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sentence, panting it into his upturned collar: “I-I-I wuz standin’ thur a long t-t-t befur you wuz. . . .” The big egg of an Adam’s apple flowed up and down. “T-t-time befur you wuz!” he gasped.
    He must say this right. He needed courage to do it. He recalled one of his rare moments of complete happiness, and the voice and the words that had made him so happy: “Archie’s all right. When he does say something, it comes out sense.” It was Mr. Hendricks who had said it. Mr. Hendricks, who always smiled at him and spoke to him, too. And he had been talking about him, Archie, who pushed the drays around at the newspaper plant. Mr. Hendricks was one of the editors. Archie remembered exactly how he heard it. He was by the elevator shaft and Mr. Hendricks was talking to Ryzek, the foreman. “Archie’s all right. When he does say something, it comes out sense.” He had felt so happy then, he could make himself happy at any time simply by recalling these words, and hearing Mr. Hendricks’s voice as he said them. “Archie’s all right . . .”
    He felt strong and very brave. He would catch up with this man with the bag. He would say words that came out sense.
    He began to think of the situation as a mistake that a few words could explain. . . . His sole caught on a curb and made a loud report.
    The man in the polo coat threw a glance behind him. Fear settled deeper in his spine and shot him forward with supernormal energy. He ran across the intersection of Fourteenth Street, over the flattened cobblestones and trolley tracks. He could see no people on Fourteenth Street, and for a couple of blocks it was as dimly lighted as the street he was on. He darted back into Greenwich. For a while he walked on his toes, hoping the cripple would think he had turned off on Fourteenth Street. Then he kicked something that slid raspingly over the sidewalk.
    â€œGoddamn!” he said, and his dirty teeth chattered. He turned around and held himself taut, listening. The scrap-slap-scrape came on. He started to trot. “Wh-what the hell am I doin’ bein’ chased by a nut,” he whispered, “when I shoulda turned off Fourteent’ t’get t’the meetin’. . . .” His feet hardly seemed to touch the ground, yet he had a sense of being dragged from behind. The cripple took fantastic proportions in his mind, became the inescapable, machinelike figure of a nightmare, and he believed he was after him now, not the bag, driven by a crazy desire for revenge. He clutched the bag harder and determined to turn off at the next street, however dark it might be, to get to some place where there were people.
    He heard his heart stagger, catch itself up like a pair of heavy feet, and he slowed immediately. He shouldn’t be hurrying like this, a guy with a delicate heart. What if he should keel over in the gutter. . . . “Suppose he don’t leave me alone all night! Suppose he don’t never leave me alone! . . . What would the guys at the hall think if they saw me wit’ a lousy bag bein’ chased by a nut!”
    For he was the bookkeeper of a large fraternal organization, and occasionally made speeches, as he had only two weeks ago tonight made the speech denouncing Putterman, who had sat on the front row hardly six feet away. “It ain’t often I feel called upon to talk like this about a fellow member,” he had concluded, wiping his mouth with his handkerchief. “But my only concern is the organ-eye-zation! . . . I say Putterman is a guy who says things are all right to your face an’ then . . . an’ then,” extending a finger, but the gesture reminded him of hailing the cripple, “then goes and spills this crap about the organ-eye-zation to someone higher up! . . . Gentlemen, I got my facts an’ I present them!” Great applause, Putterman ousted by oral vote. Wh-what would the guys say if they . .