Dick Francis - The Edge

'Good night,' Nell said softly.

'Sleep well,' I replied.

'Good night,' Xanthe said.

I smiled. 'Good night.'

I watched them go along the corridor beside the bar. Nell turned round, hesitated, and waved. Xanthe turned also, and waved. I waved back.

Gentle was the word, I thought. Go gentle into this good night… No, no! It should be, 'Do not go gentle into that good night.' Odd how poets' words stuck in one's head. Dylan Thomas, wasn't it? Do not go gentle into that good night… because that good night was death.

The train was slowly going to sleep.

There would be precious little peace, I thought, in the minds of the Lorrimores, father, mother and son. Little peace also in Filmer who would know now from Johnson that the departure of Lenny Higgs had robbed him of the lever to be used against Daffodil; who could have doubts at the very least about Mercer's future reactions; who would know that Cumber Young would find out soon who had taken Ezra Gideon's horses; who would realize he was riding a flood tide of contempt. I wished him more than an upset stomach. I wished him remorse, which was the last thing he would feel.

I wandered back through the train past George's office, which was empty, and stretched out in my own room on the bed, still dressed, with the door open and the light on, meaning just to rest but stay awake: and not surprisingly I went straight to sleep.

I awoke to the sound of someone calling 'George… George…' Woke with a start and looked at my watch. I hadn't slept long, not more than ten minutes, but in that time the train had stopped.

That message got me off the bed in a hurry. The train should have been moving; there was no stop scheduled for almost an hour. I went out into the passage and found an elderly man in a VIA grey suit like George's peering into the office. The elderly man looked at my uniform and said urgently, 'Where's George?'

'I don't know,' I said. 'What's the matter?'

'We've got a hot box.' He was deeply worried. 'George must radio to the despatcher to stop the Canadian.'

Not again, I thought wildly. I went into George's office, following the VIA Rail man who said he was the assistant conductor, George's deputy.

'Can't you use the radio?' I said.

'The Conductor does it.'

The assistant conductor was foremost a sleeping-car attendant, I supposed. I thought I might see if I could raise someone myself, as George would have already tuned in the frequency, but when I pressed the transmit switch, nothing happened at all, not even a click, and then I could see why it wouldn't work… the radio was soaking wet.

There was an empty coffee cup beside it.

With immense alarm, I said to George's assistant, 'What's a hot box?'

'A hot axle, of course,' he said. 'A journal-box that holds the axle. It's under the horse car, and it's glowing dark red. We can't go on until it cools down and we put more oil in.'

'How long does that take? '

'Too long. They're putting snow on it.' He began to understand about the radio. 'It's wet…'

'It won't work,' I said. Nor would the cellular telephone, not out in the mountains. 'How do we stop the Canadian? There must be ways, from before radio.'

'Yes, but…' He looked strained, the full enormity of the situation sinking in. 'You'll have to go back along the track and plant fusees.'

'Fusees?'

'Flares, of course. You're younger than me… you'll have to go… you'll be faster.'

He opened a cupboard in George's office and pulled out three objects, each about a foot in length, with a sharp metal spike at one end, the rest being tubular with granulations on the tip. They looked like oversized matches, which was roughly what they were.

'You strike them on any rough or hard surface,' he said. 'Like a rock, or the rails. They burn bright red… they burn for twenty minutes. You stick the spike… throw it… into the wooden ties, in the middle of the track. The driver of the Canadian will stop at once when he sees it.' His mind was going faster almost than his tongue. 'You'll have to go half a mile, it'll take the Canadian that much time to stop… Hurry, now… half a mile at least. And if the engineers are not in the cab…'

'What do you mean,' I asked aghast, 'if they're not in the cab?'

'They aren't always there. One of them regularly flushes out the boiler. the other could be in the bathroom… If they aren't there, if they haven't seen the fusees and the train isn't stopping, you must light another flare and throw it through the window into the cab. Then when they come back, they'll stop.'

I stared at him. That's impossible.'

'They'll be there, they'll see the flares. Go now. Hurry. But that's what you do if you have to. Throw one through the window.' He suddenly grabbed a fourth flare from the cupboard. 'You'd better take another one, just in case.'

'In case of what?' What else could there be? '

'In case of bears,' he said.

With a feeling of complete unreality I set off past the end of the train and along the single railway track in the direction of Toronto.

With one arm I clasped the four flares to my chest, in the other hand I carried George's bright-beamed torch, to show me the way.

Halfa mile. How long was half a mile?

Hurry, George's assistant had said. Of all unnecessary instructions…

I half walked, half ran along the centre of the track, trying to step on the flat wood of the ties, the sleepers, because the stones in between were rough and speed-inhibiting.

Bears… my God.

It was cold. It had stopped snowing, but some snow was lying… not enough to give me problems. I hadn't thought to put on a coat. It didn't matter, movement would keep me warm. Urgency and fierce anxiety would keep me warm.

I began to feel it wasn't totally impossible. After all, it must have been done often in the old days. Standard procedure still, one might say. The flares had been there, ready. All the same, it was fairly eerie running through the night with snow-dusted rocky tree-dotted hillsides climbing away on each side and the two rails shining silver into the distance in front.

I didn't see the danger in time, and it didn't growl; it wasn't a bear, it had two legs and it was human. He must have been hiding behind rocks or trees in the shadow thrown by my torch. I saw his movement in the very edge of my peripheral vision after I'd passed him. I sensed an upswept arm, a weapon, a blow coming.

There was barely a hundredth of a second for instinctive. evasion. All I did as I ran was to lean forward a fraction so that the smash came across my shoulders, not on my head.

It felt as if I had cracked apart, but I hadn't. Feet, hands, muscles were all working. I staggered forward, dropped the flares and the torch, went down on one knee, knew another bang was travelling. Thought before action… I didn't have time. I turned towards him, not away. Turned inside and under the swinging arm, rising, butting upwards with my head to find the aggressive chin, jerking my knee fiercely to contact between the braced legs, punching with clenched fist and the force of fury into the Adam's apple in his throat. One of the many useful things I'd learned on my travels was how to fight dirty, and never had I needed the knowledge more.

He grunted and wheezed with triple unexpected pain and dropped to his knees on the ground, and I wrenched the long piece of wood from his slackening hand and hit his own head with it, hoping I was doing it hard enough to knock him out, not hard enough to kill him. He fell quietly face down in the snow between the rails, and I rolled him over with my foot, and in the deflected beam of the torch which lay unbroken a few paces away, saw the gaunt features of the man called Johnson.