Ghost of a Chance (18 page)

He had talked to us on the train, he had crossed the aisle to force upon us a photograph of himself. It was because of him that we had almost missed seeing the red-headed girl escape from the train.

I let Jeff pull me from the car and lead me back up the hotel steps. I knew then that it had been no coincidence that we had been drawn into conversation with the man. It had been no accident that the girl had nearly eluded us. This man was a part of the plan, this plan that was to end with the murder of Sally Kennedy.

The black sedan was still under the porte cochere. The driver sat stolidly behind the wheel, his ferret face in profile to us. He made no move to start the engine.

“Jeff…” I said. I tried to keep my voice steady. “Jeff, what would happen if we just walked past the car and down the road?”

“I think,” he said, “and this is only my opinion, of course, that the car would follow us. When we were far enough from the hotel so that the people in the lobby wouldn’t hear two shots ring out, two shots would ring out. One for you, one for me.”

“We would be… killed,” I said.

“Our bodies would never be found.”

“And tomorrow morning Sally Kennedy would be murdered.”

“It would be inexcusable inefficiency,” Jeff said, “If they killed us and then missed out on Sally.”

“All right,” I said. “We won’t walk past that car and down the road.”

“It’s up to you, Haila.” Jeff put his hand on the lobby door; I put my hand on his.

“Wait,” I said.

“What is it?”

“Kramer… he arranged this ride for us. That means he’s in the gang.”

“Yes, I’m afraid so. I hoped he wasn’t so he could help us. But there’s too much about his connection with the redhead that doesn’t make sense. Unless he’s one of them.”

“Kramer,” I said, “the redhead, the driver there. That’s three. And how many more people inside are a part of it?”

“There’s no way of knowing, Haila.”

“This place must be their hideaway… or their headquarters.”

“Yes.”

I caught Jeff’s hand again and held tight to it. “Jeff, do we… do we have to go back inside?”

“It’s the only thing we can do. Our only chance is to go in and then get out again without their knowing.”

“But somehow I’d rather not go in at all.”

Jeff turned me so that I could see over his shoulder. The car was still there, the man still in the driver’s seat. He was motionless, waiting. He looked as if he didn’t mind at all waiting. He seemed, in fact, rather to enjoy it.

I quickly opened the door that led back into the hotel lobby.

They were all back in the
lobby now, all but the mother and the pigtailed child. They were crowded together about the fireplace in a tableau of cozy friendliness, a group of innocent people sitting out a winter storm in a family hotel. But any one of them, or all of them, might be a link in the murderous chain that was tightening around Sally Kennedy.

The shy, wide-eyed eagerness of Mary Thompson seemed suddenly to be a screen that covered a killer’s face. Trask’s old world grace, the heartiness of Merrill might be masks for intentions that were sinister. Even the needles of the two spinster ladies, as I watched them dance in their fingers, took on the wickedness of deadly weapons. I shivered and edged closer to Jeff. My only comfort was that the hotel manager was not in sight. The sight of him and his elaborate preciousness would have been more than I could have stood.

Merrill called to us from his big chair beside the hearth.

“What’s the trouble, Mr. Troy? The weather too bad for traveling?”

“Yes,” Jeff said, “much too bad.”

They were all looking at us now. The two ladies stopped their needles and held them suspended between stitches. Trask turned in his seat to face us; Mary Thompson popped up on her knees and looked over the high back of her chair. Merrill rose and took a step toward us.

“Come and sit by the fire,” he said.

“Yes,” Mary Thompson chirped, “yes, please do!”

“We were talking about you,” Trask said. There was an amused smile on his face. “Did you find your friend who did not, as it turned out, steal Miss Thompson’s name to use as an alias?”

“Yes, did you find her?” Miss Thompson asked. “I do so want to meet her.”

“No,” Jeff said, “we didn’t find her.”

“Young man,” the knitter cried, “are you and your wife in trouble?”

“Come here,” the crocheter said, “and tell us all about it. We may be able to help you.”

The two old ladies moved to opposite ends of their settee, making room for Jeff and me between them. Their eyes were bright, greedy with their curiosity.

“People should help each other,” the knitter said.

Numbly, I started toward them when Jeff’s hand caught my arm.

“Thank you,” he said, “but we were on our way to the bar. You know, a nightcap.”

He was steering me away from them, out of the lobby. I could feel their eyes on our backs, following each step that we took. They were quiet behind us. We reached the bar and Jeff bounced the palm of his hand on the bell. Then I heard their voices, all speaking at once, muted but excited.

I said, “Jeff, I don’t want a drink, I couldn’t…”

“Order something,” Jeff said. “Anything.”

The boy was hurrying in from the kitchen. He blinked at us and rubbed his eyes, grinning sheepishly. We had rung him out of a stolen nap. He said, “Yes, sir?”

Jeff looked at me.

I said, “I’ll have something warm. A… a hot rum toddy.”

“Two,” Jeff said.

“Two rum toddies, yes, sir. That’ll take a few minutes.”

The boy ducked through the swinging door beside the bar and disappeared into the kitchen. The voices, still soft, went on in the lobby. I turned sidewise and glanced toward them. No one had moved. The knitter and the crocheter were working, but their eyes were on us. Trask was watching us, the amused smile still playing on his lips. Merrill caught my eye and nodded.

Jeff was talking softly, hardly moving his lips. “When your drink comes, pick it up. Act as though we’re heading for a booth.”

“What will we be heading for?”

“The kitchen. Maybe we can get out through the kitchen.”

“Yes. Kitchens have outside doors. They always have…”

The boy was back. Silently he placed two steaming glass cups before us and left. I raised my cup, gulped at it. Then, the cup still in my hand, I started toward the booth. Jeff followed me. We cleared the arch of the lobby and right-turned. We paused by the booth. No footsteps crossed the lobby floor, no voice was raised. We took ten quick steps and moved into the kitchen.

It was being tidied for the night. A bedraggled, aching woman was laboriously drying pots and pans and hanging them on hooks. A burly gentleman in the professional white of a chef was cleaning the long gas range. The waiter was wearily sorting silverware. Just inside the swinging door the bar boy was perched in a chair that was tilted up against the wall. And at a table across the kitchen, hunched over a cup of coffee, sat the girl with red hair.

She glanced up at us, then quickly looked back down at her cup. Her body stiffened, her face became hard, expressionless. Now there was nothing feminine about her. Her smudged makeup looked like a false face that was meant to be funny and wasn’t. She seemed a small, ugly animal, wanting to strike out, knowing it was wiser to wait.

It was the chef who spoke.

“Something you want?” His voice was gruff. “Too late now for anything to eat.”

“They don’t want anything to eat,” the girl said.

The chef turned to her in surprise. She was looking down again into her cup of coffee. He wasn’t sure that it had been she who spoke.

“You said something?”

“I said they don’t want anything to eat,” she said. “Can’t you see they’ve got their hats and coats? They’re leaving. They’re looking for a way out.”

She raised her eyes and looked directly at us. She jerked a thumb over her shoulder, and the gesture hurt her. She said, “There’s a door right there. It leads outside.”

The words were half-invitation, half-dare, and they were completely chilling. My insides turned suddenly glacial.

“No,” Jeff said, “we’re not leaving. In fact, we were looking for something to eat. We see it’s too late.”

The girl, the bewildered members of the kitchen staff watched us back out of the room. Jeff held the swinging door open with one hand, steered me through it with the other. I was still holding my hot toddy and I took two long quick pulls on it. It didn’t do a thing about melting the ice in my stomach. Jeff started across the bar toward the lobby. I grabbed at him.

“No, Jeff! Not back in there. I can’t… I can’t face them all again, watching us, waiting for us to move…”

Jeff put his arm around me. “We’ll have to, Haila. We’ve got to get upstairs and see what we can do from there. They can’t be everywhere.”

“They can,” I said. “They are.”

I took another fast, final sip of my drink, set it on the bar and followed Jeff out of the taproom. They didn’t see us enter the lobby. The group at the fireplace had tightened into a circle surrounding Merrill. The knitter was standing on tiptoe before him, using him as a model for the scarf she was making. The two other women were exclaiming over the wonderful contrast the bright blue of the scarf made with the silver white of Merrill’s hair. Trask, leaning against the mantle, smiled at his friend’s embarrassment. No one turned as we crossed the room.

I didn’t feel the watchful eyes upon me until we started up the stairs. I turned quickly. In a far corner of the room, from where he could see both the stairway and the front door, sat Kramer. There was a wide-open newspaper spread over his lap and now his eyes were fastened on it.

Just before the wall of the stairwell shut him from my view I glanced back again. Again he was watching us, a little smile pursing his thin lips.

Jeff closed the door of our room and snapped shut the inside lock. I sank down on the edge of the bed. The pressure of the last thirty-six hours, the lack of food was beginning to catch up with me. Jeff’s voice was anxious.

“Haila…”

“I’m all right,” I said. “But turn on some lights. I’ve developed a craving for nice, bright lights. I’m anti-darkness.”

“I think,” Jeff said, “we’d better keep it dark.”

“Why? They know we’re here, they know…”

He had moved to the window and opened it wide.

“Is it far to the ground, Jeff?”

He didn’t answer.

I felt my way across the room and stood beside him. The courtyard lay still and white beneath us. The tall, narrow blur of darkness close against the wall looked at first like a shadow. Then it moved and I saw the figure of a man. He stepped away from the wail, raised his head toward our window. Then, quickly, he stepped back again into the shadow of the wall, flattening himself against it.

Gently, Jeff pulled shut the window.

I said, “There must be some other way. They can’t be watching the whole building.”

“Yes,” Jeff said. “There’s a staircase at the end of the other wing. I found it this evening. I don’t know, though, if there’s an exit from that wing. If there isn’t, we might be able to get down into the cellar and…”

“Let’s… let’s try it.”

Jeff took my hand. “You sound as if you would rather not.”

I thought of Sally Kennedy. I thought of Frank Lorimer’s limp body as they lifted him off the subway tracks and of Joyce’s voice at a telephone in Union Square and of tomorrow morning. Eleven o’clock tomorrow morning.

I said, “No. Let’s go.”

Noiselessly, Jeff opened the door and we sidled out into the hall. On tiptoe we started down the hall; we would have to cross the landing above the lobby in order to reach the far wing. Jeff took three steps and stopped dead.

I had seen it, too. Across the corridor from us, a door inched open, hung silently there. It closed again, smoothly, still silently, but we knew.

We went back to our room.

Jeff closed the door, locked it. With a shrug he switched on the lights. “It doesn’t matter now.”

“We can’t move.”

“Not at the moment.”

“Jeff, if we stay here, what will they do? Oh, I know they’ll kill Sally Kennedy. There’ll be nobody to stop them. But what about us? They have to kill us, don’t they? We know so much. We know about Kramer. We know about Joyce and the redhead… we know about the redhead and Joyce and the red…”

“Haila!”

The lights seemed to fade arid glow again. The room began to spin around me.

“Jeff…”

I felt his hands on my arms, gripping them. His voice was metallic, piercing. I didn’t like him at all. He was annoying me.

“Haila! How much of that drink did you have?”

“That drink? Some of it… all of it. Why?”

“Haila, don’t let yourself go. Keep fighting it. Walk, Haila, walk around the room.”

I stood up. I forced myself to put one leg in front of the other. I felt better.

“I’m all right,” I said. “I’m… Jeff, was that drink doped? But it couldn’t have been. You had one, you don’t feel anything, do you? It’s just because I’m so tired, I’m exhausted…”

Jeff’s hands were on my shoulders, forcing me to walk.

“I didn’t drink anything,” he said.

“You didn’t…”

“I left it in the kitchen.”

“You should have drunk it. It was delicious. It was warm. Oh, Jeff, I’m so sleepy.”

“Fight it, kid! Listen, Haila. Haila, are you listening to me?”

“Yes, I’m listening.”

“Once,” Jeff said, “once when I was about sixteen, being large for my age, I was a counselor at a boys’ camp. It was a big camp. There must have been two hundred and fifty boys there. Haila, how many boys were there?”

“Two hundred and fifty boys.”

“That’s a girl, sweetheart, stay with me!”

“Two hundred and fifty boys,” I said again. I wanted Jeff to be proud of me. I wanted him to be proud of me more than anything else in the world. That, in fact, was all I wanted in the world. “Two hundred and fifty boys,” I said.

“Not counting Tippy Larkin,” Jeff continued.

“Two hundred and fifty-one boys.”

“No, Tippy wasn’t a boy. He was an old, old man. He lived in a little hut on the camp grounds and they couldn’t get him off. They had bought the land from him and… Haila! Who did they buy the land from?”