Authors -- Fiction; Ghosts -- Fiction; Love stories; World War, 1914-1918 -- Veterans -- Fiction
Susannah took part of Mr. Warner's advice. She went home immediately.
But she did not take a nap. Instead, she walked up and down her bedroom
for an hour, thinking hard. She could think now; in her passage home on
the Subway, her first wild panic had beaten its desperate black wings to
quiet. What Warner had told her she now believed implicitly. She was as
much caught in the trap as any one of the three crooks with whom she had
been associated. The only difference was that she did not mean to stay
in the trap. She meant to escape. Also she did not mean to let it drive
her from the city in which she was challenging success. She meant to
stay in New York. She meant to escape. But how?
If there were only somebody to whom she could go! She had in New York a
few acquaintances--but no real friends. Besides, she didn't want anybody
to know; all she wanted was to get away from--to vanish from their
sight. But where could she go--when--how?
Fortunately she had plenty of money on hand, plenty at least for her
immediate purposes. She owned a few pawnable things, though only a few.
But at present what she needed, more even than money, was time. She must
get away at once. But again where? For a moment resurgent panic tore
her. Then common sense seemed to offer a solution. Here she was in the
biggest city in the country; the biggest in the world. She had heard
somewhere that a big city was the best place in the world to hide in.
She would hide in New York. Then--
She had forgotten one terrifying fact. Byan boarded in the same house.
She realized why now. A fortnight before--shortly after Mr. Cowler
appeared in the office--he had come to her for advice. He had given up
one bachelor apartment, he said, and was taking another. Repairs had
become inevitable in the new apartment. He did not want to go to a
hotel. Did she know of a good boarding-house in which to spend a month?
She did, of course--her own. Byan came there the next day; although,
curiously enough, she saw but little of him. They had separate tables,
and his meal-hours and hers were different.
Byan usually came in at about six o'clock. But today he might follow
her. She must work quickly.
She pulled her trunk out from under the bed and began in frenzied haste
to pack it. Down came all the pictures from her walls. Into the trunk
went most of her clothes; some of her toilet articles; her half-dozen
books; her stationery; all her slender Lares and Penates. When she had
finished with her trunk, she packed her suitcase. As many thin dresses
as she could crush in--inconsequent necessities--her storm boots; her
tooth-brush--
Then she wrote a note to her landlady. It read: "Dear Mrs. Ray: I have
been suddenly called away from the city. Will you keep my trunk until I
send for it? Yours in great haste and some trouble, Susannah Ayer." She
put it with her board money in an envelope, addressed to Mrs. Ray, and
placed it on the trunk.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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