“OH!” JULIE EDWARDS WAS SITTING UP ON THE BERTH. “Oh, it’s you!” She looked much better.
Molloy’s entrance into the compartment, while casually made, had the air of his belonging. “The doctor tells me you might survive,” he said pleasantly.
She was confused. Uncertainty, doubt, gratefulness for his gallantry about the room, seesawed for position on her face. “I—yes. Yes ... He was a nice doctor and didn’t scare me a bit.”
“I would like you to meet George ... George, this is Miss Edwards—for whom you found the doctor.”
George’s eyes came to rest on her legs.
“A pleasure,” he said appreciatively.
Molloy indicated the bench. “Close the door, sit down, and stay awhile, George. That is”—he swung to the girl amiably—“if Miss Edwards doesn’t mind. You don’t mind, do you?”
She hesitated. “I’m not so sure—”
With smile, lifted hand, he halted her objection. “I can understand that you should be rather—shall we say, dubious—about me, because of the mumbo jumbo with the snapshot.” He was disarming with expression, gesture, tone of voice. “The time has come, however, for explanations.”
She looked at him unsurely. “Explanation of what?”
“About Martha.”
“The—that picture, you mean?”
“Yes.”
“It wasn’t Martha in the snapshot.”
“I know.”
Her eyes sharpened suspiciously. “If you can explain that I’d like to hear it.”
He nodded. “You shall hear it right now,” he said. He picked up the compartment’s one chair, planted it where he could watch her face and be watched, and seated himself. “Don’t you think it would be better if we trusted each other?” he asked amiably.
“Why should I trust you? I hardly know you.”
She was not, he saw, relaxing at all; nothing he was doing or saying was easing her alarms and doubts. He felt thwarted. Patience came hard for him at this moment; he would have liked to plunge directly to the point, rip out the bald facts: Martha had disappeared! There was a Martha who wasn’t Martha! Why? Murder had been attempted! Why? Blunt truths, searching questions, were arrayed in his mind for hurling. But he had read Julie Edwards carefully, and saw her as an over sensitive person, by no means a fool, with a good mind and lightning-fast reactions. She would, he had decided, overact mentally to everything. She was suspicious of him now; the emotion, like all her emotions, would be excessively violent, a trembling fugue of her nerves. He leaned back, his strong face honestly concerned, and searched for a key to her confidence.
George’s view of the girl’s legs was shut off by Molloy’s position in the chair. George turned his attention to the window, placing an eye to the cold pane, striving to penetrate sleet and grime. The icy glass vibrated against his forehead, made a tingling. He imagined he saw ghostly telegraph poles snapping past, but he was not sure. Jeeze, the train was making time! He’d hate to have the engineer’s job, a night like this; still, with these new diesel locomotives, it might not be so bad. But what if they smacked into something? ... A sweet-looking girl, he thought. But she’s scared.
Molloy gave the appearance of being relaxed. His hands were knitted together on a knee. He said, “My name is Chance Molloy.”
“You gave me your name in the diner!” Julie Edwards said sharply.
“I thought it might mean something to you.”
“It doesn’t.”
“Such is fame,” he said wryly. “Seriously, though, I thought Martha might have mentioned it.”
“She didn’t.”
He unlaced his hands, turned them palms upward. “You’re perfectly right to be wary.” He slid his billfold out and produced his passport, which he always carried in a pocket of the large billfold. He handed the passport and a business card to her, saying, “Will you take a look at these?”
Leaning back, he watched her examine the passport. She was, he reflected, nice-looking. The long fingers, wide mouth, expressive eyes—he had already noticed that her feelings were best read by watching her eyes—probably denoted an intense, vibrant mental development. She was, he surmised, a person who felt things very strongly, so much so that her feelings needed a great deal of restraining.
He seemed to see in her many of the qualities he had sought after in himself. He admired a finely tuned nature; sensitive minds got much more out of life than torpid ones, he was sure. The depths were deeper, but the heights were higher; the wide span of tones made a vital, exciting picture. This girl, for instance, would not be monotonous. She would be intense. He was intense himself, and his interest was stirred.
Suddenly she stared at him.
“B.M.!” she exclaimed.
“Eh?”
“You’re B.M. Martha called you that in her letters!” She was smiling, relieved, delighted. “She wrote about you often! Pages and pages!”
He was puzzled. “B.M.?” he ventured doubtfully.
“She meant Big Moment.”
Molloy winced. George kept his gaze fixedly on the window and the storming night; a muscle at his mouth corner twitched. Molloy tasted embarrassment wryly and averted his gaze. He had the silly feeling he was blushing.
“I’m sorry I didn’t recognize your name,” Julie Edwards said quickly. “You see, Martha didn’t actually mention your name in her letters. But she did write that you owned BETA Airways, in South America, and that you were very successful and influential.” She extended a hand. “Will you forgive me?”
Her hand, resting briefly in his, was cool and firm. He asked, “We’re on speaking terms then?”
“Of course! I feel, from Martha’s letters, that I know you well.”
“Excellent!” he said. He was still a little warm with embarrassment. “Then you’ll listen while I tell you something?”
“To anything you want to say.”
He nodded. Her delight, her pleasure at finding he was not someone to be feared—because he was Martha’s friend—had a swift, sobering effect. He said, “Some of it is going to be unpleasant.”
Her reaction, the quick whip of anxiety across her face, was as rapid as his had been.
“You mean—bad news?” she demanded.
He shrugged. “Not good. But suppose you listen.”
In telling the story, he underplayed the urgency of the matter of engine parts and tools, his purchase of which might be thwarted if Martha was not found; he included the fact of the purchase, however, as his motive for cabling Martha, thus discovering there was a fake Martha. The rest he told concisely, with a nice omission of cluttering detail—the phony Martha was working for Copeland, she and Walheim were apparently in cahoots, Molloy’s playing of detective had so far been pretty futile. The telegram from Julie Edwards had arrived; consternation; Walheim had flown to Chicago, clearly for the sole purpose of catching this train. George had shadowed him, a fat man had joined Walheim, and Julie had been pointed out to him.
She listened attentively, wordlessly, wide-eyed. Now—he halted his recital here, let it hang—she lay back on the berth, drew the blanket over her, up to her chin. He had the feeling she was appalled, that she was forcing her body to lie as still as it would.
He asked, “Did you really faint and fall?”
She said, “I was going through the vestibule. I didn’t hear or see anyone. There was just, suddenly, nothing. Nothing at all!” She shuddered violently.
“You don’t definitely know what happened, then?”
“No ...”
“You see what we suspect, don’t you?” he asked.
“I—they ... ?”
He nodded. “Attempted murder.” The planes in his face had arranged themselves in flat hard lines. “Either Walheim or the fat man, probably the latter.”
Slowly her lips took a slashed shape.
“I think I’d like another drink,” she said.
He arose with alacrity, for he felt a strong need to do something; he wanted urgently, at this moment, to strike the enemy down, to make an arrest. He presumed that he, a citizen, had that right, but if there was any question the conductor must have authority. Unfortunately, and he saw this with exasperated clarity, there was no evidence as yet of attempted murder that would hold in court.
He had, he realized, thrown the situation—on the whole a frightening thing—at her rather too suddenly. The darkly harridan state of his own fears had made him brusque. Tension had tripped him up; he had hurled the story at her crudely, shockingly. He felt, suddenly, great admiration for the way she had taken it. Clearly she had deep natural habits of restraint, and this he liked. Himself a man accustomed to self-handling, he was impatient of weakness in others; he was delighted, conversely, to find strong traits in another. She had advanced in his estimation, which was a difficult thing to do. He handed her the drink. His opinion of her, if a painting, would have been done in bright glowing colors.
“I can’t believe it!” she said clearly. “I mean—there are other ways. I could have been kept from seeing Martha. You mentioned one yourself—a telegram sent to me on the train.”
He liked her perception there. “That’s a point that needs looking into.”
“Mother of God!” She was gripping the glass with both hands and staring at it. “Why should they want to murder me?”
“Can you think of a reason?”
“None! No!”
“It would be something connected with Martha,” he said thoughtfully. “We can safely assume that much, I think.” He threw out a hand, saved himself from being thrown forward by a lunge the train gave. “It might be something Martha wrote you.”
She shook her head. “I can think of nothing.”
“We might feed our minds some possibilities. Often that helps. Minds are like that. Give them a theory; if too improbable, they sometimes bring up a hitherto unrealized fact to refute it.” He had become intent. He had settled down, patiently, to pick the thing apart and examine the pieces. “Has there been any change in the tone of Martha’s letters the past weeks?”
“No ... Yes—that is, she was excited about her promotion, about going to New York to work personally for Mr. Copeland. She wrote that.”
“Wasn’t Martha’s decision rather sudden?”
“Sudden?”
“I was under the impression she first intended to turn the job down, feeling that, since Copeland was trimming his business holdings because of health, the job might have a limited future.”
“I—yes, that is true.”
“Then she suddenly accepted the position?”
“Yes.”
“Three weeks ago?”
“Yes.”
“Did Martha write you any special thing about that time?”
“I’m trying to think, but I don’t recall anything special.”
“Notice any difference in the tone of her letters about that time?”
She considered the question, frowning. “Not unless it was this: her letters seemed to become more flowery in description.” She moved her head and looked at him. “Martha always wrote glowing letters full of rather dull descriptions. But it seemed, after she got to New York, that her word pictures were more flamboyant. More—well, adept.”
He leaned forward. “Would you say they read as if they had been lifted from travel folders of the city?”
“Oh! Oh yes! That’s exactly the way they sounded.”
“What about the signatures?”
“Martha always signed her letters with the typewriter. They were typewritten too ... Oh! I recall something else that I hadn’t thought about. Martha had lots of little phrases, funny names for things, like—well, calling you B.M. After the letters began coming from New York lots of the phrases and names were re-used, and not many new ones invented.”
Molloy nodded grimly. “Martha didn’t write those letters, obviously. That gives us, approximately, the time the phony Martha stepped into the picture. It was when Martha left California.”
He almost added, “If she left!” His view of the picture was at its blackest, his concern for Martha’s safety most disturbing.
“Did you save the letters?”
“Why, yes! Yes, I did.” Her hands made small movements, joining the excitement in her eyes. “You see, Martha is—although I haven’t seen her in months—the very closest friend I have. So I—well, I keep her letters.” She brought a hand to her cheek, thinking; presently she added, “I could wire my landlady, Mrs. Norton, where to find the letters and get them and air-mail them to us in New York.”
He nodded, liking her aggressive advancing of an idea. “An excellent suggestion,” he said. “Write out the telegram, so it can be sent at the next stop.”
“Where—”
“The Hotel Regis. We’ll put you up there.”
George arose stolidly, lifted a pad of telegraph blanks from the holder that also contained stationery, and handed it to Julie Edwards. He pulled down his coat sleeves, drawn awry on his thick arms and shoulders by his sitting position.
“Shall I stay here, Mr. Molloy?”
Molloy shook his head. “No. You may go hack to watching Walheim and the other one.” Molloy’s shoulders had an angry slope, his eyes a thwarted violence. “The devils! The lucky devils! Whether we like it or not, there is no real evidence against them.” Head back, for a moment he computed departure hours and elapsed times of mail flights. He said, “If Miss Edwards wires for Martha’s letters tonight, they should be in New York by tomorrow afternoon. From them we may, or may not, learn the answers.” He made, with one hand, a quick cutting motion, added, “In the meantime we can only do what we can!”
A heavy hand on the door, George asked, “You will be here, Mr. Molloy, in case I wanta see you?”
“Yes, probably ... In any case, use a signal when you knock. Tap once for each quarter after the hour at the time you knock. One tap for fifteen past the hour or less, two for half past, and so on, then repeat the sequence immediately.”
“Okay.”
“And be careful!” Molloy flung a grim warning. “They’re blind if they haven’t learned that we’ve taken Miss Edwards under our wing.”
George opened the door calmly. “I’ve had that on my mind,” he said. He went out, pulling the door shut carefully behind him.
Molloy locked the door ostentatiously, posing an example he wished Julie Edwards to follow in case she were left alone. She had paused to watch him, now she went back to penciling the telegram. He took the seat by the window.
The train, he saw through the glass, was bending around a curve, the locomotive dragonlike. He braced himself, and not a moment too soon, for the car jerked to the right, the pulling force of the curve laid against him, his bag upset on the floor, his topcoat on the hook by the door was flattened against the wall. He bent and righted the suitcase, then leaned back and, elbow on window ledge, jaw on palm, resumed waiting and thinking.
The thwarted and blocked feeling was still with him. He recognized that it was not a newborn thing with him; he often felt this way, chained, when forced to advance slowly and carefully. But it seemed stronger than usual ... He watched Julie Edwards write. He was no fool, and an analytical man as well; he knew that some of his impatience—how much of it he was wary about guessing—stemmed from interest in the girl. An interest that had come unbidden and seemed to be developing.
Presently she held out what she had written.
“This all right, do you think?” she asked.
He read. “Good. You have made it sound urgent enough.” He consulted the watch on his wrist, then drew a timetable from the topcoat pocket and examined that. “We’re lucky! There’s a station stop in just a few minutes.”
“You’ll send it?”
He was lifting down the topcoat. “Yes. The stop is a city. There’ll be a Western Union in the station, or perhaps messenger boys at the train.” He put on the coat.
Alarm threw her eyes wider. “You’ll be gone for a time?”
He nodded, experiencing some warmth at this sign that, already, she regarded him as necessary to her safety and composure.
Stepping outside, he turned with the door still held open and said, “Better lock it.” He closed the door, listened for the click of the fastener, got it, and walked to the pullman where George was sitting. He knew from George’s disinterested air that George was watching the quarry.
“Where is he?”
“Third back from the front, left-hand side,” George said. “It’s the fat one. You can see his foot. I didn’t go past and take a close look, but it’s him. Same suit.”
Molloy passed George the telegram.
“Send this, next stop. I’ll keep an eye on him.”
George carried the telegram back to the vestibule. Porter and conductor were already in the vestibule. The porter used a rag to wipe off the hand-rails and make a few swipes at the top of the portable step. He tucked the rag into a niche. He opened the top half of the door, banged it back. The train, jerking, telescoping, air hissing, was beginning to slow down.
“You get off here, suh?” The porter was looking at George.
“No. Going to send a telegram.”
“We don’t stop more’n five minutes.”
“Okay,” George said. He watched the yard signals glide past, listened to a bell clanging as the train lost headway gradually.