Lantern Sam and the Blue Streak Bandits (17 page)

Smiling at her own joke, she carefully retied the gag around Ellie’s head. When she finished, Ellie smiled at me, her eyes twinkling; she knew that Sam was there for a reason.

Connie’s face suddenly changed. “Aaa-chooo! Aaa-chooo! I knew it. That stupid cat has to go.”

“No! ’Et ’im ’tay!” said Ellie.

Sam glared menacingly at Connie.
“Mrrraaaaaaaa. I’m going to dip
you
in a bucket of something a whole lot worse than ugly when this is all over,”
he promised.

Seeing that would almost make the bump on my head worthwhile, I thought.

“Reverend Picklebarrel, or whoever he is, led me to you,”
said Sam.
“I guessed that you were still in this car, so I just waited around, watching and listening. When he came out of the room, stomping and cussing because he’d smashed his fingers, I didn’t think anything of it. Got a good laugh out of it, if you want to know the truth. Figured he was taking care of his pregnant wife, right? But then he made a
big
mistake. That weasel actually flicked his cigarette butt at me! I thought about shredding that cheap suit of
his, but then I realized something important: the cigarette butt was
exactly
like the one that I saw in the ashtray of the salesman’s room. It was a hand-rolled cigarette, but not like any other I’ve ever seen. It was nearly perfect
, almost
as if a machine had made it. And the paper was different, too—do you remember? Lighter color than a cigar, but not white, either, and I just knew … well, I can tell you the rest later. You’re probably ready to get out of here. I’m going to get the cavalry, but it may take a while. I have to convince Clarence that dear Mrs. Pimpleman here is no more pregnant than I am, and that’s going to take some talking. Hang in there, kid. And let Ellie know we’re coming for her.”

It was my turn to grunt for water.

Connie shook her head and then sneezed three times. “Sorry, handsome, but you’ve only been tied up for a few minutes. If you’re going to sneak around rescuing people, you’re going to have to toughen up. Aaa-chooo! I have to get rid of that cat.” Before she got around to chasing Sam out, though, curiosity got the better of her and she changed her mind about removing my gag. “You know, I have to admit that I am a little bit confused: How
did
you know where to find her? How did you even know that she was still on the train?” She reached behind my head and untied the handkerchief.

“Water first,” I demanded.

Connie filled the cup and watched me drink. “Okay,
you’ve had your water. Tell me what I want to know.
Quietly
.”

I thought about it for a moment. I could tell the truth—that I had thought the porter was letting me into the compartment belonging to Mr. and Mrs. Gray Suit, and that it was dumb luck that I stumbled into Ellie. (Had the bird-hat lady given me the wrong room number by accident? I honestly did not know the answer to that question.) But why should I give Connie the satisfaction? Why not let her think that I had outsmarted the famous criminal duo of Connie and Ty?

I pursed my lips and shook my head. (My father would have keelhauled me if he’d seen me acting that way.) “I changed my mind. I don’t feel like telling you. You wouldn’t believe me, anyway. Oh, all right, I’ll admit it: it was all Sam! Don’t let his looks fool you. He’s smarter than Rin Tin Tin. As soon as you let him out of here, he’s going to go get help. He’ll probably tap out a message in Morse code using his paws. You can relax now, Ellie. We’ll be rescued in no time.”

“That’s quick thinking, kid,”
said Sam.
“We’ll make a detective out of you yet.”

“Ha-ha. Very funny,” said Connie. “You ought to be in pictures. Maybe when you get to Chicago, you and Rin Tin Ugly can just keep going, all the way to Hollywood.”

Sam scratched at the door.
“Mrrraaaa.”

Connie laughed again. “Well, I guess I’d better let him go. I forgot—he has to tell the coppers where we’ve got you and Miss Moneybags stashed away.” She listened at the door and then opened it enough to let Sam out. “Go on, then. Run, Sam, run! Go get help! Good riddance to you, you old bag of fleas.” She closed the door, laughing heartily at her little joke until she was overcome by a string of six sneezes.

Before the door closed, though, Sam had turned around and given her one final, evil look.
“Oh, I am going to have so much fun watching you go down for this. Nobody messes with the Shoreliner.”

At that moment, up in the locomotive, the Shoreliner’s engineer sounded the horn as we approached the next station, but we weren’t slowing down. Dunkirk was too small to be a regular stop for the Shoreliner, and we zoomed past the platform at sixty miles per hour.

“Dunkirk,” said Connie, reading the station signs. “That’s the drop-off point. The Blue Streak is almost mine, at last. I’ve been dreaming about this day for ages. Sorry, kid, but I have to gag you again. Almost time for my big exit. But don’t despair! Rin Tin Ugly will show up with the sheriff just in time to save the day. That’s how it always happens in the movies, right?” She seemed to enjoy tying the
handkerchief around my head, roughly shoving the cloth between my teeth.

Then she fixed her hair and makeup and stuffed a pillow under her blouse, and just like that she was poor, pregnant Mrs. Perfiddle again.

“Not bad, huh?” she said. “Even I almost believe I’m ‘in a delicate condition.’ Ha! Men are such fools! They see a pregnant lady and they go completely soft. I guess I shouldn’t complain. Their stupidity is going to make me rich.”

As she pulled on a lightweight overcoat, someone knocked twice on the door. “Speaking of stupid,” she said, unlocking the door for her partner in crime, “here’s the king now.”

Ty could barely contain his excitement. “I got it!” he shouted, twirling the Blue Streak on his index finger, the jewels sparkling in the overhead light.

Connie slapped him hard across the face and screeched at him, “What are you doing? Don’t show them, you … you imbecile! Arghh! What is wrong with you? Can’t you, just
once
, stick to the plan?”

Ty rubbed his face where Connie’s handprint looked as if it had been painted on, while I tried to sort out what had happened. The plan, as far as we knew, had been to put the necklace into an official US mailbag, which was then
supposed to be “picked up” by the hook at the Dunkirk station. From there, we assumed, a member of their gang would retrieve it, and afterward, they would meet up together at their secret hideout.

So how had it ended up in Ty’s grimy hands?

“You’re not the boss of me,” he whined. “In case you forgot, we’re
partners
. I’m sick of you treating me like I’m some hayseed who don’t know one end of a gun from the other. And right now, it’s
me
who’s got the cabbage.”

“In case
you
forgot,” said Connie, poking him in the chest with her index finger, “when Daddy and I rescued you from that one-horse town, you
were
a hayseed. If it weren’t for me, you’d still be shoveling cow manure or serving time in the county jail for stealing that old jalopy. So from now on, when I tell you to do something, you do it, no questions asked. Is that clear,
Tyler
?”

His eyes got watery, and for a second I thought he was going to cry, but he pulled himself together before any tears fell. “It’s clear,” he sniffed.

I didn’t quite make it back to Linesville. Not that time, anyway.

After the fiasco with Shadow and the Sardines (wouldn’t that be a great name for a nightclub act?), I was desperate for some peace and quiet, and a good night’s sleep. About halfway between Andover and Linesville, I stopped at a farmhouse and crawled into a wagon full of hay and fell into a deep slumber.

A few hours later, that wagon rumbled to life beneath me and I woke with a start, digging my way to the top of the pile in time to see a sign that read,
YOU ARE LEAVING ANDOVER
—
COME BACK SOON
! Up ahead, a shiny new Ford pulled the
wagon and yours truly north on Route 7, away from the Dilly farm, which lay to the east. I considered making a run for it the first time we slowed down, but then I thought: what if this hay wagon is Fate’s way of telling me it’s not the right time to return to the farm in Linesville? I burrowed into the hay and went back to sleep.

The sound of a train whistle woke me a little later, and it took me only a moment to realize where I was: the train station in Ashtabula, where I had said goodbye to Butch. Chugging up to the platform at that very moment was a locomotive with the name Lake Erie Shoreliner emblazoned across its nose and a dozen Pullman cars behind—a most impressive sight, indeed.

“Ashtabula!” roared the conductor, stepping gracefully from a sleeper car as the train came to a stop. “All aboard the Shoreliner for New York City!”

The Shoreliner! New York City! For a small-town cat like me, it was a dream come true. All I had to do was find a way to weasel my way aboard. The conductor looked like a friendly sort, so I ran across the platform toward him. Of course, I had to keep in mind that some humans, even a few who
look
nice, don’t like cats—hard as
that
may be to believe.

The conductor saw me and smiled. “Why, hey there, little fellow.”

I liked him already—he called me a fellow, rather than
assuming I was a girl. “Hope you’ve got room for one more,” I said, certainly
not
expecting a reply.

I don’t know how I knew, but somehow I knew he
had
heard me. Realizing that there was no one else nearby, he stopped and stared at me, his head cocked to one side.

“Is that a yes?” I asked.

“Well, dog my cat!” he said. “That’s the darnedest thing I ever … why, I suppose it is a yes. Come on aboard. I was just about to have a little snack. Do you like sardines?”

“Mrrraaa. We’re going to get along just fine,” I said. “My name is Sam, by the way.”

“I’m Clarence. Clarence Nockwood.”

Call it whatever you like—fate, coincidence, destiny—but I was meant to be on that platform in Ashtabula that day. Sure, I give Clarence a hard time every now and again, but all in all, he’s a good egg, and he
did
save my life. Well, one of my lives, anyway. It happened like this:

I had been with Clarence and the Shoreliner a little over a year, riding the rails back and forth between New York City and Chicago. On his rare days off, Clarence took me to his little farm outside of Dunkirk, New York—a pretty town on Lake Erie where I could admire the view of the lake without having to go near the water.

Clarence’s wife, like millions of others, had died from the
flu back in 1918, so when the Depression hit, he left the farm in the able hands of his son, Norman, and went to work for the railroad. When we came back for visits, Clarence always seemed a little sad; whether he still missed his wife, missed life on the farm, or simply hated being away from the Shoreliner, I was never entirely sure.

In the evenings, after the chores were finished and the dinner plates washed, Clarence and Norman drove into Dunkirk to visit old friends. They would all meet at the Boxcar Tavern, an old railroad boxcar that a retired conductor had bought and turned into a bar back in the days before Prohibition. It wasn’t much to look at, but the drinks were cheap and the bartender was a cheerful but foulmouthed sailor named François, who boasted that he had the same number of teeth and ex-wives as he had fingers—nine.

On one especially frigid, snowy night, while Clarence and Norman sat on their stools listening to another of François’s far-fetched tales, I went in search of someplace warm to curl up for a few hours. The potbelly stove in one corner of the car looked promising, but there was a semicircle of men seated around it, and they didn’t look like they were the type to want to share with a cat, if you know what I mean. And even if they had made room for me, I knew better than to risk it. You see, every customer at the Boxcar (except Clarence) chewed tobacco—a filthy habit if ever there was one.
A sign over the bar warned them to spit into the brass spittoons near the stove, but their aim was downright terrible, and most of the time they didn’t even bother—they just spat on the floor, or onto anything (or anyone) who happened to be in the way.