The Strange Story of Linda Lee (29 page)

She prayed fervently that, if things had gone like that, he would not get into trouble, then tried to comfort herself with the thought that if he swore he had only put her up for the night and had no idea that the
police were after her, there would be nothing with which they could charge him. They could not possibly prove that he had taken her across the lake. Nevertheless, if they suspected that he had, they would by now have got in touch with the American police. So the Americans might be on the look-out for her. If she was caught by them, they would need no warrant of extradition to send her back to Canada. That she had no passport, so could be presumed to have entered the country illegally, would be ample grounds for them to put her back across the frontier.

Only a quarter of a mile down the road lay the buildings among which she had seen lights a few hours earlier. In considerable trepidation, she set off toward them. They proved to be bungalows and a row of small shops on the edge of a town with street lighting along the pavements. Few people were about and, before she had gone far, she came upon a pastry cook’s, with marble-topped tables inside. The smell of coffee proved irresistible, so she went in, warmed herself up with two large cups and, although she was not hungry as she had had such good meals the previous day, she enjoyed a newly-baked roll with butter. When it came to paying, she suddenly realised that she had only Canadian money. Being so close to the frontier, with people constantly crossing, the waitress accepted it without question; but it gave Linda a nasty jolt, as if the American police were looking for her in that neighbourhood, it just might lead to their getting on her trail.

Setting off again, she saw from a sign over a garage that she was in Olcott. Near the centre of the little town she found the bus depot and learned that a coach would be leaving for Buffalo in half an hour. Anxious now not to lay a further trail by paying her fare in Canadian
money, she went into the only hotel she could see and asked them there to change a twenty-dollar bill for her. To her relief the girl at the desk did so cheerfully and without comment. By ten o’clock she was on her way to Buffalo.

Although the bus stopped at numerous villages
en route
, it did the journey in under an hour. As it stopped in the main square the good-natured conductor, realising that she was a foreigner, pointed to a large monument in its centre and told her it was in commemoration of President McKinley, who had been assassinated there by a fanatic in 1901. It was the only thing of interest that she saw during her short stay in Buffalo, which she found a dreary, dirty city.

The Hilton, which lay on the far side of the square, did not impress her at all favourably. Having booked in as Mrs. Gene Wellard, the name Colin had used when telephoning, she was taken up in a crowded lift to the room he had booked for her. It was quite adequately furnished, but one of the two windows was useless, as it was immediately opposite the windows of another, nearby skyscraper; so, unless the curtains were kept drawn, everything in the room was exposed to view.

By the time Linda had unpacked her few things, had a bath, done her hair and dressed again, it was getting on for one o’clock, so she went down to lunch. The big lounge running from one end of the hotel to the other was a seething mass of people. To her surprise, quite a number of well-dressed, middle-aged and elderly men were wearing fancy hats that, had they not been made of materials such as silk, might have come out of Christmas crackers. On passing a notice board she saw the reason. Three conventions were being held in the hotel, so these headdresses, which made men in
ordinary lounge suits look so absurd, indicated that they were Grand Wizards, King Bisons, Chief Druids, etc.

Having now to be very careful of her money, she went into the coffee shop instead of the restaurant. As she had learned in Canada, coffee shops varied from excellent restaurants where one could have a single dish instead of a full
table d’hôte
lunch, to cafeterias in which no-one but the hard-up would have eaten from choice. While she got through a leathery pancake with maple syrup, she debated her next move.

That morning she had counted up her money. When she had arrived at Banff she had had with her a little over four hundred dollars. Her stay at Lake Louise and return from Banff to Toronto, including meals on the trains, had cost her something over one hundred and eighty, so she found that she was down to two hundred and thirty-four dollars—just under one hundred pounds.

Her prime object now was to start yet another new life where any account that she gave of her past would be accepted; so, to avoid becoming noticeable as a stranger with an English accent, she must go to a big city. New York was naturally the first to cross her mind. But there was an objection to it. It was too international. The friends she had made while living with Rowley, and other people they had become acquainted with in big hotels during their trips abroad, were mostly wealthy and travelled a lot. Several of them might have an apartment in, or come on a visit to, New York. It was still less than eight weeks since Rowley had died. The story of her having made off with the jewels must have got into all the papers. Everyone she had known was not likely to forget what she had done. If she settled in New York and good fortune later enabled her to frequent the better restaurants, she might run into
someone who knew about her crime. The chances of that happening were remote, but Linda had by now learned never to take an unnecessary risk.

Her next thought was of San Francisco. Everyone she had ever met who had been there declared it to be the most delightful city in the United States. But Los Angeles offered her better prospects. It was imperative that she get a job within the next week or so and, as a typist without shorthand, she could expect only a salary that would barely keep her. On the other hand, although she could neither dance nor sing professionally, she had a lovely face and splendid figure. Surely one of the film companies would take her on as an extra?

The dream had hardly come before it faded. Los Angeles was getting on for two thousand five hundred miles away. Cheap as railway and coach fares were in Canada and the United States compared to Europe, she knew she could not possibly afford the money for the journey out of the small capital that remained to her.

Chicago then suggested itself. Few British citizens, except business men, ever went there. In such a great city she should be able to find a job, and could live there without fear of recognition. To go there would cost her only about a fifth of what it would to reach the Pacific coast, and it would be well worth that much to get right away from this area in which her description might at any time be circulated.

After lunch she went to the Greyhound office and learned that a coach was leaving for the west at a quarter past four. Having now developed an instinct to cover her tracks even when there was little need to do so, she booked only as far as Cleveland, instead of taking a ticket to Chicago.

She spent the better part of the next two hours in
buying serviceable but inexpensive underwear, strolling along the main streets of the city, then packing and paying her hotel bill. Refusing to employ a porter, she carried her bag to the coach station and set off on the first stage of the journey. For the whole of the hundred and eighty-odd miles, the highway ran south-west parallel with the shore of Lake Erie, and she enjoyed the vistas in the gradually fading evening light.

Over the long, straight highway the coach made good speed, so it was only a little after half past eight when it set her down in Cleveland. There she put up for the night at a small hotel near the bus depot, and the following morning at ten o’clock took another coach on to Toledo. It got her there in time for an early lunch and at half past one she set off on the last stage of her journey. The highway now left Lake Erie and crossed the neck of land that separates Erie from Lake Michigan, on the south-west corner of which lies the great, sprawling metropolis of Chicago. Traffic and crossroads slowed down the coach on the last twenty miles into the city, but by seven o’clock Linda was carrying her case to the Sherman House, in the block next to the Greyhound depot, where the hotel had been recommended to her as good, but not too expensive. She registered there as Irma Jameson.

Even the price of a room with a shower on one of the lower, noisy and viewless floors was more than she felt she could afford for long, unless she could find a job; but she could economise by eating out, and a good address might stand her in good stead. She decided to take the room and that evening made do with hamburgers and a Coca-Cola at a delicatessen with a snackbar.

Next morning she gave to exploring the city. She had always imagined Chicago to be a vast, hideous, industrial
complex, so she was pleasantly surprised to find that, at least for the rich, it could be a very pleasant place in which to live. The famous stockyards, where thousands of animals were slaughtered and tinned daily, and their grim surroundings of dives and tenements, were a world apart, lying quite a long way from the city centre. On its other side lay the lake shore, along which extended several miles of public gardens varying in depth from one to several hundred yards. Looking out from them across the lake were fine blocks of luxury flats, hotels and skyscrapers. The lake was so broad that the opposite shore could not be seen, so this garden waterfront with its many, flower beds gave the impression that it was the sea front of an expensive watering place. The city also had the attraction of a river running through it, with a yacht harbour below two huge, circular skyscrapers, the lower floors of which were garages and the upper ones flats.

Linda found, too, that Randolph Street, on which lay her hotel, had many fine shops, including the famous store of Marshall Field, where Gordon Selfridge had made his name before coming to London. There she bought a pair of shoes and a few other things she needed.

After a three-hour walk she ate a frugal lunch, meanwhile looking through the ‘Situations Vacant’ in a copy of the
Chicago Tribune
and marking likely possibilities which were only a few blocks distant. During the course of the afternoon she made a dozen calls at offices, but without success. In some cases the vacancies had already been filled, others had no use for a girl who could not take shorthand, and others again turned her down because she was not able to produce any references.

Next morning she again scanned a paper, this time ignoring the ‘Secretaries and Typists’ column and
marking instead those for doctors, dentists and hotel receptionists. After several calls, she found that the medical people preferred women who had trained as nurses, and the hotels required receptionists to have had at least some experience. On the few occasions when there seemed a chance that she might be given a trial, her inability to provide references again caused her to be turned away.

That evening, tired and dispirited, she returned to her hotel and ruminated anxiously on her future. Two of the business men who had interviewed her the previous afternoon had said that if she would like to have a little dinner with them, they could ‘talk things over’. But she knew what that meant, and had no intention of going to bed with anyone for a free meal and a dubious chance of getting a job at the lowest rate paid to typists; so she had promptly declined.

The thought that she had had when, had she been able to afford the fare, she would have gone to Los Angeles then recurred to her. Hollywood would undoubtedly have been the most likely place where she could have earned a reasonable living by displaying her face and figure; but there must be a market in every big city for female attractions. There were musical comedies in which expert dancing was not required of the chorus, night clubs with floor shows in which the girls had only to strut about bedisened in diamanté bikinis and ostrich feathers, and striptease joints.

Linda was reluctant to resort to this means of livelihood, not on account of false modesty, as she was justly proud of her beautiful figure, but because it would mean that night after night she would have to be bored by the company often of drunken men, and then annoy them by refusing to go to some sleazy hotel with them in the
early hours of the morning. And, as she had once heard it expressed by an actress she had met in the South of France, she was definitely not prepared to take a job in which ‘the couch was in the contract’.

But by now she had become unhappily aware that beggars could not be choosers. The only alternative to some form of night life appeared to be to become a sales girl, and the idea of standing behind a counter eight hours a day for a pittance was more than she could bear.

Accordingly, next morning she ran through the papers for the addresses of theatrical agents, took down three, made herself as attractive as possible and went out on her third day’s search for employment.

At the first agent’s to which she went, the office had only just opened; so, after giving the name under which she had registered at the Sherman House to a pimply youth, he showed her in almost at once to the manager’s office. There, a big, bald man sat in his shirt-sleeves behind a large desk littered with papers. In the corner of his mouth there was an unlit cigar, and he eyed her appraisingly out of watery eyes beneath which were heavy black hollows. After a moment he asked:

‘Waal, kiddo. What’s your line?’

‘Modelling,’ she lied. ‘But I’m sick of undressing and dressing again all day to show clothes off to other women. I thought it would be a change if I could get on the stage or in a floor show.’

‘Kin you dance or sing?’

‘Both, a little, but not sufficiently well to do solos. With a little practice I feel sure I could pull my weight in a chorus.’

‘Pull your weight, eh?’ he smiled. ‘That’s a queer expression. You don’ sound to me as if you was an American.’

‘I’m not,’ she felt compelled to admit. ‘I’m Irish.’

‘Waal, I’ve nothing against the Micks. Let’s see your work permit.’

‘I haven’t got one.’

His large mouth turned down at the corners, and he shook his massive head. ‘You got the right curves. I could place you easy, and get you plenty. But being a foreigner, not without a work permit. Take your passport round to City Hall and get one. Then come back and see me.’