Jump to content

Page:Keeban (IA keeban00balm).pdf/236

From Wikisource
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
224
KEEBAN

again when I received, through the mails at the hotel, a note in Jerry's handwriting.

"Steve: Here's your chance," I read. "Get to T. M. Teverson at once and talk to him; or Sencort. Prevent any meeting in Sencort Directors' room. Make this absolutely sure. Examine pipe, particularly. J."

Jerry's writing and his manner with me, beyond doubt. He was still alive then and, if that postmark meant anything, he was in New York City at ten o'clock last night.

Of course, I'd never seen Keeban's writing. It might be identical with Jerry's; Keeban might try this with me for some scheme of his own. But I didn't think it. In the first place, this started with such an understanding of me.

"Steve: Here's your chance!"

Now Jerry, alive and looking on at me from somewhere in New York, naturally would start with that thought for me. He'd be feeling, from the first moment I'd stuck with him after he was accused and when I continued to stick through that affair of the Scofields', how I'd had a steady run of results against me. He'd have heard how, out of that Flamingo Feather ball, I'd gone deeper into disrepute; and he'd been thinking just that for me: "Here's your chance,