Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine. Vol. 38, No. 13, Mid-December 1993

A Train of Stars by Dan Crawford

So we were off in a flurry of music, the scream of the train whistle, and the roars of the crowd. It gave me a dreadful headache, and there was all that fan mail to sort yet.

Our fan mail was hauled out to us at every whistlestop along the tour, big canvas bags bulging with envelopes. They dumped it out on a table, if there was a table: big stacks for the big names, little heaps for those players who fill in the gaps between kiss scenes and murders. But when the train pulled out again, we peons got all the fan mail. In all the hoopla, it got mixed up, see, so we had to sort it again and throw away the envelopes that were kind of grimy and load it all back into the proper canvas bags so it could be presented to us again at the next stop.

We had to write a lot of the letters, too, if the bags started getting empty. I liked to think of it as creating scrap for the next paper drive.

“Brrr,” said Olivia, when we were far enough from town to start moving from the rear platform back into the train. We had started this bond drive just after New Year’s, wearing fur coats issued by Wardrobe to make us look prosperous. But the vice presidents with us quickly decided we’d be more popular in our own cloth coats. That was supposed to show we were just folks, after all, and also making sacrifices for our boys Over There.

This fooled nobody. In one town I heard a fan growl, “They don’t know about stretching a pound of butter over a whole month.”

She was right, too. I know nothing about it because I haven’t bought a whole pound of butter at one time since 1935.

Anyway, as the least of the attractions, we were allowed to sneak off the platform first, collect our suppers, and carry them away to the club car so we could sort mail while we ate. We met George at the door of the car. He scowled but opened it for us and then grumbled away.

“My hands are still freezing,” Olivia said, squeezing among mailbags to sit at our usual table.

“I just dip mine in the gravy,” I told her. “That stuff has to be good for something.”

“Oh, Myrna!” Velvet slid on a fallen letter and had to put a hand on the table to balance herself. We’re a little too smart for that; Olivia relieved her of the bread she had pulled off Sissy’s plate when her hand came down.

Velvet flashed all her teeth but said nothing. We’d only just started talking to Velvet again this month. She never returned the bridal shower gifts we gave her, even after the groom’s lawyer found a loophole and called off the wedding.

“Careful,” I told Olivia. “You’re dripping gravy on that letter.”

She pushed it out of the way and set her plate down. “Just one of Eloise’s. She’ll never run short.”

“Ooh!” exclaimed Sissy. There is no way to look another direction when Sissy cries, “Ooh!”

“What?” I asked.

“I know what I was going to tell you.” She sat down with a little bounce. “Knock knock.”

“No,” said Velvet.

Two little lines developed in Sissy’s brow. “Wait,” she commanded. “I don’t think that’s what you’re supposed to say.” She thought about it. “You have to say, ‘Who’s there?’ ”

“I won’t,” Velvet informed her.

“It’s not that hard,” said Sissy earnestly.

“Listen,” Velvet replied, leaning over her plate. “Those jokes are dead, and you never learned to tell them even when they were alive. It just never works.”

Sissy had been listening intently. When Velvet paused, she realized some reply was expected of her. “What?” she said.

“When you say ‘Knock knock.’ ”

“Who’s there?” Sissy asked, interested.

Velvet put a hand on her forehead. “I give up.”

“I don’t get it.” Sissy turned to me, opening wide those limpid eyes that made her a star at seven in Tender Kisses and would have made her a star again twenty times over in the years since. Only she’s handled by Cal, who couldn’t get Mickey Mouse a job at Disney.

Before I could answer, Olivia, more to change the subject than anything else, brushed the gravy from the envelope and said, “We’d better be grateful to Eloise; without her, we couldn’t afford to do all this pleasure traveling.”

The train jerked, nearly slopping all the gravy onto the letters. “You did say pleasure?” asked Velvet.

It was a so-so train, suited to our so-so studio, but at least it had fuel, since a bond drive is considered war work. If we sold more in bonds than the government spent in coal, it might make a certain amount of sense. But the coal was the extent of the government’s interest; the amenities were straight Mammoth Titan standard issue. The food was canteen stuff: a certain amount of gravy with a few lumps under it to keep us wondering. Edwin usually added something from his private stock and just drank supper.

“I think we’re sitting again,” noted Olivia, listening.

“I don’t like to eat standing up,” Sissy told her. We didn’t reply, realizing it was time to start eating before the gravy congealed. The train made lots of stops to let freight trains get by. We did hope the freight was something to be dropped on the Axis, and not shoes for Gloria Swanson.

But there were people having less fun in this war, so we sipped our main course and grumbled just a little. Even our sufferings were third rate; it’s the Mammoth Titan way.

Mammoth Titan had assembled us, a collection of stars (that is, those few Mammoth Titan players that people might recognize plus those of us who weren’t recognizable but were nice to look at), publicity flacks, and hangers-on to urge the citizenry to do right by Our Boys and Uncle Sam. We got no money for this — our duty — but we did get the free ride and all the gravy we could stomach.

I was there because Cal said he’d gotten me the part of the threatened peasant girl in Night of Dr. Jekyll, never mentioning that this trip was part of the fine print. I was a real catch. Not only had I done a lot of work for Mammoth Titan (through no fault of my own) but I could play the piccolo part of “The Stars and Stripes Forever.”

See, there was only so much train to go around, so the president hated to put a band on board, too. There was usually some kind of reception band in the towns where we stopped, but anyone on board who intended to sing had to have an ensemble they could depend on. This also cut down on the number of cars on the train, the amount of coal, and so forth; the president can be very patriotic when it involves being cheap. We were all pulling together to knock down Mussolini. Only he was doing it from his office back home, and we were doing it on the road. Gee, I’d have gone to my music lessons more willingly as a kid if I’d known that one day I’d be using my piccolo to smash Panzers.

Of course, everybody with any claim to stardom demanded a private Pullman. The president announced first that private cars would go only to those of his stars whose Mammoth Titan careers had netted a minimum of a million dollars for the studio. We’ve been around too long to fall for that; we argued him down to four hundred thousand. Even then, only one Mammoth Titan performer qualified. She hadn’t even applied for the private car. But her mother saw to it that she got one.

George shoved mailbags aside with his feet as he carried two trays of “food” down the center aisle. Mrs. Marr came after him, dragging The Child Star along behind. We all sat up a little, and smiled. Mrs. Marr had much to say in the casting of Baby Eloise films.

“Good ovation, wasn’t it, Eloise?” asked Olivia.

“Nice crowd,” Velvet agreed. “They loved you.”

The Child Star blinked. “Yes,” she said.

Baby Eloise was a moonfaced ten-year-old with a voice like an angel, dimples to make combat veterans weep in their foxholes, and a smile that would melt Hitler’s heart. She displayed none of these for us; chirps and charm are rationed for use in movies like Baby Eloise Beats the Saboteurs.

Mrs. Marr moved on behind George, the two of them vying for the deepest scowl. “I should ask her about my children’s book,” murmured Sissy. “She’s a children.”

“You’re writing a book?” Olivia inquired, eyes opening almost as wide as Sissy’s.

“A children’s book,” she repeated. “The Teddy Who Wanted to Be a Bear.”

Velvet stirred her supper a little with a fork. “No problem,” she said. “Just take off the teddy.”

Sissy’s head went back a little as she tried to figure this out. “Oh!” she exclaimed, finally. “Velvet, you have such a one-piece mind!”

Mrs. Marr, at the end of the club car, heard this and sniffed. We were not, obviously, fit to associate with The Child Star. George got the door open somehow, and they disappeared into their private coach.

As a matter of fact, we aren’t fit to associate with The Child Star. We’re known as starlets, but that’s courtesy; we’ve been starlets since talkies came in. What we really do around town is get photographed, primarily from the neck down. More marketable faces are pasted over ours, so that anyone who can act but has what the wardrobe mistress calls “figure deficiencies,” and which the president describes more flatly, need not disappoint her fans when she’s on a magazine cover.

Oh, I could tell you who pads more than her shoulders, and who has me standing in for her in those pictures on barracks walls. But I won’t because eating regular is addictive and I’ve got the habit bad. I’ll save it all for my autobiography, Beauty and the Bust. But you’ll have to wait until anyone who can sue me is dead. By that time, anybody who’d be interested will have kicked off, too, so you may never find out.

Anyhow, in return for the way we stick our chests out, we’re allowed to call ourselves actresses and stroll around the ranch house in those Western fillers. Sometimes men with monocles or buck teeth tie us to fiendish devices. Most recently, I had played the romantic interest of a ventriloquist’s dummy in the serial Cal Ryder and the Hidden Voice. But I spend most of my professional life lounging around in a velvet bathing suit.

Laszlo and Jim, two men who deal in these pictures for Mammoth Titan, entered with their own saucers of gravy. Jim set his down on the table across the aisle, and lit a Fleetwood. He liked a little cigarette ash in his gravy: good training for army food, he said. I don’t know if the military will get desperate enough to take him.

He blew the smoke at me and intoned, “Ya eedmo Ob-Ararat!”

“Thank you,” I said. “Rehearsing my lines will take my mind off what I’m eating. Think they’re really going to make that Jekyll movie, Laszlo?”

Laszlo scowled; he’s important enough that jokes about the studio are subversion, to him. “You want to walk home?” he demanded.

“I don’t want to go home at all,” I told him. “I have to pay for the gravy there.”

The conductor bustled back through the car. George was so perfect he could have been supplied by Casting: white hair, little white mustache, uniform polished and in perfect repair. But he came with the train. He was a Railroad Man to the bone, with forty years’ service. His only flaw was that he hated people — movie people, anyway. Not that movie people gave him lots of encouragement to change his mind.

“Be a doll, George, and take this back, would you?” drawled Velvet, pushing her plate at him.

He dodged it, not even looking at her, and rolled along, grumbling, “ ‘Fetch salt and pepper, take my plate.’ Be rinsing out their step-ins for ’em next.”

“Hey, I charge for that!” Velvet called after him.

The only person George ever accommodated was The Child Star. Jim figured it was because she was the only real star on the train, but I thought George just took her youth into account. He assumed she’d grow out of this movie business and get into honest work.

“Don’t you agree with me in that tone of voice!”

The sound of the penalty for agreeing with Mrs. Marr rang through the club car not once but several times. It should have warmed the cockles of my heart, but we just sort of lowered our heads and ate faster. We had been through this all before.

“Is she whacking The Child Star again?” inquired the refined tones of Jewell deChante, entering the car a step ahead of George and his salt and pepper shakers. “Let’s throw them both off the train, huh? Peace in our time?”

Aside from the crime of having the train’s only private car, Mrs. Marr had snubbed Jewell more than once. And, after all, Jewell was the ranking grownup star in the excursion. We knew this was so, for Jewell had admitted it herself. (She did not admit that she needed this trip, as she was having a difficult war. She had specialized in exotic vamps and was now considered too foreign-looking to play homegrown heroines and too sinister for the heroines of the Resistance.)

She was really much too important to be seen talking to us, but for the moment we were united against a common enemy. She glanced down at the letters all around us.

“I’ve been meaning to talk to you girls about the letters I’ve been receiving. Is there room for me at your table?”

She called us “girls” only when she wanted something. Olivia leaned back. “There isn’t even room for you in that dress.”

Jewell deChante could frown without wrinkling her pretty face, though time was taking care of that for her. She lifted one nostril and moved on, preferring to dine alone in our sleeping car.

“That Women’s Auxiliary Army Corps could start drafting people around here,” noted Velvet, wiping some gravy off the table with one of Jewell’s letters.

“They’d get us instead,” I told her. “She’s over age.”

“Didn’t I see Jewell come in?”

Bevis Flint was your standard hero player, with a face so square and solid it must have hurt to move it. His rock solid muscles made for great pictures at every stop: he picked up a couple of local kids on each arm. He carried two plates of gravy, one of them for Edwin Lorenzo, who strolled in behind him. This made up our usual crowd, the poker crowd. The pinochle crowd ate in the dining car.

“To change her dress, I think,” Sissy told him. “There wasn’t any room at the table, so she went to put on a different dress.”

This made no sense, but perhaps Bevis couldn’t tell. He set Edwin’s plate down and moved out of the car with his own.

“Oh yes,” said Velvet, who had been sliding over to make room for him if he was so inclined. “How sad for her that she has to sleep in the same car as the nobodies.”

“Maybe somebody can find her another place to sleep,” Olivia suggested as the door closed behind Bevis.

“Ladies, mind your innuendo. There are gentlemen in this car.”

I looked up and down the car and didn’t spot any, which I pointed out to Edwin. He raised his chin, the way he did. Edwin was a veteran of rolling voice and grandfatherly mien, generally found playing judges, congressmen, and crusty old generals. He was a very important person on this trip as well, for he carried the cards.

The battered deck hit the table, followed by two immense rolls of greenbacks. He slid a fifty from one of these, lit it from Jim’s cigarette, and then lit his own coffin nail. The money was from Props, for display purposes when we gave our little presentation on how much more valuable a stack of war bonds was. This did not make the poker played with it any less cutthroat.

The money slid back and forth while they swapped cards and we cleared away our gravy and dealt out the mail. News both profound and obscure passed between our tables, names like Rommel and Marshall mixed with Buster Wiles, Fred McEvoy, and Betty Hansen.

Bevis came back. Velvet went to chat for a minute and stayed to play some cards, though I didn’t notice that she was betting any money. Edwin got up at least once, to fetch a bottle from his private stock. Actually, I think everybody left the car at least once; maybe it was the gravy. Laszlo went out and came back six or seven times; he liked to move around to show that his supervision was required at every second.

I wasn’t really taking notes, being busy composing a fan letter to myself from a kid in Omaha. It didn’t seem important until The Child Star poked her head into the car, lifted an eyebrow, and announced, in a voice as flat as the landscape outside, “Mother hasn’t had much to drink yet, but I can’t wake her up.”

We did carry a doctor. He was insurance for the studio; kept any of us from going out before the public sniffling or sneezing, or, more likely, suffering hangovers or indigestion. Sissy ran to fetch him. The Child Star waited quietly, without much interest, at the door between the club car and her private boudoir.

The rest of us went back to our own business. Mrs. Marr, we all knew very well by now, was something of a heavy tippler. She tended to get louder as the night went on, rather than quieter, but we thought God might be on our side tonight, if He had any attention to spare from the front lines. Dr. Stone grumbled his way through our car; he had obviously been doing well at pinochle when interrupted.

“I,” said Edwin Lorenzo, “am going to sing a song.” He drained his glass and refilled it from the bottle in his vest pocket.

“Is it clean?” inquired Olivia as the door thumped shut behind Dr. Stone, with Baby Eloise following along.

“Nobody I know thinks so,” he said. He straightened his shoulders and thumped his chest a little to prepare it for exertion.

Dr. Stone came back and bent over Laszlo. Laszlo tossed his cards down and went out with him. He didn’t like Mrs. Marr any more than the rest of us. “If she’s tom up another carpet...” he muttered.

If he got into a fight with Mrs. Marr, it was a fifty-fifty proposition which one would be walking home. Mrs. Marr was mother to a star, but Laszlo was somebody’s nephew. When no shouting came from the private car, we settled back to listen to Edwin Lorenzo’s recital and pretended to blush.

He had finished his first song and was starting in on “King Caractacus” when Laszlo came back. After a whispered conversation with Jim, the two of them started for The Child Star’s car. Laszlo, though, paused at our table.

“Better have you, too.” He pointed to me and to Sissy. “You and, um, you.”

I looked to Velvet and Olivia, exchanged shrugs with them, and got up to follow.

It was a very nice car, with actual beds instead of bunks and curtains at the windows. Mrs. Marr was sprawled in a big horsehair armchair, a half-empty bottle on a low table beside her. I didn’t see a glass.

Sissy missed something else. “Where’s Baby Eloise?” she demanded.

“We sent her into the next car,” said Dr. Stone, jerking his head in that direction. “She doesn’t know yet.”

“Is Mrs. Marr really that sick?” I asked.

“Officially,” said Laszlo, “Yes.”

“Unofficially?” asked Jim.

“She’s dead,” said Dr. Stone.

We all took two giant steps back from the chair without saying, “Captain, may I?”

“Food poisoning,” growled Laszlo. “You’d think, in this weather, they could keep the food...”

Dr. Stone sat down on the nearer bed. “That can be the official story, if you like. It was less accidental poisoning, though. Somebody slipped a bottle of rubbing alcohol into her. Know where she got her liquor?”

“I wonder if she deals with the same place as Lorenzo,” mused Jim, always interested in these practical matters.

Laszlo leaned in, his hands flat on one arm of the chair. “You couldn’t have made a mistake?”

“Not after working Hollywood all through Prohibition, no.” Dr. Stone jerked a thumb at the bottle. “And unless some of the old bootleggers are back in business, to get around rationing, we can’t blame them this time. It must have been deliberate. She had plenty of drinking alcohol, too much for her to try this instead.”

Sissy’s lower lip slid out a little. “Poor Baby Eloise. What’s she going to do without her mother? You know, if it weren’t for mothers, we wouldn’t be here at all. And then who would we talk to?”

“Is The Child Star going to have to go home?” I asked.

Laszlo turned on me, glad of someone he could holler at. “Don’t you remember why she got this private car?” he demanded, shaking three fingers at me. “She’s the only one of you with crowd appeal! We need her if we’re going to finish this trip, and we’ve got to finish the trip or explain to the government, in triplicate, why we wasted their time and coal.”

“She can’t travel alone, can she?” Jim demanded.

“Of course not!” Laszlo whirled to shake fingers at him now. “That’s why I cast these two as substitute mothers!”

“I beg your pardon?” I inquired.

“Ooh!” said Sissy. “We can be mommies?”

“It sounds like one of the tougher roles we’ve been offered,” I said. “We’re still too young for the mother parts.”

“Simplest thing in the world,” Laszlo informed me. “All women have natural maternal instincts. Well, most.” He took a step back from the deceased but said no more about that. It’s a rule in our town: never speak ill of the dead... as long as there’s a chance you’ll be picked up for the murder.

I had some doubts about my natural maternal instincts, but when I started to say so, he went on, with those eyes they issue to petty bureaucrats, “That part in Night of Dr. Jekyll is rather motherly; I hope we haven’t been guilty of miscasting.”

“Who’s going to tell Eloise?” Sissy demanded.

“You do that,” our man of decision told her. He jerked a thumb at me. “She can pack your things while you do it; you seem to have more natural instincts.”

“Pack?” Sissy asked.

“You’re going to have to move in here for the duration of the trip,” Laszlo said.

“Ooh, goody!” Sissy clapped her hands. “Be sure to bring my book while I... what was I doing?”

I thought about objecting. Not that I wanted to console The Child Star myself. I just didn’t especially want to have to console Sissy after she did it. But murder upsets Laszlo, and I might easily find myself dropped from the trip, and the company payroll, at the next stop.

Velvet and Olivia were watching from the club car side of the door. When I turned for our sleeping quarters instead, they came charging after me. Velvet’s eyes glittered when she saw me start repacking my suitcase.

“I told you not to write all those things about Jewell in that fan letter,” she said. “I do hope they’re giving you train-fare home. You’d have a terrible time charming the money out of yokels.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” I told her. “I’ve already charmed Laszlo into giving me a semiprivate car.”

Velvet’s expression made it all worthwhile. “What?”

Not knowing how much Laszlo wanted to get around, I said, “Mrs. Marr’s the one who’s leaving. Sissy and I are going to escort The Child Star the rest of the way.”

“You?” snarled Velvet. “Why you?”

“My natural maternal instincts,” I informed her.

“Oh well,” said Olivia. “That’ll give us a lot more room. And I’d rather sleep in a bunk here than babysit.” Velvet was showing her front teeth, but she pretended to take this as consolation. “True. I wonder if this will change the panty raid they had on for tonight. I was counting on the... publicity.”

“Yes, if you don’t get a boost soon, you’ll have to put all the pins back in your clothes,” said Olivia.

While Velvet indignantly declared that she had never worked as a stripper and certainly never would again, I packed up Sissy’s things as well. Then I snagged our conductor. “Be a darling and carry these to The Child Star’s car, George,” I said.

George was not inclined to be a darling and didn’t think much of carrying luggage. He was a man in uniform. He did, however, open the door for me between cars while I wrestled the suitcases through. I knew what I would find in The Child Star’s boudoir and braced myself.

Sissy was wailing, “And without my mamma I’d never have met Daddy.” She knelt with her arms around The Child Star.

The Child Star, who had bawled so affectingly over a sick canary in Viva Baby Eloise that four patrons had to be carried griefstricken from the theater, was proving that that stuff was saved for the set. She didn’t try to move, or to stem the flow of Sissy’s mourning. Her expression was that of someone willing to wait out the storm.

I set down the suitcases and jerked my head toward Mrs. Marr’s chair. “They took her out,” The Child Star told me.

I raised an eyebrow. She shrugged. “She was useful to me. But there are plenty of mothers.”

Sissy was trying to pat away The Child Star’s tears, of which there were none. “Oh,” she sobbed, “lots of people in our town are mothers, but you only get one of your very own.”

“Oh, her,” said The Child Star. “She still lives in Fayette.”

“Who was Mrs. Marr, then?” I asked.

“I forget. They told me. Dad’s brother’s wife’s mother or something. Where are we all going to sleep?”

Very practical, these child stars. Well, some child stars. I could not see this one growing up to be like Sissy, who had enchanted audiences with her dimples and her curls in a good dozen movies with lots of tap dancing, just a couple of years too early for her to be any challenge to Shirley Temple. (Maybe I can reveal some back-stage secrets without putting Hedda’s nose out of joint. The curls and dimples were real; the tap dancing was phony. They got another girl in for the closeups of the feet. I don’t know what genius decided to make tap dancing movies before sound came in, anyhow.)

Technically speaking, for that matter, I had been a child star myself. After several years of background bits (if your church group rents King of Kings, I can tell you where to find me way in the back, but don’t blink), I was awarded my first starring role at fourteen. We did not mention to the studio that I was fourteen because they had estimated three years older than that. Talkies were still so new that they were desperate for people who could sing. My parents said I could, and it took the studio seven “Sister Annette” shorts to learn different.

Mrs. Marr’s bed was big enough for the two of us, and it was no real problem to decide, but I let Sissy figure it all out. This gave her something else to think about. The Child Star showed us where we could put our things, but since Mrs. Marr’s things were still in those places, we left ours in the suitcases. Except for one flannel nightgown apiece, which we put on. The Child Star donned a similar garment, and we all settled in for the night.

I was unsettled some hours later by a shrill scream. Sissy does not scream in her sleep, so I knew who it had to be. I turned on the little bedside light and found The Child Star sitting up in bed.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“That’s all right,” I told her. “I ought to know better than to be sleeping at two A.M. anyhow. Are you all right?”

The Child Star sighed. “I’m afraid I’ll have to change.”

I knew the drill; I had little sisters. Get the blankets off before they’re soaked through, toss the sheets into a separate pile, and so forth. While I was doing this, I thought The Child Star was fetching another nightgown. Instead she brought me a long-handled bath brush.

“I don’t think we’d better run a bath at this hour,” I told her, checking the pillowcases.

Grave eyes studied me. “Look,” I said. “In the morning...”

“This isn’t a bathing brush,” she informed me. She set it on the bed and then placed her hands palms down on the mattress, presenting to me the most appalling collections of welts and bruises.

I got the idea. “You’ll have to excuse me,” I said. “We don’t want to wake up Sissy.”

An entire Panzer division couldn’t wake up Sissy. But The Child Star didn’t know that. So she shrugged and went off in search of a nightgown, leaving the brush in case I changed my mind, adults being unpredictable.

“Are there clean sheets?” I asked her when she returned.

The Child Star shook her head. “Not until morning.”

“You’d better bunk with us, then,” I said, doing my best to make this sound pleasant. “We’ll...”

There was a rap at the door. I looked around for a robe, snatched up one of Mrs. Marr’s, and went to see who it was.

It was nobody. But nobody had left us a message. A piece of paper with a skull and cross-bones above the word “Beware” had been tacked to the door.

“Isn’t this a lovely breakfast?” cried Sissy, carrying the tray back to the table.

“Oh yes.”

It was one of the least positive affirmatives I’d ever heard. But perhaps The Child Star was not large enough to have Sissy’s kind of appetite. And maybe she’d never had to go short, either.

The breakfast tray and supplies had been brought to our door by our loyal conductor and by Bevis Flint. George had charged off again, growling something about having work to do and if he’d known he’d be escorted he’d’ve let the so-and-so carry it all. But Bevis was inclined to stay and chat.

“I just wondered if you, um, needed an extra spoon,” he said.

I had counted them on the way in, to be sure they hadn’t sent the usual two-person breakfast. “No, you brought three spoons.”

“Or, um, an extra knife,” he went on, sort of twisting his head to one side.

“No,” I told him, keeping my eyes on his face. “We have three knives.”

“Or maybe an extra fork.”

Behind me, an equally useful conversation was going on. “Knock knock,” said Sissy.

The Child Star responded with “Who’s there?” on cue.

“Elephant.”

“Elephant who?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never been introduced to an elephant. So Buster climbs out on the castle roof...”

Sissy had been trying to explain the story of Buster Kitten, another one of her children’s books, all morning. Sissy gets a little tangled when it comes to plots: hers generally involve small animals that beg for wieners and table scraps at the back door and then ride off on horses to defeat giants. The Child Star had listened gravely through all this because she had been taught to listen to adults and because she had noticed Sissy had rather muscular arms.

Bevis also had muscle, both physical and box office, but not so much that I felt compelled to go through breakfast inventory with him. “If we need anything,” I said, “I’ll give you a call.” I closed the door on the foot he kept trying to slip in.

I had just reached the breakfast on the table when that same door was knocked upon. Mrs. Marr would have thrown something, but I have no children to sell the studio so I answered it.

“Hi,” said Jim, carrying a much smaller breakfast. He was followed into the room by Olivia and Velvet, whose eyes turned rounder than usual at the sight of what was being served to those of us in the private cars.

The Child Star rose with her bowl of cereal and moved to a side table without being asked. Sissy, perhaps to her dismay, followed. But The Child Star’s face registered no complaint.

“I know what happened,” Jim whispered, taking Sissy’s seat.

Olivia pulled up my chair. “Richard Hannay here has it all figured out.”

Sissy and The Child Star had taken their breakfasts with them, so mine was the only one left to prey on. I hauled up a chair without any ceremony. Jim interpreted this as a sign of intense desire to learn what he’d deduced.

“Mrs. Marr,” he said in even lower tones, “was murdered by Nazi spies.”

I spread imitation butter on my toast. “You don’t mean to say so.”

He nodded. “We have a chance to expose their fiendish plot and become heroes. You could be another Mata Hari.”

Velvet choked on the thought. “Yes.” I said. “Shot her, didn’t they?”

“I’ve already found their code book.” He reached into a pocket and brought out a little black rectangle. “It’s filled with mysterious references to their agents. Look here. ‘Joshua Red 324. Nathaniel Blue 918’.”

Velvet reared and snatched the book from his hands. “That’s mine! Those are telephone numbers!”

“Definitely not a matter for the FBI,” Olivia agreed. “The Health Department, maybe.”

“Oh well,” said Jim, reaching for a cup of brown hot water. “I... what’s this?”

It was too late, that’s what it was. “Oh, just a crank note,” I said. “It was tacked to the door. It’s nothing.” I tried to pry it from his hands.

But his eyes were gleaming. “That proves it,” he said. “At least one of the people on this train is a spy and killed Mrs. Marr and wants to keep us from investigating it. I saw just this kind of note used in The Spy Express. We’ll have to investigate them.”

“There are better than forty people on this train,” Olivia noted.

“We’ll check the movie people,” Jim decided, reaching for the plate of toast. “The train people could have had a wreck or something, but the movie people would’ve had to do it this way. It won’t be hard. Didn’t you see Singapore Harbor? We just have to look for someone with a swastika in his suitcase.”

“Mrs. Marr.”

We hadn’t seen Sissy wander over to the table to get the salt. “She had a swatsticka,” the budding author went on. “She used it to swat poor Eloise.”

Then she went away. Jim went on, “Or maybe a missing finger or a secret radio transmitter in disguise.”

“What’s a secret radio transmitter in disguise going to look like?” Velvet asked him.

“Actually, Sissy’s got the right idea,” said Olivia. “If this has anything to do with spies, then Mrs. Marr was the Nazi, and the murderer was one of our boys.”

Jim’s chin went up. “Our boys don’t murder people.”

“Spies or no spies,” I said, “somebody did kill Mrs. Marr. It might be useful to know who.”

Velvet scooped up the last of the imitation butter. “She wouldn’t have let just anybody into her precious private car.”

“Did she have to? Anybody could have slipped her the bottle, even in fun, not knowing the wood alcohol would kill her.”

Jim raised a finger to indicate a point. “And the bad bottle was not one of hers. We checked. It was probably from Lorenzo’s stock.”

“Well, he didn’t do it,” said Olivia. “It would take his mind off the cards.”

“But he might have done it,” Jim said, “under orders from Germany. Or somebody else could’ve taken a bottle he was throwing away and reused it.”

“Maybe it was spies,” said Olivia, wiping her lips. “I mean, why would anybody else kill Mrs. Marr? Except that she needed it, but so do lots of people. Why start with her?”

“Lorenzo and deChante have been in the business a long time,” said Velvet. “They’d have just the type of mind that would resent Mrs. Marr’s getting the private car.”

Olivia raised an eyebrow at that but said, “Bevis was coming back this way a lot. Maybe he did it as a favor to one of them.”

“But if you want someone who really would have liked to get Mrs. Marr out of the way,” I put in, just to add two more cents to the pot, “she was probably a real embarrassment to the studio and Laszlo represents the studio.”

“Well, I still say it’s spies,” Jim said, writing all this down in a handy pocket notebook. “But since that’s four suspects and there’s four of us, why don’t let’s investigate those four first?”

“There are lots more people...” I started to say.

“What about Bernie and Sylvester, up in the pinochle car?” Velvet demanded. “Or Annie, Kay, and Misty?”

This made us all sit back. You don’t ever want to go talking about the wardrobe and makeup people; they prefer it the other way around, and there are little tricks they can do with color and arrangement that can make you look like change for a dime.

“Or either of you could have done it,” Jim told her, “just to get a chance to have the private car yourself.”

“But that way they’d have to have known Laszlo would look for someone with natural maternal instincts,” I pointed out.

“Anyway,” he went on, leaning so low over the table as to get crumbs from the toast plate on his chin, “I know it had to be someone from our car.”

“How?” Olivia demanded.

“This note,” he said, flipping it over. “It’s written on the back of a Baby Eloise fan letter. From our bags.”

I glanced back at The Child Star, who was studying every move of Sissy’s lips as Buster Kitten brandished a pink feather duster and bright yellow lollipops in the face of the ogre.

“Four of us and four of them,” said our loyal spy smasher. “What do you say?”

“I’m game,” said Olivia. “As long as I interrogate Bevis Flint.”

“Hold it!” snarled Velvet. “You interview Lorenzo. You’ll do lots better with someone your own age.”

“We’ll flip a coin,” Olivia proposed, reaching for her purse. “Loser interviews deChante.”

“Well, I’ll tackle Laszlo,” said Jim, making a note. “It won’t be him, though. They’d be crazy to use someone with a foreign name. Except it did happen that way in Count on the Renegades.”

Someone knocked on the door. “It’s unlocked!” called Jim, who had elected himself host.

“Oh, do come in,” said Velvet, who had won the coin toss. (She’d been able to pull out a two-headed coin before Olivia could.) “We’re not quite done yet, but wouldn’t you like to come in and talk?”

Bevis would like. “Here.” Velvet moved over to clear space on the little sofa. “We can sit right here and...”

But the stalwart hero had found his own seat, next to Sissy. “Kittens, huh?” he said, catching onto the conversation. “I used to have a kitten named Jenny.”

“Kittens,” muttered Velvet. She tossed her dishes onto the little tray. “Kittens!”

Her knife bumped the sugar bowl, which none of us had touched during the meal, not expecting much to come of it. But maybe Mrs. Marr had had connections in the kitchen. I picked up the lid.

Inside, all I found was a note saying “Beware.” This one had been written on the back of a Baby Eloise envelope. I looked from it to Sissy and Bevis.

The Child Star’s blank eyes met mine. I wadded the envelope into my hand.

I couldn’t blame The Child Star for getting rid of her “mother.” And I knew where my own career would go if I said anything. There was one thing I could do, though.

Baby Eloise never walked into any drugstore to buy a bottle of rubbing alcohol, and probably didn’t snitch one of Lorenzo’s empties. She was way too well supervised. Somebody had to have done these things for her; the bottle and the warning letters suggested it was somebody on this train. If I could find out who had done The Child Star these favors, maybe I could do something to get him or her off the train before any of the rest of us looked expendable.

Lorenzo was no early riser; no rush to go interview him. I sat around to enjoy the fun as Velvet, with prompting from Jim and Olivia, tried to question Bevis. All they got out of the big, bold hero was a series of friendly but empty grunts. Bevis was a man of action — he had a Lone Ranger Pocket Book rolled into his back pocket — and he was breathing down Sissy’s neck, all agog with the suspense of Buster Kitten’s adventure.

Sissy was too busy to notice his attention or Velvet’s reaction. She was taking notes as she told the story, having long ago departed from the text, making up new perils as she went along. She couldn’t wait to find out what became of her hero.

The only person who lacked even imitation interest in the tale was the intended audience. The Child Star was slumped in her chair, occupied with a well-worn deck of cards and some obscure form of solitaire, flipping through the deck and mumbling to herself. Every now and then she’d let a card drop from the deck onto a stack of discards on her lap. When she reached the last card, she set it on top of this stack and started over.

They had been at this for better than an hour when I decided nothing much would happen if I slipped away. “Well,” I said, “better get these dishes back or they’ll think we’ve donated them for scrap.”

“As opposed to the food,” Olivia said, rising, “which we donated to the Axis.”

“Yes,” agreed Velvet, who did not stand up. “Why don’t you take all the trash with you?” Her eyes threw flame at Sissy.

The rest of the cast was less moved by our departure. The Child Star sort of nodded and went on running through her cards. Bevis, now pretending an interest in her game, grunted, either in farewell or at the sight of a nine of diamonds. “Meow,” said Sissy.

We moved out of our posh boudoir, along the external corridor, and to the end of the car. The dishes rattled as we bounced across the shaky three-foot landing that connected the cars. The train had had to be cobbled together from odds and ends of rolling stock the railroad had pulled out of mothballs, since all the good stuff was required for war work. The cars didn’t exactly fit, varying in age by centuries, I think, in some spots, so they’d nailed up little platforms and shelters to bridge the awkward bits.

Lorenzo was alone in the club car, reading a dark brown book, a bottle and glass in front of him on the table. I glanced to Olivia, who nodded and took my share of the plates on through. I sat in a chair opposite the character actor. His book came down; his head and eyebrows went up. I couldn’t see any signs of last night’s drinking in his face.

“Laszlo wanted me to check and be sure we all have our stories straight in case somebody in this next burg asks about Mrs. Marr,” I said, hoping Laszlo had not already passed this way.

He knew what I was talking about; the good news had spread quickly through the train last night. He took a drink. “And what is the story?”

“Mrs. Marr had an upset stomach after all the train riding and has gone home.”

This improvised tale nearly failed. Lorenzo’s head tipped back. “That seems strangely close to the truth for Laszlo. I expected something with more imagination.”

I shrugged. “He may be too busy looking for the murderer to be up to his usual level. Probably to thank whoever it is. Mrs. Marr was a spell of bad weather in this business.”

He took another drink and turned to me, his eyebrows raised but his eyelids lowered. “One gray cloud more or less in Southern California will not make much difference.”

I laughed; he seemed to expect it. “We’d need a whole host of murderers to clear them all away,” I said. “Did you...”

He had spread one hand across his chest, fingers splayed. “Clear them away?”

There was a touch of shock in his expression. Thinking he suspected me of taking personal credit for clearing Mrs. Marr away, I hurried to add, “Just clear away the real clouds: not the human ones.”

“Those are the most important ones,” he said, raising his head and shoulders to the level of a bust in a hall of fame. “For there are indeed lands that admire our cities, nor complain of the noise and ugly air. In the land of Suomintarin, where they watch the sun for signs of explosion, such reports as reach them from our side of the world receive great applause. You must know that in Suomintarin they believe that the sun rises each morning full of hope that this day will be different. But as the day passes, and the sun sees what evil men do each other, it burns hotter and hotter with rage. It is for this reason that afternoon is so much warmer than morning. As the sun’s strength is spent with much fury, and his face turns red, he goes to bed to dream of another, a better, world, and to waken the morrow hoping that the dream was true and what he saw was a lie.”

He rose half out of his seat. “And because they fear that one day the sun will explode from anger, as a man indeed may do whose temper rises beyond his body’s ability to contain it, they in Suomintarin believe we are wizards of genius to hide our cities with smoky fog, that the sun cannot see what we do in them.”

I stood there with my shoulders hanging slant and my mouth hanging open as he settled back down. He took another drink and said, “Seen Bevis? The games must go on.”

“Um,” I said. “Er, he’s with Sissy.”

“A little old for him, isn’t she?”

We exchanged raised eyebrow stares. I am one year older than Sissy myself, which I assumed Lorenzo knew.

“Do you play the filthy game yourself?” he went on.

“Poker?” I said. “A little. Bridge is my sport.”

He shrugged. “A pity. If Laszlo is too busy controlling rumors, I’ll have to find one of the others to take his place. Not your Allotment Annie, however, I am far too old for the stakes she prefers.”

“Last night,” I said, “do you remember seeing anyone...”

“One moment.” He extended a hand to George’s sleeve as the conductor came down the aisle. “Have you seen any likely-looking cardplayers awake yet, my good man?”

George was nobody’s good man. He paused long enough for a grunt and a growl and moved on. “I wouldn’t wear that uniform sixteen hours a day if it chafed that much,” Lorenzo noted.

Doors slammed simultaneously at opposite ends of the car. George was on his way out and Jewell deChante was on her way through. I gave way before her glower and looked down the aisle, avoiding her venomous glare. I was able to see Olivia stride in and throw herself into a seat.

“I’ll go find out if Olivia’s dying to lose play money to you cutthroats,” I said as Jewell banged the exit open.

I’d lost interest in questioning Lorenzo. I couldn’t see him doing The Child Star any favors. He had too little in the way of energy to bother, and too much in the way of brains to leave his own bottle behind if he had. In fact, he had conjured up an unpleasant alternate theory. Someone — I was thinking of Velvet — could have used his bottle for the alcohol so the crime would be pinned on him, in revenge for some insult.

“How did you do?” I asked Olivia.

One corner of her mouth jerked up. “I’m still alive. I must have done all right.”

Being alive seemed awfully significant just now. “Why? You think she did it?”

“I do not.” Her nose wrinkled, as if invaded by a foul odor. “She could poison someone just by kissing ’em.”

“Got a hangover this morning, does she?”

“That woman is a hangover.” Olivia shrugged. “I didn’t ask her any questions, if that’s what you wanted to know. I’m losing interest in playing cops and robbers. Whoever bumped off Mrs. Marr did a favor, and if there’s a chance he’ll come back for the Queen of the Screen, I don’t want to get in his way.”

I tipped my head toward the far door. “She going back to the sleeper?”

“That’s her private dining car, isn’t it?”

As ranking actress, Jewell always shooed the rest of us out so she could dine in the sleeping car undistracted by underlings. We didn’t linger there anyhow; our spot was in the club car, among the bags of bogus mail.

I set off for Jewell’s boudoir, telling Lorenzo as I passed, “Keep your cards warm. I may find somebody yet.”

The Child’s Star’s car had to be passed through first. I nearly banged into George as he hauled red, white, and blue bunting to be tacked into strategic places before we made our stop. At the door to my new bedroom, I paused to peek inside. The Child Star was still occupied with her game of solitaire; Sissy and Bevis were both trying to interest her in their drawings of bunnies. Velvet glanced back at the door and glared to see me. I ducked down the corridor and bounced across the platform to my former sleeping spot.

Jewell was sitting on Velvet’s bed, scowling at breakfast. I cannot swear that this made it curdle faster. With a sigh, she set it aside and picked up a well-thumbed volume of New Yorker cartoons.

She didn’t look up as I let the door shut behind me. “Morning,” I said.

Her eyes lit up as they lit on me, and her pearlies parted. “Become lost,” she enunciated.

Jewel and I had never been great buddies. In her first lead, in Wagons to the Ivy League, I was a funloving college girl who kicked her so she fell down. I put a little extra feeling into this on one take. She landed so perfectly asprawl, so open-mouthed with surprise, that the director not only kept it in but had us do it over four times for the still cameras. The stills made all the major magazines and did a lot for Jewell’s visibility. All she remembered me for, though, was the kick.

Aside from some growling now and then, however, we’d gotten along so far, at least when I remembered to recognize her superior status. So I stopped at a respectful distance and said, “You didn’t get to tell us what you wanted to about the letters yesterday.”

She tossed the book up to the pillow on the bunk and pulled one leg up next to her. “Forget it.” She tossed her head back. “There probably won’t be any room now for my letters, with all the ones you’ll be getting.”

She put so much venom behind “you’ll” that I took a step back. Who’d she been talking to, and what did she know that I didn’t?

One hand pulled the ankle on the bed closer to her. “Not that it matters. As if it mattered to me how many phony letters everybody gets. That brat’s the only one who gets real letters, and the company has a spy to make sure Mrs. Marr doesn’t write those herself, checking every letter that reaches the train.”

She really did have inside information, or else she was as stuck on the idea of spies as Jim was. “Who...”

The ankle was jerked even closer. I could see the deep imprints of her fingers in it. “I know what it is. I wouldn’t go with T. K. on that trip to Miami. So they told Laszlo to be sure everybody else got the attention on this trip. First it was the brat; now it’s you two guys. That’s what it is. I’d’ve got that room, but Laszlo had orders.”

I blinked. “Orders to move us into the vacant space if somebody was murdered?”

If looks could kill, it would have been all holiday with me. Since I didn’t drop, she snarled. “They’ll be giving my parts to just anybody next, anybody who’s handy, just to keep me out. I’m going to be eased away from the spotlight. That’s why they put me in Five Star with that B-movie director. This is just the next stage. Laszlo and Lorenzo are in on it together: they’d get rid of Mrs. Marr and then push you two into the spotlight so there won’t be room for me.”

She tossed her head again. “At least it took two of you to replace me. I’ll have to remember that when I’m playing the heroine’s grandmother.”

I doubted that her recent decline was caused by any studio plots, but I also doubted that saying so was going to get me I anywhere. Sympathy was more the line to take.

“Why, I had no idea!” I rolled my hands together to signify mental anguish. “I surely wouldn’t want to be a part of that.”

She sneered.

“Honest,” I said. “Laszlo doesn’t have the brains for anything like that. It’s sure to come out, and then it’ll look as if I was in on it from the start. But if you could prove everything you know, and go to the police with it...”

“The studio would toss me out on my can, and I’d never even play the heroine’s grandmother,” she told me.

“No, no,” I said. “If you can get good, solid proof — the way you did in A Fine Funeral, they’ll cut off Laszlo completely. They’ve been wanting to get rid of him forever. Think how grateful they’ll be!”

It would have taken a better actress than I am to make her buy this, but it did switch her train of thought to another track. “Maybe I could. And if I can prove T. K. and J. W. and the others were in on it, maybe the whole studio goes bust and I’ll get out of my contract. After all that publicity, all the big studios will want me.”

I had my doubts, but I didn’t let those show. “I just know you can do it! And if you need any help, remember I’m right behind you to give you a boost.”

My dialogue needed work. Her head snapped around. “You mean like in Wagons to the Ivy League?” She snatched up something and hurled it.

I ducked in time, but the crash surprised me. I had expected a pillow or, at worst, her breakfast. But I stepped backward over broken glass, and the neck of a bottle. There was nothing on it to show it was one of Lorenzo’s, but I couldn’t help wondering whether that had been in Velvet’s bunk or Jewell had brought it along to kill the taste of breakfast.

I kept moving backward before she could find something else to toss. But would either of them have done any favors for The Child Star, collecting Lorenzo’s bottles and refilling them? It was possible. Velvet anyhow, and probably Jewell, had done more difficult and time-consuming favors for directors in return for a career move. Even for assistant directors.

The platform bounced more than usual when I stepped back onto it. So did I.

I had just a second to see the stack of mail I’d stepped on. Letters slid left and right, off the train, and I was about to follow them. I grabbed at the door, but it shut before I could get a grip. The mailbag that had been emptied was hanging just inside the little windbreak that kept most of the snow off the platform. I took hold of that. It started to tear as my feet swung off the platform.

Screaming for help was actually my second idea. My first was that things like this wouldn’t happen if Mammoth Titan had gotten us a real train instead of issuing us one from the props of the Westerns Unit. MGM could afford trains built in the twentieth century. Why couldn’t we?

Since my screams wouldn’t have been heard over the rattling of the train (I’m known in the trade as a good screamer, but not that good), it was a break for me that Jim was hunting for me. He came out the door, recognized that I was about to become a casualty, and got hold of my shoulders. These were not padded, so he left imprints, but I didn’t scold him for that.

He scolded me, dragging me into the external corridor of The Child Star’s car. “Haven’t I warned you guys about trying to get across that in your heels? I told T. K. this would happen if he didn’t get a decent train.”

“I’m not wearing heels for things like walking until the war’s over,” I told him, slapping a hand on the window. “That was somebody else’s fault.”

“Someone tried to make you fall?” he demanded. He pressed his face against the window, pushing me aside. When he came back, his eyes were shining.

“You know what this means?” he demanded. “If we can’t get them for murder, maybe we can have them picked up for mistreating the U.S. mail.”

“Was this trip really necessary?” I muttered. “Look, bright eyes, that stuff isn’t U.S. mail. It was never mailed. It’s as much a prop as the money.”

“Oh,” he said. “Well... I don’t suppose you know who did it?”

“Only who didn’t,” I said. “It was put there after I went through to talk to Jewell, and she never came out here the whole time.”

“Oh,” he said in the same tone, as if I’d just told him his horse ran fifth. “Well, it doesn’t really matter because it could have been one of the others.”

“Don’t get me wrong,” I said. “I don’t really want to know. But I’m going to ask, just because we’re old buddies and I can see you want to tell me. What do you mean, ‘one of the others’?”

He looked up and down the corridor again. “It’s a Nazi plot against the studio, especially this trip. The Child Star will be the next target; they wanted to get her sent back by killing Mrs. Marr, but when that failed, they had to start on her. Without her, we’ll have to cancel the trip, and we won’t sell nearly as many bonds.” He patted his pocket. “But I’ve got a slingshot, so she can defend herself.”

“Very good,” I nodded, and patted him on the cheek. “But who is it you’ve outwitted so cleverly?”

“I was wrong,” he said again. “It really is everyone here with a foreign name; I figured it out when Laszlo wouldn’t answer my questions. It’s Laszlo, Lorenzo, Jewell, and Olivia.”

I blinked. “You, um, do know they hate each other, don’t you? Except maybe Olivia and Lorenzo. And you know those mostly aren’t their real names.”

Now he nodded and patted my cheek. “Don’t worry. They started on this scheme years ago, before they’d met or taken new names. Germany sent them one at a time, to work their way into the movies and wait.”

“The Child Star wasn’t even born that long ago.”

“Tsk,” he said, frustrated at my unwillingness to learn from the master spy. “They knew there’d be a war, and morale to undermine. Where could they do that better than in the movies? They had orders to be ready for anything. That’s just the way it worked in Stuttering Smith in San Francisco; the Nazis undermined millions through the movies.”

Before I could suggest that Mammoth Titan was not a studio that could undermine even thousands of morales, the engine started to stutter. I had to grab hold of the wall. The door at the far end of the corridor opened and Laszlo stumbled through. Spying us, he clapped his hands. “All right, people! We’re coming up on French Willow in thirty minutes! We’re just pulling onto the siding to tack up the extra bunting! Thirty minutes!”

This was sounding “Charge!” I plunged at the door of The Child Star’s boudoir just as Velvet charged through it. I repeated the news for those inside who weren’t so swift. Bevis patted The Child Star on the head and sauntered to the door.

“See ya!” he called and moved out.

“Another of your big fans,” I told The Child Star as I tried to pry Sissy from her notes.

The Child Star set her cards back into their case. “He’s trying to make me,” she replied, voice flat.

Sissy was concentrating and difficult to distract. “What?” I said, pulling on a shoulder.

The Child Star rose and brushed the wrinkles from her dress. “He’s trying to make me.”

“Why?” I demanded. “Sissy, come on! And how would you know?”

She shrugged. “He asked Mrs. Marr about maybe bringing me over for a weekend when we finished the trip. I heard them talking about it. He said he wanted me to have the big room right next to his in the big house. There was a door between, he said, so he could check if I needed anything in the night.”

She said all this without even blinking. I swallowed. “What did your... Mrs. Marr say.”

“She said, ‘We’ll see.’ ”

This was something to think about as we hustled along to the women’s half of the dressing car. It could have been a lie, of course: something to implicate Bevis in the murder instead of whoever had helped out The Child Star. If Mrs. Marr had said, “Absolutely not! Get out!” it would have been grounds for murder, with Bevis trying to keep his proposition a secret. But Mrs. Marr’s saying “We’ll see” didn’t fit the scenario. It was too close to something Mrs. Marr might actually have said; it was perfectly in character. And it was just one more good reason for The Child Star to bump off her ersatz parent.

It all provided so much food for thought that I didn’t watch where I was walking and bumped full into our loyal conductor. “Buncha thugs,” muttered George, moving on. “All alike: no consideration.”

“Well, I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t kill you, you know.”

I didn’t hear his answer, if he’d even been listening, because there were far more important things to think about than a conductor’s feelings or Mrs. Marr’s murder. There were hats, coats, hair, and faces as we submitted to the ministrations of Carmen, Misty, Annie, and Kay.

“You think when I push my lower lip out I look more like Lana Turner?”

“No, dear; Charles Laughton.”

“Can’t you at least air these coats out between stops?”

“Whatchoo want from me? Is a war on, and is winter besides.”

“What can you do to make me look younger?”

“Take off my glasses.”

We started up again just as Jewell was painting her mouth. “They do that on purpose!” she shrieked, spitting out a mouthful of beauty. “And I’m trying to conserve the stuff.”

“Okay, people!”

Laszlo stepped into the car. Those of us who weren’t quite covered yet didn’t holler; Laszlo is management. He was concerned with quality control and felt he had to check to be sure we had our stockings painted all the way up, and on both legs, to say nothing of whether the seams were straight. The girls did this, too, but he pointed out that since he’d had experience in the publicity department, he was the expert. He lingered over Sissy’s stockings, which were distinctive. The whole business of painting in the seams entertained her so much that she always had Misty paint bunnies on as well. This was a complete waste of effort. They’d look at Sissy’s legs bunnies or no bunnies.

Once inspection was over, Laszlo straightened up, wiped his mouth off, and clapped his hands some more. “Okay, people! You know the drill, don’t you?”

We did, but the last person who’d said so had been sent home. “You two,” he explained, pointing at Olivia and Velvet. “Go out first, during the intro. Take Lorenzo with you.”

The rest of our cast had been loitering at the open door keeping an eye on Laszlo’s inspection, just to see if he needed assistance with the brain work. The old character objected, “I thought we agreed young Bevis would go out with the first assault.”

Bevis’s head came up. He obviously hadn’t been included in “we.”

Laszlo whirled. “What’re you doing in here? This is the women’s car. We’re going with the contrast: the elderly with the youngish. Then you...”

He pointed at Jewell, who shook her head. “I think I...”

“Don’t think,” he snapped. “It’s my job to do the thinking for this troupe. Your job is to stand against the doorway with your eyelids down and your tits up. Come on, people! We’ll never get the job done if you aren’t going to take direction! And if you can’t take direction, you’re in the wrong business. This is for Uncle Sam, people. Bevis comes in next, just ahead of Baby Eloise.” He gave The Child Star a warm smile before adding, “With you guys.”

Jewell glared at Sissy and me but had no time to snarl or froth at the mouth. Laszlo went on through the whole program, grabbing our shoulders and pushing us here and there in imitation of the program on the platform. He told us where to stand, how to stand, when to smile, and when to sing what, repeating all instructions several times, with little variations as these occurred to him.

His uncle actually let Laszlo direct a film once. He turned out to be bossy and incompetent, but in spite of that, Tiger Lady of Toongan lost money, and the experiment had not been repeated. He released his frustrations and unused talent for confusion by bossing the help. It didn’t really matter much what we did on the platform anyhow, so long as bonds got sold and the local Chamber of Commerce got its picture taken with us. Anything that went right Laszlo would take credit for, and any uncomfortable developments would give him something new to shout at us about.

He drilled the big names most, especially The Child Star and, because we’d be going out with her, Sissy and me. Jewell’s scowl deepened.

But when the train slowed, she wore a bright, cheerful smile. We all wore bright, cheerful smiles. You’d have thought we were escapees from the local smiling academy.

“Kindly get that elbow out of my midsection; I may wish to use it at dinner,” growled Edwin Lorenzo through his bright, cheerful smile as we crushed into the caboose, kicking furniture aside.

“Prices are supposed to be lower out here,” Olivia murmured to me past her bright, cheerful smile. “Think we’ll get time off to buy supplies?”

“Laszlo’s keeping a tight rein,” I told her through a bright, cheerful smile of my own. “He’s not going to allow us a break for recreational hoarding.”

As the train slowed still more, we could make out the sound of the French Willow band. We could also hear the weather that was waiting outside.

Jim sidled up to The Child Star in what he no doubt thought was a very private move. “Here,” he whispered, giving her a wink and something else as well.

“Oh,” she said, studying the weapon.

“It’s a slingshot,” he explained, holding up his hands to shield her from the view of any Nazi spies who happened to be standing in a direct line with his hands and the slingshot.

“Yes,” she agreed, voice and face equally lackluster. “I had one in Baby Eloise on Aloha Island. What do you want me to do with it?”

He was baffled for a second but remembered she was not in on his intelligence reports. “Just keep it till I get a picture. And these.” He handed her some small rocks.

Her forehead wrinkled a little, but she nodded. They’d taught her never to express an opinion or a preference. Slingshot and ammo were tucked away without comment.

But her eyes narrowed as we came to a halt and she saw the banners and crowds waiting out there. Red, white, and blue letters shouted, “Welcome, Baby Eloise!”

She sighed. “All those people think they love me. And they don’t know me at all.”

I hadn’t been meant to hear that. I gave her a squeeze on one shoulder. She winced and moved to her position in line. When I realized she thought I’d squeezed a bruise on purpose, to make her get ready, I had to take three deep breaths. And Laszlo thought this was for his benefit and patted me on the thigh.

The door opened, and we had a job to do. A blast of wind hit us, half ice and half cheers. We put our heads down and shoved out into it, like clockwork figures.

We started with songs from the last war — “Over There,” “Kit Bag,” “Tipperary” — working up, of course, to “We Did It Before and We Can Do It Again.” The crowd could sing along with those, drowning out the fact that very few of us had made it in musicals. They didn’t really care. Life was different out there; we were interrupted by cheers instead of by “Cut! Wrong again!”

They all looked just the same in every depot: the clubwomen, the kids with their autograph books, the old men in old uniforms. Gangling youths gangled on all sides, hoping to get close enough to say something to those of us who had been on magazine covers.

Most of them, though, were there for The Child Star. And she was suddenly there for them. Dimples had blossomed out of a desert. Her smile exposed glistening teeth to the sleet and screaming wind. And when her little fists prompted the crowd through “The Yanks are coming, the Yanks are coming,” the wind was drowned out. She bounced, she danced, she spun. She spoke to them all at once, seeming to address each one personally, her hands behind her back and her knees bent over just ever so, lest someone notice that Baby Eloise was taller than she had been in 1938.

I had seen her do all this before. But there was more to it now. When General Lorenzo’s beleaguered battalion was rescued in that silly skit by Special Courier Bevis’s secret weapon (Baby Eloise leaping out of his knapsack to announce that the folks back home were buying lots of bonds, so everything would soon be peachy), my eyes picked up things they hadn’t before. There was the way Bevis held the knapsack. There was the way The Child Star adjusted her pose now and then when Bevis accidentally touched a bruise.

None of that was part of the show; these weren’t the kind of things the audience wanted in French Willow. We were allowed to let our eyes water when the wind hit them, especially during the mayor’s speech about our boys over there and our noble effort to drum up support. And when he helped dump out the fan mail that showed how much the people of French Willow and its environs appreciated our work, some of our squeals were real. He’d let some fall under the train; that was how many we’d have to replace before the next stop. Between the coal and the envelopes, I wondered whether the government was really coming out ahead on this trip. Even the stamps had to add up to something, if only three cents each.

I thought about that. Then I slipped out the sugar bowl warning I’d transferred to the pocket of this coat when I changed, just in case it was an important clue. I cupped my hands to keep it out of sight and out of the wind, and looked it over.

The stamp had been canceled. It was a real one.

Where it could have come from, I had no idea, not having received any real fan letters on that trip. The Child Star probably hadn’t kept any, but Mrs. Marr might have, just to show off when Baby Eloise’s contract came up for renegotiation. If Jewell was right about the studio’s having some spy on board to check the real mail, this warning could have come from the spy, letting me know I shouldn’t mess with the studio’s plans. Or the murderer, busy helping The Child Star with those bottles, might have picked it up anywhere once it had been delivered to the train. Where was real mail delivered on this chain of cardboard boxes?

I looked around at our happy chorus. Somebody there had to be a doer of don’ts; there absolutely had to be someone besides The Child Star involved in the death of Mrs. Marr. Because Baby Eloise could not have lugged that bag of mail to the platform between cars without falling overboard herself.

Laszlo came through, distributing pens as we dragged out the last few songs to allow the crowd to get into lines. The next bit of the show had to be improvised. We would talk about anything, autograph anything, as long as the fan bought a bond, or even a stamp. Sissy and I were motioned in closer to The Child Star. We braced for the onslaught.

They always moved in force, to congratulate us for the fine patriotic effort we’d been ordered to make. Every single one of us — even Laszlo — got autograph books shoved at him. Most of our names were no great treasure, but that didn’t matter much. They didn’t want a souvenir of us but of the occasion.

We all seemed to get a certain part of the crowd. Jewell got the men who were just barely too old for the draft and wanted her to help prove they’re still young. Edwin Lorenzo attracted the matrons, while Bevis was always surrounded by kids. He picked up several for the cameras: all girls, I noticed, while the boys stood around on the platform, in awe of his muscles.

Velvet attracted the men too young or too fragile for the draft, and seemed to enjoy it. Olivia got the women: all of them looking for beauty hints or tips on how to break into the movies. I would have swapped; I got the parents with sons overseas. It must have been something in my face; more than one wished that their “he” had someone like me to come home to. Some of them pressed his last known mailing address into my hand. I probably could have made something out of that, but Laszlo was never around to notice how taken they were with me.

Sissy’s appeal, like The Child Star’s, seemed to be universal. “Ooh!” I heard her cry, “That reminds me of a joke. Knock knock, anybody!”

A bunch of anybodies cried, “Who’s there?”

She crowed at the response, clapping her hands, and said, “Fan!”

“Fan who?” roared the chorus.

“Fan mail!” she screamed, and they all laughed with her because, after all, she was from Hollywood.

Meanwhile, a small boy in his Sunday best was edging up toward Baby Eloise. He was a little red and seemed to have been built of wartime materials because he kept wobbling in three or four directions at once. When The Child Star’s eyes came round to him, he was ready to take off.

But when she smiled at him, his backbone seemed to jell. He leaned forward and blurted, “If I saw a Nazi spy, you know what I’d do?”

Her eyes sparkled, and she put her head down to receive confidences. “Something pretty terrible, I bet. What?”

“This!”

The kid had seen plenty of Westerns. He had drawn and fired before I could get across to him. Eloise leapt back, holding one arm.

There was, of course, a major to-do. Somebody grabbed the kid and started whacking him about the head and shoulders. Their suits matched, so I assumed it was his father.

Sissy and I, among others, went to The Child Star’s aid, but she wasn’t having any. “Oh, sir!” she called. “Stop! Stop! It’s wonderful!”

A bright red spot showed on the arm she’d been gripping. She’d taken off her coat, surrounded by the crowd panting for a sight of her, so the kid’s contraption had snapped her on bare skin.

But she wasn’t gripping that arm now. She was stooping to pick up the fiendish anti-Nazi machine the kid had made out of a coat hanger or something. Her eyes were wide, and she repeated, “Wonderful!”

“It certainly is!” I agreed. She knew and I knew that having the father beat up the kid would spoil the mood completely. You don’t sell bonds this way, and you don’t sell your movies to the people of French Willow this way.

“He was just showing me,” The Child Star told the crowd, “and it went off. But it’s just the thing for a Nazi spy.” Her mouth crowded into a little scowl of concentration for just a second, and then cleared as brilliantly as the sky after a summer squall. “I think I should take this on to Washington and show the president.” She addressed the boy. “You could make another one for yourself, couldn’t you?”

The kid had, up to this point, been trying to decide whether to cry or just die, but he stood at attention for this. “I could make lots, Baby Eloise!” he declared.

“That’s wonderful!” she told him, and saluted, soldier to soldier. Then she handed the lethal-looking thing to me, saying, “We’d better keep that in the safe until we get to Washington. Maybe we can use it in a picture, too, unless Mr. Roosevelt says it has to be a secret weapon.”

Our little train was going no farther east than Omaha, but the people of French Willow didn’t know that. I tucked the weapon into my coat and ripped open the warning envelope I was carrying, to write down the names and address of boy and father, whose heads were visibly larger than they had been a minute before. I even had them autograph the envelope for me, “Unless,” as I told them, “the president wants this on display at the White House.”

We sold lots of bonds in French Willow. Nimitz should send me a thank you note.

Laszlo wasn’t around to see most of this, but he heard about it. “I’ll talk to you later,” he growled at me when he came smiling up through the throng. “If you can’t take better care of her than that...”

But his main business was with The Child Star. “It’s getting to be time to leave, folks! Have to keep to our schedule! You know how it is! How would you like to drive the train for a bit, Baby Eloise?”

She was fatigued enough to betray an actual opinion. “If I stood on the caboose and waved to the people, I’d see more of them.”

Everyone cheered except Laszlo. He got a hand clamped around her unmarked arm, snatched up her coat, and said, “Oh, but we’ll get much nicer pictures with you driving. You’ll get to wear a nice hat. Wouldn’t Baby Eloise look great in an engineer’s hat, folks?”

Everyone cheered some more, and the crowd moved up the platform a ways. I was moving with it until the Nazi-smasher slipped from my coat. The thing refused to be picked up while I had my gloves on. By the time I had the gloves off, and the Allies’ new secret weapon stowed where it would be harder to lose, the parade had moved on considerably.

Before I could join it, a voice demanded, “What did she say? Is she going to wave from the caboose?”

I glanced back and started forward. “Um, no, George. She’s going to drive the engine.”

He reached up and took hold of my sleeve. “I know I heard her say something about the caboose.”

I threw both arms into the air. “And she knows what she’s doing, too. They’d do better with the caboose, and there’d be room for all of us. They’re probably going to have her drive for a few feet, and then they’ll have to back up so we can all board the train. We may all wind up on the caboose after all. But you know what Laszlo’s like.”

“Got pictures of Washington and Lincoln in the caboose,” he noted. “FDR, too. Mayor and like that could get their picture taken with her under those, once I got some bunting tacked up.”

The wind was hitting me full, now that the crowd wasn’t there to protect me. “That’s a good idea, George. If the weather’s going to be like this the whole trip, that’ll be the only way to get decent pictures. But let me tell Laszlo. He won’t like the idea if it comes from you.”

“You’re all alike,” George snarled. “Come on and see what’s there.”

I had been in the caboose before, of course, but not without the mass of fellow performers, technicians, and publicity pushers. It was a mess, of course, after we’d kicked through it, but I could see George’s plan at once.

“Right next to a good old American potbellied stove, too,” I said as he repaired some of the bunting we’d knocked down on the way out and straightened the display of presidents. “You’d have to move that box of kindling so nobody trips, though, and...”

Next to the box of wood sat a stack of envelopes, the top one addressed to Baby Eloise. “What are those?”

He glanced back. “Ah, we use those to start the fire. You won’t miss ’em. Since we have to douse the fire every time you lot comes through, so nobody burns their valuable bodies, you might as well help us get it started again. Toss some in now, if you know anything about how to do that.”

“We know how to start fires in California, George,” I told him. “Nobody better.” I reached down for a handful. What I really wanted to know was whether these were prop letters or real ones, which could make George the studio spy.

They were real, but it didn’t matter so very much. I touched the top letter and little springs shot away. A rope skittered up through the pile and caught around my wrist. I jerked back, putting a foot up on a foot of the stove for leverage. But while that foot was off the floor, a second loop came across the floor. George flipped the rope and pulled it tight on my ankle.

“Ha!” he said, and the ankle went up in the air.

I couldn’t see him, not with my coat and skirt over my head. But I knew his teeth were clenched as he said, “I saw that mark on her arm, you witch. You’re all alike.”

“George, what is this?” I hollered. I’ve been in some serials, and suddenly having that potbellied stove so close didn’t seem so friendly.

He hauled on the rope and I tipped up enough so the piccolo in my pocket whacked me in the ear. “That rope, unh, on your wrist goes down to the ties. When we get up steam, we’ll see what’s stronger; you or these knots.”

His boots were just barely in view. I wondered if The Child Star could get this thing started before he had that rope secured, or if they were just trying the hat on her.

“You planned this together?” I panted. “You and Eloise, so she’d be the one who got to... umf!”

I sloped down toward the floor because he had to come forward to kick me. “Don’t you say a word against her!” he ordered. “Fair enough, though, to let her do it. You’re the guys who beat her up so she makes your money.”

The boots moved back and I tipped up some more. George went on talking. I didn’t interrupt him.

“I heard her scream last night,” he told me. “I thought I wouldn’t hear that any more once the old bat was dead. But you’re worse. You hurt her right in the middle of the crowd. You’re movie people; you don’t care what other people think. You don’t remember there are real people.”

He hauled on the rope some more. “But there are lots of us who love Baby Eloise. We’re real. I’ve read the letters as they come in. I know.”

“You’ve been reading the mail that...”

“I used to get letters,” he growled. “Rita knew every station on her old man’s route. I’d get a letter every other one, some runs. But she wanted to be in the movies. I told her mother not to take her. I didn’t get so many letters. She’d work ten, twelve hours a day, not but eight years old, and they’d give her things to keep her alert. Then I didn’t get any more letters. They had her so alert she tried to fly out a tenth floor window. Her mother tried to stop her and went over with her.”

He punctuated this with yanks and jerks on the rope, as if he wanted to pull me apart before the train got a chance. Something poked me in the neck, and I wondered if he was working a third rope. Then I figured out the proposition.

The inventor of that Axis-assassinator could probably have cocked it faster, but he probably would have had the use of both hands. I reached out with my unlassoed foot to try to get braced against the stove. “Ha!” said George, and pulled me nearly vertical. That was a good sign; it meant I wasn’t fastened in place yet.

With one hand, and with my eyes blurring a little from dangling upside-down so long, a thing I had not done since Two-Gun Fox and the Ring of Black Stone, I got my secret weapon together. Then I pulled my free arm back and let it swing around in George’s direction, twisting as much as I could.

The Hitler-hurter went off and caught him somewhere in the pants. It couldn’t have hurt as much as when Eloise got it on the bare arm, but it was enough for him to let go of the rope and jump back.

I let go of it as I hit the floor; no time to reload. Besides, I wanted George a little more off balance. I used the free hand to grab an ankle and pull him down while he was still wondering what hit him. Then I scrambled around to give him a good kick with those costume-department heels.

The next bit wasn’t very well staged: just a lot of heel and toe work to keep his hands off the ropes while I dug at the loop around my wrist. I couldn’t quite stand up to do this, but I didn’t dare lie down, either: that would give him too broad a target for stomping. He’d have done it, too. His face was still perfect casting, but now, instead of the kindly old conductor, he was the heavy who threw bums off boxcars all through the thirties. I was wondering why he didn’t go for that club they always seemed to have in the pictures. I figured it out when he pulled the gun.

But by now, despite a lot of kicking and crawling around, I had my hand loose. I needed it, too, as I scurried out of that caboose like the undercranked heroine of a Three Stooges short. I hit the ground outside and kicked off my shoes, for easier running and so I wouldn’t break a heel: heels were hard to come by. Then I took off up the side of the train away from the audience. I’d like to say this was to trick George, or to keep him from shooting Sissy or another innocent bystander. But it was just instinct, part of being in the business this long. You don’t take your problems to the public, not until those problems have been passed by the publicity department. Places like French Willow don’t want you bothering them with problems that haven’t been touched up into neat stories. And they won’t go to your pictures if you’re going to be a nuisance.

So where was I bound for, up the wrong side of the train? I don’t know. But better dead than not working.

I didn’t get far anyway, in stocking feet on frozen gravel. I hit the ground and heard bells. When my head cleared, George stood over me, one hand aiming the gun, one hand on his train, which had been so sullied by us Hollywood types.

But a Hollywood type was in the cab, and the bells I’d heard had been real ones, to warn the train’s cast and crew that Baby Eloise was going to try to get things moving. George fell down, and the gun went off. The train paused to consider this and moved a little more. I crawled over to George, keeping one eye on the machinery.

Better to have kept that eye on George. The gun came up at my face. Blood was slipping down the ice, but George had some acting blood in him. He’d played dead.

“You’re not going to hit any more kids,” he promised me, just before the gun went off again.

But in the middle of the sentence, the train jerked him aside, spoiling his shot. I grabbed his gun arm and, holding it down, pulled on him. This was stupid because the other arm was under a train. Anyway, he didn’t want any help from me and jerked back, throwing his head up to where nobody’s head was supposed to go.

The resulting mess took a lot of tidying up, what with the gun, me in my stocking feet and splattered with bits of George, and that odd arrangement of ropes in the caboose. Between Jim’s advice and the brakeman’s testimony about George’s working on something secret all through the trip, they finally decided to explain it by labeling poor George an Axis operative. This pleased the fans more than telling them George had just been a fan gone wrong.

None of this was decided in an afternoon, of course. Laszlo sent off a string of cables from French Willow to report the problems. We had to make our afternoon date in Woodridge, where we found cables waiting for us. These were not in answer to Laszlo’s laments, though. We found out what they were when the show was over and men started taking the train apart. Mammoth Titan had made a deal with Schukraft-Mauro, a slightly larger competitor, to combine resources and maybe extend the bond drive as far as Rockford, Illinois, maybe even Chicago. Half the Mammoth Titan people would be going east on this patriotic caravan; the rest would hook up to some freight cars headed back to California.

I was grateful for the freight cars. Without them, I’d’ve had to walk home. The half headed east was the marketable half: Bevis, Lorenzo, Jewell, and, of course, Baby Eloise. We ornaments were expendable. Schukraft-Mauro, having specialized in B musicals, had more of them, with better wardrobes.

“Don’t worry,” Jim told me. “You took out a Nazi spy! You’ll see; they’ll use this to lever you into the female lead in Night of Dr. Jekyll.”

“Ya eedmo Ob-Ararat,” I said. Jim had perfect faith in my agent. So had I. In Cal’s hands, the whole business would probably lever me into a role as fifth girl on the right, second row back, in Andy Hardy’s English class.

Jewell was so giddy at finding herself on the credit side of the ledger that she tried a little joke on Sissy. “Knock knock.”

Sissy blinked, thought about it, and remembered to say, “Who’s there?”

“Toodle,” said Jewell.

Sissy blinked again. “Toodle who?”

Jewell kissed her on one cheek. “Toodle-oo to you, too, darling. See you around.”

Sissy kissed her back but frowned. “Yes, goodbye. But weren’t you going to do a joke?”

I saw Lorenzo hug Olivia goodbye. He should have. He’d talked her into joining the poker game and now owed her four hundred thousand dollars, which, even in stage money, amounted to something. (Velvet had joined the game, too, trying desperately to lose to Bevis, but it hadn’t worked out.)

In the midst of all these touching fadeouts, we heard applause: Laszlo, as it turned out. “Come on, people,” he yelled, banging his hands together some more. “Let’s move it out. You and you and you: you packed? Okay, you know where your car is. Let’s go. Let’s go.” He had to do this before his counterparts from Schukraft-Mauro showed up and opened up a competing shop.

I started to haul my suitcase back to the car I’d started this trip on. I passed Baby Eloise on the way: she was sitting on a bench, leafing through a sheaf of paper. A couple of cables sat on her lap; they’d been waiting for her, along with the paper. I’d heard a little of what was in them. A new relative, a Miss Marr this time, was coming to take up the vacancy as Baby Eloise’s mother.

“Know her?” I’d asked, after Laszlo broke the news.

“A little,” Baby Eloise had told me, face perfectly still. “She uses her hand.”

I paused in front of her now until she looked up from the pages she was skimming. When I raised an eyebrow to inquire, she said, “Script. They want me to be ready to start a new project when I get back. Baby Eloise and O’Toole over Tokyo.”

“That’ll go over big,” I told her. “Who’s O’Toole?”

“Mr. Flint.”

I glanced back to where Bevis was posing for a couple of photographers, a girl wrapped around each arm. “Bevis?” I said. “What will you do?”

She gave me that same look I got when I failed to whack her with the bath brush. “What they tell me to do,” she said.

I reached out and patted one little hand. She didn’t know what to make of that.

“I’ll write you,” I promised.

I did, too. Not fan mail, you understand, because she couldn’t ever be The Child Star to me now. She was one of us.