Miller had said he put the suit behind the tub; it was there, wadded. Mr. Acarius had no shirt save his pajama jacket nor shoes save his carpet slippers. Nor did he have any idea where Miller’s room with its unlocked window on the fire escape was either. But he did not hesitate. I’ve done what I can, he thought. Let the Lord provide awhile.
Something did, anyway. He had to wait while the orderly and two patients bore Watkins into his room and cleared the corridor. Then he found Miller’s room with no more effort than just selecting a door rapidly and opening it. He had had a fear of height all his life, though he was already on the dark fire escape before he even remembered it, thinking with a kind of amazement of a time, a world in which anyone had time to be afraid of anything consisting merely of vertical space.
He knew in theory that fire escapes did not reach the ground and that you had to drop the remaining distance too; it was dark here and he did not know into what but again he did not hesitate, letting go into nothing, onto cinders; there was a fence too and then an alley and now he could see the sweet and empty sweep of the Park: that and nothing more between him and the sanctuary of his home.
Then he was in the Park, running, stumbling, panting, gasping, when a car drew abreast of him. Slowing, and a voice said, “Hey, you!” and still trying to run even after the blue coats and the shields surrounded him: then he was fighting, swinging wildly and violently until they caught and held him while one of them sniffed his breath. “Don’t strike a match near him,” a voice said. “Call the wagon.”
“It’s all right, officer,” his doctor said and, panting, helpless, even crying now, Mr. Acarius saw for the first time the other car drawn up behind the police one. “I’m his doctor. They telephoned me from the hospital that he had escaped. I’ll take charge of him. Just help me get him into my car.”
They did so: the firm hard hands. Then the car was moving. “It was that old man,” he said crying. “That terrible, terrible old man, who should have been at home telling bedtime stories to his grandchildren.”
“Didn’t you know there were police in that car?” the doctor said.
“No,” Mr. Acarius cried. “I just knew that there were people in it.”
Then he was at home, kneeling before the cellarette, dragging rapidly out not only what remained of the whiskey but all the rest of it too — the brandy, vermouth, gin, liqueurs — all of it, gathering the bottles in his arms and running into the bathroom where first one then a second and then a third crashed and splintered into the tub, the doctor leaning in the door, watching him.
“So you entered mankind, and found the place already occupied,” the doctor said.
“Yes,” Mr. Acarius said, crying, “You can’t beat him. You cannot. You never will. Never.”
The End
