The Noir Mystery Megapack by Joseph J. Millard & Gary Lovisi & John L. French & Robert Turner & Robert Leslie Bellem

Author:Joseph J. Millard & Gary Lovisi & John L. French & Robert Turner & Robert Leslie Bellem
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: mystery, noir, hardboiled, crime, detective
ISBN: 9781479404797
Publisher: Wildside Press LLC
Published: 2015-01-13T16:00:00+00:00

SATAN TURNS THE TIMETABLES, by David M. Norman

Originally published in 10-Story Detective, Sept. 1943.

The accompaniment of hissing steam, clatter of the drawbars, and the clickety-clack of wheels on rails never soothed Joe Mead into relaxing his vigilance. Piloting Number 74 through one of the worst stretches of track required a man’s full attention.

Joe Mead, grey, grizzled, and weather-seamed, leaned out of the locomotive cab window, eyes on the road-bed every second. Pretty soon he’d reach that sharp curve which by itself was bad enough, but a man couldn’t throttle her down too much because there was a steep grade just around the bend. It was an engineer’s nightmare, but Joe Mead had taken it so often, he scarcely thought about the matter.

He glanced at his fireman who was resting on his shovel.

“Ever get notions?” Joe Mead asked. “Call ‘em hunches if you like. I’ve got a feeling we’re in for trouble.”

The fireman made a derisive wrinkling of his nose. “You got the heebies, Pop. Anyway, nothing better happen to this train. Not with fourteen cars loaded with passengers.”

“Nothing will,” Joe Mead said grimly. “Sure, it’s the heebies, all right. I get ‘em every time we roll through here. It’s where Midford got his five years ago—when the locomotive and tender went over. Midford was my pal. We started work together and planned to retire together. Hey—make me some steam. We’ve got a schedule to fill, or didn’t you know that?”

The fireman grinned and went to work. Joe Mead stuck his head out of the cab window again and saw the start of that bad curve in the powerful headlight. The locomotive took the corner gracefully. Joe Mead breathed a sigh of relief that was suddenly cut short.

There before him, directly in the middle of the tracks, was a man. He stood not two hundred yards away so that the big headlight beam shot above him. Yet the man was illuminated well—as if the light formed around him like a halo. “Midford,” Joe Mead yelled. “Midford!”

It was his friend, dead for five years—killed close by in an accident. Midford—whom he had known so well and could never mistake. Midford seemed huge, towering, and he stayed right in the middle of the tracks. Joe Mead grabbed the brake and yanked it with all his strength. Steel scraped against steel, throwing sparks, jolting the whole train.

But it was too late. The train, traveling at fifty-five miles an hour couldn’t possibly be stopped. Joe Mead saw the man loom up larger and larger. Then the locomotive blocked his vision. Why hadn’t the man moved? Of course it couldn’t have been Midford. Joe Mead had been one of the pall bearers at his funeral, but no matter who he was, it became cruelly apparent that he’d deliberately committed suicide.

The heavy train came to a stop. Joe Mead leaped out of the cab and raced down the tracks. A brakeman and conductor, armed with lanterns, joined him. His fireman came up, well to the rear. “What happened?” the conductor asked.

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