Shadows on the Train (17 page)

“And you got an appreciative whisper-laugh?”

“I got another
wompf!
‘The stamp. Such a little thing to ask for. Well, let's see if I can't change your mind.' She whispered that if I didn't want Pantelli to disappear as well, I'd better go quietly with her.

“Nurse Ballantyne dragged me, half-stumbling because my head ached and I couldn't see, through car after car. She hissed, ‘For your tree-freak buddy's sake, if anyone stops us, stay limp. Nobody'll recognize me with this hat pulled low. I'll pretend to be a passenger with laundry. And
you're
the laundry, get it? So method-act for me, kid.' She snorted at her, uh, humor.

“Finally Nurse Ballantyne stuffed me in this hamper, and then she left for a few minutes to get duct tape. That's when I got a few words out to you on the walkie-talkie.”

Talbot rubbed his chin. “Hey, nice singing by the way. That's what gave me the energy to apply running shoe to hamper.”

He held my hand. We grinned at each other for a long moment that, when I was younger, like a few days earlier, I would've described as soppy. And all at once I didn't mind anymore the knowing, older-sisterly looks Madge sometimes gave me about Talbot.

We got up and slip-slid across the towels. Near the door, Talbot swayed wildly. Unusual for someone so well-coordinated, was my first thought. Then I realized he was holding the left side of his head. A purple lump was emerging—a souvenir of Nurse Ballantyne's fist.

“We have to get you to a first-aid kit,” I said.

“One wielded by Nurse Frankenstein? Yeah, sure. I might as well check into a funeral home right now.”

“Madge has a first-aid kit,” I informed him as he stumbled out into the passageway. I took his arm. “Look on the bright side. The lump on your head matches your shiner.”

Unamused, Talbot mumbled something about taking out insurance on himself next time he went anywhere with me. I was too distracted to be insulted—I'd just realized that I felt strangely light and unburdened.

The unwieldy walkie-talkie! I must've dropped it while scrambling through the towels.

“You go ahead. I'll be right with you,” I promised Talbot and scooted back into the linen supply room.

Chapter Twenty-Three

The Secret of Black Socks

The walkie-talkie lay broken, a coil still bouncing from inside it, on a patch of floor between two Tower of Pisa-like towel stacks. I picked it up carefully. Phew! Anyone finding it would have chucked it into the nearest wastebasket.

And I'd encouraged the idea of the walkie-talkie as junk by loudly making fun of it and leaving it jutting out of my pocket at all times so that anyone could have swiped it. Which meant no one had wanted to…

Sitting down on one of the less wobbly towel mountains, I pried apart the two sides of the walkie-talkie. Talbot's invention might not have won any beauty prizes at a tech convention, but it had worked when needed. Thanks to the walkie-talkie, he'd been able to signal me from the bottom of the hamper.

And thanks to the walkie-talkie, I'd had the perfect place to hide Dad's envelope. I slid it out now from behind a battery and some wires.

Not that the envelope was valuable. I knew that now. It might have
once
contained the King Edward the Eighth stamp. Dad, or someone else, had long ago removed it.

The stamp. Such a little thing to ask for
, Nurse Ballantyne had whispered to Talbot.

A little thing…

The King Eddie had been smaller than a lot of stamps now. The Forks Market stamp seller had remarked on how, back in the 1930s, there were no big colorful stamps.

I tipped the envelope back and forth, watching the light catch on the elk's golden flanks here, the purple of the background mountains there. A big beautiful stamp. Set an old small stamp near it and you'd hardly notice the old one.

Hardly notice…

I was five years old again, tugging at Dad's hand as, in amusement and exasperation, he shooed Ardle McBean off our porch.

Dad demanded, “You know the dangers of secondhand
smoke to a kid?” He pushed me behind him again; I popped
right out, like a jack-in-the-box.

Ardle laugh-coughed. “Okay, I'll git. I just wanted to
make sure the king was okay, that's all. Guess you don't
want to talk about the king in front o' the kid, though.”

He gestured at me with his cigarette, scattering ashes
over the porch Mother had just swept. “That sure is some
songbird you got there, Mike. She makes ‘Black Socks'
sound like a Broadway show.”

Dad grinned at me. “How do the lyrics to that go?” he
teased and crooned:

Dinah's socks,

That she never washes,

You'd hardly notice

One from the next.

“No, no!” I exclaimed, jumping up and down. “Not
like
that,
Dad.”

But Dad was narrowing his eyes at Ardle. “The king
is safe, okay? Hidden, so no one will find him. We clear
on that?”

“Yeah, we're clear,” Ardle said…

Clear on what? I wondered, tipping the elk back and forth some more. Dad hadn't actually told Ardle where the king stamp was.

Or had he?

“Black Socks” had been going through my mind since Ardle's return. As if taunting me to understand the secret it held. Except that I'd been singing the correct “Black Socks” lyrics. Maybe, all the time, the secret had been in the lyrics Dad made up:
You'd hardly notice one from the next
.

And then, at last, I got it.

I was already prying the elk stamp off the envelope. Dad had only wet the back of the elk stamp at the edges. I peeled it off, and there, underneath, in shrink-wrap, rested the purple coronation stamp that had been too hastily printed for a king who never claimed his crown.

“Long live the king,” remarked a comfortable voice in front of me.

My heart did one of those horrible pole-vaulting routines. The fisherman stood before me, arms folded and a satisfied smile playing above his pointed beard. He now wore a pinstripe jacket over his pajamas.

“Bravo,” he said. “I wonder if I might have the stamp now?”

“No,” I said, annoyed. I might have known
he'd
be after the stamp too. Everyone else was. “Why don't you take up, say, coin collecting?”

I stepped to one side to bypass the fisherman. He blocked me. “Okay,” I said. “Here. Take it.” I held out the envelope.

But before he could grab it, I whipped my hand up to the tassel of his nightcap. I gave a good tug.

“Bowl Cut!” I shouted. I dodged round him, unfotunately sliding to fall on some towels. Avoiding his outstretched hand, I crawled away. “That pointed beard,” I panted. “Very cunning. Hides the dinner-plate shape of your face.”

Bowl Cut looked rather hurt. “Listen, I've never pretended to be Brad Pitt,” he puffed. “And I have this bowl cut for an upcoming Roundhead-versus-Cavaliers battle—” He fell backward; towels piled on top of him.

I was almost at the supply room door. “I thought
I
had a problem with lateness,” I tossed back. “For your information, the Battle of Worcester happened more than three hundred and fifty years ago.”

The door jolted open. Just a crack, because of the fallen towels wedged against it, but enough to knock me backward.

Freddy's freckled face peered in, his eyes big and round over his turned-up nose as he surveyed the sea of navy towels. “What is this, the set of
Titanic
?” Shoving hard, he managed to move the towels enough to squeeze in.

He reached out to help me up.

“Am I glad you're here!” I said. “I finally found the stamp, and this guy's trying to grab it from me.” I gestured at Bowl Cut, who was cartwheeling his arms in an effort to stand up straight as he plowed toward us.

“Huh,” Freddy scowled. “I'll take care of
him
.” Grabbing one of the walkie-talkie halves from me, he hurled it at Bowl Cut.
Bam!
Down Bowl Cut went, clutching his forehead and moaning.
Bam!
Freddy winged the other half, and Bowl Cut sank onto the towels.

So now Talbot's invention had served three uses: communication, hiding place and scud missile. I objected, “I'm not sure if it was necessary to—”

Freddy interrupted, “Let's see this ker-
ay
zee stamp that's been causing so much trouble.” He held out his hand.

It was gloved.

And it was his
left
hand.

Then I knew what had bothered me when Pantelli was dive-bombing peanuts into his mouth in Hans and Roman's magic coffin.
Whenever Beanstalk, Freckles or some other
conductor brings round the snack trays, I help myself to
several of these at once
, he'd explained. And I'd thought of Freddy offering treat baskets to passengers.

With his left hand.

When the Whisperer threw the blanket over me, a non-visual sense had kicked in after all—only not the sense of hearing or smell, as I'd expected. The sense of
feeling
. The shoulder that the Whisperer wrenched and bruised was my left one, which only a left-handed person would reach for. Nurse Ballantyne couldn't possibly be the Whisperer. I'd watched her repeatedly splash on the calamine lotion with her
right
hand. She'd been telling the truth. Somebody, a prudently gloved somebody, had booby-trapped her by leaving the poison-ivy-filled purse on her desk.

Was Freddy—nice, friendly, freckled Freddy—that somebody? Was he the Whisperer?

I raised a hand to my mouth and uttered what was probably the phoniest cough in history. “Kinda stuffy in here, isn't it? Maybe I'll just pop outside and—”

Freddy twisted my elbow. “Nothin' doin'. You're gonna give me that stamp.” He lunged for my other hand, the one that gripped the envelope. I stretched my arm as far as I could. I also plunged my teeth into his wrist, what you might call multitasking.

“YEEOOWW.” Cursing, Freddy dragged me to the wall. “I knew Ma was being too soft with you. ‘We'll join our little songbird sleuth on the Gold-and-Blue,' Ma said. ‘Me
and
you, cuz there's a midnight job for a conductor open,' she said. ‘We'll wait for the right opportunity to grab the stamp.'

“Ha! ‘Grab the kid and you'll get the stamp,' I told Ma.”

“You're her son,” I said between winces at the pain he was causing my elbow. “You're also the Whisperer. I heard you hissing for your ‘Ma,' except that I thought you were Nurse Ballantyne. I'll have to buy out the entire stock of FTD to make up the insult to her.”

“Yeah, wiseacre warbler, I'm Ma's son by her first marriage. So whoop-dee-doo. The
stamp
, kid.”

“Why?” I taunted him, playing for time since I didn't know what else to do. “You're not very reliable with it. You lost it to Ardle in a card game.”

“What is this, gloat-at-the-Fredster time?” Freddy punched over a stack of towels. Daylight flooded the linen supply room from a window beyond. He shoved till the window slid open.

I wrenched and pulled, struggling to break from Freddy's clamp-like hold. No dice. He bundled me up and onto the sill.

And over. I dug my heels in below the windowsill. They, and Freddy's grip on my left hand, were all that kept me from flying
splat
! into the blurry green of the field below.

“The stamp!” growled Freddy between gritted teeth. His face was stretched so tight with rage that his freckles looked ready to spring off.

I fluttered, kite-like, in the wind. My loved ones fluttered before me too: Mother, Madge, Jack, Wilfred the cat…my best buddies, Talbot and Pantelli…The train rounded a curve and
smash
—the wind flattened me against the side of the train. If I fell, the wind might flatten me up against those churning wheels. Let's see. The blender setting would be
chop
, I believe.

“THE STAMP!” Freddy yelled. He loosened his hold slightly.

“AAAGGGHHH!” I screamed and threw up. We were going so fast that the barf flew sideways, not down. Memo to self, possibly the last: There's nothing glamorous about being a damsel in distress.

From behind Freddy, a yell: “WOMPF!”

Having clambered up a towel stack, Ryan whipped a rolled-up towel down hard on Freddy's head. “WOMPF!” Freddy fell, pulling me in enough so that I was able to angle my arm inside the window and press it against the wall. I shifted my weight over the sill. Just a bit more…

Freddy struggled up, started to push me out again. My loved ones re-flashed before me. Including Dad this time.

Dad winked at me.
Remember—you'll sing one day at
Carnegie Hall
.

“I WILL!” I shouted with all I'd got. After all, these could be my last words.

Freddy tightened his clench on my fingers, reeled me in. “You will? You'll give me the stamp?”

“YES!”

Freddy yanked me back up on the windowsill. “Gimme.” He reached for the envelope, which I still waved in the air.

“SURE!” I yelled. “Here, it's all yours”—and I let the envelope go.

With a frenzied howl, Freddy lunged after it.

And toppled out the window.

Ryan helped me in. Hugging each other, we watched Freddy bounce on the grass beside the tracks, roll down a slope and into a blackberry patch. A second howl echoed back to us.

“I'LL GET MR. WIGGINS TO SEND HELP,” I bellowed.

I received a grunt in reply. Except that the grunt came from behind us. Bowl Cut, the left side of his head bloodied, was dragging himself painfully across the towels. Weakly, he struggled to standing position and swayed back and forth for a moment before speaking. “Interesting way to dispose of villains, Dinah. Chuck them from moving vehicles.”