“Four of us and four of them,” said our loyal spy smasher. “What do you say?”
“I’m game,” said Olivia. “As long as I interrogate Bevis Flint.”
“Hold it!” snarled Velvet. “You interview Lorenzo. You’ll do lots better with someone your own age.”
“We’ll flip a coin,” Olivia proposed, reaching for her purse. “Loser interviews deChante.”
“Well, I’ll tackle Laszlo,” said Jim, making a note. “It won’t be him, though. They’d be crazy to use someone with a foreign name. Except it did happen that way in Count on the Renegades.”
Someone knocked on the door. “It’s unlocked!” called Jim, who had elected himself host.
“Oh, do come in,” said Velvet, who had won the coin toss. (She’d been able to pull out a two-headed coin before Olivia could.) “We’re not quite done yet, but wouldn’t you like to come in and talk?”
Bevis would like. “Here.” Velvet moved over to clear space on the little sofa. “We can sit right here and...”
But the stalwart hero had found his own seat, next to Sissy. “Kittens, huh?” he said, catching onto the conversation. “I used to have a kitten named Jenny.”
“Kittens,” muttered Velvet. She tossed her dishes onto the little tray. “Kittens!”
Her knife bumped the sugar bowl, which none of us had touched during the meal, not expecting much to come of it. But maybe Mrs. Marr had had connections in the kitchen. I picked up the lid.
Inside, all I found was a note saying “Beware.” This one had been written on the back of a Baby Eloise envelope. I looked from it to Sissy and Bevis.
The Child Star’s blank eyes met mine. I wadded the envelope into my hand.
I couldn’t blame The Child Star for getting rid of her “mother.” And I knew where my own career would go if I said anything. There was one thing I could do, though.
Baby Eloise never walked into any drugstore to buy a bottle of rubbing alcohol, and probably didn’t snitch one of Lorenzo’s empties. She was way too well supervised. Somebody had to have done these things for her; the bottle and the warning letters suggested it was somebody on this train. If I could find out who had done The Child Star these favors, maybe I could do something to get him or her off the train before any of the rest of us looked expendable.
Lorenzo was no early riser; no rush to go interview him. I sat around to enjoy the fun as Velvet, with prompting from Jim and Olivia, tried to question Bevis. All they got out of the big, bold hero was a series of friendly but empty grunts. Bevis was a man of action — he had a Lone Ranger Pocket Book rolled into his back pocket — and he was breathing down Sissy’s neck, all agog with the suspense of Buster Kitten’s adventure.
Sissy was too busy to notice his attention or Velvet’s reaction. She was taking notes as she told the story, having long ago departed from the text, making up new perils as she went along. She couldn’t wait to find out what became of her hero.
The only person who lacked even imitation interest in the tale was the intended audience. The Child Star was slumped in her chair, occupied with a well-worn deck of cards and some obscure form of solitaire, flipping through the deck and mumbling to herself. Every now and then she’d let a card drop from the deck onto a stack of discards on her lap. When she reached the last card, she set it on top of this stack and started over.
They had been at this for better than an hour when I decided nothing much would happen if I slipped away. “Well,” I said, “better get these dishes back or they’ll think we’ve donated them for scrap.”
“As opposed to the food,” Olivia said, rising, “which we donated to the Axis.”
“Yes,” agreed Velvet, who did not stand up. “Why don’t you take all the trash with you?” Her eyes threw flame at Sissy.
The rest of the cast was less moved by our departure. The Child Star sort of nodded and went on running through her cards. Bevis, now pretending an interest in her game, grunted, either in farewell or at the sight of a nine of diamonds. “Meow,” said Sissy.
We moved out of our posh boudoir, along the external corridor, and to the end of the car. The dishes rattled as we bounced across the shaky three-foot landing that connected the cars. The train had had to be cobbled together from odds and ends of rolling stock the railroad had pulled out of mothballs, since all the good stuff was required for war work. The cars didn’t exactly fit, varying in age by centuries, I think, in some spots, so they’d nailed up little platforms and shelters to bridge the awkward bits.
Lorenzo was alone in the club car, reading a dark brown book, a bottle and glass in front of him on the table. I glanced to Olivia, who nodded and took my share of the plates on through. I sat in a chair opposite the character actor. His book came down; his head and eyebrows went up. I couldn’t see any signs of last night’s drinking in his face.
“Laszlo wanted me to check and be sure we all have our stories straight in case somebody in this next burg asks about Mrs. Marr,” I said, hoping Laszlo had not already passed this way.
He knew what I was talking about; the good news had spread quickly through the train last night. He took a drink. “And what is the story?”
“Mrs. Marr had an upset stomach after all the train riding and has gone home.”
This improvised tale nearly failed. Lorenzo’s head tipped back. “That seems strangely close to the truth for Laszlo. I expected something with more imagination.”
I shrugged. “He may be too busy looking for the murderer to be up to his usual level. Probably to thank whoever it is. Mrs. Marr was a spell of bad weather in this business.”
He took another drink and turned to me, his eyebrows raised but his eyelids lowered. “One gray cloud more or less in Southern California will not make much difference.”
I laughed; he seemed to expect it. “We’d need a whole host of murderers to clear them all away,” I said. “Did you...”
He had spread one hand across his chest, fingers splayed. “Clear them away?”
There was a touch of shock in his expression. Thinking he suspected me of taking personal credit for clearing Mrs. Marr away, I hurried to add, “Just clear away the real clouds: not the human ones.”
“Those are the most important ones,” he said, raising his head and shoulders to the level of a bust in a hall of fame. “For there are indeed lands that admire our cities, nor complain of the noise and ugly air. In the land of Suomintarin, where they watch the sun for signs of explosion, such reports as reach them from our side of the world receive great applause. You must know that in Suomintarin they believe that the sun rises each morning full of hope that this day will be different. But as the day passes, and the sun sees what evil men do each other, it burns hotter and hotter with rage. It is for this reason that afternoon is so much warmer than morning. As the sun’s strength is spent with much fury, and his face turns red, he goes to bed to dream of another, a better, world, and to waken the morrow hoping that the dream was true and what he saw was a lie.”
He rose half out of his seat. “And because they fear that one day the sun will explode from anger, as a man indeed may do whose temper rises beyond his body’s ability to contain it, they in Suomintarin believe we are wizards of genius to hide our cities with smoky fog, that the sun cannot see what we do in them.”
I stood there with my shoulders hanging slant and my mouth hanging open as he settled back down. He took another drink and said, “Seen Bevis? The games must go on.”
“Um,” I said. “Er, he’s with Sissy.”
“A little old for him, isn’t she?”