The Night Train: A Novelette (The Strange Files of Modesty Brown Book 1) Read Online Free PDF Page B

glasses to
Bill. "It's good to see a civilizing influence on this train," Pinky
says. "You deserve a raise."
    "From
your mouth to Management’s ears, Miss."
    Bill
moves away, and Pinky lets out a thin stream of breath. "Well. That was
..."
    "Yes
it was."
    Modesty
tips up her second Sidecar, and the first part of it goes down easy. The second
part, not so much. She strangles the choke it causes in the back of her throat.
    “Take
it easy, Pilgrim! We’ve got all night!”
     Modesty
stands up quickly enough to upset the empty glass, and make her head swim a
bit. She grabs her case from the seat.
    "Not
now Pinky. I have to go."
    "What,
Pilgrim? Where are you off to? What about my letter?"
    "Later.
Just. I have to see about something."
    "If
it was those coppers, I wouldn't let them bother you. Unless you've got reason
to be bothered."
    "Nope.
Not that, just. I have to go."
    And
she slips out of the Club Car, drapes her coat over her arm to hide the
typewriter case thumping against her thigh and scoots off.
    Two
cars down, she finds a door with LADIES POWDER ROOM written in gold script. She
goes in and hooks the lock behind her. The carriage sways a little as she puts
the typewriter case on the counter and opens it. To calm her beating heart she
counts them. It takes longer than she anticipates.
    "Two
thirty four. Two thirty five. Two thirty six."
    They
were heavy, black and red. Dots in unfamiliar configurations. On the back each
was embossed with a long letter "F", in the shape of a snake or a
dragon.
    Think,
she says to her pale face in the mirror. Think. It's just a problem. It's just
a problem to solve. I'm not going to the City without my typewriter. She flips
her mind back and back. The Club Car. Bill's white coat. Pinky's pickled onion.
Walking between cars. The Reform School All Girl Orchestra. Piano Teeth.
    And
then Modesty Brown remembers, as you my friends are probably remembering now,
that we've seen two typewriter cases so far this evening.
      Maybe
you're a Lady Playwright or a Girl Journalist , he said. I know because
I'm a poet, too he said. See my soulful, poetic look?
     She'd
moved her case between the two of them. And then he moved it back onto her lap
before things got personal.
     And
then he left when the band came in. And he took his case with him. Or did he
take hers?  She didn't have a clear memory, there was so much commotion,
so much clarinets and trombones and Vol de Nuit that she couldn't be sure. But
it was the only explanation.
    And
where is he now? Some big meeting, he said, when he was trying to impress her.
He wasn't in the Club Car, so his meeting couldn't be in there. She would just
have to go the length of the train, looking for him. She knows it is utterly
inefficient, but she needs to make a move. And she needs to do it now. No time
to waste. 

 
     
    And the night wears on, my friends. And
the Night Train still rides along its back, swaying closer and closer to the city.
And our heroine, the intrepid Modesty Brown, who has her own secrets to keep,
can't afford to keep anyone else's. 236 Chinese Dominoes hum in the case, the
handle burning in her hand.
    In
her attempt to find Piano Teeth, she manages to interrupt two poker games and
one game of Canasta; three people in various stages of undress; three more in
compromising positions; some kind of wild party where they drank red liquor and
wore Halloween masks; five stunning Persian women smoking a hookah; and two
different maids stealing jewelry from two different Ladies.
    The
doors of the carriages open and close like a camera's aperture, reds and whites
and tones of sepia. Smoke and petticoats and musky perfume. And still, she does
not find the man with the big white teeth who carries her typewriter.
    She lands, as everyone on every train must
eventually, back in the Club Car. It is now empty. The man in the fedora hat
has taken himself off, and Pinky is probably off managing her people. Only Bill
is left, covering a rolling service