Terrors (54 page)

“Enough sentiment,” said a man in black. “Just a moment.” He bent and touched the white cheek, then rose. “Cold, all right.”

Satin Blaine asked, “What could have killed him?”

The conductor shook his head. “No way to tell, but it looks to me as if he died of shock.”

A man in black — the one who called himself
Traveler — said, “I need to look in that baggage car.” He stepped away from the others and tried the door. “It’s locked.”

“Baggage car’s always locked.” The conductor stepped forward. He pulled a huge key ring from his uniform pocket and found the correct key. “Even scared as he was, Ollie slammed the door behind him coming out.”

Traveler held up his hand. “Just a minute, then. Don’t be so fast
to open the door to the baggage car.”

He turned and placed the palm of one hand on the metal surface, then snatched his hand away as if he’d placed it on a red-hot stove. At the same moment a trickle of white smoke, or what appeared to be white smoke, crept through the keyhole.

An expression of fear contorted the conductor’s features. “Something’s
burning in there! We’ll have to uncouple the
baggage car.”

“No.” Traveler held his hand at shoulder level, rubbing it with the other. “Take a look at Jenkins there.” He pointed at the cadaver. “Look at his eyebrows, his mustache. That’s frost.” He swung around and pointed in the other direction. “Not smoke, not smoke at all. There’s something freezing cold in there.”

Whistler pressed his fingertips briefly to the door. “You’re right, Traveler.”
Then he addressed himself to the railroad man. “Conductor, what are you carrying in this baggage car?”

The conductor reached inside his uniform jacket. “I’ve got the manifest right here.”

He opened a small, much-battered leather portfolio that resembled an oversized wallet, pulled from it a folded sheet of oversized foolscap and spread it for them all to see. He ran a finger down a column of
brief, blue-inked entries.

“You see? Nothing but the usual passengers’ luggage, a few trunks being shipped by express service, and — and a coffin holding human remains. We need a special permit to carry human remains. I’ve got it right here.”

A second sheet bore official seals and signatures. It listed the point of origin and destination of one casket, bronze.
Point of origin, Blaine Chemical
and Pharmaceuticals Corporation, Chicago, Illinois. Destination, Blaine Works West, Los Angeles, California. Contents of casket, embalmed and preserved remains of Walter Martin Blaine, deceased
.

“You uncle, Miss Blaine?” Whistler frowned at the shapely platinum blonde.

From her gold lamé purse she produced a lace handkerchief and dabbed at her eyes. “Yes. My Uncle Walter. My parents both died
when I was a child and Uncle Walter was like a father to me. And now, now he’s gone.”

The conductor raised his uniform cap and scratched a thatch of salt-and-pepper hair. “I just don’t get it. You have my sympathy, Miss Blaine, you truly do. But I don’t see how that connects with this icy mystery.”

Traveler asked a question. “Could there be any machinery or chemicals in there?”

The conductor
shook his head. “Not possible, sir. Anything like that would have to ship on a freight. We don’t mix freight with passengers, not policy, sir, no way. Would be against railroad rules and government
regulations both. And even if we made an exception, maybe some high-priority defense materials that couldn’t wait for the next freight, why, you see—” He held the baggage manifest in one hand and slapped
the page with the back of his other hand. “—you see, it would show on the manifest. It just isn’t here, sir. It’s impossible.”

A pretty puzzle, don’t you think?
When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.
Didn’t a great detective once say that? But what happens when you eliminate the impossible — and no other explanation remains? What then,
eh? Maybe the impossible is true after all
.

Or is it?

“All right,” Traveler hissed. “Whatever killed Oliver Jenkins is inside that baggage car. And whatever it was, we’re going to find out. Let me have your key, conductor.”

The railroad man had dropped his keys back into his pocket. Now he found them again and handed them to Traveler. “That’s the one. Right there. That’s the one that opens
the baggage car.”

Traveler held out his hand.

The conductor laid the collection of keys in Traveler’s palm. He pointed to an old-fashioned, oversized blue steel key of a type that had been popular half a century before. “That’s the one, sir. That’s the one that will open the lock.”

Traveler extended his arm, moving the huge key toward the lock that stood between them and the baggage compartment.
Even as he did so the cold white mist continued to pour from the keyhole. Once through it crept down the door like a living, malevolent thing and puddled on the compartment floor, forming a lake of white, icy vapor.

As the key made contact with the lock, a woman’s voice, angry, authoritative, maybe a little bit desperate, rang out.

“Go ahead, Traveler. Open the door. And when you do, we’re all
going to take a ride in the baggage compartment.”

Traveler and Whistler were calm but the conductor showed his puzzlement. “What do you mean? What — oh.” He nodded slowly, his gaze fixed on the tiny pearl-handled .22 that she had pulled from her purse. It was pointing at them now.

Satin Blaine swung the little automatic from one to another, covering Traveler, Whistler, and the conductor in turn.

Traveler inserted the key in the heavy, old-fashioned lock. He turned it and the lock emitted a loud click.

“Go ahead,” Satin Blaine ordered. “All three of you, into the baggage car. And don’t try any tricks. I suppose you two mystery men are willing to risk your lives but I don’t think you’d risk the life of an innocent man. So any tricks and the conductor gets it. A .22 only makes a little
hole but if it’s through the heart or the brain, it’s as deadly as a cannon.”

Traveler shoved the door open with a black-clad shoulder. There was a rush of white vapor as the door swung back. The vapor flooded the platform where Satin Blaine and the others stood, then was swept into the Arizona night as the wind caught it.

One black-clad figure, then another stepped across the platform into
the baggage car. Hesitantly, the conductor followed. Finally Satin Blaine followed them, her little gold lamé purse swinging from its glittering chain and the pearl-handled automatic steady in her fist.

Whistler looked around the car. Its contents were utterly uninteresting. For the most part they were men’s and women’s suitcases doubtlessly containing light clothing for wear in the balmy winter
weather of Southern California. There were several steamer trunks. Most likely they belonged to wealthy passengers planning to proceed from California to the Hawaiian islands for an interlude of luaus and surfing while their less fortunate neighbors shivered in the Midwestern winter.

Whistler’s eyes flicked back to Satin Blaine and caught her glancing involuntarily at a large suitcase. Clearly,
it was of high quality but it was obviously well traveled. It bore stickers with scenes of Los Angeles, Honolulu, Singapore and Sydney.

Against one wall of the compartment, resting on a pair of wooden trestles, there lay a casket, its burnished bronze surface reflecting the dim electric lights in the ceiling. A light coating of frost gave its rounded lid the illusion of a graceful, snow-covered
hillside. The very air near the casket was frigid.

“You boys are making things hard for me,” Satin Blaine hissed. “As for Mr. Jenkins out there on the platform, if he’d just minded his business he would have been all right. That casket was sealed in Chicago and it shouldn’t have been opened until we got to Los Angeles. Now I think I’ll have to get off before then and leave my poor uncle to his
own devices.”

The others waited for her to continue.

“What’s our next stop, conductor?”

The railroad man went fishing in his vest pocket and came out
with a huge old watch. He pressed a button and the engraved metal front of the timepiece popped open.

“Phoenix, Miss. We pass through around eleven tonight. Los Angeles in morning.”

“Okay, bub. Here’s what we’re going to do. I’m going to lock
you in here. You — buster — the keys. That’s right. Toss ’em gently.”

She caught the heavy collection of keys skillfully.

“I’m sure they’ll wonder what happened to you, Mister Railroad Man, but that won’t be my problem. And as for you two undertakers, just don’t try anything clever and you’ll stay alive.”

She edged toward the casket.

“All right, all three of you, step back. That’s right. Undertakers
first, so the railroad man is closest to me. I have a feeling you might try something, even risk getting shot at. You’d figure that I couldn’t get both of you. Actually, I might. I’m a good shot. But you wouldn’t risk an innocent man getting plugged. So you stay in front of the others, railroad man. Stay between me and them. If they try anything fancy, you get the first bullet, right in
the belly. It’s a lousy way to go, believe you me!”

What a nice little lady we’ve got here, don’t you think? She looked so appealing up there in the club car, wouldn’t any gentleman travelling alone on a streamliner like the Desert Cannonball be happy to buy her a drink, just for the pleasure of her company. I guess the old saying is right. You know the one I mean. The one about appearances being
deceiving.

Once the others had followed their instructions, Satin Blaine edged toward the casket. She managed to open her gold lamé purse with one hand and drop the keys into it, holding the gun on the others all the while. Then with her free hand she inserted long fingernails beneath the upper half of the divided coffin lid.

“Looks to me as if poor Mr. Jenkins opened this thing and then dropped
the lid back in place when he ran away.”

It took a great effort by the slim Miss Blaine, but she managed to pry the lid open, then swing it back on its well-balanced hinges. As she did so a cloud of cold, white vapor rose from the casket and pooled around Satin Blaine’s feet.

“All right. You — Mister Blackie there — I want you to open my valise.” She jerked her head toward the much-traveled
suitcase, the one that was all but covered with the stickers from exotic ports of call.

“Dump my clothes out of there. I’ll enjoy shopping for a new wardrobe anyhow.”

The face of the cadaver Satin Blaine had exposed was white, its eyebrows frosted like those of the late Oliver Jenkins. The body was dressed in a dark blue suit, white shirt and red necktie.

Satin Blaine glanced into the coffin.
Still holding the .22 automatic on the others, she reached inside the suit jacket, then stepped back with a packet of large-denomination bills wrapped in a paper label. She tossed it across the car. It landed at the conductor’s feet.

“Put that in the valise.”

As the railroad man complied she rummaged inside the casket, withdrawing packet after packet of currency and tossing them to the railroad
man. As she worked she used them to knock white fuming cakes out of her way. White fuming cakes of dry ice, frozen squares of carbon dioxide, the coldest substance known to man.

Suddenly she screamed.

The others jerked involuntarily, staring in amazement at the scene before them.

With a single spasmodic motion the cadaver had reached up and clutched the hand that had pulled bundle after bundle
of money from the coffin.

“You can’t do that — you’re dead, dead!”

A horrifying moan rose from the casket.

Satin Blaine’s arm was pulled toward the blue suit coat of the cadaver.

“I saw you die. I gave you the
conus purpurascens
, I put it in your shaving soap, I saw you collapse and die. You can’t be alive. You can’t be alive. You …”

The arm clutching her wrist drew her down, down, into the
casket. As her face came close to that of the cadaver she screamed again and pulled the trigger of the pearl-handled automatic. It fired again and again, the bullets penetrating the body in the coffin.

Satin Blaine recoiled in a spasm of terror as her warm, lovely face made contact with the cold, white features of the cadaver. She flung herself backwards, her weapon flying from her hand and clattering
against the opposite wall of the baggage car.

Traveler stepped forward and retrieved the weapon.

The woman collapsed against the bronze casket, one claw-like hand held in the unbreakable grip of the body in the casket. And it was now
indeed a body, a dead body, a corpse. Ever since the poison of the Australian sea-cone had done its work, paralyzing Satin Blaine’s Uncle Walter, some spark of
life might have flickered faintly in the motionless body.

The .22-caliber rounds had extinguished that tiny, faint spark. And Satin Blaine had absorbed some of the toxin through her pale, delicate, lovely cheek.

The Traveler steadied the trembling, fear-struck conductor.

“It’s all right now, old man. There may even be a reward in it for you. You’d better message ahead to Phoenix and tell them
to get in touch with the police in Chicago. The Farmers and Cattlemen’s Bank loot is found.”

Oh, she was a clever one that Satin Blaine. She’d been to Australia, she’d managed to get ahold of the toxin of the Australian cone shell. These snails are among the deadliest creatures in the world. They appear harmless enough, their shells are even attractive looking. But any tourist who picks one up
— well, at least it’s a painless death. Or so I’ve heard.

Myself, I wouldn’t want to try it. Would you?

As for Uncle Walter — poor, dear Uncle Walter — do you think he really believed in vampires? I mean the human variety of vampires. Maybe he did. Maybe he was trying to become one. What was the famous line from Peter Pan? Oh yes. Do you believe in fairies? If you believe, clap your hands! Well,
dear friends. Do you believe in vampires?

As for that bat — there are plenty of bats in the desert. They’re not really vampires. They live on insects. They’re very useful little creatures, don’t you know
.