Sam Bourne - Pantheon

He thought back to those final moments at the station with Dorothy. The train had taken time to leave, as they shunted on new rolling stock. The delay had been awkward; neither knowing what to say to the other. To fill the silence, James had asked a question that had popped unannounced into his head. It came in the voice of William Curtis, the lecturer at the American Eugenics Society. The subjects in such a study will, of course, have to be photographed without clothing

…

‘This will sound strange and rude, but tell me something. Have you ever heard anything about students at Yale being photographed without-’ He hesitated. How to put this delicately?

‘Without what, James?’

‘Without their clothes.’

‘Oh, you mean the posture photos?’ She said it matter-of-factly, as if it were something perfectly normal.

‘The what?’

‘The posture photos. We had them done in our first week.’

‘“Posture photos”? Why “posture”?’

‘Because they were taken to help us with posture. You stripped off, they put steel pins on your back and then snap. Took your picture.’

‘Pins?’

‘Yes, about four inches long.’

Suddenly James was seeing those pictures stashed in Lund’s bag. ‘They put pins in your back?’

‘No! Not into our backs. They taped them on. Afterwards they looked at the shape of the curve made by the pins. Any of the girls, or boys I suppose, whose “postural curve” was not good enough were sent to posture improvement classes.’

As the train now rattled through the darkness, James heard the voice of Curtis echoing in his head. Discretion may demand that this work be done in combination, as it were, with another more conventional activity. Now it was confirmed: this was what Lund had first discovered. That Yale was taking nude photographs of its new students under the spurious cover of a posture-improvement drive.

James’s memory instantly threw up a sight he had not registered at the time but which he had stored all the same. He was in the Dean’s outer office, rifling through the filing cabinets. He had gone past the M’s — Memorial, Monroe, Montana — and landed in the P’s — Political Science, Posture Study, Professional Training. His eye had glided past, as if it were just another, regular field of university activity: posture study.

Now he knew better. This was a secret research programme aimed at proving the link between physical strength, intellectual prowess and ‘moral worth’. The men behind it were trying to answer the question Leonard Darwin had asked in that damned book of his: If our object is to try to improve the breed of man, should we not first decide on the kind of man most to be desired? Those photographs, which doubtless included not only Dorothy, the boy behind the counter at the Owl Shop and every other young person entrusted to Yale’s care, were the attempt to provide an answer. It must have been Lund’s discovery of the bogus posture study that first alerted him to the Dean’s unflinching brand of eugenics, that led him ultimately to realize the ‘bigger and more dangerous’ scheme his superior was embarked upon. Had he kept those photos in his briefcase as his only hard evidence?

James was disturbed by a sound so muffled, he first wondered if it was inside his own head. He looked up and over his shoulder; the carriage was still empty. It must have been a loose bit of gravel, thrown against the window. He went back to looking into the void outside, searching for the glimmer of even a solitary farmhouse. But he could see nothing.

A minute passed and there was another sound, louder and more metallic. James looked up again. All was quiet behind him and, apparently, at the far end of the carriage. There was a click.

He looked closer now, rising from his seat. Unlikely to be an inspector on this ghost train, doubtless loaded with sacks of mail and churns of milk rather than paying passengers, but not impossible. There was definitely movement on the other side of that door.

‘Who’s there?’ James called out, without thinking.

Now he saw the handle of the far connecting door, linking this carriage and the next, begin to twist.

The train hit some kind of rut and jumped, sending James stumbling towards the windows on the other side, his left shoulder slamming into the wooden seat post. He let out a cry of pain. At the same instant, the carriage door flung open.

All he could see was height, a tall man made taller by a hat that appeared to rise to a sharp peak, covering his face in shadow. He was walking this way, in brisk, deliberate steps. Only when he was about two yards away did he speak.

‘Hands in the air, Dr Zennor.’

Reflex sent James’s hands towards the ceiling, even before he had noticed the small, dull metal ring hovering in the air, parallel with the man’s waist. It took another second for him to understand what he was looking at: a revolver, its barrel covered by a silencer.

Time seemed to slow down; he felt detached from the scene, as if he were an observer rather than a participant. Something similar had happened during gun battles in Spain. It meant that, at this very moment, instead of fear or alarm, he felt irritation at his own foolishness. He had shouted ‘Who’s there?’ in his telltale English accent. He had betrayed himself.

‘Walk backwards. And keep your hands in the air.’ The voice was rougher than any he had heard in New Haven. Instantly James decided that this man knew nothing about him, that killing him was a job.

James did as he was told, reversing down the aisle between the benches, counting two, three, four paces. He stopped when he felt the blast of wind coming through the gap between the carriages. He was now in the standing area at the end of the car, a door on each side. The cold air seemed to slap him back to reality. Now his heart surged, a flood of adrenalin as he desperately tried to think of what he might do to save his life.

‘OK, that’s good,’ the man said. In the light, James could see he was thick-necked and square-faced, maybe a former boxer. His mouth carried the suggestion of a smile, like a man who enjoys his work. The gun was still hovering; his finger was on the trigger. What’s he waiting for?

The second-long delay provided the answer. In that instant in which he had not squeezed the trigger, James understood how this man wanted him to die. It was like Lund: he wants it to look like a suicide. He was going to try to shove James from the train, so that the police would conclude he had jumped.

The gunman stepped forward, confident that James would step back in terrified retreat, leaving him just inches from the door. James did as he was expected, trying to win himself another second or two in which he could think. He could not take his eye off the revolver. He could be shot right here before he had drawn his next breath, his body then kicked off the train, where it might not be discovered for days, unless the animals got to it first…

As the man took another step, instinct took over. Instead of walking backwards, James leapt forward, deliberately colliding with his attacker, his right hand reaching first for the gun, pushing it away.

The advantage of surprise paid off; the gunman fell back, slamming against the far door. Still gripping the man’s gun-holding hand, James rammed it into the doorframe, hoping to shake the weapon loose. But now the attacker had recovered his strength and his fingers refused to let go.

The train swerved around a bend and, in time with the movement, the gunman pushed back at James, sending him careering into the opposite door. To his horror, James felt it open — the rush of cold air against him, the carriage filling with noise. Only his fingertips, clinging to the wooden surround above the door kept him inside.