Dick Francis - The Edge

'You tell me first how you came to be knocked out,' I said.

'I can't remember. I was walking up to see the engineers.' He looked puzzled. 'First thing I knew, I was lying there trussed up. I was there for ages. Couldn't understand it.' He hadn't a chuckle left in him. 'I was in Johnson's roomette, they said. Johnson did it, I suppose. Jumped me.'

'Yes.'

'Where is he now?'

'Heaven knows.' I told George about Johnson's attacking me and how I'd left him, and how I hadn't seen him anywhere on the way back.

'Two possibilities,' George said. 'Three, I suppose. Either he buggered off somewhere or he's getting a ride on the Canadian right now.'

I stared. Hadn't thought of that. 'What's the third?' I asked.

A tired gleam crept into George's disorientated eyes. 'The mountain where we stopped,' he said. 'That was Squilax Mountain. Squilax is the Indian word for black bear.'

I swallowed. 'I didn't see any bears.'

'Just as well.'

I didn't somehow think Johnson had been eaten by a bear. I couldn't believe in it. I thought I must have been crazy, but I hadn't believed in bears all the time I'd been out there on black bear mountain.

'Know something?' George said. 'The new rolling stock can't easily get hot boxes, the axles run on ball-bearings, eh?, not oily waste. Only old cars like the horse car will always be vulnerable. Know what? You bet your life Johnson took most of the waste out of that box when we stopped in Revelstoke.'

'Why do you say oily waste?' I asked.

'Rags. Rags in the oil. Makes a better cushion for the axle than plain oil. I've known one sabotaged before, mind. Only that tine they didn't just take the rags out, they put iron filings in, eh? Derailed the train. Another railwayman with a grudge, that was. But hot boxes do happen by accident. They've got heat sensors with alarm systems beside the track in some places, because of that. How did that Johnson ever think he'd get away with it?'

'He doesn't know we have a photo of him.'

George began to laugh and thought better of it. 'You kill me, Tommy. But what was my assistant thinking of, sending you off with the fusees? It was his job, eh? He should have gone.'

'He said I'd go faster.'

'Well, yes, I suppose he was right. But you weren't really crew.'

'He'd forgotten,' I said. 'But I thought he might have warned the Lorrimores… and everyone else… to get them out of danger.'

George considered it. 'I'm not going to say he should. I'm not going to say he shouldn't.'

'Railwaymen stick together?'

'He's coming up to his pension. And no one was as much as jolted off their beds, eh?'

'Lucky.'

'Trains always stop for flares,' he said comfortably.

I left it. I supposed one couldn't lose a man his pension for not doing something that had proved unnecessary.

We ran presently into Kamloops where the axles were all checked, the radio was replaced, and everything else went according to plan. Once we were moving again, George finally agreed to lie down in his clothes and try to sleep; and two doors along from him I tried the same.

Things always start hurting when one has time to think about them. The dull ache where Johnson's piece of wood had landed on the back of my left shoulder was intermittently sharply sore: all right when I was standing up, not so good lying down. A bore. It would be stiffer still, I thought, in the morning. A pest for serving breakfast.

I smiled to myself finally. In spite of Johnson's and Filmer's best efforts, the great Transcontinental Mystery Race Train might yet limp without disaster to Vancouver.

Complacency, I should have remembered, was never a good idea.

It was discomfort as much as anything which had me on my feet again soon after six. Emil wouldn't have minded if I'd been late, as few of the passengers were early breakfasters, but I thought I'd do better in the dining car. I stripped off the waistcoat and shirt for a wash and a shave, and inspected in the mirror as best I could the fairly horrifying bruise already colouring a fair-sized area across my back. Better than on my head, I thought resignedly. Look on the bright side.

I put on a clean shirt and the spare clean waistcoat and decided that this was one VIA Rail operative who was not going to polish his shoes that morning, despite the wear and tear on them from the night's excursions. I brushed my hair instead. Tommy looked tidy enough, I thought, for his last appearance.

It wasn't yet light. I went forward through the sleeping train to the kitchen where Angus was not only awake but singing Scottish ballads at the top of his voice while filling the air with the fragrant yeasty smell of his baking. The dough, it seemed, had risen satisfactorily during the night.

Emil, Oliver, Cathy and I laid the tables and set out fresh flowers in the bud vases, and in time, with blue skies appearing outside, poured coffee and ferried sausages and bacon. The train stopped for a quarter of an hour in a place called North Bend, our last stop before Vancouver, and ran on down what the passengers were knowledgeably calling Fraser Canyon. Hell's Gate, they said with relish, lay ahead.

The track seemed to me to be clinging to the side of a cliff. Looking out of the window by the kitchen door, one could see right down to a torrent rushing between rocky walls, brownish tumbling water with foam-edged waves. The train, I was pleased to note, was negotiating this extraordinary feat of engineering at a suitably circumspect crawl. If it went too fast round these bends, it would fly off into space.

I took a basket of bread down to the far end just as Mercer Lorrimore came through from the dome car. Although Cathy was down there also, he turned from her to me and asked if I could possibly bring hot tea through to his own car.

'Certainly, sir. Any breads?'

He looked vaguely at the basket. 'No. Just tea. For three of us.' He nodded, turned and went away. Cathy raised her eyebrows and said with tolerance, 'Chauvinist Pig.'

Emil shook his head a bit over the private order but made sure the tray I took looked right from his point of view, and I swayed through on the mission.

The lockable door in the Lorrimores' car was open. I knocked on it, however, and Mercer appeared in the far doorway to the saloon at the rear.

'Along here, please.'

I went along there. Mercer, dressed in a suit and tie, gestured to me to put the tray on the coffee table. Bambi wasn't there. Sheridan sprawled in an armchair in jeans, trainers and a big white sweatshirt with the words MAKE WAVES on the front.

I found it difficult to look at Sheridan pleasantly. I could think of nothing but cats. He himself still wore the blank look of the evening before, as if he had opted out of thinking.

'We'll pour,' Mercer said. 'Come back in half an hour for the tray.'

'Yes, sir.'

I left them and returned to the dining car. The chill within Bambi, I thought, was because of the cats.

Nell and Xanthe had arrived during my absence.

'My goodness, you look grim,' Nell exclaimed, then, remembering, said more formally, 'Er… what's for breakfast?'

I got rid of the grimness and handed her the printed menu. Xanthe said she would have everything that was going.

'Has George told you that we're running late?' I asked Nell.

'No. His door was shut. Are we? How much? '

'About an hour and a half.' I forestalled her question. 'We had to stop in the night at Kamloops to get George's radio fixed, and then we had to wait there for the Canadian to go ahead of us.'

'I'd better tell everyone, then. What time do we get to Vancouver?'

'About eleven-thirty, I think.'

'Right. Thanks.'

I almost said, 'Be my guest.' but not quite. Tommy wouldn't. Nell's eyes were smiling, all the same. Cathy chose that exact moment to go past me with a tray of breakfasts: or not exactly past, but rather against me where it seemed to hurt most.