The Evening Localby L.P. Hardly
Roger Pettibone stepped quickly into the compartment and pulled the door shut behind him.
The figure on the seat did not move. Its hat was pulled down over its eyes, and the lumpy greatcoat it wore supported this accessory as stolidly as a kettle supports its lid. Roger sat down opposite. 'That was a near thing. Train almost left without me,' he said airily.
He received no reply-- should he have? His own remark was not motivated by any genuine *bonhommie*, only the casual conversational pearl one throws to strange swine, made more for the speaker's benefit than the listener's. A reply would indeed have been odious, malapropos, totally undeserved. So he pressed on, as if to apologize for speaking at all.
'They're expecting me in Clacton this evening. I've been made a seat on the Advisory Committee. The youngest ever chosen,' he added, with as much wonder as pride. It did seem unreal to him. The stranger shifted in his seat, but said nothing.
Roger was nonplussed. Really, but this was unendurable. The stranger hadn't asked for his company, true, but it was a public train after all. Surely in the interests of common courtesy he should have said something by now, even if only to tell Roger he'd rather not be bothered. Roger considered what his response to this might have been. It was not an appetizing prospect. He should have been compelled to change cars. It might not be a bad idea still.
His cowardice shamed him, and he found himself glancing up at the baggage niche directly above his fellow passenger. A battered brown valise with a well-worn leather handle trembled slightly with the motion of the train.
'Do you travel this line often?' he asked in a sudden burst of enthusiasm. His embarrassment was putting him on the offensive he knew, but it felt better to him than being cut into social quietus.
The hat lifted slightly, and Roger thought he could see the gleam of an eye.
'As often as I do,' was the response, in an oddly high-pitched voice. 'Yes, you could certainly say that was often enough.'
Now it was Roger's turn to be reluctant to speak, as he pondered this vague and vaguely malicious reply. The situation seemed utterly senseless; he himself didn't care to talk in trains, and was regretting having had such an active hand in the present exchange. But he was caught and he knew it. 'Salesman?' he persisted, with the volubility of the doomed.
The figure shook with a mild fit. Roger noticed that the suitcase was at that moment perfectly still.
'Manufacturer,' answered his companion before Roger could take offense at his amusement. Roger was on the point of asking what the man manufactured, but remembered just in time that he didn't care. So he nodded, as if in grateful acknowledgement, as if this bit of information carried all the weight required, and then some. He was suddenly glad there was not a third in their party.
His seat cushion was miserably thin, and absorbed few of the ongoing small shocks of train travel. It seemed to be filled with rocks and bundles of twigs. This struck him as a convenient distraction upon which to privately expend his ire, though his counterpart didn't seem to notice any deficiency in his. Surely they were all of them the same. He sat there, toadlike; accustomed, perhaps, by long acquaintance, or possessed of a hardier constitution. His reserve seemed to diminish the issue.
Still his own cushion *was* uncomfortable, and Roger struggled to find a position adequate for him in which to relax. He was conscious of an inertia in the air, not relievable by occasional glances out the window, where the formless landscape rolled past like the inside of a magic-lantern wheel. He felt closed-in and melancholy. Something nagged at his memory, like an unintelligible echo, some event from the past; he should be alarmed, he knew, but he felt nothing, only this weird malaise...
He didn't mean to, but jumped anyway when next the stranger spoke. 'I'm all for comfort when I travel. I like to see people at their ease.' He said this, and his huddled shape shook once again with mirth. Roger could not tell if he was being mocked or not, and took up the argument for his own self-respect.
'I don't see how you manage it on this train, at any rate,' he complained.
'Do you have the time?' the stranger asked suddenly.
Roger looked at his watch. 'Half past seven,' he said. It had the effect of dislocating the conversation, as the other seemed to lose all awareness of Roger's presence, but proceeded to rock back and forth, muttering, 'Half past seven. Half past seven.'
Roger began to wonder if his traveling companion might not be a little mad. One read the stories in the newspapers of course, though there was always in the mind that personal conviction that these affairs were only outcomes of scenarios long in the making; nothing of that sort could creep up unnoticed on a person of reasonable intelligence, he was sure.
But better safe than sorry, he decided, and he was on the point of excusing himself and going to find another car when the stranger spoke up again. 'It isn't right that paying customers should suffer,' he asserted, and Roger could not help but agree. 'Quite so. Do you think we should complain to the management?'
In answer, the stranger leaned forward until the brim of his hat nearly touched Roger's forehead. 'I think we should take matters into our own hands,' he said, and extended his own.
* * * * *
The conductor, making his round, stopped in the empty compartment. He thought he had seen the young gentleman go in, but there was no one here now, and the window shutter was pulled down. His puzzlement registered behind voluminous whiskers when he saw the suitcase still in the niche above the seat.
He was sure the young man had carried no luggage. This must have been left by a previous passenger. He checked the number on the faded tag, consulted a list in his pocket, and frowned.
Back in the office, the number was found to belong to no known passenger on that day's run. The sequence was an old one, and Faiers, the dispatcher, compared it to his records of years previous.
His face darkened. The conductor said, 'No omission, I hope?'
'He's here, all right,' Faiers answered. ' Thurgood Pritchard. You remember that name, I'll wager.'
The conductor paused a moment, then realization struck him. 'Impossible,' he croaked.
'Highly unlikely, that's for certain. They combed the train for his little souvenirs just after he had his last tumble, didn't they?' Faiers made a noise of disgust. 'A right mess, that was. Went under the wheels trying to get away.'
'No worse a mess than the ones he made,' the conductor recalled. 'I had dreams after that. They ruined me. Don't know how I stuck it. Why would his suitcase turn up after all this time?' he wondered. They stared at the object in question, mute on the wooden table under the single bare bulb.
'Should we call the police first?' Faiers asked.
The conductor looked grim. 'Time enough for that if there's anything here.' He set his face and released the catches on the valise.
It opened easily. The conductor stepped back, out of reflex. When no immediate surprises were forthcoming, he and Faiers peered inside.
The suitcase was stuffed full of cotton batting, handfuls of it, looking as if it had been ripped out of old upholstery.
The End