‘Did you hear that?’ muttered Holmes, confused and perplexed, when we had gone some way from the engine.
‘I did!’ I answered.
‘Is that what they call a timetable? Let’s see what happens now!’
It was a long wait. The engine driver took two hours over his dinner. Eventually, very unsteady on his feet, he emerged from the station house accompanied by an even more inebriated stationmaster.
‘—it’s those bastards, the correspondents, I fear,’ loudly resonated from the stationmaster, evidently concluding a conversation that had begun earlier. ‘Earlier on, that trash never bothered coming here, it being free-and-easy enough elsewhere. Then came the war and they were here one after another, like evil spirits.’
‘Ye-es,’ drawled the engine driver in his deep bass.
‘But most important, you didn’t know where such fellows are likely to pop up from,’ the stationmaster continued. ‘You even find ’em amongst the military! Turn up, sniff out and disappear.’
‘You should’ve pushed one of ’em under the wheels … like it was an accident.’
‘Brother, you won’t get hold of one of ’em. Too quick, and they always come on a passenger train. How can you tell ’em for what they are? Just as well they don’t rummage about on freight trains or we’d be back in no time on just our wages.’
‘Bloody swine!’ swore the engine driver.
They moved towards the locomotive.
‘How about one for the road?’ suggested the stationmaster. ‘A little cognac?’
‘Why not!’
‘Hey, there, Ivan,’ called out the stationmaster. ‘Cognac and glasses here!’
The two friends disposed themselves on the grass and a few minutes later started drinking again.
We hid behind a carriage and listened.
‘How many carriages did you take?’ we heard the voice of the stationmaster.
‘From Aberyantz?’ asked the driver.
‘Yes.’
‘Two,’ said the driver.
‘Did you get much?’
‘Twenty roubles each,’ answered the driver.
‘Ah, yes, he did complain to me about you. He said it’s robbery.’
‘Let him! The other day you showed me those carriages, so I ordered them to be uncoupled from the rest of the train. He noticed and came along. “Who gave orders to uncouple those carriages? They’re supposed to travel non-stop and they’ve been coming from Russia for all of four months. That’s a disgrace!” And on and on he went. So I tell him, “The train has to go uphill and is lugging too many carriages. The locomotive will never make it, so the hind carriages had to be uncoupled.” So that’s why he must’ve come to you.’
‘Yes! Yes! Well, I told him the driver knows best. He yelled and yelled, threatened to complain. But I know these merchant types. In the end he paid up.’
‘Ha! Ha! Ha!’ laughed the driver.
‘What are you laughing about?’
‘I was thinking to myself, what would a merchant be prepared to pay for a carriage full of his goods and going at normal speed, to be delivered from Moscow to Harbin in China?’
‘I did try calculating it,’ said the stationmaster merrily. ‘According to my calculations, on top of the tariff, about two hundred roubles per carriage.’
‘It used to be more in war-time.’
‘Ye-es! I used to get up to a thousand. Let’s knock back a few more.’
‘Let ’im have it! Anyway, what we are getting should be enough!’
‘Tomorrow I’ll be making money out of Liu Pin Yuan’s freight cars,’ said the stationmaster.
‘Maintenance?’
‘Yes. I’ll tell him they’re out of order. I’ll tell him that they have to be taken to the depot, but the goods cannot be transferred as the seals were affixed in Moscow. A day or so on the alternate track and he’s bound to reach into his wallet. If he doesn’t, I’ll keep them there for a month!’
Both laughed merrily. The bottle gurgled. But half an hour later, the bottle must have been emptied and the inebriated engine driver, having farewelled his friend, clambered up into the locomotive.
The third bell sounded.
The train got under way with such a jerk Holmes and I nearly fell off the platform.
‘Nonetheless… hmm… riding these trains is more dangerous than chasing the most dangerous robbers,’ Sherlock Holmes complained.
IV
The train went off in reckless flight. Carriages shook up and down and side to side as if they, too, were inebriated, and we had to hold on to the handrails for dear life, not to be shaken off the train.
‘Some way of doing things,’ Holmes went on complaining. ‘Any insurance company would be bankrupted if it were to insure trains and people from crashes. And what sort of administration have we here! How do you like it? To have your freight delivered in normal time, you have to hand out two hundred roubles in bribes alone.’
The sentry boxes of the railway security detail flashed past, one after another. And now, at last, the semaphore winked. The drunken engine driver began to slow down and slammed the brakes so abruptly several carriages nearly crashed into one another.
Half an hour passed.
‘Dammit! This is some halt!’ Holmes said indignantly. ‘My dear Watson, let’s ask when the train will move on?’
We headed for the station. The noise of revelry came through one of the windows, drunken singing, loud shouts.
‘Will the train be departing soon?’ Holmes asked some guard.
‘The engine driver and his assistant have to dine first and then it’ll go,’ came the answer.
‘What do you mean, dine!’ asked Holmes, beside himself with rage. ‘He’s eaten more than enough at the last station!’
‘Evidently not enough,’ was the phlegmatic rejoinder.
‘Phooey!’ Holmes spat out and moved back to the train.
‘I say, wouldn’t it be better to get off this train for another, whose driver isn’t so partial to dining out?’ I advised.
‘Hmmm … I’m beginning to think the same myself,’ muttered Holmes. But since no other train was available, we sat on the steps of our carriage and awaited developments.
On this occasion, the engine driver and his assistant took an hour and a half over dinner.
Dawn began to break. At last they appeared. But their appearance! The engine driver had dined so well, he couldn’t go under his own steam. Hence such a glorious procession. Two guards hauled the driver, his heels dragging along the ground. His assistant followed, just about managing to place one foot in front of the other, while singing a rollicking Russian melody.
Holmes gave me a little nudge. ‘My dear Watson, what do you think will happen to the train if this driver and his assistant decide to have another dinner. We may assume we won’t make it to another station after that!’
I simply gestured dismissively with my hand.
‘In any case, let’s have a look whether one of the rear carriages has a platform. It’d be much safer if the train crashes,’ said Holmes.
And so, while the driver and his assistant just about managed to get into the locomotive, Holmes and I got on the platform of the third carriage from the rear.
‘Now, then, Watson—’
Before Sherlock Holmes could finish the sentence, the train gave an incredible jerk and we grabbed at the handrail.
‘This is it!’ I said in horror.
But to our astonishment, we remained in the same place without moving. Holmes poked his head out to see what was going on and suddenly said in amazement, ‘My dear Watson, our train is gone!’
‘How?’ I asked in wonder.
‘Very simply! The driver fell asleep and his assistant gave such a sudden start to the train that the four rear carriages broke off and remained standing with us on one of them, while the train went on.’