A Treasury of Stories (Collection of novelettes and short stories)

You went down by a different staircase than you came up, I mean it was the same spiral but the outside track this time, and there was no partition between, just a handrail. There were lights strung all along the stairs at regular intervals, of course; otherwise the place would have been pitch-dark. Some were just house bulbs; others were small searchlights turned outward against the lining of the statue, which was painted silver. In other words, anyone that was going up while you were coming down had to pass you in full view, almost rub elbows with you. No one did. The whole boatload that had come out with me was down below by now.

When I got down even with the first resting-platform, with only a rail separating me from it, something caught the corner of my eye just as my head was due to go below the platform level. I climbed back up a step or two, dipped under the railing, and looked under the bench, where it lay. Then I saw what it was and reached in and pulled it out. It was just somebody’s brown felt hat, which had rolled under the bench.

I turned it upside down and looked in it. Knox — and P.G. were the initials. But more important, it hadn’t been left there yesterday or last week, but just now. The sweat on the headband hadn’t dried yet, and there was plenty of it — the leather strip was glistening with it. That was enough to tell me whose it was, the fat guy’s. He’d been sitting on this bench when I left him — dripping with exertion — and I remembered seeing this very lid in his hand, or one the same color and shape. He’d taken it off and sat holding it in his hand while he mopped his melting brow.

He hadn’t gone on up to where I’d left his wife, for he’d neither arrived while I was still up there nor had I passed him on the way down. It was a cinch he’d given it up as a bad job and gone on down from here, without tackling the last of the seventeen “stories” or twists. Still I couldn’t figure how he could come to forget his hat, leave it behind like this, fagged out or not. Then I thought, “Maybe the poor gink had a heart attack, dizzy spell or something and had to be carried down, that’s how it came to be overlooked.” So I took it with me and went on down to try and locate him and hand it back to him.

I rang when I got to where the elevators started from, and when the car had come up for me I asked the operator: “What happened to that fat guy, know the one I mean? Anything go wrong with him? I picked up his hat just now.”

“He hasn’t come down yet,” he told me. “I’d know him in a minute. He must be still up there.”

“He isn’t up above, I just came from there myself. And he’s the last guy in the world who’d walk down the six stories from here when there’s a car to take him. How do you figure it?”

“Tell you where he might be,” said the attendant. “Outside there on the parapet. They all go out there for a last look through the telescope before they get in the car.”

“Well, wait up here for a minute until I find out. If he shows up tell him I’ve got his hat.”

I went out and made a complete circuit of the place, then doubled back and did it in reverse. Not a soul on it. It was a sort of terrace that ran around the top of the base, protected by a waist-high stone ledge on all four sides. It was lower down than the head of Miss Liberty of course, but still plenty high.

I went back to the elevator operator. “Nothing doing. You sure you didn’t take him down in your car without noticing?”

“Listen,” he said. “When he got on the first time he almost flattened me against the door getting in. I woulda known it the second time. I ain’t seen him since.”

“Are there any lavatories or restrooms on the way up?”

“Naw,” he said, “nothing like that.”

“Then he musta walked down the rest of the way without waiting for you. Take me down to the bottom—”

“If he did, he’s the first one ever did that yet. That’s what the elevators are here for.” He threw the switch. “Say,” he said, and I saw his face light up as if he was almost hoping something would happen to break the monotony of his job, “maybe he — you don’t suppose he—”

I knew what he was driving at. “You’re trying to tell me he took a jump for himself, aren’t you? G’wan, he couldn’t have even raised himself up over that stone ledge out there to do it! And if he had, there’d a been a crowd around him below. Everyone on the island woulda seen him land. I looked down just now. They’re all strolling around down there, addressing postcards, taking it easy waiting for the boat.”

His face dropped again. “They none of ’em try that from here, they always pick bridges instead. Nothing ever happens here.”

“Cheer up, Suicide Johnny,” I told him, “your cage will probably fall down the shaft some day and kill everyone in it.”