They took it out of my hands. Not Spider and Dean. Some other They. The Big They. The people upstairs who get us into trouble and get us out of it. The Gods, the Fates, the Big Decision Boys.
Throwing down guns and having a heart-to-heart didn’t mean a pea bean anymore. There was something far more important to consider. I had forgotten all about the ticking noise that Duffy had sent Peters to investigate. But the ticking noise hadn’t forgotten itself.
It blew up. Went off.
The forward half of the baggage car disintegrated with a roaring, blasting, bursting, smash of sound, noise and terror. I saw Peters’ head fly off his shoulders like a well-hit baseball, saw the walls come stumbling, the luggage burst and fly apart.
And then the floor opened up beneath my feet with a roaring cataract of sound.
CHAPTER TEN
I didn’t lose consciousness. I should have. But I didn’t. And it was like the Titanic all over again. A night to remember. In spades. Events and crazy, seemingly unrelated circumstances had popped up all over the place. And now an explosion to top off the whole thing.
The explosion accomplished about ninety-five things in applepie order. Maybe upside-down cake order.
I was hurled against the heavy crate before me by the force of the blast. The floor shifting, tottered the broken box. It rocked for a mad second and then my added weight lurched it with a straining sound over on one side. It thudded against one wall of the car with me hanging to it like a rat on a gangway ramp. And everybody else came into sight as a cloud of thick smoke gathered in the section of the car where Peters’ headless body hung over the shattered remains of the wooden desk.
Spider and Dean had been flung in two directions by the blast. Dean was crumpled at the rear of the car, on his knees, shaking his round head so hard that his black beret jumped like a thing alive. Tall Spider was leaning against a luggage shelf behind him, bracing himself with two brown hands. Bits of flying wood and plaster powder clung to his clothes. His snappy velour was all snapped out now. Rammed down on his square cut skull like a soggy cruller. But he was still in character. He was trying to pull himself together and look for his .45 at the same time. The .45 was on the floor near the crate.
Further back in the car and obviously the least damaged by the blowup was Marlene Kelly. She was crouched fearfully at the door of the car, a little bedraggled, her smooth red hair trailing down her smooth face, her long, painted fingers clasping a whimpering bundle of brown-red fur in her lap. She was just as scared as Schnapps was. She was a good thirty feet away from me, but the fearful burn in her eyes shone like beacons. And Schnapps kept right on whimpering. I couldn’t blame him. It was a dog’s life all right. And not the one human beings are envious of.
Almost sub-consciously, I slid off the crate which still tilted into the wall and braked down to the floor. From force of habit, I found my own .45 somewhere in the rubble on the floor. Trunks had burst open and suitcases had flown around the room like confetti. But everybody was lucky except Peters. The bomb, or whatever the hell it was, had gone off in his end of the car. He had lost his head because of it. And we had hung onto ours for the same reason.
The dark smoke thinned out. There was no danger of fire even, though some of the wooden shelves seemed to hiss and crackle in the debris. I shook my head, my ears still hammering like Chinese gongs from the force and violence of the explosion. It seemed to work, shaking my head I mean, because it suddenly came home to me that the Mainliner had come to a screaming halt. The long line of cars were still shuddering with the sudden stop and the shrill blast of the emergency whistle filled the air. The damn thing was working overtime this trip.
The baggage car was all settled down now. The floor had stopped moving, stopped shifting like quicksand. My feet were holding fast. Even though my equilibrium was worse than a seven day drunk. I staggered toward the door of the car. I needed fresh air, a drink of cold water. More than that, I needed Duffy. Needed someone else to take over before I hit the deck.
Spider tried to stop me. Spider who was also fast on the recovery. He threw himself at me as I brushed past him, trying to tear the gun from my hand. His big brown mitts clawed at my arms.
I didn’t like Spider. I could never like Spider. I didn’t like the way he treated people. I gave him some of his own patented medicine. Spooned out by an apt pupil. I chopped at one of his wrists with the nose of the .45. A snarl of agony pushed out of his throat as something cracked noisily in his forearm. He stopped snarling only when I followed up with a savage pass at his head. The gun barrel came down across the wide, brown plain of his forehead. His eyes closed as I stepped past his falling body. He went down hard, still fighting, still trying to hang on.
Dean was on my way to the door too. I lifted him to his fumbling feet, cranked his arm behind his back until he stopped yelling and started moaning, and propelled him forward. The beret skipped off his round head and settled in the dust of the floor like a big, black bug.
Marlene Kelly scrambled to her feet, her full thighs crowding the tight flare of her skirt. Schnapps yelped in surprise as she crushed him under one nicely-fleshed arm. Her eyes popped at me, her red mouth hanging open in a shocked line.
“Ohhhh …” she wailed. “Those terrible men–we might have been killed …”
“Save it,” I rasped. I was in no mood for hysterical, fainting females. “Open that door and shut your mouth. I want air. Lots of it.”
It was probably the first time she had ever answered a direct order in her life. She fumbled ahead of me, her painted fingers flying at the bolts, drawing the chain lock. The door slid back slowly. Cool air rushed in with the light from the corridor. The dust in my lungs split into a thousand molecules as fresh oxygen poured in and broke the congestion up.
Duffy was standing there. A concerned-looking Duffy with an army of blue uniforms behind him. All yelling, all trying to look authoritative. It looked like the whole train staff of the Mainliner had gathered for their annual convention at the door of the baggage car.
I shoved Dean into their arms like he was something I didn’t want. Strong blue arms caught him, passed him around like a ball in play. Duffy was barking rapid instructions. Some of the blue boys rushed on past me into the smashed car.
“Lock the Professor up. He’s a badddd man,” I concluded limply. “There’s another bad man inside.”
“What the hell is going on on this train?” Duffy roared. “If this isn’t the damnedest trip …” His eyes focussed on Marlene Kelly with the wriggling Schnapps in her arms. “You and that mutt, Miss Kelly. I told you not to interfere with train procedure. You might have been killed and the line would have been responsible …”
Marlene Kelly had recovered any loss of dignity she might have suffered. She was once again a high-handed rich dish. Schnapps in her arms, with a highly-ornamental stone-studded collar gleaming around his brown neck, filled out the picture perfectly.
“Conductor, you are an idiot. If you will allow me to pass, I’m going to my compartment …”
Duffy showed her his teeth. “No you don’t. Not until I clear up what happened back here.” He barked out some more brisk, easy-to-follow orders. His small army of blue spread throughout the ruined baggage. It was going to be some job at that. An explosion to investigate, luggage to reassemble. Damage to take care of. And damages. And there was also the small matter of a missing corpse. And the very large matter of the missing Fat Harry. I had almost forgotten Opal Trace.
I leaned against the corridor of the car, saw the open train door. I didn’t wait for permission. I jogged down the metal steps, clumped onto the soft scrunchy roadbed and looked up at the stars with my back holding up the car. I filled my lungs with clean, sweet night air. I didn’t pay any attention to all the noises coming from the baggage car as Duffy’s men went through their paces. I could hear Marlene Kelly still jabbering heatedly with Duffy. But I didn’t listen to that either.
The stars were still in business. A bird was ma
king beautiful night music in a dark mass of birch trees off to my left. Moonlight was washing down on a small clearing in the woods and a black mass of mountains was a comfortable skyline in the East behind the train. The Mainliner lay like a long, gray snake on a stretch of wilderness somewhere between New York and Chicago. It was a dilly of a night even if it was an ugly train ride.
Further down the line of cars, passengers were up, moving around, wondering what the hell was going on. Well, it certainly wasn’t a dull trip. Murder, kidnapping, bomb explosions. A real unsentimental journey.
Steam hissed from the air brakes on the big Diesel locomotive. Even though I couldn’t hear the sound it made. A blue uniform wagged a train lamp back and forth, making signals of some kind. I sucked in some more night air. It felt good. Real good. Like the first glass of water after ten hours in Death Valley.
I looked at my watch. It was close to three. Another eight hours and then Union Station, Chicago, U.S.A. I grinned to myself. There’s many a slip twixt the cup and the trip. That was Ed Noon. Not Ralph Waldo Emerson.
Feet crunched on the cinders behind me. I didn’t turn around. But I knew it was Duffy.
He came around to where I could see him, and offered me a cigarillo from his tin case. His taste in smokes was as strong as he looked. He lit us both up.
“Turkish blend, Noon. Strong and my own mixture. But that’s the way I like them.” His eyes twinkled in the darkness. “Glad you made it to the baggage car. I didn’t give you even money on that stunt.”
I chuckled tiredly. “Me and Errol Flynn. How about the bomb? What do your men think?”
“Working on it now. You got any ideas?”
I shrugged. “Nothing much. But one thing sticks out. Peters found something. Some kind of bomb. Maybe in the crate, maybe not. While he had it in his hand, Spider and Dean walked in on him. Before they could give him a chance, they slugged him pretty hard and he fell across the desk. Or maybe he was trying to deactivate the thing at the desk when they came in. They saw his preliminary work on the crate and figured he’d tumbled to something. Like their Blue Green. So they took up where he left off–forgetting all about him. The bomb must have been timed. And it must have been on him. Or near him. Which is one good reason why it blew his head off. Or didn’t you notice?”
He grimaced. “I noticed. But Peters was a good railroad man. He’d been with me ten years. He wouldn’t have had anything to do with these people or getting greedy himself. And I never saw any of these characters before.”
“I’ll buy that, Duffy. But the innocent bystander is dead now. Just because somebody wants a fabulous hunk of junk called The Blue Green. I hope your men give that car a good going over.”
“Don’t worry,” he growled. “If it’s anywhere in there, they’ll find it.”
“What about the Kelly dame?”
He growled again. “I sent her back to her lipstick. Some temper for a redhead. She’s Irish all right. Beautiful dames with pet pooches …” A sound of disgust rattled in his throat. “You see that fancy collar? Bet it cost more than I make all year.”
I tossed my cigarillo into the cinders beneath my feet.
“Duffy, I just thought of something.”
“What’s that?”
“If the bomb had gone off where it was supposed to–say in the crate–that famous statue of yours would be a handful of marble dust right now. That must mean something. Why would somebody want to destroy The Violent Virgin?”
Duffy cursed. “I like my mysteries in books. I’m just a simple guy who likes trains. Don’t expect me to figure this out for you.”
The Mainliner’s whistle hooted in the distance. I dig train whistles at night the most. It reminds me of so many nice things. Even a whistle on a terror train like this one was a pleasant sound.
“All aboard, Noon,” Duffy rumbled amiably. “We got things to do. You’re a dick so I’m using your special services.”
We mounted the steps. Muffled noises of activity sounded in the ruined baggage car.
“Such as?” I asked.
Duffy grunted. “I’m wiring Chicago to have a police squad waiting for us. I know Monaghan, the head man down there. We’ll need some official help on this one. The owners of the line will never believe my report when it comes in, so help me.”
“I’ll help you anyway I can, Duffy.”
“Good boy. I’ll slap those two monkeys in irons and hold them in my compartment under guard. Meantime, you turn in. I want you–I’ll call you. You come–understand?”
“A deal has been made, Mr. Duffy. See you later.”
I left him at the door of the baggage car with his blue boys jumping all over the place trying to make some sense out of the mess on their hands. But I was sure if anybody could handle things Duffy could. I wouldn’t put building Rome in a day past him. To me, he was Daniel Boone and Andrew Carnegie all rolled up into one steely-eyed Irishman. I couldn’t recall liking somebody on such short notice before. Or so much.
I made my way back slowly to Compartment B. And Opal Trace. I hoped she had gotten some sleep during the uproar. For what seemed like the nth time that night, I was aware of the Mainliner’s wheels as they gathered up speed and started to revolve powerfully.
The day coaches and sleepers were all wide awake and buzzing excitedly. By the time I reached my car, I’d heard enough wild guesses to last me a lifetime. Every car had a well-informed, well-opinionated expert who had known exactly what had happened. It seemed the Mainliner had lost a wheel, jumped the track, lost a car on a horseshoe curve and even run into a bus loaded with school children. I don’t know what schools open at two in the morning for kids, but the experts were sure of their ground. A real Nostradamus in the day coach insisted that a car of runaway cons had halted the train at gunpoint and was taking over. And one Cagliostro in the sleeper, a balding, fat business man was equally sure that a Communist group had dynamited the tracks to halt the train.
I was real weary as I stumbled down the corridor toward Compartment B. So weary that I never heard the door behind me open softly. So fatigued that somebody could get the drop on me so easily. The nose of a gun boring into the small of my back and moving my spine over to one side was familiar and unmistakeable.
“Not a word, Mr. Noon. You will step into my compartment quietly. And do not, I beg of you, attempt anything heroic. As I told you once before, I am an excellent shot.”
The voice was unmistakeable too.
It was Fat Harry. Sydney Greenstreet had come back with vengeance.
Harry was in better shape than I was.
Even as he ushered me into the compartment, I could see he was as hale and hearty as ever. His big bulk was untroubled, his tie was mussed a little but his smooth, unwrinkled face was as serene as a sleeping child’s once again. He closed the door behind him and hid that and half of the wall by leaning against it. The black automatic in his hand was as unwavering as a spike in a railroad tie. He smiled at me as I settled wearily into a soft seat by the window.
“It relieves me, Mr. Noon, to see you in such a relaxed frame of body and mind. You tend to hustle and bustle, sir. A real go-getter, I believe the expression is.” His tiny eyes narrowed. “Kindly place your gun on the chair across from you.”
I shook my head and did as I was told. Harry’s eyes followed my hand up to my holster, watched my fingers obey orders. My .45 skidded silently on the chair padding.
“You sure get around, Harry,” I said. “How did you get out of the belts? And where, oh where, is the missing dead body?”
His eyes twinkled in their rolls of surrounding fat. He chuckled deep in his stomach.
“My escape is of no matter. For a man of my formidable proportions, mere straps are nothing. I snapped them in half, sir. The dead body’s disappearance is easier to explain. I lifted the corpse and dropped it through the compartment window. I imagine it is lying somewhere along the line too far back to be of any consequence. Dead men tell no tales. And this is one dead man wh
ose corpse will not be discovered in sufficient time to affect my program.” His expression changed into a fierce mask that once more made a hook of his soft nose, a parrot’s beak of his mouth. “And now, sir, to the point. I take it you were in the baggage car. You will please detail for me all that occurred there.”
His explanation about the dead body figured. It would have been the simplest way. But his constant chattering about things and events got my goat. He looked like he ought to have all the answers to everything by this time. I couldn’t understand about the belts. I thought I’d rigged him up real tight.
“Harry, I just don’t get all this. Nothing could be worth all the trouble you and Spider and Dean are going to …”
The gun thrust forward a foot in my direction.
“The complete details, Mr. Noon. Do not delay me further, I beg of you. Or your body will join the other.”
“I got you the first time.”
I spelled the whole crazy thing out for him. He showed particular interest in the ticking thing in the crate. Any mention of Spider and Dean seemed to make his eyebrows lower angrily. But he did show satisfaction about their being under lock and key in Duffy’s compartment. He balled a fat hand furiously at me and glowered. All two tons of him glowered.
“Damnation–destroying the statue is completely unpardonable! A work of art, a thing of unparallelled delight. The swine! The stupid swine!”
I blinked. “You’re not listening. Spider and Dean couldn’t have planted that firecracker. If they had they wouldn’t have stood around to hear it go off. That doesn’t make sense.”
He waved his fist at me.
“We won’t discuss it, Mr. Noon. You give me your word that no one uncovered The Blue Green in the melee?”
The Case of the Violent Virgin Page 8