Exactly the way I had it figured out, Max said approvingly.
“What should we do, Max?”
“I think we better find that conductor,” Max replied. “He’ll probably want to put a warning sign on this door.”
99 looked back along the aisle. “Max. . we seem to be the only passengers left.”
“I know that, 99. That’s why I want a sign on that door. We could get killed going to dinner this evening if something isn’t done about the dining car!”
3
Max and 99 located the conductor-the fat, jolly-looking man with the white beard-a short while later. He was in the lounge car alone, standing behind the soda fountain, mixing himself a chocolate soda. The conductor looked quite surprised when he saw Max and 99 enter the car and approach the soda fountain.
“We’d like to report an accident,” Max said.
“I can see it,” the conductor replied. “How come you two didn’t step off the train-to your deaths-with all the others?”
“No, no, that’s not the accident,” Max said. “The accident is that the door to the dining car- Oh, you know-” He peered at the conductor narrowly. “If you know about it,” he said, “Then apparently it wasn’t an accident-it was planned. And the only people I know who would plan a mass assassination are-”
The fat, jolly-looking, bearded conductor had produced a pistol from behind the soda fountain and was pointing it at Max and 99. “And the only person I know who would know that the only people he knew who would plan a mass assassination would be a Control agent,” he said. With the pistol, he gestured toward the front of the train. “March!” he ordered. “All the way to the engine!”
Max and 99 made their way up the aisle, with the conductor following them, keeping his gun pointed at them.
“Keep an eye out for a guy with feathers,” Max whispered to 99. “He’ll be the injun.”
“Not injun, Max. Engine.”
“Oh. I guess that does make a lot more sense. After all, we’re on a train, not a reservation. Although. . we have a compartment. And you can’t get a compartment without a reservation.” He looked thoughtful. “Just to be on the safe side, 99, keep an eye out for a guy with feathers, anyway.”
“All right, Max.”
They soon reached the engine. It was not easy to enter, however. More than a dozen men were crowded into a small space that normally accomodated only the engineer and the fireman.
“Coming through!” the conductor shouted. “Watch it! Coming through with Control agent prisoners!”
The men cleared a small passageway and Max and 99 and the conductor squeezed past, then reached a small, wispy, saucer-eyed, nervous-looking man who was seated at the controls of the train.
“Arbuthnot,” the conductor said to the man, “look what I caught!” He seemed proud.
Arbuthnot, KAOS’s master assassin, looked at Max and 99 and screamed. “Control agents! Get them out of here! Control agents have germs!” He then fainted.
“Wheeeee!” the man standing behind Arbuthnot shouted. “Now, it’s my turn.” He shoved Arbuthnot out of the seat and took his place at the controls.
“Give me a hand here,” the conductor said to Max and 99. “You two pick him up and carry him back to the lounge car. He looks like he needs a good stiff chocolate soda.”
“You said ‘give you a hand’,” Max replied. “What are you going to be doing?”
“Somebody has to carry the gun,” the conductor pointed out.
Max and 99 picked up Arbuthnot, who weighed not much more than a feather pillow, and maneuvered him out of the crowded engine, then headed back down the aisle with him toward the lounge car.
“Those men in the engine-” Max said to the conductor. “Were they, by any chance, a contingent of KAOS assassins on the way to a secret siminar?”
“That’s Classified information,” the conductor replied.
“How about this, then?” Max said. “What are all those KAOS assassins who are on their way to a secret seminar doing up there in the engine? Is that Classified?”
“Oh, no-I can tell you that,” the conductor replied. “When we were planning this trip, we voted on whether to travel by stolen plane or stolen train. Well, stolen train won by a wide margin. Almost all of us, we discovered, had a secret hankering to drive a train. I was the only one who didn’t-and I had a secret hankering to take tickets on a train and walk up and down the aisle calling ‘Lunch is now being served in the dining car.’ So, we hijacked this train to take us to the secret meeting place. That’s why all those KAOS assassins who are on their way to a secret seminar are up there in the engine. They’re playing engineer. Scratch a ruthless, hardbitten KAOS assassin, and, every time, you’ll find a cutesy-pie little kid underneath.”
“Assassinating all the other passengers-I suppose that was a kid trick, too!” 99 said.
“Are you kidding?” the conductor replied, hurt. “The way that was done? That had real technique-it was professional. A kid would’ve just gone through the cars with a machine gun, blasting away. It would’ve been fun, sure. But no technique.”
“He’s right, 99,” Max said. “There was certainly nothing amateurish about the way he wiped out those passengers. I think you owe him an apology.”
“Sorry. .” 99 said.
They had reached the lounge car. Max and 99 put Arbuthnot in a chair. The the conductor mixed a chocolate soda-straight-and waved it under the master assassin’s nose. He stirred. His eyes opened. After a sip of the chocolate soda he regained full consciousness. But when he saw Max and 99 he looked as if he were going to faint again.
“Get away!” he shrieked at Max and 99. “I don’t want your Control germs!”
The conductor took Max and 99 to the far end of the car. “Stay right here,” he ordered. “Arbuthnot’s got a thing about germs. He’s a regular nut on the subject. You ought to see him when he starts out on an assignment to assassinate somebody. He puts on a face mask and rubber gloves and sterilizes his gun or knife or poison-as the case may be-and-”
“Come back here!” Arbuthnot called to the conductor. “Do you want to catch something!”
The conductor left Max and 99 at the end of the car and walked back to where Arbuthnot was seated.
“Well,” Arbuthnot called to Max and 99, “so you were sent by Control to follow us and locate our secret meeting place, were you?”
“Sorry,” Max shouted back, “but that’s Classified information.”
“Which?” Arbuthnot asked. “That you were sent by Control? Or that you were sent to locate our secret meeting place?”
“Both,” Max replied.
“Shall I take them to lunch in the dining car?” the conductor asked Arbuthnot.
“No-we’ll keep them alive,” Arbuthnot replied. “We’ll use them as hostages in case Control happens to find out where we’re holding our secret meeting. When we get-”
The train suddenly jerked to a halt. Max and 99 were thrown against the end of the car, and Arbuthnot and the conductor were hurled down the aisle and ended up in a tangle with Max and 99.
“Get me out of this!” Arbuthnot screeched. “I’m getting their germs all over me! Ugh!” In panic, he scrambled out of the tangle, then raced to the other end of the car and huddled in a corner. There, crouching, he got out a spray bottle and began spraying the surrounding air and himself with disinfectant.
Max and 99 were so fascinated by Arbuthnot’s performance that they made no effort to try to escape. As a result, the conductor was able to disentangle himself and get the drop on them again.
The train began moving once more.
“Well. . that went pretty smoothly,” the conductor said, pleased.
“Smoothly?” Max said. “That was the roughest whatever-it-was I’ve ever experienced. What was it?”
“We just switched from the main track to a side track,” the conductor replied. “The side track will take us to the secret meeting place. Nobody will know where we are.”
“I doubt that,” Max said. “Won’t the railroad miss the train when it doesn’t arrive at its destination?”