Lantern Sam and the Blue Streak Bandits (9 page)

Clarence checked his pocket watch and turned to Ambrose. “There—you see? You can’t ignore what the boy said. Dinner service will begin soon. I can arrange to have you seated at table three. You’ll be able to see everyone who comes into the dining car. I’d be happy to find you a pad of paper to take notes.”

Ambrose glared at Clarence. “To the dining car, then,” he grumbled.

Despite Clarence’s best efforts to keep Ellie’s disappearance quiet, rumors about a missing rich girl from the deluxe Commodore Perry suite spread like a grassfire from one end of the train to the other. By the time passengers returned to their rooms to dress for dinner, virtually everyone on the Shoreliner had heard
something
about a kidnapping, and those who were parents demanded to speak to the conductor about what was being done to ensure their children’s safety.

Clarence knew that he needed to reassure the passengers, especially those traveling with children. In order to keep the situation under control, he and the two porters he trusted most set out to knock on every compartment door and explain what had happened.

“You do what you have to do,”
Sam told Clarence.
“Henry and I’ll be snooping on His Immenseness.”

When no one was looking, Clarence led Sam and me into the dining car, where the upright piano had been pushed against a wall to make room for another table. Clarence pulled it out a few inches and motioned for us to squeeze behind it.

“Mrrraaa. Not much room back here,”
complained Sam.

“What about me?” I said. “I’m a lot bigger than you.”

“Are you going to be all right?” Clarence asked.

“There’s only one problem,”
said Sam.
“We can hear people but we can’t see them. How are we supposed to know who’s talking?”

“How about a big vase of flowers to hide behind?” Clarence suggested. “That’s what they always do in the pictures. Let me see what I can find.”

“While you’re at it, how about a little something to eat? I’m famished,”
said Sam.
“What’s that I smell, pork chops?”

“You’re just going to have to wait.”

“Oh, fine. You’ll get the boy genius everything he asks for, but I ask for one little pork chop and suddenly you’re too busy. If I die of starvation back here, please don’t tell my mother I went like this. She had such great expectations where I was concerned. It would break her poor, weak heart.”

“Oh no,” I said, suddenly remembering the promise I’d made to my mother.

“You have to go to the bathroom, don’t you?”
Sam asked.
“I
told
you to go before we came back here.”

“It’s not that. My mother—she’ll be looking for me. She said she wanted to treat us to a nice meal in the dining car for a change, instead of stale sandwiches.”

“Leave it to me,” said Clarence. “I’ll take care of everything. Now, shhh! Someone’s coming.”

It didn’t take us long to figure out who that someone was, even though we couldn’t see anything from behind the piano. The heels of a pair of sturdy men’s shoes (custom built in a factory in Hoboken, New Jersey, to withstand forces no ordinary shoe could handle)
clacked
loudly, and the floorboards beneath them creaked in protest with every step. When Judge Ambrose finally came to a stop and lowered himself onto a chair, its wooden frame groaned so noisily that I cringed, waiting for its imminent collapse.

“Fee-fie-fo-fum,”
said Sam.
“I smell the blood of a half-ton bum.”

I had to cover my mouth to keep myself from laughing out loud.

“Waiter!” shouted the judge. “Bourbon, and make it snappy.”

When the waiter returned less than a minute later, Ambrose complained about how long it had taken and told him to leave the bottle.

“Glad to see he’s taking this investigation so seriously,”
said Sam as we listened in awe to the
glug-glug-glug
of liquor splashing into a glass.

And Sam’s eyes were wider than mine when, seconds later, Ambrose slammed that glass down onto the table and refilled it!

“He drinks like the sailors on Father’s ship,” I noted. “Father says they have hollow legs.”

“Based on the sound that chair made when he sat in it, I don’t think any part of him is hollow,”
said Sam.

Clarence walked past, placing a vase filled with colorful flowers on top of the piano before checking up on Judge Ambrose.

“Everything all right here, Judge? You should be able to observe everyone on board from this table. Sooner or later, everyone will come in for something to eat.”

Judge Ambrose grumbled something unintelligible, and then added, “Complete waste of time if you ask me. At least the whisky’s good. Since this is an official investigation, you’ll see to it that I’m not charged for it, I’m sure. Now, how about some dinner? Three or four of those pork chops ought to do the trick.”

“I’ll send a waiter right over,” said Clarence. “I’ve been telling the passengers that you’ll be here, and that you’ll want to talk to some of them.”

“Correction: I don’t
want
to talk to any of them. I’m only doing this for Mrs. Strasbourg’s sake.”

I peeked through the wilted flowers in time to see Clarence turn away from the judge as two women, obviously sisters, approached his table. I’ve never been very good at guessing ages, but I thought they were probably in their late thirties, with nearly identical hairdos and long dresses that matched the flowers right in front of my nose.

“Excuse us, Judge Ambrose,” said one. “Do you have a moment?”

“Why certainly, ladies,” he said, turning on a kind of greasy, sickening charm that I felt sure
anyone
could see through. “Won’t you sit? Would you like a drink?”

“Oh, no, we don’t wish to disturb your dinner,” said the slightly-more-brunette sister. “My name is Gladys Henshaw, and this is my sister Gwendolyn. We, er, I may have heard something important. I didn’t think anything of it at the time, but now, with what’s happened … we …”

“Yeeessss?” The judge leaned in, his forehead deeply furrowed.

“He looks worried,” I whispered to Sam.

Gladys Henshaw continued. “The conductor mentioned a man, a traveling salesman of some kind, who may be involved with the little girl’s disappearance. You see, my sister and I were having a cup of tea in the club car not long
after we departed from New York, and I believe that we may have spoken to such a man.”

“He was very polite,” said Gwendolyn. “He said that he was a marble salesman, and he was on his way to Albany for the biggest deal of his life. He was going to get the contract for the new courthouse.”

Gladys shivered. “He was going to make a
killing
—that was the word he used. It gives me a chill now, just thinking of it. If everything went according to his plan, he would make more money in one day than most people make in a lifetime.”

“But you see, Judge Ambrose,” Gwendolyn said, “there is no new courthouse in Albany. My best friend, Maryanne Hawthorp, works in the existing courthouse, and believe me, she would know if something like that were happening. She is the nosiest person you’d ever want to meet.”

“I see,” said the judge. “That’s very interesting, and possibly quite helpful, ladies. Thank you for bringing it to my attention.”

“There’s one more thing,” said Gladys. “He made a point of saying that he usually stayed at the State Street Hotel when he was in Albany, but this time he was going to treat himself and stay at the Fitzgerald.”

“That’s the nicest hotel in the city. He might be there right now!” said Gwendolyn.

Judge Ambrose scribbled something on his notepad and thanked the ladies again for their help. “I’ll look into this myself. The Fitzgerald, you say.”

“What do you think?” I whispered to Sam.

“Sounds to me like the salesman was trying to impress the two ladies,”
said Sam.
“Remember what the porter said about him. That he was a real smooth talker. I think the whole courthouse story was a lie.”

“What about Ellie? Did he kidnap her?”

“Write a note to Clarence, and tell him to send a telegram to Albany. Somebody should at least check the State Street Hotel for our friend Romeo.”

“Don’t you mean the Fitzgerald?”

“Ha! I have friends in Albany, and from what they’ve told me, the Fitz is a first-class operation. The bellmen there are so snobby they’d never even let a salesman like Romeo into the
lobby—
except maybe to polish the marble floors in the middle of the night.”

I dug the stub of a pencil out of my pocket, quickly scribbled the note on a scrap of paper, and handed it to Clarence on his next pass by the piano. When I looked up, a man and a woman were preparing to sit at the lone table between the judge’s table and the piano. As the man helped his wife into her chair, I recognized him immediately as the man in the gray suit—the one from the club car who had teased me about Ellie. The woman, I noticed immediately, wore
a scarf tied around her head and fashionable dark glasses, even though she was inside a train car
and
the sun was hidden behind clouds.

Sam noticed the same thing.
“Now, there’s somebody who doesn’t want to be recognized. Look how she’s sitting, bent over, hiding behind her menu. The scarf, the glasses—I wonder what her story is. She’s up to no good—you can count on that.”

“You’re a very suspicious person, er, cat,” I said.

“In my line of work, you have to be. Tell me, what else do you see when you really look at them?”

I watched them for a while, then shrugged. “I don’t know—other than the sunglasses, they look kind of ordinary to me.”

“Look at their hands. He can’t stop fiddling with his wedding ring, and she can’t stop looking at hers. What does that tell you?”

“They’re married?”

“Mrrrraa. Maybe they are, maybe they aren’t, but they’re certainly not used to wearing those rings. They could be newlyweds—after all, he did pull the chair out for her. Husbands don’t do that for long.”

“My father still does it for my mother,” I said. It was true; Captain Shipley was an old-fashioned gentleman, through and through.

“Well, he’s the exception to the rule.”

As Sam and I watched, the man reached across the table
and took the woman’s hand in his. He spoke softly: “Stop worrying. Everything’s going to work out perfectly. We’re going to get away with it, at least until—”

“Until someone recognizes me,” said the woman, slinking even lower into her seat. “If word gets out, those vultures will be waiting for us when we get off the train. You saw the way that girl looked at me—I’m telling you, she
knew
. And then there’s our friend with the bird’s nest on her head. It’s no accident that
she’s
here.”

“As soon as we’re done with dinner,” said the man, “we’ll go back to our room and stay there. It’s too late for the little girl to say anything, and don’t worry about our friend with the hat. I’ll take care of her.”

Her name was Marmalade and she was nothing but trouble from the moment I laid eyes on her. She was a round-faced tabby with long legs and a voice that made me go weak in the knees. The first time I saw her, she was on the roof of Fagin’s Place, a hole-in-the-wall bar down by the Cuyahoga River.

“Rrroooowww,” she said. “Hey there, handsome.”

I looked around, wondering who she was talking to.

“I’m talking to you, Calico. You new in town?”

Back on the Dilly farm, Mom had warned me about girls like Marmalade, and I should have just kept walking. But for the second time in less than a week, I ignored the advice of
an older and wiser cat. I couldn’t help myself; Marmalade was a knockout.

“Came in on the train today,” I said. “From Ashta—”

She cut me off. “Why don’t you come up here so I can get a closer look at you. I’ve never seen a boy calico. Go around to the side. There’s a stack of old beer kegs in front of the truck that’s parked there. If you climb up those, you can jump onto the roof of the truck, and then … you’ll see. It’s easy from there.”