Ghost of a Chance (6 page)

We turned away from the door. The other three walls were smooth, unbroken by any door or window. The bulb overhead and the bridge lamp by the easy chair flickered and went out.

We stood there in the cold, damp darkness. The silence was hardly disturbed by the slopping shuffle of footsteps coming back to the door, then on by it.

“Joyce!” shouted Jeff.

The footsteps moved away and were gone.

“Jeff,” I said,
“where are you?”

“By the door.”

“What are you doing?”

“Seeing if Joyce left a key under the mat for us.”

“Don’t be sarcastic. I thought you might possibly be doing something about getting us out of this pitch-black hellhole.”

“Have you got a match, Haila?”

“No. But I’ve got a cigarette.”

Jeff swore at me.

“Darling,” I said, “don’t tell me that you haven’t any matches!” Jeff swore at himself.

“Well,” I said, “if you had the grace to carry that lighter I gave you for your birthday…” I was interrupted by a thud. “Jeff, what was that?”

“Me. I’m trying to knock down the door.”

“With what?”

“My shoulder.”

“Try again.”

“It’s useless.”

“You have to do it three times. The door will fly open the third time.”

“Sweetheart,” Jeff said, “if you don’t stop being cheerful, I’ll… by God, I’ll walk right out on you. I won’t stay in this room another minute with you.”

“I was just trying to keep our morale up.”

I heard Jeff prowling cautiously around the room. He said, “There must be some way to get out of here.”

“No,” I said. “Eddie Joyce looked very competent. Did you notice what a fine job he did shoveling snow? Eddie’s an all-around man. We’re in here to stay.”

“That’s keeping our morale up.”

“Jeff…”

“Yes?”

“We’ll probably be kept here until the woman is murdered, won’t we? We won’t be hurt. But the woman will be dead.”

Jeff didn’t answer me. He kept shuffling blindly around the room, frantically feeling for a way out. At last he gave up and the room was still, still as the bottom of a well on a deserted farm. We could hear nothing, not even the noise of the traffic outside. I groped my way to the chair before the roll-top desk and sat down. There was nothing else to do.

Sitting there I found out about time. I found out that it wasn’t just clocks and the sun that told you time. It was seeing things happen, doing things yourself. You knew it took fifteen minutes to wash and dry dishes for two, ten minutes to walk to the corner and back. It took just a few minutes to watch a man sweep a sidewalk. But when you were motionless in utter blackness you had no way of telling time.

“Jeff,” I said, “how long have we been in here?”

“Fifteen minutes, I’d guess.”

“I’d guess an hour at least.”

“Haila, it’ll be all right. We’ll get out. The people who own this house will probably come back from Florida in the spring.”

“This house,” I said, “wasn’t boarded up because somebody went to Florida. They’ll be gone for years.”

“They might, yes. But on the other hand this joint might be torn down soon to build an apartment house. The wreckers will find us.” “How will we look?”

“Emaciated but undaunted.”

“I’d rather be daunted and not emaciated. Oh, Jeff!”

“Stop it, Haila. Do something to keep yourself occupied. Make a pet out of a rat.”

Jeff started prowling again. I could hear him circling the room. I could hear his hands sliding over the walls, struggling with the door, then moving again on plaster and concrete and woodwork. He went on and on until the monotony of the sound hypnotized me into a mental vacuum. When I heard him speak his voice was sharp, as if this were the second time he had said my name. I jumped to my feet.

“Yes, Jeff?”

“Help me here.”

“What is it?”

“This old bookcase. It weighs a ton. I want you to help me move it.” I stretched my hands out before me and walked along the beam of Jeff’s voice. “I think there might be something behind it. It isn’t quite flush with the wall. Maybe the woodwork of a door frame is blocking it.” The tips of my fingers touched Jeff. “Go up to the other end, Haila.”

I felt my way along the massive, grotesquely carved piece of furniture. I found a crevice between it and the wall that was large enough for me to slide my flattened hand into.

I said, “Jeff, we can never move this.”

“Reach as high as you can. We’ll try to tilt it. Ready?”

I pushed and nothing happened. I strained until red spots danced in the darkness before my eyes. I was about to give up when the top of the bookcase began to inch forward. Then I gave it all I had left and the thing began to topple. Jeff yelled timber and I jumped back. There was the crackle of shattering glass, the tearing sound of splintering wood and a booming bang as the full weight of the case hit the floor. A cloud of dust billowed up into my face.

Turning to the wall, I put my hands on it and started toward Jeff. He beat me to the discovery. His yelp of triumph came a moment before I touched the woodwork of the door frame. Hinges squeaked as Jeff wrenched the door open. It bounced off my shoulder and I found it with my hands. It was a small door; its top was a little above my head, its bottom a little below my waist. Jeff’s groan confirmed my pessimism.

“Jeff, it’s a closet, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” he moaned. He was disgusted. “Want to hang up your hat and coat?” His voice rose suddenly in a shout. “Wait a minute! Ropes! Yeah! Haila, this is a dumb-waiter! It’s an abandoned dumbwaiter!”

Jeff was apparently pulling on a rope. High above us I could hear a rattle, like the sound of a cart in its tracks. The rattle was growing fainter. “Wrong rope,” Jeff said. Then the car began moving downward. In a few minutes there was a thump and our way out stood waiting before us.

Jeff found my elbow. “Get in, Haila.”

“Me?”

“I’ll pull you up.”

“That’s awfully kind of you, but…”

“Would you rather be down here alone for a few minutes or up there alone?”

“Well,” I said, “I know what’s down here. Couldn’t I pull you up? Then you could use the stairs and open this room for me. I’d appreciate that, Jeff.”

“We’ve both got to use the dumb-waiter. Joyce took the key to this door with him. I heard him take it.”

“Thorough chap, isn’t he? I wonder how he happened to miss this dumb-waiter.”

“I imagine,” Jeff said, “that the bookcase has been hiding it longer than he’s been caretaker here. Get in, Haila.”

Jeff loaded me into the thing, more quickly than carefully. I bumped both elbows, soundly knocked my head. When I finally got settled I was sitting with my knees up under my chin, my feet twisted at the wrong angle to my ankles. Something sharp dug into my back. The dust I had stirred up from the floor of the cart sent me into a fit of sneezing.

Jeff said, “The trip will do you good.”

“I’m not sure. I’ve never ridden in a dumb-waiter before. Maybe I get sick in a dumb-waiter.”

“Keep feeling the wall for the opening on the first floor,” Jeff said. “Here you go.”

It was a bumpy take-off, but soon Jeff had me moving smoothly and steadily upward. I tried to find the rope to help him pull, but it was in a trough and inaccessible to me. Then I remembered that I was to watch for the first floor exit from the dumb-waiter. I gingerly let the tips of my fingers glide along the wall at my right. A splinter got me in the pinkie and when I went back to the wall again I used my knuckles. There are tricks to every trade.

Jeff’s voice moaned up through the shaft like the wind in a chimney. “Drop me a card when you get there, for God’s sake.”

“Am I heavy, dear? So sorry.”

My knuckles flipped over the jutting of a sill and I felt the coolness of a metal door. I shouted whoa to Jeff, shoved open the door and stepped out into the musty darkness of what I hoped was a room with a floor in it. My feet touched hard wood. I called down to Jeff.

“Take it away.”

The cart dropped rapidly down to the cellar and I could hear, Jeff boarding it.

“Haila!” he called. “I can’t help you pull me up.”

“I know you can’t, but don’t worry.”

I hopped up and, grasping the rope as high as I could reach, hung onto it. It jerked down a few inches and stopped. My feet dangled in the air. There was a loud thump below. Jeff yelped in pain. “Haila, wrong rope! I want to go up!”

“Did I hurt you, dear?”

“Considerably. Damn it, you’d think you’d never pulled a man up in a dumb-waiter before.”

I found the right rope and tugged on it, carefully and tenderly, thoughtful of my love below. Nothing happened. I pulled harder. Still nothing happened. I stopped to investigate.

“Jeff, have you invited somebody in there with you?”

“What are you talking about?”

“I can’t budge this thing!”

“You haven’t given yourself a fair chance. Try again.”

“Yes, dear.”

“There,” Jeff said, “now it ought to be easier.”

“What did you do, darling?”

“I threw away an old letter and a comb I had in my pocket. I’m ready now.”

I grabbed the rope, gritted my teeth and yanked. My super-human effort was rewarded. Slowly, Jeff began to rise. My arms were beginning to leave their sockets when Jeff called.

“Take it easy, Haila.”

Gratefully, I took it easy. I let go of the rope and massaged my fingers back into shape. I got out my gloves and put them on. I began to breathe instead of gasp.

Jeff said, “Okay, Haila.”

“Okay, hell. I need some more rest.”

Jeff didn’t answer me; he let me take my time.

In a moment I was ready and I went back to work. It was easier now. Some muscles, dormant since my high school basketball days, came into play. The gloves helped, too. I gave that rope the gun. The top of the cart breezed past my ear and mine was a job well done. “All right, Jeff,” I said, “get out. If you’re not too exhausted.”

He didn’t answer.

“Jeff!” I said.

I put my hands into the dumb-waiter. It was empty.

Slowly, I stepped back. I was stunned. Things like this didn’t happen in the twentieth century, except perhaps in unexplored parts of Tibet and India. But this was New York. A man couldn’t vanish in mid-air from a sealed dumb-waiter. Not even Jeff, with all his strange and useless talents, could do that.

But he had; he was gone.

Suddenly the house became a horrible, outré thing. I knew now why it was boarded up. It wasn’t because its tenants had found it convenient to leave. They had fled the place.

I turned, trying to pierce the stifling darkness, trying to find an escape from the room. I could see nothing. But I had heard something. Somewhere in the house footsteps were sounding on bare floor, footsteps the like of which I had never heard. They weren’t human footsteps. One was a flat slap, the next a whispering scrape, then the slap and the whisper of the scrape. They were coming closer. I thanked heaven that it was too dark for me to see.

A voice said, “Haila.”

It knew my name.

“Haila, where the hell are you?”

“Jeff!” I screamed. “Jeff, it’s you!”

“Sure.”

“Why are you walking that way?”

“My foot went to sleep in the dumb-waiter.” He stamped it vigorously on the floor. “It’ll be all right in a second.”

“Put your arm around me, Jeff.”

“What’s wrong?”

“I pulled up the dumb-waiter. You weren’t in it.”

“I got out on the first floor. You could have, too, if you’d been paying attention and found the door.”

“Oh,” I said. “Listen, why didn’t you tell me you were getting out? A girl likes to know those things.”

“I told you to stop.”

“I thought you meant for me to rest. But it’s all right. It’s all right, all right. Let’s get out of this house.”

I held onto Jeff’s arm as he led me down two flights of stairs. He kicked the improvised front door from under the hasp of its padlock and we went out into the blinding blessed light that bounced off the white of the snow. Jeff started walking fast; he seemed to know where he was going and what he was going to do when he got there. I trailed along, a half step behind him.

The downstairs hall floor
of the house on Bolton Street was getting what it needed; a good scrubbing. It wasn’t being done by the landlady, but by a middle-aged, vigorous, chunky woman whom we had never seen before. As Jeff and I opened the front door and walked past the room that had been Frank Lorimer’s, she leaned on her hands and looked inquiringly up at us from all fours.

“We’d like to see the landlady,” Jeff said.

“I ain’t the landlady,” the woman said.

“I know you’re not,” Jeff said.

“I’m from around the corner. I’m just doin’ Mrs. Loerch a favor. I’m an old friend of hers.”

“We’d like to sec Mrs. Loerch,” Jeff said again.

“She ain’t here,” the woman said, as if that was something we should have known. “That’s why I’m here. Mrs. Loerch was called away and I’m takin’ charge until she gets back.”

“Well,” Jeff said. “It was pretty sudden, wasn’t it?”

“No more than an hour ago. Mrs. Loerch come to me and told me that her sister-in-law was took sick bad and she had to go and help out. She asked me to take charge here and that’s what I’m doin’.”

“Where does her sister-in-law live?”

“Boston.”

“Where in Boston?” Jeff asked. “Did she leave you an address?”

“Yes, she did. She don’t expect to be gone long, but if she is I’m to collect the rents and send them on to Boston. In care of General Delivery, Boston.”

“I see,” Jeff said. “General Delivery.”

“That’s right. Did Mrs. Loerch promise you two a room?”

“No, it was something else. Did you ever, by any chance, meet Mrs. Loerch’s sister-in-law?”

“I never been to Boston.”

“I thought she might have visited Mrs. Loerch.”

“Maybe she did, I don’t know. But I never met her.” The woman dipped her brush into the bucket and slubbered some water on the floor. She began scrubbing. “You come back when Mrs. Loerch comes back.”