Constance Farnsworth was nice to her, but as soon as she’d left the dining room Constance confided, “She’s new. At any formal serving, I mean. I was forced to hire her on short notice this very afternoon. But I fear she needed the job even more than I needed a new maid. So I’m sure it will work out.”
Longarm said, “She served me decent enough, ma’am. I noticed that younger gal who was here last night wasn’t dishing out the grub this evening.”
His hostess frowned thoughtfully and replied, “I can’t understand it. Sarah said nothing about giving notice. She was upstairs, dusting, when our morning train left for the outside world. So she has to be somewhere nearby. But none of my other help has been able to locate the silly thing and, in all modesty, I do have some help on my payroll.”
Longarm said, “She’s likely hiding out on you, then. Have you looked to see if you’d be missing any valuables, ma’am? Help quitting without notice have been known to leave with milady’s jewels, the family silver, or the best pony out back, whether they were sore at their boss or not.”
The comely widow sighed and said, “There’s nothing of value missing. You’re not the only reluctant cynic at this table. But it does seem she packed her best things and slipped out the back way just after noon. She was serving a noonday guest and me when we got word of your gunfight down at the school. I was naturally concerned for the safety of poor Beth Donnan too. But from the way Sarah carried on and burst right into the conversation, I gathered she knew our school principal even better than I do. I told Sarah I’d tell her all the details as soon as I got back from that hearing at the town hall, but by the time I’d returned, she’d packed up and slipped out like a thief in broad daylight. I’ve no idea why.”
Longarm said, “That makes two of us. This mint jelly sure goes swell with this lamb, ma’am. As soon as we’re done here, I got the answer to another mystery we were talking about. I looked up English railroad trackage at that school this morning, in hopes of figuring out what Gaylord Stanwyk had in mind for your narrow-gauge. I got some pencil sketches I made at my hotel, just before I headed up this way. I’d be proud to show ‘em to you, after you’ve had your dessert.”
Constance Farnsworth rang a small brass bell by her own plate, and when that miner’s woman came in she allowed they’d have their dessert and more tea served in her parlor.
Then she rose to her feet and asked Longarm what was keeping him.
He followed her sheepishly into her parlor, hauling out the drawings he’d made on hotel stationery as she quickly led the way. Seeing she seemed so anxious, he sat right down beside her and forked over the drawings, saying, “You told both that civil engineer and me why you couldn’t afford to lay all those miles of new track for a marginally profitable mountain line. I suspect Stanwyk found it as odd that a cheap holding company, salvaging a played-out boom at bargain prices, wanted to pay anything for a railroad that needed a total overhaul.”
She stared down at the diagrams he’d drawn from memory, shaking her puzzled head as she said, “They have some of that English rail on hand. Not nearly enough to replace my whole line, even if they were willing to sell it to me.”
She held Longarm’s sketches up to better light, adding, “What am I missing here? Everyone knows English and American rails are different. That’s why I can’t use the cheaper American rails to rebuild my worn and battered English rails, Deputy Long.”
He said, “My friends call me Custis. Those dumbbell-shaped or double Wilkinson rails running the whole length of your line have to rest in those little grippers because they’d never stand up to the weight of a train if they were just gripped by spike heads American style.”
She said she could see that, and that her late husband had once allowed it seemed a complicated way to lay railroad tracks.
He said, “I suspect few Englishmen have bothered to study on it. Folks tend to accept what they’re used to without studying on why it ought to be that way. I must be nosier than most. When something makes no sense to me I like to see if I can find out why.”
He leaned closer to point at the way the English rail was bedded down as he explained. “Those fancy fasteners that hold Wilkinson rails to what Englishmen call sleepers instead of cross ties are way more expensive than the four spikes and at most a flat plate that we use. The Englishmen who lay tracks ain’t dumb. They figure their fancier fittings pay for themselves with change to spare when the top riding surface gets worn and they simply loosen the bolts and turn the rail over, with the worn side down and the identical-shaped fresh side up!”
For a gal who’d only inherited a railroad from a man who’d never built one, Constance Farnsworth caught on quickly. She gasped, “My God, no wonder they killed poor Gaylord! He was about to save me a king’s ransom! All my track workers have to do, for a few furlongs every day, is loosen those bolts, pull a section of rail up, and simply drop it back in place upside down!”
“They have to tighten the bolts before you run any trains across your new riding surfaces, though,” he quietly warned.
She was beaming at him radiantly as she gushed, “It’s so simple, yet so logical, even if it sounds too good to be true! But if only poor Gaylord had simply told me all this down in Denver, he might have still been alive!”
Longarm nodded soberly and replied, “He might have hoped for some greater reward if he made it seem he’d put more effort into it. You hear sad tales from folks who feel somebody took a grand notion from them and never considered sharing the wealth when it paid off. I met this old coot who used to work back East in Tom Edison’s invention factory.”
He leaned back. “I doubt the old coot invented that electric lamp like he said he did. But my point is that a man with a sudden bright but simple notion might be worried about getting paid for it.”
The older Cornish woman came in with the dessert and tea service. When she’d managed not to spill any of it, the widow said she’d serve and the old gal backed out awkwardly.
As soon as they were alone again, the pretty young widow quietly asked what Longarm thought she might owe him for saving her derriere—a fancy word for ass.
Longarm laughed lightly and said he was a deputy marshal, not a civil engineer. He added, “Like I told them at that hearing this afternoon, I had time on my hands and nothing better to do. The only reason I never said what I’d been looking up was that you might have had some business rivals there. I found out at the barbershop I was on the money about that. Old T.S. Nabors of C.C.H. was sitting on that panel like he already owned this whole park.”
She sliced him some marble cake as she softly said, “I’m still in deep debt to you, ah, Custis. I don’t know what poor Gaylord Stanwyk meant to demand of me for the same simple but important help. I don’t know what I can do for you, if you won’t accept even a token percentage of the money you’ll be saving me.”
He said an extra helping of her swell cake would do him fine.
She blinked at his empty saucer and murmured, “You do have quite an appetite for life’s simple pleasures, don’t you? I understand poor little Beth Dorman feels she’s deeply in debt to you too.”
He didn’t know what that was supposed to mean. He said, “She don’t owe me. I owe her. Had not I heard her putting up a struggle out in the hallway, I might well have been the dolorous subject of that hearin this afternoon!”