I was working fast now, splitting the packages open and tossing the bills out as fast as I
could take them from the suitcase.
The windows opposite began to empty of faces. Those who at one time had the better view
were now rushing to the elevators to get them to the street in time to horn in on this rain of
money.
Well, I had promised myself if ever I got hold of real money I’d go on the biggest spending
bender ever. I was keeping my promise, and I was getting a tremendous bang out of it. Right
at this minute I was the most powerful and the most important man on earth.
The scene below defeated imagination. People fought, trampled on each other, screamed,
yelled and clawed. Even the cops were flaying with their night-sticks to get their hands on the
bills as they floated to the ground. The wind spread them far and wide. I could see people
fighting on the beach. I watched a girl cramming crumpled bills down the front of her dress,
only to have the dress torn from her by a yelling, greed-crazed old woman, old enough to be
the girl’s grandmother.
A man with a handful of bills was being pushed against the side of a car while four women
beat him with their handbags. A policeman was trying to turn a woman who lay on the
sidewalk while she screamed like a train whistle.
I tossed the last of the bills down to them, and then sat back to watch. My breath was
coming in great heaving gasps, and I had sweated right through my clothes. I would have
gone through all I had gone through to have had those ten-minutes of power all over again.
But the money was gone - a quarter of a million gone as Della had said it would go: like
snow melting in the sun, and now I had nothing to show I had ever owned it. My one supreme
moment was over, and it would never be repeated.
211
No one in the street below was paying any further attention to me. They had forgotten me
in their mad, greed-crazed scramble for the money, and they were still fighting and yelling
amongst themselves.
My time was running out. Before long the police would organize a means of reaching me. I
had two alternatives: I could either give myself up or I could anticipate my destiny and slide
off the ledge into space. I was sure there would be no out for me once Hame got his hands on
me.
If it hadn’t been for Ginny I wouldn’t have hesitated. I would have ended it there and then,
but I remembered how she had looked at me when Hame had said I had stolen the money. I
remembered, too, she had said she didn’t believe I had ever loved her. More than anything
else in the world now I wanted her to know how much she had meant to me, and still meant
to me. I wanted her to know my side of the story, sure that if she knew the facts, and how I
had been drawn into this mess as inexorably as a swimmer gets sucked into a whirlpool, she
would realize, after I had gone to the chair, that I wasn’t quite so bad as Hame had painted
me.
And because it was essential to me that she should know the truth, I decided to give myself
up. Before they brought me to trial I would have time to write down my story just as it had
happened, and if the verdict went against me, Ginny would at least have my written record.
Having made the decision, I got cautiously to my feet. I looked back along the ledge. A
policeman was leaning out of a window about twenty yards away from me. Reluctantly, his
eyes popping and his face shiny with sweat, he swung his leg over the window-sill.
“Stay where you are,” I said, waving him back, “I’m coming in.”
As I walked towards him, moving slowly, steadying myself against the side of the building
and keeping my eyes fixed on him, I heard the deep-throated roar from the crowd below. It
reminded me of the noise the lions had made when I had dropped Reisner into the pit. At least
he hadn’t known what was coming to him.
