Marlene Kelly eyed him coldly.
“I was walking past this compartment when I heard someone crying. Crying terribly. The door was ajar. I walked in. Opal looked like she needed a friend. We talked. Had a cigarette. After what happened in the baggage car, it was a much needed rest for me too. Even Schnapps got some good out of it. See how he’s sleeping?” Her eyes got a degree icier. “Does that answer your question?”
Harry shrugged. “Unfortunate. Now I must hold you here until I am done with these people.”
“Suit yourself,” she told him drily. “But I get off this train in Chicago. If you have any ideas about detaining me past that point, you’re out of your mind.”
Harry changed the subject. “Quite so. Now be good enough to remain silent while I question Miss Trace.”
“Ed, Ed …” Opal said wearily. “Can’t you make him leave me alone? I’m so tired of all this. They took that dead old guy out of here only ten minutes ago. And his wife crying all the while like she was crazy. I’m beat, I tell you. Really beat …”
She was. Her head was almost limp on her shoulders. But I had no mercy for her anymore.
“Sorry, Opal. It’s Harry’s deal. He calls the game. Besides which, I’m mighty interested in your answers too.”
Her eyes widened in surprise at that. The remark added some vitamins to her voice. “I don’t get you, Ed.”
“Don’t you?” I gave her a tight smile. “I’m thinking right now that you lied to me, Opal. Lied about everything. Lied about this trip, what’s in that baggage car. Lied about The Blue Green.”
“Lied about The Blue Green?” She looked on the verge of tears. “Ed, what are you saying? Honey, I’d never lie to you …”
“Wouldn’t you, Opal?” I could tell I had Harry’s approval because he let me continue with a short jerk of his dome skull. “You’re the only person in the world who knows where The Blue Green is. Because the three other people who should know have been doing their damnedest to find it. Now, Spider and Dean are out of circulation and Harry is here only because he’s still looking for it. That leaves you, Opal. Only you. You’re the only other person involved.” I looked at her hard. “Where did you hide it?”
That did it. She broke down suddenly. Collapsed in a trembling, weeping heap. Her shoulders tried to come apart with tears. But Marlene Kelly leaned over and held her together, glaring up at me with hazel eyes shooting sparks.
“Men,” she sneered at me. “What arch bastards you all are! Bullying this poor girl. Get out. The both of you.”
“We can’t do that, Miss Kelly,” Harry interjected almost softly. “Not until I have The Blue Green. Isn’t that so, Mr. Noon?” The gun in his fist mocked me.
“I’m with you, Harry,” I said. I watched Opal Trace pull herself together, watched Marlene Kelly pooh-pooh and there-there her until the waterworks turned off and lady’s handkerchiefs were working overtime. I kept an eye on Harry’s gun too. I didn’t want anybody getting shot so I behaved.
“Blue Green!” Marlene Kelly snorted. “What in hell is that anyway?”
Harry answered her. “A rare stone, M’am. The rarest in the land and worth a nation’s ransom.”
She said “Humph” like she was born to say “Humph”. And Opal Trace stopped sniffling long enough to stare up at me with hurt eyes.
“Oh, Ed. I’m sorry–I wanted to tell you the truth hours ago–but I was so scared. And I couldn’t be that sure you weren’t just another hustler out to make a fast buck …”
“Okay, okay. Now I’m a good scout. But what did you do with the thing?”
She wasn’t looking at anybody but me now. Her red lips were parted, her breasts were slowly heaving and her unforgettable eyes were suddenly as clear as rainwater. And Harry was leaning forward, his bulk poised and ready for the happiest words of his life. The gleam of his eyes was not exactly normal.
“It’s in the baggage car,” Opal Trace said. “In a maroon leather hat box that I sent ahead to the station. Checked in my name. Everybody thought the stone was in the crate with the statue. But it’s not.”
“That figures,” I said. “The crate was shipped before you all had that housewarming in Maine. You couldn’t have had the time to park the stone in the crate, much less open the damn thing. But Harry couldn’t know that. So he thought it might be there. I wondered why Spider and Dean weren’t interested in checking the crate right off the bat. They were just interested in catching up with you. But then they didn’t know what to think–so they ran to the baggage car to have a whack at it anyhow. Not being too sure how organized you had become.”
“Now you know,” Opal said with real weariness. “And I wish I’d left the stone where it was. In Harry’s pocket. It’s brought everybody nothing but trouble …”
Marlene Kelly stirred. “But that bomb in the crate–what was that all about? It doesn’t make sense.”
“You’re right, it doesn’t,” I agreed. “The Mad Bomber was put out of business months ago. But I think I know who planted the bomb and why. But we’ll go into that later.”
“Miss Trace,” Harry rumbled back to life. “You will go to the baggage car and claim your hatbox and bring it here. Intact. Unless you return quietly with it and do not attempt to summon help, Mr. Noon will die. I can shoot him very quickly before anyone could stop me. Is that clear?”
“You’re taking lousy odds, Harry,” I said. “I don’t think Opal cares that much what happens to me.”
Marlene Kelly folded her arms and frowned.
“I didn’t think you were as stupid as all that, my friend. She’d probably cut an arm off for you. Perhaps, two. God knows why. You’re such an oaf.”
We all looked at Opal Trace. She looked only at me. For a long time. Then she quietly got to her feet and slipped out into the corridor without another word. We could hear her high heels clicking away and then nothing. Silence. Suddenly, the forward rush of the Mainliner filled our ears.
Harry made himself comfortable on the seat across from Marlene Kelly. The redhead crossed her legs and idly stroked Schnapps’ furry brown body curled near her ample hip. Harry put his back to the window and motioned me to sit next to Marlene Kelly. I squeezed down alongside her. It was nice squeezing. The curve of her hips and thighs were pleasanter than two weeks in Florida.
I wondered about Opal Trace and her hat box. I thought about Duffy and what he might be doing. Maybe he was looking for me. I thought about the bomb that had blown Peters’ head off. Maybe the whole answer to everything was right in there with that bomb.
Harry smoked another cigar halfway down before Opal Trace got back. She slipped into the compartment breathlessly, her right hand closed around a maroon leather hatbox. The kind that you see hanging on the arm of the bright young girls running up and down Broadway. The standard gear of models, actresses, call girls and gals who are just traveling light.
Harry didn’t let her open it. He took it from her, bounced out of his seat and pawed it open. It was zippered all around, a 360 degree zipper that cut the box in half.
“I was lucky …” Opal puffed. “What a mess back there! The box was right on top …”
Harry thundered an ejaculation that cut right in on her. His face fell fifty feet, his gun lowered and the hat box rolled to the floor as lightly and as noiselessly as a bag of feathers.
I could see what was bothering him.
The hat box had no hat, no Blue Green. No nothing.
It was emptier than a reservoir in the drought season.
CHAPTER TWELVE
The effect of an empty hat box and no Blue Green on Fat Harry was something to see. He collapsed in his seat and all the air went right out of him. He was like a Macy’s Day Parade balloon deflating on Fifth Avenue. And his eyes went dead too. Only the black gun in his fat hand stayed as it was. Targeted in on my breadbasket.
Opal Trace whimpered.
“Honest, Harry–that’s where it was all the time–I had it right in the box–somebody must have taken it …” She tra
iled off helplessly.
He didn’t answer her. Just kept deflating and seeing nothing in front of him. I thought fast. Duffy, the mix-up in the baggage car. Would they have let Opal waltz in for her hat box so easily? But I wasn’t going to ask her that question now.
Marlene Kelly stirred and Schnapps jerked erect near her hip, his long, aristocratic brown snoot coming apart with a yawn. He looked around at all of us and blinked.
“I think I’ll go back to my own compartment,” Marlene Kelly announced in her best business meeting voice. “It’s way past my bedtime. And Schnapps’.”
“You’d better get Harry’s permission before you leave the room, Miss Kelly,” I warned her.
She gave me her Drop Dead smile. The one with thirty-two dazzling teeth and years of calling the shots behind it.
“No one can detain me here. What would be the point anyway? I don’t deal with the police unless I have to.”
“It was nice of you to stop in, Marlene,” Opal said. “Did me a lot of good. I feel a lot better now.”
“Forget it, sweetie,” the Lipstick Queen said grandly. “Men can be such a bore. I’ve often wondered what women ever saw in them. Sex can’t be everything.” She shrugged. “I’ll be in my compartment if you need me. E, at the end of the car.”
She was hooking a leash strap into Schnapps glittering collar when Harry came back to earth and revisited our planet. His eyes snapped and his body vibrated with fresh horsepower.
“Sit down, Miss Kelly,” he boomed. “A temporary setback for me. But I am my own man again. Now be quiet and let me think.” He looked at me as Marlene Kelly sighed and sat down again. “Mr. Noon–are you still aligned with my side of things?”
“Solidly, Harry. Solidly. But how about putting on a show of good faith? Your gun is making me nervous.”
“Just so.” He considered my suggestion and so suddenly that it was almost funny, pocketed his black automatic. It disappeared into a side pocket of his pin-striped tent.
“Hooray,” I said and stretched my arms and yawned. “Now we can all relax.”
Harry frowned. “That is not possible until we recover The Blue Green. Someone else has scented the trail. Miss Trace must have injudiciously revealed the whereabouts of the stone to someone on this train. That person must have it now.”
Opal Trace pouted. “No one saw me put it in my hat box.”
“Someone must have,” I reminded her. “Otherwise it would still be there. Harry–tell me something about The Blue Green.”
“Such as–Mr. Noon?”
“Well, for one thing–what does it look like exactly?”
His eyes glowed. He was a man for favorite subjects. And The Blue Green was one of them. Second only to his blessed Virgin.
“A large round stone of immesaureable worth. Almost as large as one of your redoubtable fists, Mr. Noon. Pure diamond through and through. At times, a deep blue in color varying into brilliant hues of green. Hence the particularly fitting cognomen of Blue Green.”
“How much is it worth in dollars and cents?”
He smiled. “My ancient bride of one day, the good Miss Redleaf, was offered a million dollars in gold for it by no less than a prince of Egypt.”
I nodded. “Then all the trouble you’ve been going to figures. That would buy a lot of coffee and cake. And keep the wolves away for several lifetimes. Spider and Dean must have licked their chops at sight of it.”
“Animals,” Harry breathed fiercely. “Carrion. The manner in which they have exploited the Virgin is proof positive of their baser instincts.”
“You’re right, Harry. Money isn’t everything.” I kept him talking for a reason. Duffy should be showing pretty soon, looking for me. I hoped like hell he’d wired his cop pals in Chicago. I hoped he still had Spider and Dean locked up. I looked at my watch. It was almost five in the ayem. Chicago wasn’t much further away. The Mainliner was really eightballing through the darkness now. Through-train to Chi on the craziest run it had ever had. The engineer must have been pouring it on to make up for the lost time.
I kept thinking of the bomb in the baggage car. Everything else fit but that. Who would want to blow an expensive statue to smithereens? Why would they want to? Whose interests would it serve the most … ?
Opal Trace interrupted my brainwork.
“I’m hungry. That’s not important I know when you compare it with a million dollars–but I’m still hungry.”
With a jolt, I realized we hadn’t had anything to eat since the afternoon of the day before. Suddenly, my stomach felt as hollow as a drum.
“We had our dinner at six fifteen in town,” Marlene Kelly said easily. We meaning her and her dachshund friend.
I looked at Harry. “How about it, big boy? If we’re going hunting for the missing diamond, we ought to tie on the feed bag. A full stomach would help.”
I had a picture of all the steaks and potatoes that Harry must have put away in his lifetime to get himself up to the mammoth size he was. But I could also see that food was a luxury he had denied himself recently in his mad chase after his two loves.
“The diner would not be open at this hour,” he rumbled evenly.
“Maybe so,” I said. “But I’d like to go rummaging for some hamburgers somewhere. There might even be some stale sandwiches lying around.”
“We will have to wait until breakfast, I’m afraid,” Harry purred.
“Don’t be afraid. Be hungry. I could get us some sandwiches. And coffee. Wouldn’t you like some hot coffee? I would.”
Opal rubbed her hands across her trim stomach.
“Oh, Ed. Stop it–you’ve got me drooling.”
Marlene Kelly smiled and rubbed Schnapps’ red-brown back. Harry’s mouth was watering too but his eye was on the sparrow. And it was blue-green.
“I tell you it’s not possible, Mr. Noon. Furthermore, we must make plans about retrieving the stone. Perhaps Spider and Dean …”
The rest of what he had to say was lost in what followed. Lost in the loudest, noisiest, screeching of train wheels I’ve heard since six boxcars piled up in a troop movement from Camp Lucky Strike to Le Havre.
The Mainliner lurched and jarred to a grating, sickening, stunning stop all over again.
But not in time to avoid hitting something full-tilt. With a roar and crash of metal that must have been heard in Outer Mongolia, the Diesel engine ploughed into the immovable object. And the long line of cars shuddered, twisted and fought to stay on the rails.
Compartment B was turned upside down in a lightning flash of time and movement.
Harry bellowed, Schnapps barked, Opal screamed, Marlene bleated and I cried out in warning. Our bodies flung around the small compartment like so many runaway marbles in a plastic box game.
The Mainliner had crashed into something on the tracks.
No one was thinking about food anymore. Starvation was a thing of the past. When the train you’re going to Chicago on suddenly piledrives into something, you’re very likely to forget your stomach and think more about your skin.
We were four people and a dog in one small compartment of a crack streamliner, doing better than sixty miles per hour. We had slowed down because the engineer had gotten some idea of what was ahead. But he couldn’t stop thirty tons of steel and wheels that fast. Modern science and invention can do so much. And the laws of nature and natural energy are kind of unbreakable.
We hit what the engineer slowed down to avoid hitting. But he obviously hadn’t had enough time.
Neither did we. The jarring impact of collision upset everybody. The Fat Harry bounced like a basketball rocketing off the backboard as his enormous bulk rammed into the wall of the compartment. Marlene and Opal grabbed for each other like two frightened dames will; but before they could glue onto one another for mutual support, the floor vibrated beneath their feet, and they skidded apart like ballet dancers separating for a brisk finale in The Swan. Schnapps howled and tried to hide under his seat but it moved away from him and
he burrowed at empty air for a full five seconds. I threw an arm around the compartment door which had flown back on its hinges, hanging onto the doorknob for support. But it was no use. Our car butted and shoved and banged into the car that came before it, and then the car that came after us got in its noisy licks. Crashing sounds of steel and shuddering, clanging metal thundered down the Mainliner leaving the long shells of cars humming with gong-like overtures, drumming at the ears like a million seashells pouring out noise. Wind and fury roared in my skull. My fingers wrenched from the doorknob, the panel slammed into my face and for once, my one hundred and eighty pounds of male muscle felt as unnecessary as a sack of dead mice. I flew backwards into space until there was no space at all. Only a hard brown wall that folded me up neatly like a handkerchief, sitting me down on the floor like I had really meant to sit down all the time.
Then there was long, loud silence with the girls whimpering, and Schnapps barking pitifully and my head aching and Harry a fat mass of crumpled-up nothing across the room. I stared at the floor. It was side-saddle, catering up to the light insanely in a Dali burlesque of design and construction. It was as easy as that. Our car was no longer on the tracks. It had climbed like a metal monkey a good three feet up the steel rear of the forward car.
Shock settled in fast with the silence. Then the silence evaporated into that concentrated deadly thing called panic and the fear of the unknown. A mammoth, terrible chorus of yells and screams and excited pleas filled the air. Outside, through the shattered glass of the compartment windows, I could see the dark countryside and the still-star bright sky, could feel the cold night air whistling in. Could hear the hoarse shouts along the tracks of the train personnel trying to do something, trying to make order out of chaos.
I got up. I had to. I was the detective. I was the guy who was supposed to be handy in a pinch. At his best with bill collectors, goons and train wrecks. Oh, yeah.
It must have taken me five years to reach my feet and I spent two of them on my knees, making sure my head was still where I had seen it last, trying not to think what the flying door had done to my face. My right cheek felt blood-warm and blood-red. You know the feeling. One side of my kisser felt like it was hanging off, and I just didn’t have the guts to reach up and touch it just then. I knew if I did it would seem worse than it actually was and I might just possibly throw my head back and scream and lose whatever marbles I had left.
The Case of the Violent Virgin Page 10