I thought about that. Then I slipped out the sugar bowl warning I’d transferred to the pocket of this coat when I changed, just in case it was an important clue. I cupped my hands to keep it out of sight and out of the wind, and looked it over.
The stamp had been canceled. It was a real one.
Where it could have come from, I had no idea, not having received any real fan letters on that trip. The Child Star probably hadn’t kept any, but Mrs. Marr might have, just to show off when Baby Eloise’s contract came up for renegotiation. If Jewell was right about the studio’s having some spy on board to check the real mail, this warning could have come from the spy, letting me know I shouldn’t mess with the studio’s plans. Or the murderer, busy helping The Child Star with those bottles, might have picked it up anywhere once it had been delivered to the train. Where was real mail delivered on this chain of cardboard boxes?
I looked around at our happy chorus. Somebody there had to be a doer of don’ts; there absolutely had to be someone besides The Child Star involved in the death of Mrs. Marr. Because Baby Eloise could not have lugged that bag of mail to the platform between cars without falling overboard herself.
Laszlo came through, distributing pens as we dragged out the last few songs to allow the crowd to get into lines. The next bit of the show had to be improvised. We would talk about anything, autograph anything, as long as the fan bought a bond, or even a stamp. Sissy and I were motioned in closer to The Child Star. We braced for the onslaught.
They always moved in force, to congratulate us for the fine patriotic effort we’d been ordered to make. Every single one of us — even Laszlo — got autograph books shoved at him. Most of our names were no great treasure, but that didn’t matter much. They didn’t want a souvenir of us but of the occasion.
We all seemed to get a certain part of the crowd. Jewell got the men who were just barely too old for the draft and wanted her to help prove they’re still young. Edwin Lorenzo attracted the matrons, while Bevis was always surrounded by kids. He picked up several for the cameras: all girls, I noticed, while the boys stood around on the platform, in awe of his muscles.
Velvet attracted the men too young or too fragile for the draft, and seemed to enjoy it. Olivia got the women: all of them looking for beauty hints or tips on how to break into the movies. I would have swapped; I got the parents with sons overseas. It must have been something in my face; more than one wished that their “he” had someone like me to come home to. Some of them pressed his last known mailing address into my hand. I probably could have made something out of that, but Laszlo was never around to notice how taken they were with me.
Sissy’s appeal, like The Child Star’s, seemed to be universal. “Ooh!” I heard her cry, “That reminds me of a joke. Knock knock, anybody!”
A bunch of anybodies cried, “Who’s there?”
She crowed at the response, clapping her hands, and said, “Fan!”
“Fan who?” roared the chorus.
“Fan mail!” she screamed, and they all laughed with her because, after all, she was from Hollywood.
Meanwhile, a small boy in his Sunday best was edging up toward Baby Eloise. He was a little red and seemed to have been built of wartime materials because he kept wobbling in three or four directions at once. When The Child Star’s eyes came round to him, he was ready to take off.
But when she smiled at him, his backbone seemed to jell. He leaned forward and blurted, “If I saw a Nazi spy, you know what I’d do?”
Her eyes sparkled, and she put her head down to receive confidences. “Something pretty terrible, I bet. What?”
“This!”
The kid had seen plenty of Westerns. He had drawn and fired before I could get across to him. Eloise leapt back, holding one arm.
There was, of course, a major to-do. Somebody grabbed the kid and started whacking him about the head and shoulders. Their suits matched, so I assumed it was his father.
Sissy and I, among others, went to The Child Star’s aid, but she wasn’t having any. “Oh, sir!” she called. “Stop! Stop! It’s wonderful!”
A bright red spot showed on the arm she’d been gripping. She’d taken off her coat, surrounded by the crowd panting for a sight of her, so the kid’s contraption had snapped her on bare skin.
But she wasn’t gripping that arm now. She was stooping to pick up the fiendish anti-Nazi machine the kid had made out of a coat hanger or something. Her eyes were wide, and she repeated, “Wonderful!”
“It certainly is!” I agreed. She knew and I knew that having the father beat up the kid would spoil the mood completely. You don’t sell bonds this way, and you don’t sell your movies to the people of French Willow this way.
“He was just showing me,” The Child Star told the crowd, “and it went off. But it’s just the thing for a Nazi spy.” Her mouth crowded into a little scowl of concentration for just a second, and then cleared as brilliantly as the sky after a summer squall. “I think I should take this on to Washington and show the president.” She addressed the boy. “You could make another one for yourself, couldn’t you?”
The kid had, up to this point, been trying to decide whether to cry or just die, but he stood at attention for this. “I could make lots, Baby Eloise!” he declared.
“That’s wonderful!” she told him, and saluted, soldier to soldier. Then she handed the lethal-looking thing to me, saying, “We’d better keep that in the safe until we get to Washington. Maybe we can use it in a picture, too, unless Mr. Roosevelt says it has to be a secret weapon.”
Our little train was going no farther east than Omaha, but the people of French Willow didn’t know that. I tucked the weapon into my coat and ripped open the warning envelope I was carrying, to write down the names and address of boy and father, whose heads were visibly larger than they had been a minute before. I even had them autograph the envelope for me, “Unless,” as I told them, “the president wants this on display at the White House.”
We sold lots of bonds in French Willow. Nimitz should send me a thank you note.
Laszlo wasn’t around to see most of this, but he heard about it. “I’ll talk to you later,” he growled at me when he came smiling up through the throng. “If you can’t take better care of her than that...”
But his main business was with The Child Star. “It’s getting to be time to leave, folks! Have to keep to our schedule! You know how it is! How would you like to drive the train for a bit, Baby Eloise?”
She was fatigued enough to betray an actual opinion. “If I stood on the caboose and waved to the people, I’d see more of them.”
Everyone cheered except Laszlo. He got a hand clamped around her unmarked arm, snatched up her coat, and said, “Oh, but we’ll get much nicer pictures with you driving. You’ll get to wear a nice hat. Wouldn’t Baby Eloise look great in an engineer’s hat, folks?”
Everyone cheered some more, and the crowd moved up the platform a ways. I was moving with it until the Nazi-smasher slipped from my coat. The thing refused to be picked up while I had my gloves on. By the time I had the gloves off, and the Allies’ new secret weapon stowed where it would be harder to lose, the parade had moved on considerably.
Before I could join it, a voice demanded, “What did she say? Is she going to wave from the caboose?”