Death Train to Boston

by Dianne Day

  Michael could read her look, and suspected the word she sought was of the sort proper females, young or old, were taught not to utter. It might not even be in her vocabulary.

  But it would be in Fremont’s. Fremont could swear like a sailor when she wanted to, which was not often. She contended she had learned all these words from Michael, although he suspected she’d picked them up at a shockingly young age from sneaking into some room at night to listen to her father and his cronies. Her mother had died young, leaving Fremont to be her father’s hostess—and an often lonely, if unusually privileged, adolescent girl.

  Michael roused himself, deliberately shutting a door in his mind against any thoughts of Fremont except those directly related to this case. For that was how he was beginning to think, the direction his analytical mind was increasingly bent upon. Somehow this was all one case, all related: the harassment of the railroad that J&K had been hired to look into, the explosion of the train they’d been on, everything that had happened since. He just didn’t know quite how it all fit together, and if Fremont’s disappearance was related to all the rest. He continued to think, to hope, she’d been dazed but not seriously hurt, and had wandered away on her own.

  But for now, Meiling deserved his attention. His mind might have wandered for a few seconds, but still he’d heard, even been amused by, what she’d said.

  Careful to keep any trace of that amusement out of his voice, he inquired, ‘‘Shall I help you choose the word you’re looking for? I quite take your meaning, you know. You think I am being—how about difficult? Unreasonable? Stubborn?’’

  ‘‘Like the head of a pig,’’ she said, ‘‘or the donkey of a horse.’’

  ‘‘I think you mean a horse’s ass.’’

  ‘‘Yes, that is it. A horse’s ass.’’

  ‘‘And pigheaded.’’

  ‘‘That also.’’ Meiling bowed from the waist, a mockery of maidenly deference.

  Michael sighed, shaking his head. Women.

  He leaned forward and held one hand out, palm up, on the table in a gesture of concession. ‘‘Obviously we need to talk this through. It’s not the club car that has you out of sorts, it’s me. And I have to tell you, Meiling, I’m a little out of sorts with you too. So we’ll talk, and then you’ll agree to get off this train.’’

  ‘‘No,’’ she said, eyes flashing, ‘‘I do not think so. I do not think that would be wise at all, and if you were not being the donkey of a horse you would see it for yourself, Michael Kossoff!’’

  ‘‘Very well. Explain yourself. I’ll listen.’’ Michael leaned back and folded his arms over his chest, sling and all.

  ‘‘I could have been a help to you earlier. I am quick, nimble, and can defend myself. I am skilled in jujitsu, as I’m sure you know. If we had both gone into the corridor together, I might have pursued the man and brought him down while you did whatever it was you were doing outside my door. You wasted time. He got away.’’

  He had to admit she could be right; in such a situation, seconds did count. But he wasn’t ready to admit it yet, if ever. Nor did he want to believe Meiling’s jujitsu could bring down a man as big and tall as the one he’d been chasing.

  He took a different tack: ‘‘I wasn’t wasting time, Meiling. I was checking around the door for explosives. I was remembering, I suppose, how the train Fremont and I were on was blown up. Not only that, but the very cars in which we had our compartments appeared to have been targeted. I mean, those were the cars that ended up at the bottom of the gorge. That could have been coincidence. Must have been coincidence. And yet—’’

  Meiling remained quiet, calm, watchful.

  ‘‘And yet,’’ Michael said, ‘‘I had the oddest feeling it might be about to happen again. . . .’’

  ‘‘Odd feelings are important,’’ Meiling said, leaning forward, instantly interested, animated. ‘‘Tell me more about this.’’

  But Michael was reluctant. Surely nothing so irrational could be worth his consideration, or hers. Yet, irrational or not, these feelings and accompanying thoughts persisted—and since this most recent incident, they had indeed increased manyfold.

  He took a piece of cinnamon toast, tore it in two, put half in his mouth, and began to chew. It was good, but he only distantly registered its spicy-sweet taste. At last Michael said, ‘‘I’ve had a feeling, ever since the explosion, that Fremont and I were specific targets. But that’s ridiculous. Nobody would blow up a whole train just on the uncertain chance that the two of us, out of two or three hundred passengers, could be hurt or killed.’’

  Now Michael too leaned forward. He kept his voice intentionally low: ‘‘Besides, the explosive was not on the train, it was affixed to the trestle that supported the tracks over the gorge. This was confirmed by burn marks on what was left of the trestle’s wooden timbers. A part of the detonating mechanism was also found. As I’d thought might be the case, it had a timer, which was tripped when the engine passed over it on the track. A certain pre-set interval passed, during which the fuse was burning down, and then . . . boom.’’

  Meiling blinked, even though he’d only whispered the word.

  Michael paused, stunned by his memories, his eyes suddenly staring at a place only he could see.

  Meiling said, ‘‘Yes, boom, and Fremont lies at the bottom of this gorge. Hurt, but alive. And now she is missing. We will find her. Let us not lose sight of this most important fact.’’

  Now in her turn Meiling paused, to let what she had just said sink into Michael’s distracted brain. Then she urged, ‘‘You are not finished, there is more. Tell me.’’

  ‘‘Very well, but eat some of this damn toast. We must at least give the appearance of having breakfast together.’’

  She took a piece of toast and tore it into small pieces, some of which were destined to disappear on her tongue; others ended as decoration around the rim of her saucer. Her attention was rapt, as Michael found himself slowly but surely opening up to her.

  He told Meiling things he’d thought he had to keep to himself. For example, his nagging conviction that someone was conducting a vendetta not just against the railroad but also against the J&K Agency—even though this made no sense, because they had not been in business long enough to have made any enemies.

  Thinking aloud, he admitted that as individuals, independent of the detective agency, he and Wish Stephenson might have old enemies. Certain shady persons who could want revenge for something he or Wish had done earlier in their respective lives, his in the spy world and Wish’s with the San Francisco Police Department.

  Not Fremont, though. All of Fremont’s enemies were in jail; she had a tidy way of catching them and turning them in. Didn’t Meiling agree this was so?

  Meiling inclined her head, not quite a nod of agreement, just recognition of what he’d said, and silent encouragement to continue.

  Michael sighed; his life was neither so simple nor so tidy, never. He had years of loose ends that he despaired of ever being able to tie up—but that he did not tell Meiling. Instead, having opened certain floodgates, he went on.

  He told her about the dream he’d had repeatedly since the blowup, a dream in which he saw Fremont in a small room, a confined space like a prison cell yet not quite that, with chains on her legs.

  Telling the dream unmanned him. Michael had to turn his head away, to cover his eyes with his hand until the tears stopped, and then to unobtrusively wipe them away.

  Meiling remained silent, giving him time to recover, for which he was grateful. The pair who had been dining at the far end of the car left their table, chairs scraping on the polished floor, and walked past in the aisle. The lone male diner had long since gone; Michael automatically noted that with the departure of the couple, he and Meiling would be alone in the dining car. Except, of course, for the stewards, who presumably stood unobtrusively nearby.

  The female of the departing pair was a large woman; her dress brushed against the tablecloth, threatening to upset the s
ilver coffeepot, but Meiling reached out a stabilizing hand. In the woman’s wake trailed a stink of strong perfume. Heavily exotic, a scent meant for nights in some Turkish bazaar, not daytime hours in polite society, it swarmed up Michael’s nostrils and produced a jolt, like ammonia to one who has fainted.

  Thus jolted back to the business at hand, Michael at last told Meiling the most irrational, yet oddly most important thing of all: the sudden mind-picture, almost a vision, that had come over him when his hand touched the handle of her compartment door an hour earlier. It was this vision that had caused him to hesitate, and then to take the time to examine the walls and floor in a search for explosives.

  ‘‘What, exactly, did you see in this mind-picture?’’ Meiling inquired urgently. ‘‘Tell me while it is still fresh in your memory.’’

  ‘‘I saw a man planting slender sticks of dynamite along the seam where the wall meets the floor outside a train compartment, also taping and laying a length of fuse. I only saw it for an instant, not long enough to recognize the man, but I had the impression he was large—and it is true the man I followed to the next train car was also a large fellow. But there were no explosives outside your door.’’

  Michael rubbed his chin thoughtfully, then ended with a rueful admission: ‘‘Now that some time has passed, and I hear myself tell it aloud, I’m inclined to think my so-called vision was probably no more than the product of a heated imagination.’’

  ‘‘Do not be so sure. You are very close to Fremont in spirit. It may be that she saw this man, but because of her injury she cannot remember it. You can see him— you are seeing him for her—because your mind and hers are linked, just as your bodies have so often been linked. In that way you and Fremont are one.’’

  ‘‘Meiling—’’ Michael felt he should protest this reference to his and Fremont’s most private business, but he did not quite know how to do it, and so ended by saying nothing more than her name.

  Meiling shrugged. ‘‘The two of you are together, you are—how do you say it?—a couple. Married or not.’’

  She nailed him with a direct gaze, almost blinding in its honesty and forcefulness. ‘‘Do you think I do not know these things? Do you think I don’t know what people do even if I have never done it myself? Stop being silly. You continue to think of me as a child; that is your problem, and you are going to have to stop it, do you hear?’’

  Michael’s mouth fell open, but words failed to come out.

  And in that moment, Hilliard Ramsey strolled by. He slowed as he passed their table and tipped his brown fedora, which he wore with a dandified suit of light brown fabric criss-crossed with threads of dark green and red.

  ‘‘Good morning, Miss Li,’’ said Ramsey. ‘‘Don’t get up, Kossoff. I’m just passing through.’’

  Neither Michael nor Meiling spoke; nor, apparently, had Ramsey expected it, because he didn’t stop but simply strolled on.

  Suddenly acutely aware of their being alone in the dining car, Michael let the fingers of his good hand stray toward his belt, where he’d stashed the revolver for quick access. But Ramsey kept on moving, his back presenting a rather tempting target.

  Only when his old nemesis had left the car by the far exit did Michael silently wonder how the hell Ramsey had known Meiling’s name.

  It is not as easy as it looks, walking on crutches. But I was fiercely determined, all the more so because although Dr. Arnold Striker had given me the crutches and taught me how to use them, the last thing he had said before leaving was that he would not be notifying my husband of my whereabouts, or even of my survival. To say that I was put out by this would be a considerable understatement.

  Striker was a good doctor, even a kind one, as long as he played the role of healer; but as a plain human being he turned out to be as rigid and severe as my first impression had suggested. Never before had I been so sorry to have an initial opinion proven right.

  He had told me goodbye, and his hand was already on the doorknob, when he turned back. ‘‘Oh, Carrie,’’ he’d said—this had happened five days ago now—‘‘I think you’ll want to know I won’t be sending that telegram to your husband.’’

  I wasn’t greatly surprised, but one always hopes until hope has died, and sometimes even beyond that.

  ‘‘I had a considerable struggle with my conscience over this,’’ he added in a self-righteous tone, ‘‘believe me.’’

  ‘‘Oh, I believe you,’’ I conceded, ‘‘but perhaps you’ll enlighten me as to the details of your struggle.’’

  I wondered if it was too late to dissuade him, if I might yet persuade him to change his mind.

  Striker folded his hands and faced me straight on, his features set in the gravest of lines. He declared, ‘‘We Mormons believe in the Angels of the Lord, you know.’’

  I nodded, keeping my face as serious as his, and said, ‘‘Yes, I know.’’

  There is no accounting for some of the things people believe. I myself am halfway inclined to believe in God from time to time, but to believe in winged creatures of no particular gender? Semidivine beings, usually invisible, except that rather regularly during the Renaissance one assumes they must have come down from heaven to pose for numerous religious paintings? Hah! As for the one most famous around these parts, the Angel Moroni, double hah. And Pratt’s angel? I would not waste even a hah on that one.

  When Dr. Striker did not continue, I inquired, ‘‘So your point is?’’

  ‘‘So while I am not a member of Melancthon Pratt’s community, I do respect his beliefs and his right to have them, including his belief in the angel that appears to him from time to time. I am willing to accept that his angel led Father Pratt to you, that this was a miracle, and that all will work to your own good as well as to the good of the whole Pratt family. Therefore I have decided not to notify Mr. Jones.’’

  I nodded again. I was doing my best to be civil. ‘‘Mr. Leonard Pembroke Jones,’’ I intoned, because my father’s name—which Striker believed to be the name of my husband—did have a calming effect on me. My father’s name also gave me courage, along with a very great determination to get out of this situation so that I could complete my journey to Boston—a journey I had undertaken not only as a job for the J&K Agency, but also because at the end of it I had expected to see my father again.

  Resolutely I pushed to the back of my mind the nagging fear that now I might never make it in time, that when at last I got there I might be too late.

  ‘‘I recall the name, Carrie,’’ Striker was saying, ‘‘but better you should forget. It is of no further consequence now.’’

  I could have struck him for that, be his own name Striker or not, and very likely I might have if I hadn’t needed both hands on my crutches in order to keep my balance. My feet could not yet bear my weight for more than a minute, not even two.

  So I had simply stood there and listened to him build his argument, brick by verbal brick—and with each one my own determination to get away quickly grew and grew.

  ‘‘Surely you see,’’ he argued, ‘‘that you are better off here with a fine family who all care about you than with a man who cares so little that he allows you to travel around the country alone!’’

  ‘‘That man is legally my husband,’’ I lied, maintaining the ruse. My jaw ached from controlling my tongue, which longed to lash at him while my body could not.

  ‘‘Sometimes it is necessary to put aside a set of laws, if in doing so you accomplish a greater good. Pratt will marry you in the Temple, Carrie, once you have converted. This good, generous man will save your soul by marrying you. You will join The Elect for all eternity. And you will prosper here on Earth as well.’’

  ‘‘I see you did indeed think it all out,’’ I said, biting off the words.

  There had been nothing more to say. To my great relief, Dr. Striker also considered the matter closed, and had taken his leave.

  In the five days that had since passed, I’d realized I could not find fault with
Striker’s logic, given that he could operate only out of his own set of peculiar beliefs. If there was any one single thing I both admired and detested about the Mormons, it was this: They were always so very sure of themselves, no matter what the subject or the situation.

  I gripped the crutches under my arms firmly, pushed down hard on the crossbar, and went swinging across the floor of my room. Back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. Sweat beaded my brow and my underarms ached, but I was getting stronger.

  If my Mormon so-called family were sure of themselves, well, so was I. I was leaving, and soon, with or without Norma’s help.

  Today, for the first time, I intended to go outside.

  13

  MY HEART was pounding, not from exertion but with excitement, as I carefully let just enough of my weight down to allow myself to grasp and tug the doorlatch. Then I swung myself out of the way on my crutches and let the door fall inward of its own accord, as I’d seen it do many times.

  ‘‘Open sesame,’’ I said softly, for this seemed to me such a momentous occasion that some incantation was required. Then I took a deep, fortifying breath and peered out. I was only partially prepared for what I saw.

  The sisters, Sarah and Tabitha, had told me some weeks earlier—I wasn’t sure how many, as I never saw a calendar or a newspaper and had given up trying to keep an accurate count—that the Pratt household consisted of a main house plus a sleeping cabin for each wife, plus this guest cabin I occupied. I had spent many of my idle hours trying to figure out how this arrangement was laid out. Trying without success and with considerable frustration.

  Now I understood what my problem had been: The guest cabin, my domain, stood at a considerable remove from the others, whose roofs I could see some distance away. The distance was dismaying, in fact, because everything I would ultimately need for my getaway was over there. All the way over there.

  ‘‘Look on the bright side, Fremont,’’ I muttered aloud. At least I was outside again, under the wide open sky!