by Dick Francis
‘Tell the Conductor. He has a radio.’
‘I’ll go,’ I said. ‘I know where his office is. I’ll find him.’
‘Hurry then.’
‘Yes.’
I hurried. Ran. Reached George’s office.
No one there.
I went on, running where I could, and found him walking back towards me through the dayniter. He instantly took in that I brought bad news and steered me at once into the noisy outside coupling space between the dayniter and the central dining car.
‘What is it?’ he shouted.
‘The Lorrimores’ private car is unhitched … it’s somewhere back on the track, and the Canadian is coming.’
He moved faster than I would have thought anyone could on a train and was already talking into a radio headset when I reached his office.
‘The private car was there at Cartier,’ he said. ‘I was off the train there and saw it. Are you sure it’s not in sight?’ He listened. ‘Right, then radio to the Canadian and warn the Conductor he’ll not be leaving Cartier, eh? I’ll get this train stopped and we’ll go back for the lost car. See what’s what. You’d better inform Toronto and Montreal. They won’t think this is very funny on a Sunday evening, eh?’ He chuckled and looked at me assessingly as I stood in his doorway. ‘I’ll leave someone here manning the radio,’ he continued. ‘Tell him when you’ve got the Canadian understanding the situation, eh?’
He nodded at the reply he heard, took off the headset and gave it to me.
‘You are talking to the despatcher in Schreiber,’ he said, ‘– that’s ahead of us, this side of Thunder Bay – and he can radio straight to the Canadian following us. You can hear the despatcher without doing anything. To transmit, press the button.’ He pointed, and was gone.
I put on the headset and sat in his chair and presently into my ears a disembodied voice said, ‘Are you there?’
I pressed the button, ‘Yes.’
‘Tell George I got the Canadian and it will stop in Cartier. There’s a CP freight train due behind it but I got Sudbury in time and it isn’t leaving there. No one is happy. Tell George to pick up that car and get the hell out.’
I pressed the button. ‘Right,’ I said.
‘Who are you?’ asked the voice.
‘One of the attendants.’
He said, ‘Huh,’ and was quiet.
The Great Transcontinental Mystery Race Train began to slow down and soon came to a smooth stop. Almost in the same instant, George was back in his doorway.
‘Tell the despatcher we’ve stopped and are going back,’ he said, when I’d relayed the messages. ‘We’re eleven point two miles out of Cartier, between Benny and Stralak, which means in an uninhabited wilderness. You stay here, eh?’ And he was gone again, this time towards the excitement in the tail.
I gave his message to the despatcher and added, ‘We’re reversing now, going slowly.’
‘Let me know when you find the car.’
‘Yes.’
It was pitch dark through the windows; no light in the wilderness. I heard afterwards from a lot of excited chattering in the dining room that George had stood alone outside the rear door of the dome car on the brink of space, directing a bright hand-held torch beam down the track. Heard that he had a walkie-talkie radio on which he could give the engineer instructions to slow down further, and to stop.
He found the Lorrimores’ car about a mile and a half out of Cartier. The whole train stopped while he jumped down from the dome car and went to look at the laggard. There was a long pause from my point of view, while the lights began flickering in the office and the train exceedingly slowly reversed, before stopping again and going into a sudden jerk. Then we started forwards slowly, and then faster, and the lights stopped flickering, and soon after that George appeared in his office looking grim, all chuckles extinguished.
‘What’s the matter,’ I said.
‘Nothing,’ he said violently, ‘that’s what’s the matter.’ He stretched out a hand for the headset which I gave him.
He spoke into it. ‘This is George. We picked up the Lorrimores’ car at one point three miles west of Cartier. There was no failure in the linkage.’ He listened. ‘That’s what I said. Who the hell do they have working in Cartier, eh? Someone uncoupled that car at Cartier and rigged some way of pulling it out of the station into the darkness before releasing it. The brakes weren’t on. You tell Cartier to send someone right away down the track looking for a rope or some such, eh? The steam heat pipe wasn’t broken, it had been unlocked. That’s what I said. The valve was closed. It was no goddam accident, no goddam mechanical failure, someone deliberately unhitched that car. If the Lorrimore girl hadn’t found out, the Canadian would have crashed into it. No, maybe not at high speed, but at twenty-five, thirty miles an hour the Canadian can do a lot of damage. Would have made matchsticks of the private car. Might have killed the Canadian engineers, or even derailed the train. You tell them to start looking, eh?’
He took off the headset and stared at me with rage.
‘Would you,’ he said, ‘know how to uncouple one car from another?’
‘No, of course not.’
‘It takes a railwayman.’ He glared. ‘A railwayman! It’s like a mechanic letting someone drive off in a car with loose wheel nuts. It’s criminal, eh?’
‘Yes.’
‘A hundred years ago,’ he said furiously, ‘they designed a system to prevent cars that had broken loose from running backwards and crashing into things. The brakes go on automatically in a runaway.’ He glared. ‘That system had been by-passed. The Lorrimores’ brakes weren’t on. That car was deliberately released on level ground, eh? I don’t understand it. What was the point?’
‘Maybe someone doesn’t like the Lorrimores,’ I suggested.
‘We’ll find the bastard,’ he said, not listening. ‘There can’t be many in Cartier who know trains.’
‘Do you get much sabotage?’ I asked.
‘Not like this. Not often. Once or twice in the past. But it’s mostly vandals. A kid or two throwing rocks off a bridge. Some stealing, eh?’
He was affronted, I saw, by the treachery of one of his own kind. He took it personally. He was in a way ashamed, as one is if one’s countrymen behave badly abroad.
I asked him about his communication system with the engineer. Why had he gone up the train himself to get it stopped if he had a walkie-talkie?
‘It crackles if we’re going at any speed. It’s better to talk face to face.’
A light flashed on the ship-to-shore radio and he replaced his headset.
‘George here,’ he said, and listened. He looked at his watch and frowned. ‘Yes. Right. Understood.’ He took off the headset, shaking his head. ‘They’re not going to go along the track looking for a rope until both the Canadian and the freight train have been through. If our saboteur’s got an ounce of sense, by that time there won’t be anything incriminating to find.’
‘Probably not already,’ I said. ‘It’s getting on for an hour since we left Cartier.’
‘Yeah,’ he said. His good humour was trickling back despite his anger, the gleam of irony again in his eye. ‘Better than that fellow’s fake mystery, eh?’
‘Yes …’ I said, thinking. ‘Is the steam pipe the only thing connecting one car to the next? Except the links, of course.’
‘That’s right.’
‘What about electricity … and water?’
He shook his head. ‘Each car makes its own electricity. Self contained. They have generators under the floors … like dynamos on bicycles … that make electricity from the wheels going round. The problem is that when we’re going slowly, the lights flicker. Then there are batteries for when we’re stopped, but they’d only last for forty-five minutes, eh?, if we weren’t plugged into the ground supply at a station. After that we’re down to emergency lighting, just the aisle lights and not much else for about four hours, then we’re in the dark.’
‘And water?�
�� I asked.
‘It’s in the roof.’
‘Really?’ I said, surprised.
He patiently explained. ‘At city stations, we have water hydrants every eighty-five feet, the length of the cars. One to each car. Also the main electricity, same thing, eh? Anyway, the water goes up under pressure into the tanks in the roof and feeds down again to the washrooms by gravity.’
Fascinating, I thought. And it had made unhitching the Lorrimores’ car a comparatively quick and easy job.
‘The new cars,’ George said, ‘will be heated by electricity, not steam, so we’ll be doing away with the steam pipe, eh? And they’ll have tanks for the sewage, which now drops straight down onto the tracks, of course.’
‘Canada’s railways,’ I said politely, ‘will be the envy of the world.’
He chuckled. ‘The trains between Montreal and Toronto are late three-quarters of the time, and the new engines break down regularly. The old rolling stock, like this train, is great.’
He picked up the headset again. I raised a hand in farewell and went back to the dining room where the real mystery had easily usurped Zak’s, though some were sure it was part of the plot.
Xanthe had cheered up remarkably through being the centre of sympathetic attention, and Filmer was telling Mercer Lorrimore he should sue the railway company for millions of dollars for negligence. The near-disaster had galvanised the general consciousness to a higher adrenaline level, probably because Xanthe had not, in fact, been carried off like Angelica.
Nell was sitting at a table with a fortyish couple who she later told me owned one of the horses in the box-car, a dark bay called Redi-Hot. The man beckoned to me as I stood around vaguely, and asked me to fetch cognac for him, vodka with ice for his wife and … what for Nell?
‘Just coke, please,’ she said.
I went to the kitchen where I knew the coke was, but made frantic question mark signals to Nell about the rest. Emil, the chefs, Oliver and Cathy had finished cleaning up and had all gone off duty. I had no alcohol divining rod to bend a twig in the direction of brandy or Smirnoff.
Nell said something to the owners and came to join me, stifling laughter.
‘Yes, very funny,’ I said, ‘but what the hell do I do?’
‘Take one of the small trays and get the drinks from the bar. I’ll explain they have to pay for them.’
‘I haven’t seen you for five minutes alone today,’ I complained.
‘You’re downstairs, I’m up.’
‘I could easily hate you.’
‘But do you?’
‘Not yet,’ I said.
‘If you’re a good little waiter, I’ll leave you a tip.’
She went back to her place with a complacent bounce to her step, and with a curse, but not meaning it, I took the coke and a glass to her table and went on into the dome car for the rest. After I’d returned and delivered the order someone else asked for the same service, which I willingly performed again, and yet again.
On each trip I overheard snatches of the bar room conversations and could hear the louder buzz of continuing upheaval along in the lounge, and I thought that after I’d satisfied everyone in the dining room I might drift along to the far end with my disarming little tray.
The only person not wholly in sympathy with this plan was the bartender who complained that I was supposed to be off duty and that the passengers should come to the bar to buy the drinks themselves; I was syphoning off his tips. I saw the justice of that and offered to split fifty fifty. He knew very well that, without my running to and fro, the passengers mostly wouldn’t be bothered to move to drink, so he accepted fast, no doubt considering me a mug as well as an actor.
Sheridan Lorrimore, who was sitting at a table apart from his parents, demanded I bring him a double scotch at once. He had a carrying voice, and his sister from two tables away turned round in disapproval.
‘No, no, you’re not supposed to,’ she said.
‘Mind your own business.’ He turned his head slightly towards me and spoke in the direction of my tie. ‘Double scotch, at the double.’
‘Don’t get it,’ Xanthe said.
I stood irresolute.
Sheridan stood up, his ready anger rising. He put out a hand and pushed my shoulder fiercely.
‘Go on,’ he said. ‘Damn well do as I say. Go and get my drink.’
He pushed again quite hard and as I turned away I heard him snigger and say, ‘You have to kick ’em, you know.’
I went into the dome car and stood behind the bar with the bartender, and felt furious with Sheridan, not for his outrageous behaviour but because he was getting me noticed. Filmer had been sitting with his back to me, it was true, but near enough to overhear.
Mercer Lorrimore appeared tentatively in the bar doorway and came in when he saw me.
‘I apologise for my son,’ he said wearily, and I had a convincing impression that he’d apologised countless times before. He pulled out his wallet, removed a twenty dollar note from it and offered me the money.
‘Please don’t,’ I said. ‘There’s no need.’
‘Yes, yes. Take it.’
I saw he would feel better if I did, as if paying money would somehow excuse the act. I thought he should stop trying to buy pardons for his son and pay for mental treatment instead. But then, perhaps he had. There was more wrong with Sheridan than ill-temper, and it had been obvious to his father for a long time.
I didn’t approve of what he was doing, but if I refused his money I would be more and more visible, so I took it, and when he had gone off in relief back towards the dining car I gave it to the barman.
‘What was that all about?’ he asked curiously, pocketing the note without hesitation. When I explained, he said, ‘You should have kept the money. You should have charged him triple.’
‘He would have felt three times as virtuous,’ I said, and the barman looked at me blankly.
I didn’t go back to the dining car but forward into the lounge, where again the sight of my yellow waistcoat stirred a few thirsts, which I did my best to accommodate. The barman was by now mellow and helpful and said we were rapidly running out of the ice that had come aboard in bags in Sudbury.
Up in the dome, the uncoupling of the private car had given way to speculation about whether the northern lights would oblige: the weather was right, apparently. I took a few drinks up there (including some for Zak and Donna, which amused them), and on my way down the stairs saw the backs of Mercer and Bambi, Filmer and Daffodil, as they walked through the lounge towards the door to the private car. Mercer stood aside to let Bambi lead the other two through the short noisy joining section, and then, before going himself, he looked back, saw me and beckoned.
‘Bring a bowl of ice, will you?’ he said when I reached him. ‘To the saloon.’
‘Yes, sir,’ I said.
He nodded and departed, and I relayed the request to the barman who shook his head and said he was down to six cubes. I knew there were other bags of cubes in the kitchen refrigerator, so, feeling that I had been walking the train for a lifetime, I went along through the dining room to fetch some.
There weren’t many people still in there, though Xanthe was still being comforted and listened to by Mrs Young. Nell sat opposite Sheridan Lorrimore who seemed to be telling her that he had wrapped his Lamborgini round a tree recently and had ordered a new one.
‘Tree?’ Nell said, smiling.
He looked at her uncomprehendingly. Sheridan wasn’t a great one for jokes. I fetched a bag of ice and a bowl from the kitchen, swayed back to the bar and in due course took the bowl of ice (on a tray) to the saloon.
The four of them were sitting in armchairs, Bambi talking to Daffodil, Mercer to Filmer.
Mercer said to me, ‘You’ll find glasses and cognac in the cupboard in the dining room. And Benedictine. Bring them along here, will you?’
‘Yes, sir.’
Filmer paid me no attention. In the neat dining room, the cupboards had glas
s fronts with pale green curtains inside them. In one I found the bottles and glasses as described, and took them aft.
Filmer was saying, ‘Will Voting Right go on to the Breeders’ Cup if he wins at Winnipeg?’
‘He’s not running at Winnipeg,’ Mercer said. ‘He runs at Vancouver.’
‘Yes, I meant Vancouver.’
Daffodil with enthusiasm was telling a cool Bambi that she should try some face cream or other that helped with wrinkles.
‘Just leave everything,’ Mercer said to me. ‘We’ll pour.’
‘Yes, sir,’ I said, and retreated as he began the ultimate heresy of sloshing Remy Martin’s finest onto rocks.
Mercer would know me everywhere on the train, I thought, but none of the other three would. I hadn’t met Filmer’s eyes all day; had been careful not to; and it seemed to me that his attention had been exclusively focused upon what he had now achieved, a visiting-terms acquaintanceship with Mercer Lorrimore.
There was now loud music in the lounge, with two couples trying to dance and falling over with giggles from the perpetual motion of the dance-floor. Up in the dome, aurora borealis was doing its flickering fiery best on the horizon, and in the bar there was a group playing poker in serious silent concentration. Playing for thousands, the barman said.
Between the bar and the dining room there were three bedrooms, and in one of those, with the door open, was a sleeping car attendant, dressed exactly like myself.
‘Hello,’ he said, as I paused in the doorway. ‘Come to help?’
‘Sure,’ I said. ‘What do I do?’
‘You’re the actor, aren’t you?’ he asked.
‘It’s hush hush.’
He nodded. ‘I won’t say a word.’
He was of about my own age, perhaps a bit older, pleasant looking and cheerful. He showed me how to fold up the ingenious mechanism of the daytime armchairs and slide them under a bed which pulled out from the wall. A top bunk was then pulled down from the ceiling, complete with ladder. He straightened the bedclothes and laid a wrapped chocolate truffle on each pillow, a goodnight blessing.