The train lurched again, a sudden violent jolt that rocked the car like a rowboat, and the book slid back across the floor as if attached to a string. Distracted, Mart never said yea or nay — he merely reached down to pluck up the book and thumb through the pages till he found his place. Then he swung his legs round, adjusted himself in his seat and cleared his throat. “Now, you remember this part of the story, Mr. McCormick,” he said, speaking to a spot on the wall just above the pillow and the frozen drained grimacing mask of their employer’s face. “The shark bit off Mugridge’s foot and Humphrey realized he knew who the lady was.” There was no reaction from Mr. McCormick, and as O‘Kane turned to leave he could hear Mart begin to read in a soft, hesitant voice: “ ’Among the most vivid memories of my life are those of the events on the Ghost which occurred during the forty hours succeeding the discovery of my love for Maud Brewster… ‘ ”
O‘Kane made his way back to the head of the car, his internal gyroscope adjusting to the little leaps and feints of the wheels, thinking he might just stop in the parlor car for the added stimulant of a whiskey or two before he had his coffee. Booze was nothing to him, though it had ruined his father — and his father before him — and he could take it or leave it. Tonight, though, he felt he would take it, and the more he thought about it the more he could taste the premonitory bite of it at the back of his throat and feel the tidal surge of the blood as it carried little whiskey messages to the brain. He was wearing the new suit he’d ordered from Sears, Roebuck even before he ruined the Donegal tweed — both the Mrs. McCormicks insisted that all of Mr. McCormick’s attendants be dressed as proper gentlemen at all times because Mr. McCormick was a gentleman and accustomed to the society of gentlemen — and he stopped a moment to admire his reflection in the barred glass of the doorway. He was looking uncommonly good tonight, he thought, in his Hecht & Co. fancy black-and-blue-plaid worsted with the sheeny black bow tie and brand-new collar — like a swell, like a man who had his money in oranges or Goleta oil. And the suit had only cost him thirteen-fifty at that, though the outlay had exhausted his savings and got Rosaleen screeching and flying around the apartment like some hag on a broom.
At any rate, he’d just turned his key in the lock when he became aware of a sudden sharp hiss behind him, as if someone had let the air out of a balloon, and even as he glanced over his shoulder to see the apparent figure of Mart sailing through the air in defiance of gravity, he didn’t yet appreciate what was happening. It wasn’t until Mr. McCormick burst through the doorway half a second later that O‘Kane made the connection, seeing and understanding wedded in the space of a single heartbeat: Mr. McCormick was loose. Unblocked, untangled, unfrozen. And loose. O’Kane made the connection, but he made a fatal error too. Caught up in the engine of the moment, Mart lying there in a heap against the paneling like an old rug and Nick and Pat already springing up from their cards to intercept their employer and benefactor as he raged down the length of the carpet in a milling frenzy of limbs and feet and fists, O‘Kane surged forward and forgot all about the key.
He was a big man, Mr. McCormick, no doubt about it, thirty-three years old and in his prime, with a gangling reach and the muscle to qualify it, and when the fit was on him he was a match for any man, maybe even the great John L. himself. He never hesitated. Jaws clenched, eyes sunk back into the cavity of his head till they were no human eyes at all, he came on without a word, and Nick, shouting “No, no, Mr. McCormick, no, no!” flung himself at his right side while Pat went for the left.
Their efforts were in vain. Nick missed his hold and went sprawling into a low mahogany table in an explosion of crystal, and Pat, who’d managed to lock his arms around Mr. McCormick’s neck and shoulder, took half a dozen sharp jabs to the gut and fell away from him like a wet overcoat. Mr. McCormick wouldn’t listen to reason. Mr. McCormick was in the grip of his demons, and his demons were howling for bloody sacrifice. There was no sense in cautioning him, no sense in wasting breath on mere words, and so O‘Kane just lowered his shoulder and came at him down the full length of the car in a linebacker’s rush. Unfortunately, Mr. McCormick was in motion too, having kicked Pat free of his left foot, and the two met head-on in the center of the car.
They met, of that much O‘Kane was certain, but things were a bit hazy beyond that. Something sharp and bony, some whirling appendage, calcareous and hard, came into contact with the ridge of bone over his left eye and for a moment he wasn’t sure where he was — or even who he was. Mr. McCormick, on the other hand, wasn’t even winded and had somehow managed to stay on his feet, knees and elbows slashing, a sort of long drawn-out whinny coming from deep inside him, goatish and stupid. “Ooooooouuuuuuut!” he seemed to be saying. “Ooooooouuuuuuut!” And then O’Kane was on his knees, Pat and Nick scrabbling behind him, the doctor aroused and livid and shouting out unintelligible commands, and Mr. McCormick was at the door and the door had a key in it and the key was turning under the concerted pressure of Mr. McCormick’s long, dexterous and beautifully manicured fingers.
O‘Kane saw that key and thought his heart would explode. What was he doing? What had he been thinking? That was his key in the lock and Dr. Hamilton would find that out soon enough and give him the dressing down of his life, maybe even sack him for dereliction of duty and yet another violation of the three p’s (Never allow a patient access to the keys, never!). Even as he sprang desperately forward, O’Kane could see the orange groves and the jasmine-hung patios and wistful señoritas dissolving like a mirage. Sprinting through the car for all he was worth, Nick and Pat at his heels, he could only watch in horror as Mr. McCormick tore open the door and flung himself headlong into the vestibule, already grabbing for the door to the next car… and what sort of car was it? A sleeper. A Pullman sleeper with murals, chandeliers, plush green seats that converted to berths — and women. Women were in that car.
“Stop him!” Nick roared. “He’s got a key!”
But it was too late to stop him. He was already in the adjoining car, his angular frame thrashing from side to side, already reduced to a pair of oscillating shoulders rapidly diminishing down the long tube of the aisle. By the time O‘Kane reached the door of the sleeper, Mr. McCormick was at the far end of it, startled faces gaping pale in his wake, an elderly gentleman sprawled in the middle of the carpet like a swatted fly, the train screeling down the tracks and the whole darkling world violent with the rush of motion. O’Kane was the fastest man in his high school class, a natural athlete, and he poured it on, vaulting the old man, brushing back passengers, porters and conductors alike, but still Mr. McCormick kept his lead, wheezing and bucking his head and throwing out his long legs like stilts. He reached the head of the car, jerked open the door, and disappeared into the next car up the line.
What went through O‘Kane’s head in those frenetic moments was probably little different from what was going on in his employer’s convoluted brain, a whirling instinctual process that supersedes thought and allows the limbic system to take over: it was as simple as chase and flee. O’Kane was pugnacious, smart, tough in the way of the man who could survive anything, anywhere, anytime, and he was determined to have his way. And Stanley? Stanley was like a rubber band twisted back on itself till it was half its normal length and then suddenly released, he was a cork shot from the bottle, a bullet looking for the wall to stop it.
O‘Kane finally caught up with him in the dining car, but only because Mr. McCormick had been distracted by a passenger seated at one of the tables, a passenger who had the misfortune to be of the gender that was both his nemesis and his obsession: a woman. He’d led the chase through three cars, bobbing and weaving in his maniacal slope-shouldered gait, apparently looking to run right on up through the length of the train, over the tender and across the nose of the locomotive to perch on the cowcatcher and trap insects in his teeth all the way to California. But there was a young woman seated in the diner, facing the rear of the train and having a genteel, softly lit evening meal with an older woman, who might have been her mother or a traveling companion, and O’Kane watched in horror as Mr. McCormick pulled up short, snapped his head back like a horse tasting the bit, and in the same motion skewed to the left and fell on her. Or no, he didn’t fall — he dove, dove right on top of her. Plates skittered to the floor, food flew, the elder woman let out a howl that could have stripped the varnish from the walls.