The porter didn't get it. The Pullman conductor did.
"Hey!"
The porter stopped. Then he got it. They all turned their backs and started to talk. I stumped up the car steps. I got to the top. That was her cue. She was still down on the ground, with the conductors. "Dear."
I stopped and half turned. "Come back to the observation platform. I'll say good-bye to you there, and then I won't have to worry about getting off the train. You still have a few minutes. Maybe we can talk."
"Fine."
I started back, through the car. She started back, on the ground, outside.
All three cars were full of people getting ready to go to bed, with most of the berths made up and bags all out in the aisle. The porters weren't there. They were at their boxes, outside. I kept my eyes down, clinched the cigar in my teeth, and kept my face screwed up. Nobody really saw me, and yet everybody saw me, because the minute they saw those crutches they began snatching bags out of the way and making room. I just nodded and mumbled "thanks."
When I saw her face I knew something was wrong. Outside on the observation platform, I saw what it was. A man was there, tucked back in a corner in the dark, having a smoke. I sat down on the opposite side. She reached her hand over. I took it. She kept looking at me for a cue. I kept making my lips say, "Parking...parking...parking." After a second or two she got it.
"Dear."
"Yes?"
"You're not mad at me any more? For where I parked?"
"Forget it."
"I thought I was headed for the station parking lot, honestly.
But I get all mixed up in this part of town. I hadn't any idea I was going to make you walk so far."
"I told you, forget it."
"I'm terribly sorry."
"Kiss me."
I looked at my watch, held it up to her. It was still seven minutes before the train would leave. She needed a six-minute start for what she had to do. "Listen, Phyllis, there's no use of you waiting around here. Why don't you blow?"
"Well—you don't mind?"
"Not a bit. No sense dragging it out."
"Good-bye, then."
"Good-bye."
"Have a good time. Three cheers for Leland Stanford."
"I'll do my best."
"Kiss me again."
"Good-bye."
For what I had to do, I had to get rid of this guy, and get rid of him quick. I hadn't expected anybody out there. There seldom is when a train pulls out. I sat there, trying to think of something. I thought he might leave when he finished his cigarette, but he didn't. He threw it over the side and began to talk.
"Women are funny."
"Funny and then some."
"I couldn't help hearing that little conversation you had with your wife just now. About where she parked, I mean. Reminds me of an experience I had with my wife, coming home from San Diego."
He told the experience he had with his wife. I looked him over. I couldn't see his face. I figured he couldn't see mine. He stopped talking. I had to say something.
"Yeah, women are funny all right. Specially when you get them behind the wheel of a car."
"They're all of that."
The train began to roll. It crawled through the outskirts of Los Angeles, and he kept on talking. Then an idea came to me. I remembered I was supposed to be a cripple, and began feeling through my pockets.
"You lose something?"
"My ticket. I can't find it."
"Say, I wonder if I've got my ticket. Yeah, here it is."
"You know what I bet she did? Put that ticket in my briefcase, right where I told her not to. She was to put it here in the pocket of this suit, and now—"
"Oh, it'll turn up."
"Don't that beat all? Here I've got to go and hobble all through those cars, just because—"
"Don't be silly. Stay where you are."
"No, I couldn't let you—"
"Be a pleasure old man. Stay right where you are and I'll get it for you. What's your space?"
"Would you? Section 8, Car C."
"I'll be right back with it."
We were picking up speed a little now. My mark was a dairy sign, about a quarter of a mile from the track. We came in sight of it and I lit my cigar. I put my crutches under one arm, threw my leg over the rail, and let myself down. One of the crutches hit the ties and spun me so I almost fell. I hung on. When we came square abreast of the sign I dropped off.
Chapter 7
There's nothing so dark as a railroad track in the middle of the night. The train shot ahead, and I crouched there, waiting for the tingle to leave my feet. I had dropped off the left side of the train, into the footpath between the tracks, so there wouldn't be any chance I could be seen from the highway. It was about two hundred feet away. I stayed there, on my hands and knees, straining to see something on the other side of the tracks. There was a dirt road there, that gave entry to a couple of small factories, further back. All around it were vacant lots, and it wasn't lit. She ought to be there by now. She had a seven-minute start, the train took six minutes to that point, and it was an eleven-minute drive from the station to this dirt road. I had checked it twenty times. I held still and stared, trying to spot the car. I couldn't see it.
I don't know how long I crouched there. It came to me that maybe she had bumped somebody's fender, or been stopped by a cop, or something. I seemed to turn to water. Then I heard something. I heard a panting. Then with it I heard footsteps. They would go fast for a second or two, and then stop. It was like being in a nightmare, with something queer coming after me, and I didn't know what it was, but it was horrible. Then I saw it. It was her. That man must have weighed 200 pounds, but she had him on her back, holding him by the handle, and staggering along with him, over the tracks. His head was hanging down beside her head. They looked like something in a horror picture.
I ran over and grabbed his legs, to take some of the weight off her. We ran him a few steps. She started to throw him down. "Not that track! The other one!"
We got him over to the track the train went out on, and dropped him. I cut the harness off and slipped it in my pocket. I put the lighted cigar within a foot or two of him. I threw one crutch over him and the other beside the track.
"Where's the car?"
"There. Couldn't you see it?"
I looked, and there it was, right where it was supposed to be, on the dirt road.
"We're done. Let's go."
We ran over and climbed in and she started the motor, threw in the gear. "Oh my—his hat!"
I took that hat and sailed it out the window, on the tracks. "It's O.K., a hat can roll,—get going!"
She started up. We passed the factories. We came to a street.
On Sunset she went through a light. "Watch that stuff, can't you, Phyllis? If you're stopped now, with me in the car, we're sunk."
"Can I drive with that thing going on?"
She meant the car radio. I had turned it on. It was to be part of my alibi, for the time I was out of the house, that I knocked off work for a while and listened to the radio. I had to know what was coming in that night. I had to know more than I could find out by reading the programs in the papers. "I've got to have it, you know that—"
"Let me alone, let me drive!"
She hit a zone, and must have been doing seventy. I clenched my teeth, and kept quiet. When we came to a vacant lot I threw out the rope. About a mile further on I threw out the handle. Going by a curb drain I shot the glasses into it. Then I happened to look down and saw her shoes. They were scarred from the tracks ballast.
"What did you carry him for? Why didn't you let me—"
"Where were you? Where were you?"
"I was there. I was waiting—"
"Did I know that? Could I just sit there, with that in the car?"
"I was trying to see where you were. I couldn't see—"
"Let me alone, let me drive!"
"Your shoes—"
I choked it back. In a seco
nd or two, she started up again. She raved like a lunatic. She raved and she kept on raving, about him, about me, about anything that came in her head. Every now and then I'd snap. There we were, after what we had done, snarling at each other like a couple of animals, and neither one of us could stop. It was like somebody had shot us full of some kind of dope. "Phyllis, cut this out. We've got to talk, and it may be our last chance."
"Talk then! Who's stopping you?"
"First then: You don't know anything about this insurance policy. You—"
"How many times do you have to say that?"
"I'm only telling you—"
"You've already told me till I'm sick of hearing you."
"Next, the inquest. You bring—"
"I bring a minister, I know that, I bring a minister to take charge of the body, how many times have I got to listen to that—are you going to let me drive?"
"O.K., then. Drive."
"Is Belle home?"
"How do I know? No!"
"And Lola's out?"
"Didn't I tell you?"
"Then you'll have to stop at the drugstore. To get a pint of ice cream or something. To have witnesses you drove straight home from the station. You got to say something to fix the time and the date. You—"
"Get out! Get out! I'll go insane!"
"I can't get out. I've got to get to my car! Do you know what that means, if I take time to walk? I can't complete my alibi! I—"
"I said get out!"
"Drive on, or I'll sock you."
When she got to my car she stopped and I got out. We didn't kiss. We didn't even say good-bye. I got out of her car, got in mine, started, and drove home.
When I got home I looked at the clock. It was 10:25. I opened the bell box of the telephone. The card was still there. I closed the box and dropped the card in my pocket. I went in the kitchen and looked at the doorbell. That card was still there. I dropped it in my pocket. I went upstairs, ripped off my clothes, and got into pajamas and slippers: I cut the bandage off my foot. I went down, shoved the bandage and cards into the fireplace, with a newspaper, and lit it. I watched it burn. Then I went to the telephone and started to dial. I still had one callback to get, to round out the late part of my alibi. I felt something like a drawstring pull in my throat, and a sob popped out of me. I clapped the phone down. It was getting me. I knew I had to get myself under some kind of control. I swallowed a couple of times. I wanted to make sure of my voice, that it would sound O.K. A dumb idea came to me that maybe if I would sing something, that would make me snap out of it. I started to sing the Isle of Capri. I sang about two notes, and it swallowed into a kind of a wail.
I went in the dining room and took a drink. I took another drink. I started mumbling to myself, trying to get so I could talk. I had to have something to mumble. I thought of the Lord's Prayer. I mumbled that, a couple of times. I tried to mumble it another time, and couldn't remember how it went.
***
When I thought I could talk, I dialed again. It was 10:48. I dialed Ike Schwartz, that's another salesman with General.
"Ike, do me a favor, will you? I'm trying to figure out a proposition on a public liability bond for a wine company to have it ready for them tomorrow morning, and I'm going nuts. I came off without my rate book. Joe Pete can't find it, and I'm wondering if you'll look up what I want in yours. You got it with you?"
"Sure, I'll be glad to."
I gave him the dope. He said give him fifteen minutes and he'd call back.
I walked around, digging my fingernails into my hands, trying to hold on to myself. The drawstring began to jerk on my throat again. I began mumbling again, saying over and over what I had just said to Ike. The phone rang. I answered. He had it figured for me, he said, and began to give it to me. He gave it to me three different ways, so I'd have it all. It took him twenty minutes. I took it down, what he said. I could feel the sweat squeezing out on my forehead and running down off my nose. After a while he was done.
"O.K., Ike, that's just what I wanted to know. That's just how I wanted it. Thanks a thousand times."
Soon as he hung up everything cracked. I dived for the bathroom. I was sicker than I had ever been in my life. After that passed I fell into bed. It was a long time before I could turn out the light. I lay there staring into the dark. Every now and then I would have a chill or something and start to tremble. Then that passed and I lay there, like a dope. Then I started to think. I tried not to, but it would creep up on me. I knew then what I had done. I had killed a man. I had killed a man to get a woman. I had put myself in her power, so there was one person in the world that could point a finger at me, and I would have to die. I had done all that for her, and I never wanted to see her again as long as I lived.
That's all it takes, one drop of fear, to curdle love into hate.
Chapter 8
I gulped down some orange juice and coffee, and then went up to the bedroom with the paper. I was afraid to open it in front of the Filipino. Sure enough, there it was on Page 1:
OIL MAN, ON WAY TO JUNE RALLY,
DIES IN TRAIN FALL
H. S. Nirdlinger, Petroleum Pioneer,
Killed in Plunge from Express En Route to
Reunion at Leland Stanford.
With injuries about the head and neck, the body of H. S. Nirdlinger, Los Angeles representative of the Western Pipe & Supply Company and for a number of years prominently identified with the oil industry here, was found on the railroad tracks about two miles north of this city shortly before midnight last night. Mr. Nirdlinger had departed on a northbound train earlier in the evening to attend his class reunion at Leland Stanford University, and it is believed he fell from the train. Police point out he had fractured his leg some weeks ago, and believe his unfamiliarity with crutches may have caused him to lose his balance on the observation platform, where he was last seen alive.
Mr. Nirdlinger was 44 years old. Born in Fresno, he attended Leland Stanford, and on graduation, entered the oil business, becoming one of the pioneers in the opening of the field at Long Beach. Later he was active at Signal Hill. For the last three years he had been in charge of the local office of the Western Pipe & Supply Company.
Surviving are a widow, formerly Miss Phyllis Belden of Mannerheim, and a daughter, Miss Lola Nirdlinger. Mrs. Nirdlinger, before her marriage, was head nurse of the Verdugo Health Institute here.
Twenty minutes to nine, Nettie called. She said Mr. Norton wanted to see me as soon as I could possibly get down. That meant they already had it, and I wouldn't have to put on any act, going in there with my paper and saying this is the guy I sold an accident policy to last winter. I said I knew what it was, and I was right on my way.
I got through the day somehow. I think I told you about Norton and Keyes. Norton is president of the company. He's a short, stocky man about 35, that got the job when his father died and he's so busy trying to act like his father he doesn't seem to have time for much else. Keyes is head of the Claim Department, a holdover from the old regime, and the way he tells it young Norton never does anything right. He's big and fat and peevish, and on top of that he's a theorist, and it makes your head ache to be around him, but he's the best claim man on the Coast, and he was the one I was afraid of.
First I had to face Norton, and tell him what I knew, or anyway what I was supposed to know. I told him how I propositioned Nirdlinger about the accident policy, and how his wife and daughter opposed it, and how I dropped it that night but went over to his office a couple of days later to give him another whirl. That would check with what the secretary saw. I told him how I sold him, then, but only after I promised not to say anything to the wife and daughter about it. I told how I took his application, then when the policy came through, delivered it, and got his check. Then we went down in Keyes' office and we went all over it again. It took all morning, you understand. All while we were talking phone calls and telegrams kept coming in, from San Francisco, where Keyes had our investigators interviewing people th
at were on the train, from the police, from the secretary, from Lola, after they got her on the phone to find out what she knew. -They tried to get Phyllis, but she had strict instruction from me not to come to the phone, so she didn't. They got hold of the coroner, and arranged for an autopsy. There's generally a hook-up between insurance companies and coroners, so they can get an autopsy if they want it. They could demand it, under a clause in their policy, but that would mean going to court for an order, and would tip it that the deceased was insured, and that's bad all the way around. The get it on the quiet, and in this case they had to have it. Because if Nirdlinger died of apoplexy, or heart failure, and fell off the train, then it wouldn't any longer be accident, but death from natural causes, and they wouldn't be liable. About the middle of the afternoon they got the medical report. Death was from a broken neck. When they heard that they got the inquest postponed two days.
By four o'clock, the memos and telegrams were piled on Keyes' desk so he had to put a weight on top of them to keep them from falling over, and he was mopping his brow and so peevish nobody could talk to him. But Norton was getting more cheerful by the minute. He took a San Francisco call from somebody named Jackson, and I could tell from what he said that it was this guy I had got rid of on the observation platform before I dropped off. When he hung up he put one more memo on top of the others and turned to Keyes. "Clear case of suicide."
If it was suicide, you see, the company wouldn't be liable either. This policy only covered accident.
"Yeah?"
"All right, watch me while I check it over. First, he took out this policy. He took it out in secret. He didn't tell his wife, he didn't tell his daughter, he didn't tell his secretary, he didn't tell anybody. If Huff here, had been on the job, he might have known—"