Ghost of a Chance (19 page)

“Whom, Jeff, not who. Whom did they buy the land from? They bought the land from Tippy Larkin. Tippy. I knew a girl once named Tippy. We were both in love with the same boy and…”

“Go on, Haila, go on! What was the boy’s name?”

“None of your business. None of your…”

“Fight it, Haila! Tell me about the boy.”

“Well, his name was Fred Leeder. His full name was Frederick. Well, Fred invited me to go to the senior dance and I couldn’t go. I didn’t have a long dress. Why couldn’t I go to the dance, Jeff?”

“Because you didn’t have a long dress.”

“That’s a boy, Jeff, fight it… fight it… fight…”

“Haila, stay awake! Please stay awake! I’ll give you anything you want if you stay awake!”

“I want a long dress. A real long dress…”

“Sweetheart, get up! Walk!”

“No, I can’t… I don’t have a thing to wear…”

“Haila, listen to me… Haila…”

His voice trailed off. I tried to do as he asked but the effort was too great… and I didn’t care. I was whirling… whirling… I was falling asleep as I had never fallen asleep before… and it was wonderful…

I don’t know how long i had been awake
. I only knew that I was lying on a bed in a dark room, staring up at a dark ceiling. I knew that and then, all at once, I knew everything. I was in a hotel on a mountain top. I was here because a girl named Sally Kennedy was to be murdered… I sat up.

I was alone in the room.

It was dark, but not so dark that I couldn’t see into each corner of the small, square bedroom. Jeff wasn’t there. He would never have voluntarily gone away, leaving me to lie drugged, to come to and find him gone, or not to come to. Somehow they had separated us. They had got Jeff.

I pulled myself to my feet. A door squealed softly on its hinges and quickly I dropped back on the bed. I closed my eyes and lay perfectly still. Feet shuffled across the carpet and stopped beside the bed.

I must be convincing, I must still appear to be in my drugged stupor. I had to be left alone again so that I could search for Jeff…

Motion stirred the air above my eyes. A cold, wet cloth was clamped down on my forehead. They were trying to bring me to. It was no longer their plan to keep me immobilized… I heard a voice, low, solemn. At first the words were indistinguishable, then they were not.

“…I promise to take better care of her in the future. I won’t even let her feet get wet. I won’t cross against a red light when she’s with me…”

I didn’t budge. I didn’t want to break this up. It was doing me a world of good.

“… I won’t let her ride planes or fast trains, or elevateds or subways. I won’t let her out of the house. We’ll stay in every night and listen to the radio…”

“Now wait a minute,” I said.

“Haila!”

“As usual, you have to overdo it.”

“Darling, how do you feel?”

“I’ll be all right if you take that wet, clammy rag off my head.”

“I’m sorry.”

“How long have I been out?”

“Hours. It’s damn near dawn.”

“Dawn? Jeff, what have you been reading while I was unconscious? Jeff, did you say… dawn? We’ve got to do something! We’ve got to get out of here… Sally…”

There was the creak of a floorboard in the hall outside. Jeff flung himself on the bed beside me, stretched himself full length.

“They’re coming back,” he whispered. “You’re out, Haila, you’re doped.”

I was getting good at this sort of thing. Once more I closed my eyes and lay very still. Beside me I heard Jeff breathing deeply, regularly, and I let my breathing rise and fall in step with his.

There were muffled, stealthy steps in the hall outside, but the door remained closed. Through my closed eyelids I could feel the room suddenly brighten. I could feel the beam of light land smack on my face, hold there for a moment, then move away. My eyelids turned black again. There was a little thud in the hall, a scuffling sound of footsteps and then silence.

Jeff’s hand closed on mine and squeezed a warning. We lay motionless.

“All right,” Jeff’s whispered, “It’s all right now.”

“What was going on?”

“They were inspecting us through the transom.”

“Has that happened before?”

“Often. But each time they’ve found me awake.”

“Could you see who it was?”

“No.” He got off the bed and started for the window. “I’m hoping that finding us both asleep now will take them off their guard. That guy under the window can’t stay out much longer. He must be frozen.”

“Oh, I hope not, I sincerely hope not!”

“Nobody has taken over for him all night!”

“Jeff, are you feeling sorry for him!”

“Only sorry enough to want him to go inside for a while.”

Jeff stayed at the window; I moved over to his side and looked out. It had stopped snowing and there was a trace of what Jeff referred to nowadays as dawn in the sky. But it was still dark enough to make the man against the wall of the courtyard only a blurred figure. We waited long minutes, minutes that seemed hours, for what Jeff was hoping for would happen. Then a window in the wall opposite the man was quietly raised. We watched him tramp through the snow toward it. He paused for a moment beside it, listening, then he moved away, out of the court.

Jeff’s hand clamped on my wrist. “Haila, do you think you can make it? Now? There mightn’t be much time.”

“Yes,” I said. “Yes, let’s go.”

Jeff had the blankets torn off the bed; he was stripping off the two sheets. He knotted them together, looped the end of one around the leg of the radiator beside the window, fastened it securely. Cautiously, he opened the window, waited a moment, then lowered the rope of twisted sheets through it.

I had put on my hat and coat; I handed Jeff his. I waited while he sat on the window sill and swung his legs across it. “All my life,” he said, “I’ve wanted to try this.” He started down. I leaned out the window, watching him until he hit the ground. He motioned to me.

I had a moment’s qualm. I hadn’t spent all my life wanting to try this. But it was easy. I kept my legs tight around the material and lowered myself hand over hand until Jeff reached up and took me in his arms. He put me down and I sank almost to my knees in the snow. We stood and listened. There was no sound and, from the hotel, no glimmer of light. Slowly, carefully, we edged our way toward the right wing and worked the length of its wall. A few feet from the corner of the building we stopped and reconnoitered.

Thirty feet ahead of us, across the lawn of the Lodge, stood a row of bushes and hedge. Once across those thirty feet we would be safe… or at least, much safer.

Jeff put his lips to my ear. “How do you feel?”

“Better every minute. This air.”

“Ready?”

I nodded.

Jeff grasped my wrist. We both took one step and stopped dead. From around the corner came the man with the blinking eyes. He was as startled to see us as we were to see him. His mouth fell open and he stood still, eighteen inches away, gaping at us. Then his right hand reached into his right overcoat pocket.

Jeff hit him. He hit him in the stomach with one hand, on the point of his chin with the other. The man bent over, then straightened, then crumpled slowly into a heap. His eyes weren’t blinking now; they were wide open and only the whites of them showed. He looked dreadful but, for him, it was a definite improvement and, for us, a great convenience.

We ran.

We ducked low and plunged forward through the deep snow toward the sanctuary of the hedge. Our pace was maddeningly slow. I found myself waiting for a shout, for the crack of an exploding gun. It wouldn’t hurt; the bullet would merely knock me flat, it wouldn’t hurt until later. That was too soon. I dug in harder and pushed ahead. Jeff had hold of my wrist, he was dragging me along. The branch of a bush slapped smartly across my face and it felt wonderful.

We knelt down, out of view of the hotel behind us, and caught our breath. There was still no light visible inside the Lodge. There was no one to be seen except a man sprawled on the snow, and he was a dark, motionless mound.

“It’s all right, Haila,” Jeff said. “We’re all right.”

“Yes. So far.”

“Ready to get moving again?”

“Yes.”

The road was fifty yards off to our left. The hedge row ran all the way to it. We started moving, each step a struggle against the drifted snow and underbrush. The front of the Lodge came into view. From the lobby shone the soft glow of a solitary lamp. We crouched lower, moved more cautiously.

Once I wallowed to my waist in a drift. Jeff dug me out. Once he missed his footing and went sprawling. But the road came closer and closer and then we were wading through its ditch and standing on its snowed-under surface. We started down it.

There had been just enough night traffic on the road to pack down four tire-wide tracks. It made the going easier, we made good time… better time than I could stand. It hit me suddenly. I was winded, exhausted, my legs refused to do any more than just hold me up. Jeff led me over to the cable guard rail on the left of the road and I half sat on its top strand.

I glanced down behind me and then, quickly, I put my hands on the cable and held on. The road here was a shelf blasted out of sheer rock cliff. Before us it rose smoothly up out of sight in the darkness, behind us it dropped straight away, a black pit. I didn’t look behind me again.

Jeff lit a cigarette. It smelled good and warm and, after a moment, my lungs were in condition to ask for one. It was almost pleasant sitting there. The darkness no longer seemed terror-ridden; it was a protection, a comfort. It was on our side now.

“Jeff, what time do you think it is?”

“It gets light about seven-thirty. It must be nearly seven.”

“If it takes us an hour to get to the village, then two hours to New York…” I stood up. “Jeff, we haven’t much time.”

“I know. We should keep moving.”

I heard the drone of the car before I saw it. It was coming down the mountain toward us. The sound of its obviously ancient motor was lovely, lilting music to my ears. “Jeff!” I called, “Jeff, it’s a lift…” I started to the opposite side of the road.

Jeff caught me by the shoulder and, as he did, I saw what he had seen. The car was still out of sight around the curve above us, but its headlights spilled out before it, cutting into the black abyss beyond the road. One of them was parallel with the road, the other shot upwards at a forty-five degree angle. The car that had waited for us in front of Chappawan Lodge. The car whose chauffeur had been the man with the nervous eyes.

There was no shelter for us. We were caught on a narrow white ribbon between two cliffs. The headlights would pick us out as easily as if we were a vaudeville duo on an empty stage.

We started running, away from the lights, away from the sound of the motor that grew stronger behind us. I was gasping, stumbling, fighting to keep moving. Jeff dragged me along. The lights would soon touch our heels, move up our backs until we were pinioned by them, two black targets against the whiteness of the snow.

Ahead of us the road twisted in a sharp bend. Behind us the car’s motor was clear now, growing louder, rising in a terrible crescendo.

We rounded the bend and there was nothing, no sign of shelter to the right or left. Jeff broke away from me. He vaulted the guard rail and leaned out into the darkness. He turned back to me.

“Haifa! Here!”

He pulled me across the cables, led me the three steps to the brink of the drop. He said, “Jump.”

“No,” I said.

The motor was a roar in the quiet morning. The lights stabbed into the gloom before us, fingers of light on a great black curtain. The car had started around the bend. Jeff put both hands on my shoulders. He pushed me out and down into the hideous, yawning gulf.

There was no time for me to scream. My mouth was filled too soon with snow. I was sprawling, floundering in a pit of it. I felt Jeff as he thudded down beside me. I blew the snow out of my mouth and listened.

The car was just above us, its motor churning. It didn’t stop. In a few minutes it was only a muffled, far-away drone.

I sat up. Jeff lifted me to my feet and I was standing in a drift up to my hips. He brushed off my face. He was smiling down at me with relief, a little affection, a little more amusement.

“You might have told me,” I said, “that there was a ledge here.”

“I was afraid you might ask me how wide it was.”

“How wide is it?”

“About five feet.”

“Five feet… I won’t faint… I won’t faint… I… Jeff, what if I had jumped clear over it?”

“You never jumped five feet in your life. Besides, I pushed you. I pushed you lovingly and gently.”

“Let’s get out of here,” I said, “before we’re attacked by eagles.”

We worked our way along the ledge until we found a place where we could scramble back up on the road. We beat the snow off each other and started walking again. I was too hopped-up by my leap into the unknown to be tired now; I was too glad to be able to walk not to walk. I strode along almost briskly.

Jeff said, “Look.”

I knew from his voice that this would be something good to see. Moving toward us, so slowly that its motor was a murmur, was a small dump truck. A spasmodic shower of cinders flew from its rear and landed on the road. It was a highway squad.

From the cab of the truck a red-faced man grinned down at us. We grinned back at him, so heartily that he was slightly bewildered. He reached for the brake and pulled the machine to a stop.

“You’re out kinda late, ain’t you?”

“Kind of early,” Jeff said. “We have to catch a train for New York. Could you…”

“Hop in!” He pushed open the door on the far side. We ran around to it and hopped in beside him. “Guess you’re after the seven thirty-five.”

“That’s right,” Jeff said.

“Well, now, we’ll soon be rid of this load of ashes and then we can make some time. You’ll get your train.”

“If it’s out of your way I’ll be glad to pay…”

“Not a bit! Chappawan is where we load up again.”

The truck crept along for several hundred yards, then there was a thump on the cab roof as one of the shovelers signaled the driver. He carefully maneuvered the truck through a U-turn. We were facing Chappawan. We picked up as much speed as the dangerous road allowed and we were rolling down the mountain.