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

“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.