Well, we had a newly made stiff on our hands. A very unexpected carcass as it was. And we were three people in Compartment B of the Mainliner heading for Chicago. And all three of us reacted differently because we were three different people who had had three distinctly different lives.
Opal Trace screamed because she was a woman and the conductor’s body toppling face down to the floor was the mouse that ran out from under the bed. But because she was Opal Trace, she shut up just as fast and simply sat down and stared dully at the body stretched lengthwise into the compartment.
Big Harry cursed loudly and kept on cursing, his fists doubled up in impotent rage. But I guessed he’d seen stiffs before because he hastily closed the compartment door and put his big back to it with his gun still leveled on my third button.
Me–I’m still a detective. And stiffs are no strangers in my profession. I acted accordingly too. I crouched by the fallen conductor and checked his pulse. He was dead all right. He was face to the floor with his arms limp along his sides. The knife had gone all the way in. It didn’t take much Sherlocking to figure that only someone as strong as Spider looked could have managed such a muscular performance. The handle of the apple peeler was bone and iron studs. Like a hunting knife you can pick up in any Army and Navy store. And there was a large scrap of white paper that the knife had poked in the middle of the conductor’s back.
Harry let me investigate the body without a word of reproach. He just stood rooted against the door staring down at the corpse and me, still cursing. Finally, he ran out of curses and sputtered under his breath. I could hear Opal Trace weeping.
“Knock it off,” I said. “The pair of you. We got a stiff on our hands and unless he was somebody’s relative, crying won’t help. Or cursing, either. Somebody’s bound to miss this guy sooner or later.”
That made Opal Trace mad somehow. What sounded like my callous soul got under her skin. She stopped weeping and glared at me.
“You’re the guy who’s practicing to be a policeman. Any ideas?”
I smiled at her. A thin smile.
“I’m doing fine. This man has been murdered. With a knife. A Five And Dime Store type of knife. And he’s got blood all over his uniform. His, I imagine.”
“Excellent,” Harry boomed from his position by the door. “The Police Laboratory could not have exceeded your diagnosis. Now one small detail. Why was he killed?”
“That’s easy,” I said. “Why don’t you let me read the note that’s sticking under the murder weapon?”
Harry’s eyes bulged. Dead men didn’t scare him. But notes obviously did.
“Note? he rumbled. “What note?”
I reached down and slipped the white paper wadded under the knife hilt into view. “This one,” I said. “It’s got Opal Trace’s name on it.”
He waved his free fat hand as Opal stirred. “Read it.” His voice was thick and unwieldy again.
I fanned the bloody paper open. Just a 5 × 8 scrap of white with a hastily scrawled message on it. But the handwriting was neat and scholarly. The lines were irregular and not exactly standard:
Opal
“Too many men I know, are degraded by their sympathies; their native aim being high enough but their relations all too tender to the gross people around them.”
Emerson’s Societies And Solitudes
P.S. The Club Car. You have twenty minutes precisely.
I read it aloud, then passed it over to Harry. He scanned it, made a face and balled it up savagely before he thrust it in his pocket.
“The devil! He has the effrontery to link his name with that of Ralph Waldo Emerson. Blast him …!”
Opal Trace shuddered. “How awful–they’ll do anything–they’re two terrible people. Not human.”
“Great way to send a message,” I suggested. “Beats singing telegrams every time.” I looked at Harry. “Well, you’ve got the gun, Harry. It’s your move. Do we go to the Club Car or don’t we?”
Harry wasn’t listening to me. His fat head was rotating slowly with bewilderment.
“To kill a man just to re-inforce a threat? It’s absurd. It doesn’t make sense. The man must have known something, suspected them.”
I interrupted him.
“I want to know what you’re going to do next, Harry. Keeping this corpse company isn’t going to do us any good if somebody stumbles in on us. I don’t know anything about anything yet. So start making some suggestions.”
Harry regarded me soberly, then looked at Opal Trace.
“Miss Trace–your friend here–you told him nothing? That is hard to believe, my dear.”
She was tired. Tired, confused and upset. Her evening drunk had worn off long ago and maybe the dope had too. Her wonderful eyes had dark shadows under them.
“It’s the truth. I was running out on Dean and Spider. Running out on everything. I met Ed in a bar. He said he’d help me to the train. He was nice. I let him help me. I didn’t tell him anything because I didn’t want him to get hurt.” She looked at me now. “Now, I don’t know that …”
“That’s the scoop, Harry. She’s giving it to you straight. Why don’t you put that toy away? Maybe we can present an armed front when we see Spider and Dean.”
He showed me his teeth. They were small and white and even.
“Pray use Basic English, Mr. Noon.”
I grinned. “Okay, I will. We seem to have a common enemy. The Misters in the funny hats. Let’s throw in together. I’m a private detective. Complete with license and .45. I could be a big help. As long as it isn’t illegal.”
I was now a funny man. The funniest man alive. Because Harry threw back his head and laughed. Laughed like an elephant with a sense of humor. His big voice rolled around the compartment, bombarding the walls and windows. His laughter was loud enough to wake the corpse.
Then he got hold of himself. His eyes had nearly filled with tears. He mopped at his face, shook himself and gazed at me almost fondly.
“Illegal?” he rumbled. “The police of four nations want me, there’s a ten thousand dollar bounty on my head and you wish to know if I have anything to do with illegality? Mr. Noon, I revise my opinion of you. You are funny, indeed.”
“He’s a smart operator, Harry,” Opal Trace said meekly, rising to my ragged defence.
“As you are smart, my dear,” he responded gallantly. “But you do not delude me. The Violent Virgin is on the train. Dean and Spider are on the train. The facts are conclusive. With you three individuals in evidence, the Blue Green must be about too. Yes, definitely. I don’t know why you have split with them but that remains to be seen. No, I will make deals with no one. Neither you nor your detective ally. I hold you as hostage in our parley with Spider and Dean. We will see what develops. But I will share the Blue Green with no one. I make that definite right now to avoid further bargaining time. Do I make myself clear? I will have it no other way.”
Opal’s black hair reflected tiny glints from the overhead lights as she stared down at the corpse again. “You’re making a mistake, Harry. You can’t buck Spider and Dean by yourself.”
I was getting dizzy from listening to them both.
“As long as you’re both intent on boring me to death, will somebody please tell me what the hell is going on? This Violent-Virgin-Blue Green chatter is driving me cuckoo.”
Harry sneered. “You, sir, are a latent paranoiac.”
“Better latent than never I always say. What do you always say?” I was feeling mean myself now.
Harry frowned at me. “Come, Mr. Noon. You really don’t know–you’ve never heard of The Violent Virgin? Or The Blue Green? It really speaks ill of your conversance with the finer things in life.”
“I’ll bet. But I’m a bum like you must have figured. I read comic books and have never been able to walk by a burlesque house without going in. So I’m a low brow. So tell me–what’s in this big crate in the baggage car?”
His whole attitude changed subtly. His face took on that ded
icated look that inventors and school teachers must get when they first see the light. Or maybe Da Vinci’s double-take at his first large chunk of the world’s mystery and beauty.
“Very well, Mr. Noon. I shall tell you, since you persist in your protestation of ignorance. There is a large crate in the baggage car. It contains a six foot statue of a woman known to the world of sculpture and fine arts as The Violent Virgin. It is the finest work of female form extant in our time. The beauty of a woman completely devoid of clothing and civilization. The Violent Virgin. Fresh, vibrant, unsullied. Defending her chastity in the face of a cold, ugly world. In short, Mr. Noon …” His eyes glowed like two burning embers of coal. “–The Number One Nude!”
He had barely gotten the last word out with a ringing, fervent voice when the Mainliner’s horn blasted again and I leaned against the light switch throwing the compartment into blinding, startling darkness.
Darkness like a bat’s gullet in Carlsbad Caverns.
CHAPTER FIVE
I wondered if I had pegged Harry right as I flung myself toward where he had been standing.
I’d only known him about twenty-five minutes and I’d had only twenty-five minutes of his personality to clue me as to what he’d do in a situation like that. I’d come up with a couple of conclusions. One of them was that he was a scholar of sorts. Another, that he was tough for all his fatness. But the third and most important conclusion was that he really didn’t want to kill anybody. I couldn’t be positive, of course. You can’t be that positive about something that can get you killed.
But I was right. He didn’t fire blindly. Just yelled something of a warning and tried to dodge out of my way. He didn’t have a chance. I found him in the dark because he was so big and the compartment was so small.
He grunted an oath as my fingers closed around his gun hand. I could smell Opal Trace’s fresh rainwater smell mixed in with the hot, fatman’s odor of Harry. I could feel Opal huddling against her seat in the darkness and the train rushing on through the night.
I moved fast and rocketed my right fist into Harry’s enormous bread basket. Air whooshed out of him. But he didn’t sag. I closed with him and twisted his gun hand until it was no longer interested in being a gun hand. He screamed and the gun thudded to the padded flooring.
I didn’t waste the advantage. I hammered him against the compartment wall so he couldn’t get away in the darkness. He squirmed and wrenched at my arms feebly. I measured just about where his fat chin would be and let my right fist find it. A short, savage blow. But it did the trick. He sagged in my arms and I stepped back letting him sink to the floor.
Breathing hard, I found the light switch again, thumbed it on. The compartment flooded with illumination.
On her cushioned seat, Opal Trace blinked at me. Harry’s beefy bulk was in a sitting position by the door, his outthrust legs braked by the dead body of the conductor. His rakish bowler was side-saddle on his skull and his eyes were closed like he was sleeping. He looked as funny as a statue of Buddha that some tourist had unceremoniously slipped a derby on. But I didn’t have a laugh left in me. I scooped up his automatic and placed it in Opal Trace’s fingers.
“If you know how to use that, hang on to it. If you don’t, tell me now and I’ll keep it. But I think you’re going to need it.”
She shook her lovely head. “I know how to use it. But I can’t take much more of this. So many things are happening so fast …”
“Simmer down, Opal. Don’t boil over now. We’re holding high cards.” I looked around. “Where’s your luggage?”
She looked surprised. “I guess they put it in the closet for me. Why?”
“I want all the belts and straps you can dig up. Go look, Chop-chop. I want to put Harry on ice before we go see your cute friends in the Club Car.”
Her eyes widened. “Ed, you’re crazy. You can’t see Spider and Dean. They’ll kill you …”
“I don’t want to disagree with a lady but they obviously want to talk to us first. Remember–you’ve got what they want.” I looked her right in the unforgettable eyes. “Haven’t you?”
She lowered her head. “I told Harry the truth. I haven’t got anything.”
I grinned at her. “Then who put the crate in the baggage car for shipment to Chicago? It certainly wasn’t Harry and it certainly wasn’t me. And Spider and Dean wouldn’t be bothering everybody if they had something to do with it, would they? Or would they?” I sighed, not waiting for an answer. “Skip it. Get some belts. We can talk about it later.”
She didn’t want to talk about it anyway. She went to the closet, pulled a mirrored door back and disappeared for a minute. I could hear her rummaging like a woman doing spring cleaning. I checked Harry again to make sure he was still pounding his ear. He was. I dropped on one of the seats and inched one of the window shades up.
The night was dark and fierce. But we had raced ahead of the stormy weather. I saw trees, hills and a random private home lightning up the wilderness. I lamped my watch. It was nine thirty already and no more New York or big cities. The Mainliner was making good time.
Opal Trace re-appeared with a handful of fashionable woman’s belts. Patent leather, suede, and cloth. I was glad she was the one piece dress type with belt to match. She had shed her transparent raincoat so that I had a good look at her figure for the first time. It was better than good–her figure. Her hips were beautifully arched and her breasts were like proud flags waving triumphantly. She carried them high and mighty. But her elegant waist was slightly discouraging. She looked like a 22 incher and Harry had to be all of 60. I guess I made a face.
“What’s the matter, Ed?”
I took the belts from her. “Nothing. Belt his feet. I’ll do his wrists. It’s the best we can do–you being such a sylphlike senorita.”
She liked that. A nice smile warmed her white face. But she got down to business. We belted Harry out in five minutes. He didn’t stir once. I forced his mouth open, borrowed the bit of orange scarf at Opal’s throat and wadded the gag between his teeth. It made him look like a fat pig with an apple in its mouth.
“That ought to hold him.” I started for the door. “Come on. Spider and Dean must be getting pretty impatient.”
Opal nodded and thrust Harry’s automatic in her blue calf bag and tucked it under her arm. Her face was flushed and her breathing was irregular. But she looked great otherwise. Like most girls would like to look.
“Think you can make it all right?” I asked. “Or do you need a shot of the white stuff?”
I hadn’t mentioned dope to her once since the time in the bar. Now it must have sounded like a dirty crack. Because the red mounted in her face and her lush lips drew back in a tight snarl.
“Funny man,” she rasped. “No–I don’t need any of the junk. I don’t have any of it anyway. I’ll be okay. Just watch me.”
I took her arm. “Good girl. Come on with Poppa and don’t be surprised at anything I say or do.”
Her snarl went away. “You can take care of yourself, can’t you? It must be a wonderful feeling to know that you can take care of yourself. Without having to depend on people and things like that. Like junk.”
“It is, Opal. And it’s not as hard as you think. Want me to try and teach you how?”
Her fingernails dug into my coatsleeve. Her voice was almost eager now. “Would you, Ed? Would you?”
“Would and could, M’am. Can and will. Watch me.” I took her face in my hands and kissed. Slow, gentle and nice. Before it could get any warmer and while she was still saying, “Oh …”, I led her out into the corridor and carefully turned out the lights and locked the door.
The corridor was long, narrow but brown and pleasant like the compartment. We went down it toward the club car which I imagined was at the rear of the train. Where they usually are. A ceiling fixture glowed up ahead. Just beyond it, a glass partitioned door gleamed with more light. I saw passengers. Other passengers. And more light. Opal leaned against me easily as the Main
liner swept smoothly around a horseshoe curve.
We didn’t meet anyone until we were halfway down the passageway.
A lovely, thirtyish redhead came bowling angrily along with two things in tow. A beleaguered-looking train official in the blue uniform of the line. And a long, sorrowful-looking, richly brown dachshund padding along on his stubby little legs behind them, alternately trying to run ahead of his leash and catch his mistress’ eye. He wasn’t making much headway in either department.
There was no doubt about who owned the dog because, as we made room for them to pass, parts of their conversation continued without a break in tempo.
“–most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard! Schnapps can’t ride up front with me–why he’s better behaved than most people I know …”
The train official was having a hard time.
“It’s rules and regulations, Miss Kelly. All animals must ride in the baggage car. I’ll take your word that he’s a well-behaved dog but the rules of the railroad specify …”
“Rules, scmules,” the redhead snapped. As she squeezed by me, our eyes met. She was a stunner, amply and curvily stacked with a high-held head. She flashed me an intriguing smile and returned to her grievance in less time than it takes to push a button. “It strikes me that a well-trained animal is just as good or better than …”
“Please, Miss Kelly. I’ve got my job and Mr. Duffy is the man to talk to …”
The rest of it was muffled and lost as they swept on by us. The redhead was flouncing, the train official was wearily wheedling and Schnapps was mournfully scrabbling behind them on his four stub legs. He looked back once at Opal Trace and yipped excitedly three times. As if he recognized her. Then the three scene stealers were gone.
Opal Trace laughed. A nice, musical laugh. Some of the vitamins that had been missing in her voice had come back.
“And I think I have troubles. Poor Schnapps has to ride in the baggage car.”
I laughed too. “Frankly, I was thinking about the redhead. If I could sit in that lap, I think I could stand being a dachshund.”
The Case of the Violent Virgin Page 4
