Ghost of a Chance Read Online Free

Fourteenth.”
    “Well,” Jeff said, “thanks a lot.”
    “Thank you a lot! Ten bucks in all!”
    “What are you going to do with it? Give it to your mother?”
    The boy laughed. “No, sir! All that would come out of that would be a hangover and it wouldn’t even be me that had it.” He got up, but he didn’t seem to want to leave. “I wish there was somethin’ else I could do for you. Is there maybe?”
    “No,” Jeff said. “Thanks again.”
    “Okay.”
    The boy headed for the door. As he passed an empty booth, he threw the rest of his newspapers into it. He looked back at us and waved and went on out into the snow.
    “Read me the mail, Haila,” Jeff said.
    “All right. ‘Still followed. See you in the lobby of the Royale.’ Darling, it seems I was hasty to accuse you of having enough imagination to invent Frankie to escape Aunt Ellie. I’m sorry.” “You’re convinced now about Frank and his lady?”
    “Yes, of course. Let’s get to the Royale. Quickly.”
    “The Royale,” Jeff said. “I never heard of it.”
    “It’s on Seventy-second just off Fifth.”
    “Oh. Fashionable.”
    “Very. Oodles of suicides.”
    “We’ll take the Lexington Avenue Subway.”
    We went north and up north we found the blizzard, being closer to home, was really spreading itself. As we mushed across Park Avenue I had to hang onto Jeff two-handed or the wind would have rolled me down New York’s grandest canyon all the way to Grand Central Station. At last the marquee of the Royale took shape through the swirling snow and, as we scurried for its cover, a man and a woman swung in ahead of us. A giant doorman, wrapped to the teeth in conservative but rugged livery of maroon, majestically braved the elements to open the door. He spoke to the man.
    “Mr. Troy?” he said.
    “Here!” Jeff said. “I’m Troy.”
    “Jeff Troy.”
    “Right.”
    “Got something for you.” He reluctantly doffed his admiral’s hat and fumbled inside it. “Funny business. Fellow pushed this at me and disappeared around the corner before I knew what was happening.” From one envelope he drew a second one. He handed it to Jeff. “There was ten dollars and a note for me. It said to give that to Jeff Troy when he showed up. Whoever your friend is, he’s generous.”
    “How long ago was he here?”
    “Not more than five minutes ago. Maybe less. Excuse me, I’m freezing.”
    A wisp of beautiful warmth touched us as he opened the lobby door and slipped inside. Jeff turned his back to the wind and unsealed the envelope. I leaned close to him and read Frank Lorimer’s third order of the day.
    “Please go to Times Square. Keep walking around the Times Building till I talk to you. Don’t look at me when I do. The enclosed is only part payment.”
    Jeff pulled some money out of the envelope.
    “Fifty dollars,” he said. “Frank must have been afraid we’d give up on him.”
    We started back to Lexington Avenue and the subway.
    Jeff said, “Haila, this is hardly a day to stroll around and around the Times Building. You go home.”
    “No. Don’t make me, Jeff.”
    “Frank mightn’t be able to connect with us this time, either. We might have to keep on moving.”
    “I know.” I waited a moment until I had enough breath saved up to speak again. “If only he had given us the lady’s name in one of his messages. We could go straight to her.”
    “There’s probably a great deal more to tell us than a name.”
    “But a name would help.”
    “It would,” Jeff said. “But on second thought, I have a hunch that Frank’s going to get to us at the Times Building.”
    “I wonder,” I said, “which of the men we saw at the Belfast Bar could have been Lorimer?”
    “It’s useless to try to figure that out. We saw fifty men. And maybe we didn’t see Lorimer at all.”
    A half block ahead of us the subway entrance gaped a black welcome in the surrounding whiteness. We quickened our steps and ran for it.
    We had turned the first