I glanced back and started forward. “Um, no, George. She’s going to drive the engine.”
He reached up and took hold of my sleeve. “I know I heard her say something about the caboose.”
I threw both arms into the air. “And she knows what she’s doing, too. They’d do better with the caboose, and there’d be room for all of us. They’re probably going to have her drive for a few feet, and then they’ll have to back up so we can all board the train. We may all wind up on the caboose after all. But you know what Laszlo’s like.”
“Got pictures of Washington and Lincoln in the caboose,” he noted. “FDR, too. Mayor and like that could get their picture taken with her under those, once I got some bunting tacked up.”
The wind was hitting me full, now that the crowd wasn’t there to protect me. “That’s a good idea, George. If the weather’s going to be like this the whole trip, that’ll be the only way to get decent pictures. But let me tell Laszlo. He won’t like the idea if it comes from you.”
“You’re all alike,” George snarled. “Come on and see what’s there.”
I had been in the caboose before, of course, but not without the mass of fellow performers, technicians, and publicity pushers. It was a mess, of course, after we’d kicked through it, but I could see George’s plan at once.
“Right next to a good old American potbellied stove, too,” I said as he repaired some of the bunting we’d knocked down on the way out and straightened the display of presidents. “You’d have to move that box of kindling so nobody trips, though, and...”
Next to the box of wood sat a stack of envelopes, the top one addressed to Baby Eloise. “What are those?”
He glanced back. “Ah, we use those to start the fire. You won’t miss ’em. Since we have to douse the fire every time you lot comes through, so nobody burns their valuable bodies, you might as well help us get it started again. Toss some in now, if you know anything about how to do that.”
“We know how to start fires in California, George,” I told him. “Nobody better.” I reached down for a handful. What I really wanted to know was whether these were prop letters or real ones, which could make George the studio spy.
They were real, but it didn’t matter so very much. I touched the top letter and little springs shot away. A rope skittered up through the pile and caught around my wrist. I jerked back, putting a foot up on a foot of the stove for leverage. But while that foot was off the floor, a second loop came across the floor. George flipped the rope and pulled it tight on my ankle.
“Ha!” he said, and the ankle went up in the air.
I couldn’t see him, not with my coat and skirt over my head. But I knew his teeth were clenched as he said, “I saw that mark on her arm, you witch. You’re all alike.”
“George, what is this?” I hollered. I’ve been in some serials, and suddenly having that potbellied stove so close didn’t seem so friendly.
He hauled on the rope and I tipped up enough so the piccolo in my pocket whacked me in the ear. “That rope, unh, on your wrist goes down to the ties. When we get up steam, we’ll see what’s stronger; you or these knots.”
His boots were just barely in view. I wondered if The Child Star could get this thing started before he had that rope secured, or if they were just trying the hat on her.
“You planned this together?” I panted. “You and Eloise, so she’d be the one who got to... umf!”
I sloped down toward the floor because he had to come forward to kick me. “Don’t you say a word against her!” he ordered. “Fair enough, though, to let her do it. You’re the guys who beat her up so she makes your money.”
The boots moved back and I tipped up some more. George went on talking. I didn’t interrupt him.
“I heard her scream last night,” he told me. “I thought I wouldn’t hear that any more once the old bat was dead. But you’re worse. You hurt her right in the middle of the crowd. You’re movie people; you don’t care what other people think. You don’t remember there are real people.”
He hauled on the rope some more. “But there are lots of us who love Baby Eloise. We’re real. I’ve read the letters as they come in. I know.”
“You’ve been reading the mail that...”
“I used to get letters,” he growled. “Rita knew every station on her old man’s route. I’d get a letter every other one, some runs. But she wanted to be in the movies. I told her mother not to take her. I didn’t get so many letters. She’d work ten, twelve hours a day, not but eight years old, and they’d give her things to keep her alert. Then I didn’t get any more letters. They had her so alert she tried to fly out a tenth floor window. Her mother tried to stop her and went over with her.”
He punctuated this with yanks and jerks on the rope, as if he wanted to pull me apart before the train got a chance. Something poked me in the neck, and I wondered if he was working a third rope. Then I figured out the proposition.
The inventor of that Axis-assassinator could probably have cocked it faster, but he probably would have had the use of both hands. I reached out with my unlassoed foot to try to get braced against the stove. “Ha!” said George, and pulled me nearly vertical. That was a good sign; it meant I wasn’t fastened in place yet.
With one hand, and with my eyes blurring a little from dangling upside-down so long, a thing I had not done since Two-Gun Fox and the Ring of Black Stone, I got my secret weapon together. Then I pulled my free arm back and let it swing around in George’s direction, twisting as much as I could.
The Hitler-hurter went off and caught him somewhere in the pants. It couldn’t have hurt as much as when Eloise got it on the bare arm, but it was enough for him to let go of the rope and jump back.
I let go of it as I hit the floor; no time to reload. Besides, I wanted George a little more off balance. I used the free hand to grab an ankle and pull him down while he was still wondering what hit him. Then I scrambled around to give him a good kick with those costume-department heels.
The next bit wasn’t very well staged: just a lot of heel and toe work to keep his hands off the ropes while I dug at the loop around my wrist. I couldn’t quite stand up to do this, but I didn’t dare lie down, either: that would give him too broad a target for stomping. He’d have done it, too. His face was still perfect casting, but now, instead of the kindly old conductor, he was the heavy who threw bums off boxcars all through the thirties. I was wondering why he didn’t go for that club they always seemed to have in the pictures. I figured it out when he pulled the gun.
But by now, despite a lot of kicking and crawling around, I had my hand loose. I needed it, too, as I scurried out of that caboose like the undercranked heroine of a Three Stooges short. I hit the ground outside and kicked off my shoes, for easier running and so I wouldn’t break a heeclass="underline" heels were hard to come by. Then I took off up the side of the train away from the audience. I’d like to say this was to trick George, or to keep him from shooting Sissy or another innocent bystander. But it was just instinct, part of being in the business this long. You don’t take your problems to the public, not until those problems have been passed by the publicity department. Places like French Willow don’t want you bothering them with problems that haven’t been touched up into neat stories. And they won’t go to your pictures if you’re going to be a nuisance.
So where was I bound for, up the wrong side of the train? I don’t know. But better dead than not working.
I didn’t get far anyway, in stocking feet on frozen gravel. I hit the ground and heard bells. When my head cleared, George stood over me, one hand aiming the gun, one hand on his train, which had been so sullied by us Hollywood types.