Railroad

by Graham Masterton

  ‘Will it take long?’ she asked, and she was really anxious now.

  ‘I hope not. But you can do me a great service by staying calm, and not mentioning my whereabouts to anybody, and waiting at the International until I come home.’

  ‘Are you going to be late?’

  He swallowed and raised his glass of wine. ‘I may be. But don’t fret. There’s no danger, and if everything goes well, we should be several thousand dollars richer by the time we return to Sacramento.’

  She raised her glass in a discreet toast. ‘I wish I could kiss you,’ she said.

  He raised his glass in return. ‘I wish I could make love to you,’ he whispered, and he enjoyed her sudden blushing as much as the wine.

  He arrived at W. L. Winn’s at ten minutes of three. The gilt-lettered windows were steamed up because of the wet weather, and it was difficult to see inside. He paused under the front awning, took down his umbrella, and shook it vigorously. The doorman watched him from the shelter of the entrance, like a gopher in a dry burrow, and made no move at all to come out and assist him. That was one advantage of the rain, thought Collis. The real doorman was far less likely to come out and collide with the fake doorman, and cause unnecessary scuffles.

  Collis had already walked past the fish-crate wagon, which was waiting around the corner. Its two six-year-old oxen were dripping with rain, and its Chilean driver was hunched under a wet sack. Collis had to admit that Andy Hunt had done his bit. The fish crates were stacked precariously high, and there were baling hooks and stray pieces of timber sticking out in all directions. There was no chance that Sarah’s carriage would be able to draw to one side of the street to let the wagon go by – not unless the coachman wanted to lose half of his varnish. Collis took out his pocket watch, checked the time, and then stepped inside the fountain.

  It was crowded and bright inside, and chirpy with the talk of young ladies taking tea. There were cream-painted iron pillars and frondy palm trees, and the furniture was elegant wrought iron. Collis stood for a moment in the doorway, looking out over the strawberry ices and the cream cakes and all the fluffy and feathery bonnets, trying to see if Sarah had arrived already. But she hadn’t, of course. She was too well mannered to be punctual. One of the waiters came forward and asked him if he wished to take tea.

  ‘I want a table for two,’ he said, still looking around for Sarah. ‘I’m expecting a young lady guest in a short while.’

  ‘Of course, sir. I have one here at the back, if you’ll follow me.’

  ‘There’s a table free by the window,’ said Collis.

  ‘I’m sorry, sir. Reserved. Now – please come this way.’

  Collis reached out and discreetly seized the waiter’s wrist. He twisted it around, hard, just to make his point, and then he pressed a dollar into the man’s palm and forcibly closed his fingers over it.

  ‘I said, there’s a table free by the window,’ he repeated.

  The waiter winced. ‘Yes, sir. For a moment I didn’t see.’

  Collis sat down, flicked out his coat-tails, and picked up the menu. There was a mahogany clock on the wall behind the cash register, and it already said two minutes of three. Underneath it, the lady cashier was lancing her iron-grey bun with hairpins. Collis inspected the menu quickly, and when the waiter came back, he ordered ‘Coffee, black; and a pastry.’

  ‘Lemon pastry? Or vanilla pastry? Or bilberry pastry? Or –’

  ‘Anything. As long as it’s not stale.’

  ‘All of our pastries are fresh-baked today, sir,’ said the waiter indignantly.

  ‘Just bring it, will you?’

  When the waiter had gone, Collis wiped the steam from the window with his grey morning glove. There was no sign of Sarah Melford’s carriage yet. Nothing but rain and passers-by, and wagons rolling through the mud. He prayed that none of the wet-hooded carriages which were bumping along the street would get themselves bogged down in front of Sarah’s carriage, and prevent her coachman from moving on. He looked at the clock again, and with a hesitant shudder, the minute hand moved to twelve.

  The waiter brought his coffee and a lemon pastry, and banged them down on the table in front of him. He spent a restless minute cutting the pastry with his cake fork, until his plate was strewn with flaky fragments; and then he sat looking at it with no appetite at all. He took two or three sips of hot coffee, but it didn’t seem to taste like anything. He could see the waiter watching him balefully from the opposite side of the fountain, and even though it annoyed him, it was just what he needed. An independent witness who would remember his face.

  The clock shuddered around to five after three. At the next table, two young girls had succumbed to an uncontrollable fit of giggles, and Collis glanced at them in irritation. He finished his coffee and swallowed a gritty mouthful of grounds by mistake. Outside in the street, like undersea divers in a strange dream, shoppers and clerks and messenger boys struggled through the mud and the fierce gusts of rain.

  At eight after three, Collis looked up and the Melford carriage was suddenly there. Dark-blue, its varnish beaded with rain, with Martin the coachman sitting stiffly up front in his waterproof cape and his tall hat. Collis’s heart began to beat at a fast, regular rate, and he quickly wiped the window again so that he could see what was happening.

  The fish-crate wagon – where the hell was the fish-crate wagon? It was time – where was it? Martin was already reining in the horses and tugging at the brake, and Collis could see the mud being scraped from the iron rims of the wheels. He looked towards the fountain entrance to reassure himself that the doorman was still sheltering from the rain, but a large woman in a black cape was obstructing his view. He turned back to the window again.

  At last – there it was. The fish-crate wagon. Grinding its way along the street like Krishna’s Jagannath, an unsteady tumbril of wet crates and broken lumber. Its wheels were almost hub-deep in the mud, and the oxen were dragging it rather than pulling it, but the Chilean driver was standing up on his seat, cracking his whip again and again, and cursing so loudly that Collis could hear him from inside Winn’s, and somehow the wagon was slowly creeping forward.

  Collis saw the door of Sarah’s carriage open, and Sarah herself begin to step down. He saw Martin turn in his seat and wave to the Chilean driver to wait.

  ‘I don’t wait!’ screamed the Chilean. ‘I stop, and I don’t never get moving no more! You shift your ass! You move!’

  Martin said something in reply which Collis couldn’t hear. But the Chilean shook his head fiercely and cracked his whip again, so that his huge disastrous load continued to bear down on the Melford’s brougham at the same relentless pace. Collis was sitting rigidly in his chair his fists clenched in apprehension. Now, for God’s sake. Now!

  With the orchestrated timing of one of those elaborate clockwork toys, everything happened at once. Dan McReady rushed forward from the alley, in his blue doorman’s jacket and his bushy false whiskers, and took Sarah’s hand as if he were claiming first prize in a raffle. Nodding and bowing, he busily assisted her to step down on to the wooden sidewalk, and at the same time jostled his large green Winn’s umbrella around so that Martin found it impossible to see his face.

  Dan smartly slammed the carriage door, whistled a piercing whistle between his teeth, and shouted, ‘Off you go now, driver!’

  Martin hesitated, but the Chilean was screaming at him again, ‘Move out! Move out!’ and so he tipped his hat to Sarah, released his handbrake, and drove the Melford carriage away. Collis caught a momentary glimpse of Sarah standing on the sidewalk under Dan’s umbrella, modestly but elegantly dressed in a grey overcoat, and he could see that she was smiling at the chaos in the street. But then a Chinese laundryman passed in front of Winn’s window, with a bundle of washing on his head, and when Collis looked again she was gone.

  That was all. He didn’t even hear the cab in the alley pull away. He could hardly believe it was over, and he sat back on his wroughtiron chair feeling peculiarl
y deflated. What was worse, he would have to wait here for at least ten minutes more, to make sure that his alibi was conclusive. He called the waiter and ordered another cup of coffee.

  ‘Is that clock correct?’ he asked. ‘My visitor was supposed to be here by three.’

  ‘The correctest clock in the city, sir,’ the waiter said sarcastically.

  Collis drank more coffee, and the minutes passed by so slowly that he felt as if he’d been sitting in Winn’s all day. At last, at twenty past three, the waiter came across and flicked his tablecloth with a napkin. ‘It seems as if your lady friend has been unavoidably detained, doesn’t it, sir?’ he said.

  Collis glared at him. ‘Yes,’ he snapped, with as much self-control as he could muster.

  ‘I don’t mean to offend, sir,’ said the waiter.

  Collis tossed two bits on to the table. ‘I know you don’t mean to,’ he said. ‘The trouble is that you do.’

  He paid for his coffee at the desk, shrugged on his coat, and stepped out into the rainy daylight. At the next corner, he flagged a cab down and asked to be taken to Sacramento Street. He sat back on the wet leather seats, smoking and impatiently watching the raindrops trickle and jerk their way down the window. When they reached the firehouse on Sacramento and Kearny, he rapped on the hood for the driver to stop, and he climbed out. The rain was easing off now, and there was a wash of glittering yellow sunlight on the sidewalks. He was pleased about that, because to complete his alibi he was going to have to walk three blocks to Bush Street, right down to the next firehouse, and hope that he didn’t run into anybody who might recognise him.

  He reached Maria-Mamuska’s house with his shoes spattered in mud. The Chinese girl let him in, took his coat and his umbrella, and gave him a pair of oriental silk slippers in vivid green. Andy Hunt, in a loud brown herring-bone suit, was waiting impatiently for him in the front parlour.

  ‘Well?’ asked Collis. ‘What’s happening?’

  ‘This had better not backfire,’ said Andy. ‘By God, I tell you, Collis, if this backfires –’

  ‘It’s not going to backfire,’ Collis told him sharply. ‘Now, what’s happening? Did she get here all right?’

  ‘Sure. Dan had her blindfolded and everything. We took her upstairs to Maria’s back bedroom and she’s there now.’

  ‘Did she take the opium?’

  Andy nodded. ‘She struggled at first, and wouldn’t drink it. But Maria had the answer. She told her it wasn’t poison, and that if she wouldn’t swallow it, she’d have all her hair cut off. Well, that did the trick. She drank it right down without any more fuss.’

  Collis took out his watch. ‘How long ago was that?’

  ‘Not long. Ten minutes or so.’

  ‘Is Figgis here?’

  ‘Oh, yes. He’s been here since two.’

  Collis thought for a moment, and then said, ‘All right. Let’s go up and take a look.’

  They climbed the narrow, soft-carpeted staircase to the landing. There Andy opened the first door on the right-hand side and led Collis into a small front room, wallpapered in dark purple, with a purple velvet daybed and two plushy purple armchairs. Andy went over to the wall and beckoned Collis to come closer. Then he lifted a small wooden flap on the wall and peered through a spyhole which gave out on to the larger back bedroom where Sarah was being held.

  ‘Let me see,’ said Collis. Andy put his finger to his lips.

  Through the spyhole, Collis could see only part of the room. He could make out the foot of Mr Figgis’s tripod, and a part of Maria-Mamuska’s gown, but for the moment he couldn’t see Sarah at all. Perhaps she was already alseep, and Maria-Mamuska’s maid was undressing her. He turned back to Andy and whispered, ‘I don’t see her. It looks as though the opium’s worked.’

  But Andy was just about to take another peek when a clear, distinctive voice said, ‘I really don’t know why you’re keeping me here. My father will make sure that every one of you is hanged.’

  Andy looked at Collis and made a face. ‘Doesn’t sound as though she’s very sleepy, does it?’

  Collis put his eye to the spyhole again. He saw Sarah this time, as she stalked haughtily across the room with her arms folded. She was still wearing her grey overcoat and her bonnet. Then he saw Dan McReady, flushed and sweating, his false moustache hanging loose from one side of his cheek. Then Sarah appeared again, as awake and as intractable as before.

  ‘You sure Mr Kwang didn’t sell you a pup?’ asked Andy.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Collis. ‘What do I know about opium?’

  ‘Well, if she doesn’t zizz off soon, we’re sunk,’ said Andy. ‘She may take a drink if we threaten to cut her hair off, but you can bet your boot buttons she ain’t going to take off her clothes.’

  ‘Damn,’ said Collis, to nobody in particular, as he saw Sarah walk across the room again.

  A door opened and closed, and then Dan McReady and Maria-Mamuska appeared in the back bedroom, perspiring and dispirited. Maria had disguised herself with a black lace-edged mask, but when she saw Collis she pulled it off and threw it aside.

  ‘That lady may be everything you say she is,’ Maria-Mamuska told Collis. ‘But one thing she isn’t, and that’s sleepy.’

  ‘She’s not even yawning,’ said Dan.

  Collis sat down on the daybed and looked at them without saying a word. If they didn’t get their calotypes, Sarah’s abduction would be nothing more than a ridiculous charade. Apart from the sheer absurdity of returning Sarah to the bosom of her family completely unharmed and untouched, at the cost of two cabs, one Chilean fish-crate wagon driver, two cups of coffee, and a lemon pastry he hadn’t eaten, there was the painful prospect of having to go back to Hannah and admit that his wonderful secret plan, the plan which had led to so many arguments, had dismally failed.

  ‘It’s that Chinese bastard, Kwang,’ Andy said. ‘He probably gave you a bottle of rice wine, or pig’s piss, or whatever it is those Chinks use to cook with.’

  Collis shrugged. ‘He said it was opium tincture, and strong, too. How much did you give her?’

  ‘Four spoonfuls, just as you said.’

  ‘Well, I don’t understand it,’ said Collis. ‘He specifically said that if she had anything more than a few drops, she’d fall flat on her back. He warned me not to give her too much, in case it killed her.’

  ‘Aah, you know what these Chinese are like,’ said Andy. ‘All noodles and shrimps and hocus-pocus.’

  ‘What are we going to do?’ asked Maria-Mamuska softly. ‘If she doesn’t sleep, then we can’t take the pictures.’

  ‘I’m thinking,’ said Collis. ‘There has to be a way out of this somehow.’

  ‘I could punch her,’ suggested Dan McReady helpfully.

  ‘Don’t be so damned stupid,’ said Collis. ‘The whole point of this plan is that she doesn’t get harmed. Not physically, anyway.’

  ‘We could keep her here until she drops to sleep naturally.’

  ‘And then what? You can’t take calotypes at night. It’s going to be difficult enough as it is unless the sun comes out.’

  ‘Maybe we have to let her go,’ said Maria-Mamuska.

  ‘And maybe we have to tell her what’s going on,’ said another voice, cultured and sharp.

  They looked up, in complete shock. Standing in the open doorway in her grey overcoat was Sarah Melford, straight-backed, composed, and not drugged in the slightest. Just behind her, Mr Figgis was trying to communicate with a variety of shrugs and facial contortions that he had tried to stop her, without success.

  ‘Is this a kidnapping?’ asked Sarah, stepping into the room. ‘Is it serious, or is it a joke? Collis – seeing you here, I must conclude that it’s a joke.’

  Collis pressed his fingers against his eyelids as if he could make the whole scene vanish. Then he opened his eyes again, and found it was all still real, and sighed.

  ‘Well?’ demanded Sarah. ‘Aren’t you going to tell me what’s up? Aren’t you going to te
ll me who are these peculiar people, and why they’ve brought me here?’

  Collis stood up and bowed his head. ‘I’m sorry, Sarah. In the surprise of the moment, I forgot my manners. This is Maria, whose house this is. This is Mr Dan McReady, of the Eagle Saloon. And this is Mr Andrew Jackson Hunt, one of my partners in the Sierra Pacific Railroad. Oh – and the gentleman behind you is Mr Figgis, the calotypist.’

  ‘I still don’t understand,’ said Sarah. ‘Are you keeping me here for a ransom? Are you going to sell me off to white slavers? And why were you going to take calotypes of me?’

  Collis turned to Maria-Mamuska. ‘I believe we could all use a drink,’ he told her. Maria-Mamuska nodded, said, ‘Sure,’ and went to arrange it, dropping a curtsey to Sarah as she passed her by.

  ‘Andy, Dan,’ said Collis indicating that he would rather be left alone with Sarah. They left, both of them sheepish. Dan peeled off his false moustache as he walked out, grimacing with the pain of it.

  ‘Perhaps you’d care to sit down,’ Collis told Sarah.

  ‘Very well,’ Sarah replied, walking across the room and arranging herself on the purple daybed. ‘And perhaps you’d care to explain.’

  ‘You don’t mind if I smoke?’

  ‘You look as if you need something to settle your nerves.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Collis. ‘I believe I do.’

  ‘This is serious, isn’t it?’ asked Sarah. ‘It’s not just some kind of a practical joke against my father?’

  ‘Well, it is and it isn’t,’ Collis admitted. ‘It’s a joke in the sense that we never had any intention of harming you. And it’s a joke in the sense that it’s new-fangled, and nobody’s ever tried it before. But, well, it didn’t quite work out the way we planned it.’

  Sarah leaned forward on the daybed. In the gloomy afternoon light, her eyes glistened brightly, and her diamond choker sparked off curved rainbows and winking stars. Collis could smell her perfume, and he knew that he’d forgotten how beautiful she was, and how sensual.

  ‘I didn’t really want to involve you in this at all,’ Collis said. ‘More than anything, I didn’t want to take advantage of your friendship. But there are other considerations, far more pressing. I’m afraid you were perfect for what I wanted to do.’