by Nan Ryan
Ignoring him, Lucy headed directly to the front desk. A beak nosed man with bushy eyebrows and large prominent ears was on duty this morning. He looked up, smiled pleasantly.
“Are there any messages for Miss Lucy Hart of Colonias, New York. Room 313.”
The desk clerk checked. “No, Miss. Nothing.”
She gave him a weak smile. “Thank you.”
Lucy swallowed hard. She mustn’t panic. There was a simple explanation. Theodore would surely arrive before the day was over.
Lucy realized suddenly that she was famished. In the anxiety of last evening, she’d totally forgotten about dinner. She hadn’t eaten a bite since arriving here yesterday afternoon. Lucy inquired where she would find the dining room and was directed down a wide hallway to the left of the reception desk, at the end of which she was to turn right and she would be there.
Lucy paused at the arched entrance to the immense dining hall, filled now with hungry guests enjoying sumptuous breakfasts. She was led to a table meant for two, which, to her dismay, was situated squarely in the center of the crowded room. Seated there alone, Lucy felt as if she was in a fishbowl, as though everyone was staring. Her appetite departed. After only a few forced bites of toast and jam and a half-cup of coffee, Lucy anxiously fled.
She again took up her station in the lobby, choosing a chair with a clear view of the hotel’s front entrance. Pretending to be nonchalant and relaxed, Lucy sat waiting, hoping Theodore D. Mooney would walk through the revolving doors and make everything all right.
The long anxious hours of a day-long vigil had begun.
From her lookout post there in the elegant lobby, Lucy watched a steady stream of hotel guests come and go, but paid little attention to any of them.
There was only one guest for whom she diligently searched; only one person she hoped would walk into view. But an hour passed, then two, with no sign of Mr. Theodore D. Mooney.
Lucy was relieved and delighted to see a friendly face when, at shortly before twelve noon, the silver haired Colonel Cort Mitchell stepped off the elevator. The tall, distinguished southerner immediately spotted Lucy, smiled warmly, and came directly to her.
The Colonel, immaculate in a powder blue linen suit and sporting his ivory-headed cane, greeted her as if they were old friends. He sat down in the chair beside her, took the hand she offered, shook it gently, and asked why she wasn’t outdoors enjoying the sun and the sea with rest of the young people. Lucy explained that she was waiting for someone. The Colonel smiled and nodded knowingly.
“And you, Sir?” Lucy politely inquired, “going out for a stroll on the Boardwalk?”
Colonel Mitchell shook his silver head. “No, not this morning, Lucy. May I call you Lucy, my dear?”
“I insist you do,” she said. “To tell you the truth, I hate being called Miss Hart.”
“Then Lucy it is,” he said, releasing her hand. His fingertips idly tapping on the cane’s ivory head, he told her, “I was just leaving for the train depot. I’m on my way into the city to spend a couple of days at a series of business meetings.” Nodding, Lucy felt like begging him not to go. His authoritative bearing coupled with his natural southern friendliness drew her to him like a magnet. In his strong fatherly presence, she didn’t feel so alone, so out of place and anxious. He was the kind of man you instinctively felt safe with. She was sorry he was leaving.
Lucy wondered if her thoughts showed on her face when, after a few brief minutes of polite small talk, the Colonel, looking earnestly at her, said in that slow, southern drawl, “My dear, I wish I didn’t have to go. I hope you’ll do me the honor of being my guest for dinner upon my return.”
Lucy smiled at the handsome gentleman who bore such a striking resemblance to her dear, deceased father.
“I should be delighted to have dinner with you, Colonel Mitchell,” she told him.
“Good, good,” said the Colonel. “Now you take care of yourself, you hear?”
“I will,” she promised.
Too soon he was gone and Lucy was again left very much alone in a crowd of strangers. Hunger drove her once more to the great dining hall at shortly after two that afternoon. She requested a less conspicuous table and was taken to one at the very back near the kitchen. It suited her fine.
On returning to the lobby she caught sight of a tall, black haired man in a cream colored suit. His back to her, he stood at the cigar counter. Lucy’s heart slammed against her ribs. Adrenaline flooded her system. Her hopeful gaze fastened on him, she held her breath as he slowly turned, spotted her, and smiled.
Blackie LaDuke!
Lucy didn’t bother acknowledging him. She turned her head quickly and hurried away, darting into the hotel’s shelf-lined library where she chose a book at random, sat down, and stared at the pages.
Lucy checked the reception desk at least a dozen times during that endlessly long Monday afternoon. There were no messages for her. By nightfall she had finally given up.
She couldn’t bear another hour of sitting alone in the lobby. Not with swarms of pretty women and successful looking men constantly exiting the elevator. Their laughter rang in her ears as they breezed through the lobby and out of the hotel. They seemed to be having such fun. Their excited chatter filled the lobby along with the pleasing scent of soap and perfume.
The night was young. The glamorous guests were obviously looking forward to an enchanting evening of dining and dancing and romance.
Lucy blushed when the doors of the busy elevator opened just as a tall man inside leaned down and kissed his female companion squarely on the lips. Embarrassed, Lucy quickly looked away, but couldn’t resist stealing a glance as the couple passed her. The same pair she’d seen last night on the hotel steps.
The man was slim and handsome, a well-scrubbed, suntanned blond in a tailored white dinner jacket. The dark haired young woman was fresh and pretty in a shimmering evening gown of sky blue chiffon. They made such an extraordinarily attractive pair it was hard not to stare. A truly golden couple, they served as the perfect living advertisement of the place.
They didn’t notice Lucy or anyone else.
Conspicuously in love, they had eyes only for each other. Hand in hand they floated across the spacious lobby and disappeared into the sultry summer night.
Lucy rose.
She went one last time to the front desk.
The beak nosed man with prominent ears was still on duty behind the marble counter. He looked up, smiled pleasantly, just as he had on each prior occasion.
Before she could ask, he said, not unkindly, “No, Miss Hart. No messages. I’m sorry.”
“Thank you.” She started to walk away, stopped, turned back. “Can you tell me if a guest has checked into the hotel?”
His eyebrows lifted. “It is against hotel policy to give out room number information.”
“Yes, I understand that. I’m not asking for a room number. I only want to find out if a certain party has checked into the hotel.” She smiled weakly.
“Very well,” said the clerk. “What is her name and where is she from?”
“He,” Lucy corrected. “The guest is a gentleman. He’s Mr. Theodore D. Mooney from Cooperstown, Pennsylvania. Mr. Mooney was supposed to arrive around five o’clock yesterday afternoon, but I haven’t seen him and I thought perhaps…Has he registered? Is he in the hotel?”
“I’ll see.” The clerk left her, carefully investigated his room reservation and occupancy records. He returned to the desk to tell Lucy that Mr. Theodore D. Mooney had sent a telegram canceling his reservations.
“No,” Lucy murmured aloud, stunned. “Why would he…when? When did he cancel the reservation?”
“I believe the wire arrived late Saturday informing us to release his hold on the room.”
“He isn’t coming? He won’t be arriving later? Perhaps someday this week? He made no other reservations?”
“No, Miss. Apparently Mr. Mooney won’t be staying at the Atlantic Grand this season.”
Theodore was not coming.
He had changed his mind. Gotten cold feet. He didn’t want to meet her. He was not going to meet her.
And here she was stuck in this enchanting seaside resort. Alone. All by herself in a warm, sunny playground where everyone else was enjoying themselves. Everywhere she turned were carefree, laughing people. Men and women. Couples falling in love, holding hands, finding romance.
Everyone but her.
Chapter Eight
In the beautiful City by the Sea, a title that was greatly favored by Atlantic City, there was a vast wooden Boardwalk. It was the fifth and latest of its kind to be built at the popular oceanside resort.
The first Boardwalk was dedicated in the summer of 1870. Ten feet wide and a mile long, the promenade stretched from Congress Hall to the Excursion House. At season’s end, the Boardwalk was taken apart and stored for the winter.
A new wooden path was laid down in 1880, a little longer, a little wider than the original. Four years later, a storm took the Boardwalk and everything on it.
A third was set on pilings five feet above the beach. The sea couldn’t get this one. The tides could wash safely beneath it.
Wind, unfortunately, was a different story. A forceful hurricane completely wrecked the Boardwalk in September of 1889.
But by the following spring, a new improved Boardwalk appeared. Twenty-four feet wide, ten feet high, and nearly four miles long. A sturdy, permanent structure with railings on both sides, the Boardwalk became Atlantic City’s main attraction.
The famed wooden walkway was so popular, an expanded fifth and final version appeared in 1896. The proud city fathers predicted the Boardwalk would last for ‘at least a hundred years’.
Perhaps longer.
Along that forty foot wide, four-mile-long Boardwalk were fifty-seven commercial bathhouses, ten amusement ride centers, eight sellers of saltwater taffy—and no less than five hundred hotels.
But the finest of all, the undisputed glittering jewel in the crown of the seaside resort hotels, was the majestic, twin-towered Atlantic Grand. The Grand’s treasured guest registry read like a Who’s Who of noted Americans and Europeans. Presidents, potentates, millionaires and royalty had found comfort and luxury beneath its steep roof.
Rarely were there empty rooms in the Atlantic Grand. Even in the cold of winter when the sea was dark and the sky was gray, the big stately inn sheltered many illustrious guests.
Some came for a day.
Some came for a week.
Some came for the Season.
Some came for the rest of their lives.
Residing year round in the Atlantic Grand’s south tower penthouse suite was a sixtyish, once beautiful woman known as Lady Strange. Divorced decades ago from Great Britain’s powerful Lord William Strange, the woman was, on her wedding day, a tiny, five-foot doll-like creature weighing barely ninety pounds.
Now Lady Strange tipped the scales at one hundred ninety five pounds sans clothing. While her round face was as unlined and as pretty as ever, she was a mountain of quivering flesh that rippled with every struggling breath she drew.
Lady Strange spent most of her time in an oversized chair in her lavish penthouse parlor, gorging on goodies. She denied herself nothing. Rich chocolates and tempting pastries were always within reach of her small, pudgy, bejeweled hands.
She spoiled herself and she spoiled the huge, overweight black Persian cat whom she called Precious. When Lady Strange was not holding Precious or a bonbon, or both, she was studying tea leaves. Satisfied customers and fellow mystics swore Lady Strange could see into the future.
In a slightly smaller suite one floor below Lady Strange resided another permanent guest. The silver-haired, dignified, sixty-six-year-old Colonel Cort Mitchell was a native son of the Old South. Brevetted to Colonel for outstanding bravery in the War Between the States, the tall, dapper southerner was still addressed as Colonel out of respect.
Widowed twice, he lost both a son and two daughters in the New Orleans yellow fever outbreak of ’75. Colonel Mitchell—now a successful broker representing Southern cotton interests on both sides of the Atlantic—was a charming, mannerly, much sought after escort for the hotel’s middle-aged ladies. But he had no interest in romance.
At least not for himself.
Two floors below, on five, forty-two-year-old Lochlin MacDonald was quietly living out his last days with as much dignity as he could muster. A former seaman, once vigorous and strapping, who had sailed all over the world, the painfully thin, wheelchair-bound MacDonald never allowed his infirmity to slow him down. A warm, friendly man who loved to laugh, his mind was razor sharp, but his wasted body no longer heeded the commands sent by his brain to his withered extremities.
Lochlin MacDonald suffered from an incurable degeneration of the nerve cells that control most muscles. A team of physicians had told him that he would likely die of respiratory failure within two to four years.
And that bit of bad news had been given to him four years and three months ago.
In the face of his fatal illness, Lochlin MacDonald had vowed to live every minute of the time he had left. He did just that. A ready smile masking the pain that was his constant companion, Lochlin MacDonald never missed a single social event at the Atlantic Grand and a day never passed—winter, summer, spring, and fall—that the laughing Lochlin MacDonald couldn’t been seen down on the Boardwalk.
An ever-changing roster of temporary guests included, on these last days of the season, a pair of starry-eyed young newlyweds from Pittsburgh. A prominent New York City physician and his sour, complaining wife. A loud, boisterous family of eight—the mother and all six children had flaming red hair—were crowded into two connecting rooms. A wealthy railroader. A hypochondriac banker on three. A fading stage actor on six. A petty thief. A circus clown. A recluse writer.
The Atlantic Grand Hotel was completely sold out and full at the height of this waning summer season.
But one guest room remained empty.
The room which had been reserved months in advance by Mr. Theodore D. Mooney of Cooperstown, Pennsylvania.
Chapter Nine
So Lucy Hart was alone.
Alone at mealtime in the huge paneled dining room. Alone at a table meant for two. Alone on a visit to the souvenir shop next door. Alone on the crowded Boardwalk while laughing lovers passed by in the wicker rolling chairs. Alone in her third floor room after dark.
Lucy was alone and that was nothing new. But here in this sun-drenched resort, which existed solely for play and for pleasure, it was somehow much worse to be alone than it was back home in Colonias. Being alone here made her feel lost and lonelier than she had ever been in her entire life.
Lucy was not just lonely; she was humiliated as well. She just knew that she stuck out like a sore thumb, as if the words old maid were stamped on her forehead in bright red letters for the entire world to see. Was it her imagination, or had she detected something like sympathy in the passing glances of some hotel guests? If there was one thing she couldn’t stand it was the thought of people feeling sorry for her.
On Tuesday afternoon, after two incredibly long wretched days—and even longer, more wretched nights—Lucy began to seriously consider cutting her failed holiday short and returning home at once. It made no sense to stay on here and be unhappy.
She was deliberating on the very real possibility of leaving on the Wednesday afternoon train when she went down for dinner that Tuesday evening.
Since his Sunday afternoon arrival in Atlantic City, Blackie LaDuke had diligently cast an eye about for suitable female companionship and had found no one that struck his fancy.
Sauntering through the lobby of the elegant hotel a half dozen times each day, the handsome thirty-three-year-old Blackie turned heads, attracted attention.
Including Lu
cy’s.
There was a roguish aura about him, an air of adventure, which made him impossible to ignore. But Lucy held herself aloof, was pointedly chilly, did not return his friendly waves and warm smiles.
Blackie was mildly amused by her haughty scorn. He was not amused to see that she was still very much alone. She was, he could tell, attempting to appear at ease and in charge, but she failed miserably. Bless her heart, she looked frightened, forlorn, and woefully out of place.
Despite all her best efforts to appear poised, her manner was almost diffident. When she walked through the lobby she seemed almost to apologize for herself.
Wondering what had happened to her Mr. Mooney, Blackie hated to think that she had been stood up. Left out in the cold in this warm summer place. The sight of her looking lost and alone evoked long buried memories of his first frightening days at boarding school.
Lucy Hart was very much on his mind when, at shortly after eight that Tuesday evening, Blackie realized he was hungry and went down for dinner. He paused in the open arched doorway of the filled dining hall, looked about impatiently. The captain came up to him; Blackie smiled and waved him away.
Strains from a string quartet mingled with subdued laughter and the clink of crystal. Waiters dressed in starched white jackets and dark trousers moved with silence and grace, huge silver, serving platters balanced on their raised hands. Families sat at large, round tables. Couples at small square ones.
Squinting his darkly lashed eyes, Blackie spotted, across the crowded hall, Lucy Hart. She was seated at a table for two.
Alone.
From where he stood he could see that she was as stiff as a poker. So uncomfortable, so utterly miserable it was a wonder she could digest her dinner. It was painful to witness her distress. His mood immediately became somber. He needed a drink. A stiff drink. He exhaled, frowned, and shook his dark head.
Then all at once a smile came to his lips.
Blackie walked into the dinning room and made his way directly to Lucy Hart’s table, fully aware that everyone was watching. He reached the small, square, white-clothed table, smiled warmly, leaned down, and kissed the startled Lucy’s cheek.