Night Probe!

by Clive Cussler

  Then, as if by magic, the impossible thing passed over them. "Now!" Pitt shouted above the din.

  They all dropped their hands and stared, eyes still adjusted to the dark.

  The light was now aimed away and traveling down the abandoned track bed, the locomotive sound diminishing in its wake. They could clearly see a black rectangle centered in the glow about eight feet off the ground. They watched fascinated as it grew smaller in the distance and then turned up the grade to the bridge, where it blinked out and the accompanying clatter died into the storm. "What in hell was that?" Chase finally muttered.

  "An antique locomotive headlamp and an amplifier," answered Pitt.

  "Oh, yeah?" grunted Giordino skeptically. "Then how does it float in mid-air?"

  "On a wire strung from the old telegraph poles."

  "Too bad there has to be a logical explanation," said Chase, sadly shaking his head. "I hate to see good supernatural legends debunked."

  Pitt gestured toward the sky. "Keep looking. Your legend should be returning anytime now."

  They grouped around the nearest telegraph pole and stared upward into the darkness. A minute later a black shape emerged and slipped noiselessly through the air above them. Then it melted back into the shadows and was gone. "Fooled hell out of me," Giordino admitted.

  "Where did the thing come from?" asked Chase.

  Pitt didn't answer immediately. He suddenly stood illuminated by a lightning strike in a distant field; the flash revealed a contemplative look on his face. Finally he said, "You know what I think?"

  "No, what?"

  "I think we should all have a cup of coffee and a slice of hot apple pie."

  By the time they knocked on Ansel Magee's door they looked like drowned rats. The big sculptor cordially invited them in and took their wet coats. While Pitt made the introductions, Annie Magee, true to expectations, hurried into the kitchen to rustle up coffee and pie, only this time it was cherry.

  "What brings you gentlemen out on such a miserable night?" asked Magee.

  "We were chasing ghosts," Pitt replied.

  Magee's eyes narrowed. "Any luck?"

  "May we talk about it in the depot office?"

  Magee nodded agreeably. "Of course. Come, come."

  It took little urging for him to regale Chase and Giordino with the history behind the office and its former occupants. As he talked, he built a fire in the potbellied stove. Pitt sat silently at Sam Harding's old rolltop desk. He'd heard the lecture before and his mind was elsewhere.

  Magee was in the midst of pointing out the bullet in Hiram Meecham's chessboard when Annie entered, carrying a tray with cups and plates.

  After the last scrap of pie was gone, Magee looked across the office at Pitt. "You never did say whether you found a ghost."

  "No," Pitt replied. "No ghost. But we did find a clever rig that fakes the phantom train."

  Magee's broad shoulders drooped and he shrugged. "I always knew someone would discover the secret someday. I even had the local folks fooled. Not that any of them minded. They're all quite proud of having a ghost they can call their own. Sort of gives them something to brag about to the tourists."

  "When did you get wise to it?" Annie asked.

  "The night I came to your door. Earlier I was standing on the bridge abutment when you sent the phantom on a run. Just before it reached me the lamp blinked out and the sound shut down."

  "You saw how it worked then?"

  "No, I was blinded by the glare. By the time my eyes readjusted to the dark it was long gone. Baffled the hell out of me at first. My gut instinct was to search the ground level. That only added to my confusion when I failed to find tracks in the snow. But I'm a man with a curious streak. I wondered why the old railbed was torn up and hauled away down to the last cross tie and yet the telegraph poles were left standing. Railroad officials are a tightfisted lot. They don't like to leave any reusable equipment behind when they abandon a right-of-way. I began following the poles until I came to the last one in line. It stands at the door of a shed beside your private track. I also noticed that the headlamp was missing from your locomotive."

  "I have to give you credit, Mr. Pitt," said Magee. "You're the first to hit upon the truth."

  "How does the thing operate?" asked Giordino.

  "The same principle as a chair lift on a ski slope," Magee explained. "The headlamp and a set of four speakers hang suspended from a continuous cable strung along the crossbars of the telegraph poles.

  When the light and sound package reaches the edge of the old Deauville bridge, a remote switch shuts off the batteries and then it makes a hundred-and-eighty-degree turn and returns to the shed."

  "Why was it that some nights we only heard the sound but saw no lights?" asked Chase.

  "The locomotive headlamp is rather large," answered Magee. "It's too easily detectable. So on moonlit nights I remove it and run only the sound system."

  Giordino smiled broadly. "I don't mind admitting, Chase and I were ready to take up religion the first time it paid us a visit."

  "I hope I didn't cause you any unnecessary inconvenience."

  "Not at all. It was a great source of conversation."

  "Annie and I stand on the riverbank nearly every day and watch your salvage operation. Looks to me like you've experienced problems. Have any pieces of the Manhattan Limited been pulled up yet?"

  "Not even a rivet," Pitt answered. "We're closing the project down."

  "That's a shame," Magee said sincerely. "I was rooting for your success. I guess the train wasn't meant to be found."

  "Not in the river at any rate."

  "More coffee, anyone?" Annie came around with-the pot.

  "I'll take some," said Pitt. "Thank you."

  "You were saying." Magee probed.

  "Do you own one of those little motorcars that railroad gangs ride on when they repair track?" Pitt asked, changing the subject.

  "I have an eighty-year-old handcar that moves on muscle power."

  "May I borrow it along with your phantom train gear?"

  "When do you want to use it?"

  "Now."

  "On a stormy night like this?"

  "Especially on a stormy night like this."

  Giordino took up his station on the platform bordering the tracks. In one hand he held a large flashlight.

  The wind had died down to ten miles an hour, and by keeping to the corner of the depot he was sheltered from the sweeping rain.

  Chase was not so lucky. He stood huddled atop the handcar a quarter of a mile up the track. For perhaps the tenth time he dried off the battery terminals and checked the wires leading to the locomotive headlamp and sound speakers that were jury rigged on the front of the handcar.

  Pitt stepped to the doorway and made a signal with his hand. Giordino acknowledged it and then jumped down onto the track bed and blinked his flashlight into the darkness.

  "About damned time," Chase mumbled to himself as he pushed the battery switch and began pumping the hand levers.

  The headlamp's beam glinted on the wet rails and the whistle shriek was swept ahead by a following gust of wind. Pitt hesitated, timing in his mind the advance of the handcar. Satisfied that Chase was approaching at a good clip, he reentered the office and absorbed the warmth from the stove. "We're rolling," he said briefly.

  "What do you hope to learn by recreating the robbery?" asked Magee.

  "I'll know better in a few minutes," Pitt replied evasively.

  "I think it's exciting," Annie bubbled.

  "Annie, you act out the role of Hiram Meechum, the telegrapher, while I play the station agent, Sam Harding," Pitt instructed. "Mr. Magee, you're the authority. I'll leave it to you to take the part of Clement Massey and lead us through the events step by step."

  "I'll try," Magee said. "But it's impossible to reconstruct the exact dialogue and movements of seventy-five years ago."

  "We won't need a perfect performance," Pitt grinned. "A simple run-through will do fin
e."

  Magee shrugged. "Okay . . . let's see, Meechum was seated at the table in front of the chessboard.

  Harding had just taken a call from the dispatcher in Albany, so he was standing near the phone when Massey entered."

  He walked to the doorway and turned around, holding out his hand in simulation of a gun. The locomotive sounds drew nearer and mingled with the occasional boom of thunder. He stood there a few seconds listening, and then he nodded his head. "This is a holdup," he said. Annie looked at Pitt, unsure of what to do or say.

  "After the surprise wore off," said Pitt, "the railroad men must have put up an argument."

  "Yes, when I interviewed Sam Harding he said they tried to tell Massey there was no money in the depot, but he wouldn't listen. He insisted that one of them open the safe."

  "They hesitated," Pitt conjectured.

  "In the beginning," said Magee, his voice taking on a hollow tone. "Then Harding agreed, but only if he could flag the train first. Massey refused, claiming it was a trick. He became impatient and fired a bullet through Meechum's chessboard."

  Annie hesitated, a blank look on her face. Then, carried away by her imagination, she swept the board off the table and scattered the chess pieces over the floor.

  "Harding begged, tried to explain that the bridge was out. Massey would have none of it."

  The headlamp beam on the handcar flashed through the window. Pitt could see that Magee's eyes were looking into another time. "Then what happened?" Pitt prompted.

  "Meechum grabbed a lantern and made an attempt to reach the platform and stop the train. Massey shot him in the hip." Pitt turned. "Annie, if you please?"

  Annie rose from her chair, made a few steps toward the door and eased down in a reclining position on the floor.

  The handcar was only a hundred yards away now. Pitt could read the dates on the calendar hanging on the wall from the headlamp. "The door?" Pitt snapped. "Open or closed." Magee paused, trying to think.

  "Quickly, quickly!" Pitt urged. "Massey had kicked it closed."

  Pitt pushed the door shut. "Next move?"

  "Open that damned safe! Yes, Massey's very words, according to Harding."

  Pitt hurried over and knelt in front of the old iron safe.

  Five seconds later the handcar, with Chase pumping up a sweat, rolled by on the track outside, the bass of the speakers reverberating throughout the old wooden building. Giordino stood and swung the flashlight at the windows in a wide circular motion, making it seem to those inside that the beam was flickering past the window glass in the wake of the handcar. The only sound missing was the clack of the steel coach wheels.

  A shiver crept up Magee's spine and gripped him all the way to the scalp. He felt as if he had touched the past, a past he had never truly known.

  Annie lifted herself from the floor and put her arms around his waist. She looked up into his face, her expression strangely penetrating. "It was so real," Magee murmured. "All so damn real."

  "That's because our reenactment was the way it happened back in nineteen fourteen," said Pitt.

  Magee turned and stared at Pitt. "But there was the real Manhattan Limited then."

  Pitt shook his head. "There was no Manhattan Limited then."

  "You're wrong. Harding and Meechum saw it."

  "They were tricked," Pitt said quietly.

  "That can't be . . ." Magee began, then stopped, his eyes wide in un comprehension He started over.

  "That can't be . . . they were experienced railroad men . . . they couldn't be fooled."

  "Meechum was lying wounded on the floor. The door was closed. Harding was bent over the safe, his back to the tracks. All they saw were lights. All they heard were sounds. Sounds from an old gramophone recording of a passing train."

  "But the bridge . . . it collapsed under the weight of the train. That couldn't be faked."

  "Massey blew the bridge in sections. He knew one big bang would have alerted half the valley. So he detonated small charges of black powder at key structure points, coinciding the blasts with the thunderclaps, until the center span finally gave way and dropped in the river."

  Magee, still puzzled, said nothing.

  "The robbery of the station was only a sham, a cover-up. Massey had bigger things on his mind than a measly eighteen dollars. He was after a two-million-dollar gold-coin shipment carried on the Manhattan Limited."

  "Why go to all the trouble?" Magee asked doubtfully. "He could have simply stopped the train, held it up and made off with the coins."

  "That's how Hollywood might have filmed it," said Pitt. "But in real life there's always a catch. The coins in question were twenty-dollar pieces called St. Gaudens. They each weighed close to one ounce. Simple arithmetic tells us that it took a hundred thousand coins to make two million dollars. Then allow sixteen ounces to a pound, do a little dividing and you come up with a shipment weighing over three tons. Not exactly a bundle a few men could unload and haul away before railroad officials figured the cause of the train's delay and sent a posse charging down the tracks."

  "All right," said Giordino. "I'll bite and ask the question on everyone's mind. If the train didn't pass through here and take a dive in the Hudson, where did it go?"

  "I think Massey took over the locomotive, diverted the train from the main track and hid it where it remains to this day."

  If Pitt had claimed to be a visitor from Venus or the reincarnation of Napoleon Bonaparte, his words couldn't have received a more dubious reception. Magee looked downright apathetic. Only Annie had a thoughtful expression.

  "In some respects, Mr. Pitt's theory isn't as farfetched as it sounds," she said.

  Magee stared at her as if she was an errant child. "Not one passenger or crewman who survived to tell the tale, or a robber confessing on a deathbed, not even a corpse to point a finger? Not a fragment from an entire train come to light after all these years . . . not possible."

  "It would have to be the greatest vanishing act of all time," added Chase.

  Pitt did not look as though he was listening to the conversation. He suddenly turned to Magee. "How far is Albany from here?"

  "About twenty-five miles. Why do you ask?"

  "The last time anyone saw the Manhattan Limited up close was when it left the Albany station."

  "But surely you can't really believe."

  "People believe what they want to believe," said Pitt. "Myths, ghosts, religion and the supernatural. My belief is that a cold, tangible entity has simply been misplaced for three quarters of a century in a place where nobody thought to look."

  Magee sighed. "What are your plans?"

  Pitt looked surprised at the question. "I'm going to eyeball every inch of the deserted track bed between here and Albany," he said grimly, "until I find the remains of an old rail spur that leads to nowhere."

  The telephone rang at 11:15 p.m. Sandecker laid aside the book he was reading in bed and answered.

  "Sandecker."

  "Pitt again."

  The admiral pushed himself to a sitting position and cleared his mind. "Where are you calling from this time?"

  "Albany. Something has come up."

  "Another problem with the salvage project?"

  "I called it off."

  Sandecker took a deep breath. "Do you mind telling me why?"

  "We were looking in the wrong place."

  "Oh, Christ," he groaned. "That tears it. Damn. No doubt at all?"

  "Not in my mind."

  "Hang on."

  Sandecker picked out a cigar from a humidor on the bedside table and lit it. Even though the trade embargo with Cuba had been lifted in 1985, he still preferred the milder flavor and looser wrap of a Honduras over the Havana. He always felt that a good cigar kept the world at bay. He blew out a rolling cloud and came back on the line. "Dirk."

  "Still here."

  "What do I tell the President?"

  There was silence. Then Pitt spoke slowly and distinctly. "Tell him the odds have dropped from
a million to one to a thousand to one."

  "You found something?"

  "I didn't say that."

  "Then what are you working on?"

  "Nothing more than a gut feeling."

  "What do you need from me?" asked Sandecker.

  "Please get ahold of Heidi Milligan. She's staying at the Gramercy Park Hotel in New York. Ask her to dig into old railroad archives for any maps that show New York & Quebec Northern Railroad tracks, sidings aivd spurs between Albany and the DeauvilleHudson bridge during the years eighteen eighty to nineteen fourteen."

  "Okay, I'll take care of it. Got her number?"

  "You'll have to get it from information."

  Sandecker took a long puff on the cigar. "How does it look for Monday?"

  "Grim. You can't rush these things."

  "The President needs that treaty copy."

  "Why?"

  "Don't you know?"

  "Moon clammed up when I asked."

  "The President is speaking before the House of Commons and the Senate of the Canadian Parliament.

  His speech centers around a plea for merging our two countries into one. Alan Mercier let me in on it this morning. Since Quebec went independent, the Maritime Provinces have been considering statehood. The President is hoping to talk the Western Provinces into joining too. That's where a signed copy of the North American Treaty comes in. Not to coerce or threaten, but to eliminate the red-tape jungle of the transition and stonewall any objections and interference from the United Kingdom. His pitch for a unified North America is only fifty-eight hours away. You get the action?"