Holocaust House | Page 6

your next month's salary?"
"I don't remember exactly, but another hundred will do nicely."
Toggery moaned. He counted out bills on the counter with trembling hands. Doan wadded them up and thrust them carelessly into his coat pocket.
"Aren't you forgetting something, Mr. Doan?" MacTavish asked.
"Oh, yes," said Doan. "Toggery, pay MacTavish what I owe him on account. Cheerio, all. Goodbye, Carstairs. I'll give you a ring soon." He went out the door whistling.
Toggery collapsed limply against the counter, shaking his head. "I think I'm going mad now," he said. "My brain is simmering like a teakettle."
"He gets me that way too," said MacTavish. "Why do you put up with him?"
"Hah!" said Toggery. "Listen! If he wasn't the best--the very best--private detective west of the Mississippi, and if this branch of the agency didn't depend entirely on him for its good record, I would personally murder him!"
"I doubt if you could," said MacTavish.
"I know it," Toggery admitted glumly. "He could take on you and me together with Carstairs thrown in and massacre all three of us without mussing his hair. He's the most dangerous little devil I've ever seen, and he's all the worse because of that half-witted manner of his. You never suspect what he's up to until it's too late."
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CHAPTER IV.
WELCOME TO DESOLATION
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DOAN ROLLED HIS head back and forth on the hard plush cushion, opened his eyes and blinked politely. "You were saying something?"
The conductor's face was red with exertion. "Yes, I was sayin' something! I been sayin' something for the last ten minutes steady! I thought you was in a trance! This here is where you get off!"
Doan yawned and straightened up. He had a crick in his neck, and he winced, poking his finger at the spot.
The roadbed was rough here, and the old-fashioned tubular brass lamps that hung from the arched car top jittered in short nervous arcs. The whaff-whaff-whaff of the engine exhaust sounded laboriously from ahead. The car was thick and murky with the smell of cinders. Aside from the conductor, Doan was the only occupant.
Doan asked: "Do you stop while I get off, or am I supposed to hop off like a hobo?"
"We'll stop," said the conductor.
He might have been in telepathic communication with the engineer, because that's just what they did right then. The engine brakes screeched, and the car hopped up against the bumpers and dropped back again with a breath-taking jar, groaning in every joint.
"Is he mad at somebody?" Doan asked, referring to the engineer.
"Listen, you," said the conductor indignantly. "This here grade is so steep that a fly couldn't walk up it without his feet were dipped in molasses first."
Doan took a look at the empty seats. "You didn't make this trip especially on my account, did you?"
"No!" The conductor was even more indignant at the injustice of it. "We got to run a train from Palos Junction through here and back every twenty-four hours in the off season to keep our franchise. Otherwise you'd have walked up. Come on! We ain't got all night to sit around here."
Doan hauled his grip from the rack, pausing to peer out the steamed window. "Is it still raining?"
The conductor snorted. "Raining! It's rainin' down on the coast maybe, but not here. You're eight thousand feet up in the Rocky Mountains, son, and it's snowin' like somebody dumped it out of a chute."
Doan was no outdoorsman, and he hadn't taken what J. S. Toggery had said about skis and snow-shoes at all seriously.
"Snowing?" he said incredulously. "Why, it's still summer!"
"Not up here," said the conductor. "She'll make three feet on the level, and it's driftin'. Get goin'."
Still incredulous, Doan hauled his bag down the aisle and through the end door of the car. This was the last car, the only passenger coach, and when he stepped out on the darkness of the platform the snow and the wind slapped across his face like a giant icy hand. Doan sputtered indignantly and went staggering off balance down the iron steps and plumped into powdery wet coldness that congealed above the level of his thighs.
The engine whistle gave a triumphant, echoing scream.
The conductor was a dim, huddled form with one gaunt arm stretched out like a semaphore. His voice drifted thinly with the wind.
"That way! Through snow-sheds... along spur..."
The engine screamed again, impatiently, and bucked the train ahead.
Doan had dropped his bag, and he scrambled around in the snow trying to find it. "Wait! Wait! I've changed my mind."
The red and green lights on the back of the car blinked mockingly at him, and the conductor's howl came blurred and faint through the white swirling darkness.
"Station... quarter-mile... snow-sheds..."
The engine wailed like a banshee, and the snow and the darkness swallowed the sound of it up in one gulp.
"Well, hell," said Doan.
He spat snow out of his