suitcase down on the ledge behind me. Still holding on to the projection I began to
climb around it. A woman screamed. The roar of the crowd surged up and submerged me in
sound. Satisfied I had a good hand and foothold, I reached down and pulled the suitcase to
me. Then, clinging on, I lifted it. For perhaps three or four seconds I remained pressed against
the projecting corner, my foot wedged into one of the ornate carvings, the fingers of my left
hand dug into a crevasse of stone, the suitcase dangling from my right hand in space. Its
weight upset my balance, but I managed to hang on while the people at the windows opposite
yelled and screamed at me.
I remained like that for some time. Then slowly, inch by inch, I began to edge into the
hollow made by the two ornate projections either side of the corner stone. It took time, and
once or twice I thought I wasn’t going to do it. Without the suitcase it would have been easy,
but having to work only with one hand and to counter-balance the drag of the suitcase made it
terrifyingly difficult. I got into the hollow without quite knowing how I did it. I had quite a
bit more room once I was inside, and no one could get at me either from the right or from the
left.
I was so exhausted I could no longer stand upright, and still clinging to the suitcase I sat
down, my back firm against the hollow in the stonework, my legs dangling into space.
For the first time since I had been out on the ledge I looked down.
Roosevelt Boulevard and what I could see of Ocean Boulevard were packed solid with
gaping faces. From this height they looked like a white-checkered carpet spread out below
me. I could make out the tiny figures of cops and patrolmen trying futilely to clear the street.
In the distance a mile-long traffic block hooted and honked. I could see people leaving their
cars and making their way on foot to the hotel.
At a guess I had only a few more minutes before the police started to try to rope me or send
some courageous harness bull along the ledge to grab me. My time was running out. But I
couldn’t grumble. At my side I had a quarter of a million dollars. Below me I had some five
or six thousand people who were concentrating on me, and me alone. The next move was
obvious.
210
I opened the case and took out a packet of hundred-dollar bills. I broke the elastic band and
tossed the packet high into the air. The notes broke loose and spun to the ground in a
fluttering little cloud.
The crowd below me stared up, watching the bills as they floated down to them. The bills
took some time to reach them. A man jumped high in the air to be the first to grab one. Then
they realized what I was throwing down to them. A yell went up that seemed to split the air
and shake the buildings.
A man leaning out of a window opposite yelled, “He’s throwing money away!”
