The Thief (Isaac Bell 5)

What would they do when saw her tea mug and the jam jar?

The train was moving too fast to jump off, and the roof was too high even if it weren’t moving.

She looked back. The sky was gray.

She looked ahead. Under lowering clouds, the train looked like a long dark snake. Sparks flew from the distant locomotive. It was the fastest yet that she’d ridden on. In the dull morning light seeping from the storm clouds, she saw why. It was a military train. Flat cars bore either a single long cannon, or two-wheeled artillery caissons. As the train swept through a long curve exposing its side, she saw livestock cars, which would be carrying the artillerymen’s horses, and passenger cars, which would be packed with soldiers.

What was the best?

Hope? A hope that they would assume tramps had broken in to steal food. How did the tramps leave through locked doors? The cupola hatch? Hope was the best she could conjure, hope that the brakemen did not read Sherlock Holmes.

Bolts of lightning pierced the clouds. She felt an icy breath of cold wind. She tugged the blanket she had taken around her shoulders and prayed for a miracle. But, answering her worst fear, the hatch began to rise. A brakeman was climbing up to look to see if a tramp was hiding on the roof.

Suddenly thunder shook the caboose, and rain pelted down.

The hatch slammed shut.

A bolt of lightning struck the locomotive. The thunder crashed again and again as if Donar himself had noticed the train and didn’t like it. But she was the luckiest girl alive: the thunder god had saved her from the brakeman.

Another bolt of lightning struck, blanketing the locomotive with blue fire. It slowed abruptly, and the train clanged to a stop with a crash of banging couplers.

Balls of electric fire spewed from the locomotive’s wheels and leaped to a tree beside the tracks. The tree flew to splinters when its sap exploded in a burst of superheated steam. Pauline saw green fire race toward her along the boxcar roofs, and she felt the incipient tingle of electrical shock. Clutching her precious rucksack, she scrambled down the ladder and ran into the woods.

* * *

Isaac Bell caught Marion in his arms as she stepped off the Coast Line Limited from San Francisco. They kissed, and they kissed again. Bell seized her bag and gave the porter her trunk check, the name of their hotel, and a large tip.

“Mighty generous, sir.”

“I am happy to see my beautiful wife.”

“Hard to imagine you wouldn’t be, sir.”

They kissed once more. “Andrew found us a house to rent near his place on Bunker Hill,” Bell told Marion. “Until it’s ready, I booked rooms at the Van Nuys.” They walked hand in hand off the platform.

Bell asked, “What was your first thought when Irina telephoned and offered you this job?”

“Joy. I’d get to see you.”

“And then?”

“I thought that The Iron Horse would be very challenging. It’s a big story to pack into three reels, and I thought right away that maybe I can persuade Irina to take a chance on four.”

“And your next thought?”

“Do you really want to know?”

“Yes.”

“Well, it’s somewhat technical, but I was thinking I want to revive the old-fashioned ‘traveling pictures’ they used to take years ago, where the camera moves alongside the action. They’ve fallen out of favor. Everyone is in love with presenting close-up figures. But with handcars available to glide the camera on a smooth track, and the fact that I want to start the scenario before the western railroads with galloping Pony Express riders and stagecoaches— You see what I mean, it’s technical, but that’s what I was thinking.”

“Did you wonder why Irina hired you?”

“No.”

“You weren’t at all surprised?”

“There are many women in the movie business, but more men, and I’ve found that women do like to work with women. Also, she knows that I’ve made topical films, so I’m comfortable taking pictures on the fly. Why do you ask?”