Night Probe! Read online

  "How do you do?" Annie said warmly. "You look like you could use a cup of coffee."

  "I'd love one," said Pitt. "Black, thank you."

  Her eyes widened. "Did you know your hands were bleeding?"

  Pitt looked at the skin abrasions on his palms. "I must have scraped them when I tripped over the rails outside. They're so numb from the cold I didn't notice."

  "You just sit down here by the fire," said Annie, guiding him to a circular sofa. "I'll get them fixed up for you." She hurried into the kitchen and filled a bowl with warm water. Then she went to the bathroom for the antiseptic.

  "I'll get the coffee," Magee volunteered.

  The sheep dog stayed and stared blankly at Pitt. At least he thought the dog was staring at him. Its eyes were curtained by thick tufts of hair.

  He regarded the interior of the living room. The furniture appeared to be individually designed along contemporary lines. Each piece, including the lamps and numerous art objects, was elegantly contoured in poly resin and painted either red or white. The room was a livable art gallery. Magee returned with a cup of steaming coffee.

  In the light Pitt identified the kindly, elf like face. "You're Ansel Magee, the sculptor."

  "I'm afraid there are certain art critics who would disagree with that label." Magee laughed goodnaturedly.

  "You're modest," said Pitt. "I once stood in a block-long line waiting to view your exhibit at the National Art Gallery in Washington."

  "Are you a modern-art connoisseur, Mr. Pitt?"

  "I'd hardly qualify even as a dilettante. Actually, my love affair is with antique machinery. I collect old cars and airplanes." That part was true. "I also have a passion for steam locomotives." That part was another lie.

  "Then we have a common meeting ground," said Magee. "I'm an old train buff myself." He reached over and turned off the television. "I noticed your private railroad."

  "An Atlantic type four-four-two," Magee said as if reciting. "Rolled out of the Baldwin Works in nineteen oh-six. Pulled the Overland Limited from Chicago to Council Bluffs, Iowa. It was quite a speedster in its day."

  "When was the last time it was operated?" Pitt sensed immediately that he'd used the wrong terminology by the sour expression on Magee's face.

  "I stoked it up two summers ago after I laid in about a half mile of track. Ran the neighbors and their kids back and forth on my private line. Gave it up after my last heart attack. It's sat idle ever since."

  Annie returned and began bathing his cuts. "Sorry, but all I could find was an old bottle of iodine. It'll sting."

  She was wrong: Pitt's hands still hat no feeling. He watched silently while she tied the bandages. Then she sat back and appraised her handiwork.

  "Won't win a medical award, but I guess it will do until you get home."

  "It will do just fine," Pitt said.

  Magee settled into a tulip-shaped chair. "Now then, Mr. Pitt. What's on your mind?"

  Pitt came right to the point. "I'm accumulating data on the Manhattan Limited."

  "I see," said Magee, but it was plain he didn't. "I assume your interest lies more in the nature of its last run rather than its track history."

  "Yes," Pitt admitted. "There are several aspects of the disaster that have never been explained in depth.

  I've gone over the old newspaper accounts, but they raise more questions than they answer."

  Magee eyed him suspiciously. "Are you a reporter?" Pitt shook his head. "I'm special projects director for the National Underwater and Marine Agency."

  "You're with the government?"

  "Uncle Sam pays my wages, yes. But my curiosity concerning the DeauvilleHudson bridge disaster is purely personal."

  "Curiosity? More like obsession, I'd say. What else would drive a man to wander about the countryside in freezing weather and in the dead of night?"

  "I'm on a tight schedule," Pitt explained patiently. "I must be in Washington by tomorrow morning. This was my only chance to view the bridge site. Besides, it was still daylight when I arrived."

  Magee seemed to relax. "My apologies for forcing an inquisition on you, Mr. Pitt, but you're the only stranger who's stumbled onto my little hideaway. Except for a few select friends and business associates, the public thinks I'm some sort of weird recluse feverishly pouring molds in a rundown warehouse on New York's east side. A sham contrived for a purpose. I value my seclusion. If I had to contend with a constant stream of gawkers, critics and newspeople pounding at my door all day, I would never get any work done. Here, hidden away in the Hudson valley, I can create without hassle."

  "More coffee?" asked Annie. With feminine astuteness she had picked the opportune time to interrupt.

  "Please," replied Pitt.

  "How about some hot apple pie?"

  "Sounds great. I haven't eaten since breakfast."

  "Let me make you something, then."

  "No, no, the pie will be fine."

  As soon as she left, Magee continued the conversation. "I hope you understand what I'm driving at, Mr.

  Pitt."

  "I have no reason to sell out your privacy," said Pitt.

  "I shall trust you not to."

  Feeling was beginning to return to Pitt's hands and they ached like hell. Annie Magee brought him the apple pie and he attacked it with the ravenousness of a farmhand.

  "Your fascination with trains," Pitt said between bites. "Living practically on top of the bridge site, you must have an insight on the disaster that can't be found in old files."

  Magee stared into the fire a long moment, then began speaking in a vacant tone. "You're right, of course.

  I have studied the strange incidents surrounding the wreck of the Manhattan Limited. Dug into local legends, mostly. I was lucky and interviewed Sam Harding, the station agent who was on duty the night it happened, a few months before he died at a rest home in Germantown. Eighty-eight he was. Had a memory like a computer bank. God, it was like talking with history. I could almost see the events of that fatal night unfold in front of my eyes."

  "A holdup at the exact moment the train came through," said Pitt. "The robber refusing to let the station agent flag the engineer and save a hundred lives. It reads like fiction."

  "No fiction, Mr. Pitt. It occurred just the way Harding described it to the police and newspaper reporters. The telegrapher, Hiram Meechum, had a bullet hole in his hip as proof."

  "I'm familiar with the account." Pitt nodded.

  "Then you know the robber was never caught. Harding and Meechum positively identified him as Clement Massey, or Dapper Doyle as he was called in the press. A natty dresser who had pulled off some pretty ingenious heists."

  "Odd that the ground split and swallowed him."

  "Times were different before the war to end all wars. The law authorities weren't nearly as sophisticated as they are now. Doyle was no moron. A few years behind bars for robbery is one thing. Indirectly causing the deaths of a hundred men, women and children is quite another. If he had been caught, a jury would have taken all of five minutes to send him to the gallows."

  Pitt finished off the pie and leaned back in the sofa. "Any guesses as to why the train was never recovered?"

  Magee shook his head. "Supposedly it sank in quicksand. Local scuba-diving clubs still search for artifacts. A few years ago an old locomotive headlamp was pulled from the river a mile downstream.

  Folks generally assumed that it came from the Manhattan Limited. I feel it is only a matter of time before the riverbed shifts and reveals the wreckage."

  "More pie, Mr. Pitt?" asked Annie Magee.

  "I'm tempted, but no, thank you," said Pitt, rising. "I'd best be leaving. I have a plane to catch at Kennedy in a few hours. I'm grateful for your hospitality."

  "Before you go," said Magee, "I'd like to show you something."

  The sculptor pushed himself from the chair and walked over to a door set in the middle of the far wall.

  He opened it to a darkened room and disappeared inside. He
reappeared a few moments later, holding a flickering kerosene lamp.

  "This way," he said, motioning.

  Pitt entered, his nose sorting out the musty smells of aged wood and leather from the kerosene vapor, his eyes scanning the shadows that quivered under the soft flame of the lamp. He recognized the interior as an office furnished with antiques. A potbellied stove squatted in the middle of the floor, its flue sprouting straight through the roof. The orange glow revealed a safe backed into a corner, its door decorated with the painting of a covered wagon crossing the prairie.

  Two desks sat against a wall of windows. One was a rolltop with an old-fashioned telephone perched on its surface, the other was long and flat and supported a large cabinet filled with pigeonholes. On the edge, in front of a leather-cushioned tilt back chair, there was a telegraph key whose wires angled up and through the ceiling.

  The walls held a Seth Thomas clock, a poster touting the Parker and Schmidt traveling amusement show, a framed picture of an overripe girl holding a tray stacked with bottles of beer advertising the Ruppert Brewery on 94th Street in New York City, and a Feeney & Company insurance calendar dated May 1914.

  "Sam Harding's office," Magee said proudly. "I've recreated it exactly as it was on the night of the robbery."

  "Then your house . . ."

  "Is the original Wacketshire station," Magee finished. "The farmer I bought the property from used it to store feed for his cows. Annie and I restored the building. A pity you haven't seen it in daylight. The architecture has a distinctive design. Ornate trimmings around the roof, graceful curves. Dates back to the eighteen eighties."

  "You've done a remarkable job of preservation," Pitt complimented him.

  "Yes, it's been given a better fate than most old railroad stations," said Magee. "We made a few changes. What used to be the freight area is now bedrooms, and our living room is the former waiting room."

  "The furnishings, are they original?" Pitt asked, touching the telegraph key.

  "For the most part. Harding's desk was here when we bought the place. The stove was salvaged from a trash pile, and Annie rescued the safe from a hardware store in Selkirk. The real prize, though, was this."

  Magee lifted a leather dust cover revealing a chessboard. The hand-carved ebony and birch pieces were cracked and worn by the years. "Hiram Meechum's chess set," explained Magee. "His widow gave it to me. The bullet hole from Massey's pistol was never patched."

  Pitt studied the board for a few moments in silence. Then he looked out the windows at the blackness.

  "You can almost sense their presence," he said finally.

  "I often sit alone here in the office and try to visualize that fateful night.

  "Do you see the Manhattan Limited as it roars past?"

  "Sometimes," Magee said dreamily. "If my imagination flows freely." He stopped and stared at Pitt suspiciously. "A strange question. Why do you ask?"

  "The phantom train," answered Pitt. "They say it still makes its spectral run over the old track bed."

  "The Hudson valley is a breeding ground for myths," Magee scoffed. "There are those who even claim to have seen the headless horseman, for God's sake. What starts as a tall tale becomes a rumor.

  Embellished with age and exaggerated by local folklore, the rumor turns into a full-blown legend bending the outer fringe of reality. The phantom train hauntings began a few years after the bridge failure. Like a ghost of a guillotined man who wanders about searching for his head, the Manhattan Limited, so its disciples believe, will never enter that great depot in the sky until it finally crosses over the river."

  Pitt laughed. "Mr. Magee, you are a card-carrying skeptic."

  "I won't deny it."

  Pitt looked at his watch. "I really must be on my way."

  Magee showed him outside and they shook hands on the old station platform.

  "I've had a fascinating evening," said Pitt. "I'm grateful to you and your wife for your hospitality."

  "Our pleasure. Please come back and visit us. I love to talk trains."

  Pitt hesitated. "There is one thing you might keep in mind."

  "What's that?"

  "A funny thing about legends," Pitt said, searching Magee's eyes. "They're usually born from a truth."

  In the light from the house, the kindly face was somber and thoughtful, no more. Then Magee shrugged noncommittally and closed the door.

  Danielle Sarveux warmly greeted Premier Jules Guerrier of Quebec Province in the corridor of the hospital. He was accompanied by his secretary and Henri Villon.

  Guerrier kissed Danielle lightly on both cheeks. He was in his late seventies, tall and slender with unkept silver hair and thick tangled beard. He could have easily accommodated an artist's conception of Moses.

  As Premier of Quebec he was also the leader of the French-speaking Parti Quebecois. "How marvelous to see you, Jules," said Danielle.

  "Better for old eyes to behold a beautiful woman," he answered gallantly. "Charles is looking forward to seeing you."

  "How is he getting along?"

  "The doctors say he is doing fine. But the healing process will take a long time."

  Sarveux was propped up by pillows, his bed parked beside a large window with a view of the Parliament building. A nurse took their hats and coats, and then they grouped around the bed on a chair and sofa. Danielle poured a round of cognac.

  "I'm allowed to serve a drink to my visitors," said Sarveux. "But unfortunately alcohol won't mix with my medication so I can't join you."

  "To your speedy recovery," toasted Guerrier.

  "A speedy recovery," the others responded.

  Guerrier set his glass on an end table. "I'm honored that you asked to see me, Charles."

  Sarveux looked at him seriously. "I've just been informed you're calling a referendum for total independence."

  Guerrier gave a Gallic shrug. "The time is long overdue for a final break from the confederation."

  "I agree, and I intend to give it my full endorsement."

  Sarveux's statement fell like a guillotine blade.

  Guerrier visibly tensed. "You'll not fight it this time?"

  "No, I want to see it done and over with."

  "I've known you too long, Charles, not to suspect an ulterior motive behind your sudden benevolence."

  "You misread me, Jules. I'm not rolling over like a trained dog. If Quebec wants to go it alone, then let it be. Your referendums, your mandates, your incessant negotiations. That's in the past. Canada has suffered enough. The confederation no longer needs Quebec. We will survive without you."

  "And we without you."

  Sarveux smiled sardonically. "We'll see how you do starting from scratch."

  "We expect to do just that," said Guerrier. "Quebec Parliament will be closed and a new government installed. One patterned after the French republic. We will write our own laws, collect our own taxes, and establish formal relations with foreign powers. Naturally, we'll maintain a common currency and other economic ties with the English-speaking provinces."

  "You'll not get your cake and eat it too," said Sarveux, his voice hard. "Quebec must print its own money, and any trade agreements must be renegotiated. Also, customs inspection stations will be erected along our common borders. All Canadian institutions and government offices will be withdrawn from Quebec sod."

  A look of anger crossed Guerrier's face. "Those are harsh actions."

  "Once Quebeckers have turned their backs on the political freedoms, wealth and future of a united Canada, the severance must be unconditional and complete."

  Guerrier got to his feet slowly. "I would have hoped for more compassion from a fellow Frenchman."

  "My fellow Frenchmen murdered fifty innocent people in an attempt to assassinate me. Consider yourself lucky, Jules, that I don't lay the blame on the doorstep of the Parti quebecois. The outrage and whiplash would cause irreparable damage to your cause."

  "You have my solemn word, the Parti quebecois played no part in the pla
ne crash."

  "What about the terrorists of the FQS?"

  "I have never condoned the actions of the FQS," Guerrier said defensively. There lip service. You've done nothing to stop them."

  "They're like ghosts," Guerrier protested. "No one even knows who their leader is."

  "What happens after independence and he comes out in the open?"

  "When Quebec becomes free the FQS no longer has a reason to exist. He and his organization can only wither away and die."

  "You forget, Jules, terrorist movements have a nasty habit of turning legitimate and forming opposition parties."

  "The FQS will not be tolerated by Quebec's new government."

  "With you at its head," Sarveux added.

  "I should expect so," Guerrier said without a trace of ego. "Who else has the mandate of the people for a glorious new nation?"

  "I wish you luck," Sarveux said skeptically. There was no arguing with Guerrier's fervor, he thought. The French were dreamers. They thought only of a return to romantic times when the fleur-delis waved majestically throughout the world. The noble experiment would be a failure before it began. "As Prime Minister I will not stand in your way. But I warn you, Jules, no radical upheavals or political unrest that will affect the rest of Canada."

  "I assure you, Charles," Guerrier said confidently, "the birth will be peaceful."

  It was to prove an empty promise.

  Villon was furious; Danielle knew all the signs. He came and sat beside her on a bench outside the hospital. She shivered silently in the cool spring air, waiting for the eruption she knew would come.

  "The bastard!" he finally growled. "The underhanded bastard gave Quebec to Guerrier without a fight."

  "I still can't believe it," she said.