Shadows on the Train (13 page)

“What about me?” I demanded. “It may surprise you, Talbot St. John, but I, too, am able to muster a polite manner now and then.”

“Ha!” Pantelli scoffed. “If so, it'd be harder to find than Mrs. Chewbley.”

“Yeah? This from the guy who thought
24
would be improved if the title referred to tree rings instead of hours!”

“Puh-leeze, you two,” Talbot begged. “Dinah, you're a target. I think we should escort you safely back to your compartment, where you double-bolt the door.”

I opened my mouth to object, specifically to the word “safely,” which I always find tedious.

Talbot cut me off. “Besides, Madge is upset about Jack and this LaCrème woman.”

“La
Flamme
.”

“Whatever. Anyhow, at this trying time for Madge, you should be there in case she wakes up and needs you to comfort her.”

“Crafty, very crafty,” I informed Talbot. “Knowing that I have no sense of natural caution, you appeal to my sense of guilt.”

“Which you have in spades,” Talbot said comfortably. His dark eyes twinkled at me.

It was still early evening, as in pre-prowl time, so we took Ryan to the games car for a game of ping-pong. He was getting pretty good. He sailed the ball right between Talbot and Pantelli and he grinned at my wild cheers—but still didn't say anything.

After, we all flopped down at a booth. “Nurse Ballantyne isn't the only one who can
wompf!
people,” I informed Ryan. “You
wompf!
ping-pong balls.”

Ryan mouthed the word
wompf!
He liked it.

Freddy wheeled up a cart with water bottles; we each grabbed one. I decided to pour everyone's water into glasses. Of course I managed to slosh water on the table. Why couldn't I pour in a queenly manner, like my sister?

A queen. A
king
, I thought. Always back to that.

“So tell us, oh wise historian,” I said to Talbot. “Charles the First was too early to appear on a stamp. What other king got beheaded?”

Talbot took a long glug of water before replying. “The difficulty is, all this hacking off of monarchs' heads occurred before stamps were invented. There was Mary, Queen of Scots, in 1587, Charles the First in 1649, France's Louis the Sixteenth and Marie Antoinette in 1793…”

Shrugging, he took another long slurp and drained his glass. “Unless you count Russia's Czar Nicholas and Czarina Alexandra and their whole family in 1918, but they were shot, not beheaded.”

“Please,” I begged, holding up my hands. Pantelli and I savored this type of history lesson, but I could see Ryan's dark eyes growing rounder and rounder. I didn't want him to have nightmares. “I can see I lost my head, as it were, in asking you.”

“Bad pun alert,” Pantelli chanted.

The bad pun circled back, Frisbee-like, to my mind. Which was where a light suddenly flashed on. How stupid I'd been!

“Talbot,” I said, my voice rather shaky, “forget about kings who had their heads chopped off. Was there ever a king who lost his head as in,” I struggled to say it right, “acting foolishly or impulsively?”

Talbot paused in aiming his empty bottle at a recycle bin. “Oh, sure,” he said, surprised, as if I'd asked him something so easy it was hardly worth mentioning. “Edward the Eighth. Handsome guy. Smooth-talking, witty, fashion plate-ish…Edward fell like a ton of bricks for some American dame nobody approved of. In 1936 he gave up his crown to marry her.”

Edward the Eighth! Why hadn't I asked the right question before? I clutched my head, marveling at the dim-wittedness it contained. “How silly!”

Talbot pulled away my glass, which I'd almost elbow-swiped off the table. “I dunno if Edward was
silly
,” he said. “If you like someone, you tend to put up with a lot.”

I sensed that, in a vague way, he was referring to putting up with
me
, and I felt oddly pleased. I managed a weak, rueful grin.

Chapter Seventeen

Another Passenger Disappears

I climbed into bed fully clothed in case I had to rush out to help Talbot and Pantelli. If only they could find poor old Mrs. Chewbley! From under my pillow I withdrew the mega-canister of Smarties that I'd bought from the snack shop. I'd planned to gobble down the contents as a pre-breakfast treat while waiting for Madge to beautify herself—a long and, in my view, completely unnecessary process. But, out of sheer nervousness, I started eating the Smarties now.

Poor Mrs. Chewbley! What if
she
wasn't getting enough to eat? I tucked back more and more Smarties. I was picturing Mrs. Chewbley: on my piano bench, rewarding me with orange creams even when I'd bashed the keys out of all proportion to the Edna May Oliver tune; crunching over our horse chestnuts in search of her glasses; beaming patiently at Pantelli as he blathered on about his tree “findings.”

Madge turned over in bed, blinked at the lamplight and woke up. “Oh, hi. I'm glad—though slightly stunned—that you junior sleuths are actually keeping to a curfew. No late-night prowling or anything like that.”

“Ummm…”

“You may be interested to know that I finally got through to Jack's cell.” Madge sat up, managed a wan smile and burst into tears.

This didn't sound promising. I waited glumly for her to continue.

“He said—he said he wanted me to be open-minded. Then,” Madge shook her head, almost unable to go on, “
he
hung up
!”

At this point her tears turned into agonized howls. I squeezed her hand, feeling, A, terrible for her, B, even more furious at Jack than before, and, C, uneasy about the sleep prospects for the people in the neighboring compartments.

I switched the light off so Madge could howl herself to sleep and waited outside in the passageway for Pantelli and Talbot to return.

In the meantime, unfolding the stamp dealer's card, I punched in his number on Madge's cell.

“Yeah?” he barked into the phone.

“Um, hi. This is Dinah Galloway. I'm the one with the elk stamp.”

Gusty sigh. “I told you, kid. A dollar eighty for it, and that's final.”

“I don't want to sell the elk,” I said hastily. “I'm phoning to ask you if there's a King Edward the Eighth stamp worth eighty thousand dollars.”

Loud snort in my ear. “The King Edward the Eighth blooper? Maybe it was worth eighty grand a few years ago. We're talking out-in-orbit prices now, kid. The King Eddie ain't as big and colorful as a lot of the ones they make now, but it's worth millions.”

Practically staggering under all this information, I squeaked, “So there
was
a King Edward blooper stamp!”

“Sure. The stamp was issued showing Edward at his coronation. Y'know, the official crowning of a king or queen.”

“What's the blooper in that?”

“You being cute with me, kid? The blooper was that
the coronation never happened
. Eddie quit the throne to marry his girlfriend in December 1936.”

“Holy Toledo.”

“There's no Holy Toledo about it. What'd I tell you at the market? Blooper stamps are the most valuable because so few of 'em get printed.

“Now leave me alone. I gotta watch me some baseball.”

The door to our car banged open. I was still standing outside the door of Madge's and my compartment, wondering what to do next. Pantelli trudged up to me with a horse chestnut branch. “Found this in the luggage car. It appears I'm not the only dendrologist aboard the Gold-and-Blue.”

He paused at the sound of the howling. “Wow, you can really hear the coyotes at night.”

“That's Madge. Let's just say she's not adapting well to the single life.” I pushed away the branch, with its lone, spiky-shelled horse chestnut dangling like a Christmas tree ornament. “So what happened in the luggage car?”

“I replaced the ice packs in my specimen case,” Pantelli reported happily. He wagged the branch some more. “Whoever the other dendrologist is, he's not being as careful as I am. Proves he doesn't read
Young Dendrologist
magazine.”

With waning patience, I demanded, “What did
Talbot
find in the luggage car?”

Pantelli regarded me owlishly. “I dunno. Didn't he tell you?”

I was close to erupting in Madge-like howls myself. “I haven't seen Talbot.”

“Huh. I thought he'd headed back here. I was busy arranging my Baggies of
Aesculus hippocastanum
leaves. When I finished, I looked around and no Talbot.”

Pantelli put down the horse chestnut branch he'd been studying. Our eyes widened at each other. We shoved open the door to Talbot's and Pantelli's compartment.

Empty.

For the second time aboard the Gold-and-Blue, a passenger had disappeared.

Chapter Eighteen

The Luggage Car, a.k.a. the Black Hole

“No,” pleaded Head Conductor Wiggins. In his gold-trimmed blue dressing gown, with a head conductor's badge sewn on the breast pocket, he leaned against the doorframe. “Not another missing-person report. You wouldn't do that to me, Miss Galloway. You
wouldn't
.”

Freddy, who'd escorted Pantelli and me to the head conductor's compartment, beamed. “I gotta hand it to you, Miss Galloway. You sure crank out the PR stunts.”

“Talbot has disappeared,” I said urgently. “We have to search the train.”

Head Conductor Wiggins covered his face with his hands. Moans limped out from behind his fingers. “This can't be happening. Did you check the games room? The library? The observation dome?”

“Well, no,” I admitted. “But why would Talbot go any of those places in the middle of an investigation? I can't see him sitting down to play chess by himself,” I added witheringly.

“If so, he's winning very handily,” Pantelli pointed out, wagging his horse chestnut branch.

Head Conductor Wiggins parted his fingers to peer out at us through bloodshot eyes. “Young Mr. St. John is playing a prank on you, Miss Galloway. It's what boys do when they like a girl. I remember such things from my own youth.

“My youth,” the head conductor repeated on a sob. “You'd never believe, to look at me now—weak, defeated— that I was once young, would you?”

“No,” Pantelli agreed cheerfully. He was using the dangling horse chestnut and branch as a paddleball toy; now, after a particularly vigorous bounce against the branch, the gourd-encased chestnut flew loose. It wheeled toward Head Conductor Wiggins—and one of its spikes gouged his earlobe.

“AAAGGGHHH!”

“Sir, maybe you'd prefer we come back later,” Freddy suggested.

“Yeah, like 2012,” the head conductor moaned, prying the spike from his flesh.

“I just don't believe Talbot would abandon you in the luggage car,” I told Pantelli. “It's not like him. He's too conscientious and honorable.”

We were in the dining car, at the table where I'd last seen Mrs. Chewbley. Freddy showed up with mugs of black coffee.

We both grimaced at the taste of the coffee. It was more than strong. It was Herculean. Yech. But we wanted to make ourselves stay awake to search for Talbot.

“I sure wish I'd paid more attention,” Pantelli lamented. “I was concentrating on the stria of my poplar leaves.”

“Is that like, stria-k, you're out?” inquired Freddy.

“Stria are the lines on leaves,” Pantelli told him. “Fascinating. Why, I once spent five and a half hours examining the stria of an—”

“Never mind,” I said wearily. “And it's not your fault you got distracted. It's just the way you tree types are.”

“Dendrologists,” Pantelli corrected.

Ignoring him, I begged Freddy, “Will you puh-leeze let us in the luggage car one more time? I think Talbot found something there. If I can find out what it is, maybe I'll know why he and Mrs. Chewbley have both disappeared.”

“When you're done, come find me and I'll lock up,” Freddy instructed. “Tootles!” He sauntered off.

Just inside the luggage car door, Pantelli and I hesitated. We didn't actually have a plan—a weakness that seems to feature in much of my sleuthing.

The gold-tiled passageway continued down the luggage car, only with stacks of suitcases, huge trunks standing on end, and cartons of all sizes instead of compartments. There was a stuffy stillness to the luggage car that should have convinced me no one else was there, but didn't. Pantelli whispered hoarsely, “Do you get the feeling we're not alone?”

“I'm hoping it's just spiders I sense here,” I whispered back. Gulping, I nudged him. “C'mon, as long as we use the buddy system, we'll be okay.”

We moved past some boxes labeled
PETRIE'S
PORCELAIN DOLLS
. The boxes weren't large enough to hold a person—at least, not a whole one. I shuddered. That was it. After this, I was rationing my reading of Deathstalkers comics.

Pantelli elbowed me. “Look at this carton!”

It was a giant ebony box that stretched from floor to ceiling. On the side, in ghoulish, dripping-candle-wax-like letters, it said:
HANS & ROMAN, THE WORLD-
FAMOUS MAGICIANS, PRESENT THEIR SPECIAL
DISAPPEARING COFFIN
!

I stared. I knew Hans and Roman. They'd performed their mega-magic show on the same Alaska cruise ship I'd sung on this past May. Without intending to, I'd sort of upstaged them—but they'd been good sports about it, since I'd got extremely cold, wet and uncomfortable in the process. We'd even talked about working together sometime.

Suddenly, any fond memories I was indulging in were interrupted by a deafening “WOO-HOO!”

Yelping in shock, Pantelli and I fell backward against Hans and Roman's magic coffin.

“WOO-HOO!”

About to let out a second scream, I looked up—and saw a giant wooden cuckoo poised over me. Bright blue, with gleaming red eyes, it was jutting out on a pole from a doghouse-sized clock wedged atop a steamer trunk. It was doing the
Woo-Hoo
song as opposed to an old-fashioned cuckoo sound.