“Please go into your compartment and stay there. Till we clear this mess up. We are re-checking all tickets. There’s something unusual going on in this train and I have to get to the bottom of it.”
It was a curious speech for a railroad official to make to a mere passenger. And this one’s blue uniform had the gold braid and ninety service stripes that plainly showed he was born with a brake rod in his mouth.
I said the next best thing.
“I beg your pardon …”
The guy scowled. His nose and mouth were hard and serviceable like well-worn leather. “I’m Duffy. I’m the big wheel on this train. We have to check all tickets.”
He sounded tough but he sounded urgent. He also sounded worried. I took a chance. I needed help anyway. Spider and Dean couldn’t be far behind.
“Duffy, I’m a detective. Ed Noon. This is Miss Trace, my assistant. And there’s two guys with guns in the Club Car. If you need some help …”
“Noon, eh? Detective, huh?” He must have liked the Irish sound of my name and good Irishmen always stick together. “Okay. Here it is. There’s a large crate in the baggage car. It started to tick about ten minutes ago. One of my men spotted it when he was checking the cargo. And now this emergency stop on top of everything …”
“Tick?” I was stupid for a second. “What do you mean–tick?”
“A bomb, Noon.” Duffy’s steel blue eyes got steelier. “It might be a time bomb.”
Somebody behind me screamed. Good and loud. It rivaled the blast whistle of the Mainliner for tonal registry. I turned. It was the redhead who had stayed on my trail all the way from the Club Car.
“Ohhhh!” she wailed again. “Poor Schnapps!”
CHAPTER SEVEN
Great. Real great.
A dead man in our compartment. Plus a huge fat man held captive. Two bad hombres with guns in the Club Car out to lower the boom on me and my lovely lady. And now the big crate in the baggage car maybe wired for sound. Plus a halted passenger train, plus poor Schnapps in the baggage car. And now his beautiful redheaded mistress hollering her head off. Right in my ear.
And a sharp operator like Duffy to buck.
What a trip. I’d gotten fifty bucks for the job. I’d had the idea that a train ride to Chi might be something of a vacation. I’m also the guy who didn’t think Television was here to stay.
Duffy’s ears must have been just as sensitive as mine were. He whirled on the screaming redhead.
“Quiet down, Miss Kelly. Everything’s going to be all right. It might be that it’s just a shipment of watches or a big clock of some kind. Passengers have lied about contents before. Two of my men are working on it right now. And we’ll be underway in just a minute …”
The redhead wasn’t satisfied.
“I’m going back there to get my dog! I don’t see why he can’t ride with me in the first place! I’ve never ridden on such a train in my life–I should have gone by plane! First, this idiot pulling the emergency cord and now bombs being planted all over the baggage car …”
The cat was out of the bag and Duffy didn’t let it get away. His steely eyes regarded me with new interest.
“I think you’ve got some explaining to do, Noon.”
“It looks that way,” I admitted. “But there were, and are, two mugs back there who were ready to shoot me and Miss Trace here. Also, they’ve already killed a man. He’s lying in B here. Right behind the door. If you come in with us–I can show you and tell you a lot of things that will make this the most interesting train run of your life.”
The blue boys with Duffy made angry comments, but he quieted them all down. His face tightened into a stiff mask. His train face. The one that said he belonged to the railroad lock, stock and barrel chest.
“Let me see your identification, Noon. Something that tells me you’re a detective. Don’t reach for anything else either. I could break your arm before you could use it.”
I believed he could too. Voices were yelling all over the train now; I could see track lamps blazing outside the windows. But the Mainliner was rolling again. Air brakes hissed and steamed, wheels turned slowly and the steel body of the train rumbled smoothly and shuddered gently in forward motion. One of Duffy’s blue-uniformed assistants whispered something in his ear while Duffy briefly scanned my PI card and photo.
He grunted and handed them back to me.
“Private boy, eh? Well, let’s go into your compartment and check your story.” He turned to the blue boy who had whispered in his ear. “Go back and see how they’re coming out with that crate. Tell Peters to join me here. With his gun. ’Bout time our special guard earned his money. I’ll be with Noon and the young lady in B. Shake a leg, now.” Duffy’s blue crew broke up and left us.
With the train moving again, voices and confusion had died down. But I was still wondering about Spider and Dean in the Club Car. And the redhead was still worrying about her Schnapps in the baggage car.
“Conductor,” she demanded imperiously of Duffy. “With or without your permission, I’m taking Schnapps from that awful baggage car. This minute!” She squeezed between us and flounced off angrily without looking back. Her hips switched like a perfect clock movement. The girl can’t help it, I thought. A Hepburn mind with the body of a Monroe. No wonder she was always fighting.
“Suit yourself, Miss Kelly,” Duffy foghorned after her. “But you’d be a lot safer back here. Just in case there is a bomb in that crate.”
Just before she turned the corridor out of sight, we had one last word from her. “Cowards!” In that beautifully pitched voice of hers, it was a real dirty word.
Duffy looked at Opal Trace and me. His smile was flinty and rueful.
“Marlene Kelly. Richest dame in New York. I wish she had gone by plane this time.”
“Kelly?” My mind probed. “The Lipstick Queen?”
Duffy nodded. “That’s her. Thirty-three, unmarried and worth ten million because she patented a trick lipstick right after she got out of Barnard College. She’s some dame.”
Opal Trace came back to life for the first time in hours. A woman always will when another one’s being discussed by two such worthy specimens as Duffy and me.
“Cleopatra’s Needle. I use her lipstick too. Real handy thing. Been using it for years.” She made a face. “But Miss Kelly has awful manners if you ask me.”
Duffy’s grin faded. “Let’s get into your compartment and see what this is all about, huh?” I unlocked the door and we eased in. Duffy flicked on the light switch from long knowledge of its whereabouts.
I blinked. Opal Trace blinked. And Duffy looked at me sarcastically. As if I had just trried to sell him the Brooklyn Bridge.
The compartment was as empty of people as a not-in-use elevator.
Talk about Agatha Christie, Sherlock Holmes and Philo Vance. I had just moved into their league.
The stabbed conductor’s body was nowhere in sight.
Fat Harry was as invisible as a fat man could ever be.
The neatly groomed chairs, rug and furnishings seemed to mock me as I stared at them. There was no blood on the floor and Opal Trace’s belts were nowhere to be seen.
Compartment B was as neat as a pin but its vacancy was twice as pointed. The clothes closets had nothing but clothes in them.
Fatso and the corpse had vanished.
The Mainliner had settled down into its sixty-mile speed and Duffy’s face showed satisfaction with the movement of his favorite train. But his steel blue eyes weren’t happy at the idea that I might have been pulling his uniformed leg.
His eyes came back from their brief expert rove of the empty compartment. He didn’t look happy.
“Well, where’s the body, Noon? And there certainly isn’t anybody in here at all. Now how about a straight story before I lock you both up?”
It was fantastic all right. Even all the belts were back on Opal Trace’s dresses where they belonged. Somebody had covered up real good. Like an expert. Making me see
m like a lousy liar or slightly loco.
“Duffy, let’s make a bargain.”
He sniffed. “What kind of bargain?”
“I’ll tell you everything. From the beginning. When I finish, I want to ask you some questions. Deal?”
He was my kind of guy. “Deal. Let’s hear the story.”
He heard it. All the way from the bar to the wet sidewalk to the Grand Central getaway with Spider and Dean two jumps behind. The nonsense part about Fat Harry and a statue known as The Violent Virgin and a fabulous stone known as The Blue Green left him quietly speechless. Only the sarcastic pull on the left side of his mouth told me how he felt about the whole thing. The dead conductor raised his eyebrows a little but they came down again when he remembered he hadn’t found a corpse yet. When I finished, I lit a cigarette for Opal and myself. My damsel in distress was really beat now. Purple shadows had fallen all around her unforgettably moody eyes.
Duffy had taken a tin case from an inner pocket and prodded a brown cigarillo between his thick, strong teeth. The cigarillo seemed to fit him.
“Welll …” he started to say.
I grinned. “It’s the nuts, isn’t it? But Gospel from the word go. So help me.”
Duffy shrugged. “Normally, I’d call you a liar and tell you to sell that yarn elsewhere. But certain things do check out.”
Now I was interested. So was Opal Trace. She was leaning against me, almost expectantly as I probed Duffy’s remark. “Such as?”
“There is a crate in the baggage car. It is registered in Miss Trace’s name. We knew it was a statue because of its weight and size. Also, it’s marked Statuary-Fragile-This End Up and junk like that. We didn’t know it was the Virgin. Course now with that ticking noise, I’m more confused than I was. Hell, even a lowbrow like me has heard of that thing. Playboy Magazine had a big picture spread on it almost a month ago.”
“Three cheers for Playboy. Keep talking. Duffy. You’re a fund of information.”
He laughed. “You get to read a lot on trains. This statue is the number one thing in its class. Worth a fortune. Let me see, now.” I could watch him think, see the wheels turning in what I had already classified as a very tight intellect. “Yeah. Privately owned. Some college professor from California. Simpson Carleton Stanley. That’s the guy. If I remember right, every museum in the world has made him fabulous offers for the thing. Ever seen it? Real work of art. Almost life-like.”
Opal Trace nodded. “Simpson Carleton Stanley. That’s Dean, Ed. I was his private secretary for six months.”
Duffy looked at her. “That so? How come he never wanted to sell it?”
She laughed. It wasn’t a funny laugh. “Sell it? He’s almost queer for that statue. The way he talked about it–you would have thought it was a real woman. Always referring to it as–her.”
I’d been waiting for her to get around to her side of the story. Letting her pick her spot. It looked like the time had come.
“Why is he shipping the lady to Chicago?” I asked.
Opal frowned. “Haven’t you guessed that part of it yet? The Virgin is his all right. But he also wants the Blue Green. And all the money he can find.”
I looked at Duffy. I decided to go around things a little more. “How about that stone, Duffy? Those cultural magazines you read ever run a piece on that?”
He shook his head. “Doesn’t ring a bell. “Suddenly, he stopped ruminating and scowled at me again. “Okay. Now how about this fat guy and that dead man you thought you saw?”
“Something’s going on,” I said. “Somebody’s working underground and I don’t know who.”
Duffy sighed. “Well, I can’t do anything about nothing. Or arrest anybody on ungrounded testimony. All I can do is wait for that baggage car report and put people on or off this train. Now let me see your ticket before I forget it all over again.”
Opal had hers but I didn’t have one. Duffy made a face at me.
“Don’t you ever do anything right?”
“Sometimes,” I laughed. I dug out my wallet and fished out Opal Trace’s fifty dollar bill. “Can’t I buy a ticket now? That way everybody will be happy.”
Duffy grunted and dug an orange-colored streamer out of his coat. He ripped off about a foot of it, punched it with a silver hand punch and thrust it in my hand. “Thirty-nine, seventy-five,” he said.
I took the ticket while he found me change. But all the while, my head was buzzing. Spider and Dean had been silent too long. Where were they and far more importantly, what were they doing?
Opal Trace had collapsed on one of the cushiony chairs. Her eyes were closing and her pointed breasts were starting to elevator slowly. Up and down. She was falling asleep while we were gabbing.
Duffy squinted down at her. “She looks like she’s been through the mill. Any of your doing, Noon?”
“I don’t abuse my women, Duffy. That’s why they keep coming back. No, I didn’t do it to her. Those two guys in the Club Car did.”
“Two guys in the Club Car?” His cigarillo glowed. “Oh, yeah. Guys with guns, you said. Well, they’ve been pretty quiet up to now.”
I smiled sourly. “Give them time. They’re bad boys and bad boys are always heard from sooner or later.”
We both sat down almost by mutual consent to wait for the news from the baggage car. I propped Opal’s beautiful face and head on my shoulder and made myself comfortable. The relaxing speed of the Mainliner was lulling. I was dead myself. A creeping inertia settled over me. And the smoke from my cigarette and Duffy’s cigarillo met in mid-air and formed a compatible blue cloud.
We stayed like that for maybe ten minutes with the time crawling and my body slipping off into Sleepyville. Duffy was just across from me, his face contented and almost cheerful. There was silence in the corridor of the car. Only the timed rhythm of the clacking wheels sounded in the stillness. I idly thought of an old kid trick about train tempo. You say Connecticut over and over again and it begins to sound like train wheels flying over the rails.
Connecticut, Connecticut, Connecticut …
You can’t ever go back to being a kid. Not when you’re a grown man. Not when you’re all mixed up with women and sudden death and PI cards. They won’t let you. Nobody will. Because things have a way of happening. They keep on happening. And if you’re a great big boy, you have to stop clowning around and get up and do something about it.
I say that because a woman screamed in the corridor. Screamed in mortal terror. And three shots rang out. One after the other with three, violent, wicked bursts of sound.
And the woman stopped screaming and heavy feet thundered past the door of Compartment B.
Going in the direction of the baggage car.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Duffy’s dying cigarillo hit the floor as he scrambled to his feet and raced to the door. I raced with him. He threw the panel back and slammed into the corridor. Then we both stopped short and Opal Trace braked to a halt behind me, startled out of sleep and contentment by all the shots and noise.
It was turning out to be quite a train ride.
A woman was kneeling, weeping over the body of a man lying on the floor. She was shaking him furiously, mumbling something over and over again in a terror-filled voice. I didn’t have to look twice. It was the middle-aged bridge playing couple from the Club Car. Only the woman wasn’t interested in bids and contracts now and the old timer had smoked his last foot long perfecto. Two dime size holes in his silk shirt front were starting to spread out alongside his carnation red tie as if the blood was trying to outmatch the tie for vermilion hues. The woman started to cry because the man was dying right under her eyes.
Hard, old, tough-as-nails Duffy could be tender when he had to. I could tell he had a heart of gold the way he took the woman under the armpits and raised her gently to her feet and whispered to her softly.
“What happened here, M’am … ?”
Words bubbled out of her then. A torrent of wild, almost unintelligible words
. All adding up to one, gruesome, lousy report. The Messrs. Spider and Dean had used them for shields exiting from the Club Car and the woman’s husband, Eli, had put up with the arrangement as far as our door. He had turned around swinging and dear old Spider had shot him down like a dog. And Spider and Dean had kept on going.
Duffy was swearing under his breath. And I had really had enough. I turned to Opal and the organizer buried inside of me went to work with a vengeance.
“Opal, take the lady inside. Stay put and close the door. Use that gun if you have to. Duffy and I are going to the baggage car to settle all this.” I looked him square in the steel-blues. “Aren’t we, Duffy?”
Duffy who must have loved straight-from-the-shoulder patter all his life, nodded briskly. We both took one second to carry the old guy into the compartment, help his crying wife to a seat and got back into the corridor. Before Opal Trace closed the door and locked it, I gave her a quick squeeze on the arm.
“Take it easy, kid. We’ll be back in ten minutes. And don’t let anybody in but us. Got that?” She nodded. She was still nodding as the door closed.
“Lead the way, Duffy. It’s your train. I hope you have a gun.”
He did. The blued steel of a .32 Banker’s Special gleamed in his hard fist. We headed down the hall.
Duffy led and I followed. Conscious of the easy motion of the Mainliner’s wheels beneath my feet, well aware of the pounding confusion in my head. Where had the dead phony conductor’s body gone and what had happened to Harry? And why had Spider and Dean gone berserk so suddenly? What was worth so many dead bodies? Also, I remembered the righteous redhead stalking off to the baggage car to see about poor Schnapps. I hoped she didn’t get in their way and yell her rich fool head off and make a fuss. Being Marlene Kelly, the Lipstick Queen, wouldn’t stop her from stopping a bullet. Spider seemed to kill people regardless of race, color, creed or profession. And Dean of the large words didn’t seem to have any compunctions at all about his flunky’s bad habits.
And that ominous ticking in the large crate in the baggage car …
The Case of the Violent Virgin Page 6