New York - The Novel

this, Mr. MacDuff has agreed, on condition that he, Mr. MacDuff, is able to secure an absolute majority shareholding of the Hudson Ohio. This means, sir, that we should like to purchase half of your ten percent from you.”
    “Oh,” said Frank. “What about Gabriel Love?”
    “I purchased his Niagara shares three hours ago,” said Gorham Grey.“He hoped, I think, to make more of a killing. But once I made clear that Mr. Morgan will not be buying anything unless he is satisfied as to all the arrangements, and that Mr. MacDuff will buy nothing without Mr. Morgan’s recommendation, we were able to reach an agreement. Mr. Love has sold at a good profit, so he’s better off than he was.”
    “What’ll you pay for my shares?” asked Frank.
    “The current market price for Hudson Ohio is sixty. Shall we say seventy?”
    “I was hoping for one twenty,” said Frank.
    “Love’s plan is busted,” said Mr. Gorham Grey, quietly.
    “Ah,” said Frank.
    There was a brief silence.
    “Mr. Morgan thinks that the future Hudson-Ohio-Niagara will be a logical amalgamation, and profitable to all parties,” continued Gorham Grey. “Your remaining Hudson Ohio shares will undoubtedly increase in value. And though he has paid well over the present market price, Mr. Morgan expects in due course to see a fair profit from the Niagara shares he has bought. In short, everyone gets something. So long”—he gave Master a severe look—“as people are not too greedy.”
    “I’ll sell,” said Frank, not without relief.
    “Quite right,” said Tom.
    The weather continued to improve for the rest of that day. On Thursday morning, Frank returned to the house on Gramercy Park, to be welcomed by Hetty as though nothing had happened at all.

    It was three days later that Lily de Chantal came to see her. When they were alone, Lily gave her a strange look.
    “I have news for you,” she said. “About Miss Clipp.”
    “Oh?”
    “I went to her lodgings, but she wasn’t there.”
    “Still in Brooklyn?”
    “I went to the hotel. She left on Monday morning. They still have her suitcase.”
    “You don’t mean …?”
    “They’ve been digging up quite a few bodies around the city, as you know. People caught in the blizzard, who froze to death.”
    “I heard it’s close to fifty.”
    “They found one up on the walkway of the Brooklyn Bridge. Had her bag. A notebook with her name in it, and other things. Nobody’s come forward looking for her, and the city authorities are busy enough as it is. They’ll bury most of the bodies tomorrow, I believe.”
    “Should we do anything? I mean, we sent her to Brooklyn. It’s our fault.”
    “Are you sure you want to?”
    “No. But I feel terrible.”
    “Really?” Lily smiled. “Ah, Hetty, you are too good for us all.”

    So ended the great Dakota Blizzard. By the following week the trains were all running again, and New York was returning to normal.
    On the following Wednesday, as a train was leaving that was bound all the way to Chicago, no one took particular notice when a neatly dressed lady, with dark hair and a new suitcase containing a new set of clothes, quietly boarded. Inside the car, she sat alone, with a book open on her lap. Her name was Prudence Grace.
    When the train began to move, she gazed out of the window as the city slowly receded. And if anyone in the car had happened to glance in her direction as the last view of the city disappeared, they would have noticed her whisper something that might well have been a little prayer.
    Then Donna Clipp sighed with satisfaction.
    It had been a moment of inspiration when she’d found that body up on the Brooklyn Bridge. Dead as a doornail. Frostbitten and frozen to a block already. The woman hadn’t looked especially like her, but roughly the same age, brown hair, not too tall. Well worth a chance. It had only taken a moment or two to leave her bag with the dead woman and enough identification to give the body her name.
    Then she’d forced herself on, down that long, terrible walkway, almost dead herself, but with a new and urgent reason for staying alive.
    If the police ever caught up with her now, they’d find she was dead. She had a new name, a new identity. Now it was time to move on to a new city, far away. And a new life.
    She was free, and it amused her. That’s why, as New York was lost to sight, she’d thought one last and final time of Frank Master and whispered: “Good-bye, you old fart.”

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