Larue got up from his scrutiny. The pit of his stomach tingled and his body felt dampish. That crazy, wicked Nevers. By god, he'd get him. So he was a killer! He had shoved him, Jack Larue, and he'd killed one, maybe two. But where to look in this maze of silent black coaches squatting everywhere on rusty rails dreaming of the past?
The problem was solved suddenly for him To his right, several blocks away, the metallic jerk of an el starting shocked him. The headlamp lit up, and against the light-reflected back, Larue could see a three-car train moving slowly along parallel to the platform lie was on, toward the switch that opened into the now-condemned line. Ghostlike the whole scene was, incredible as some distorted, fevered dream. For there seemed no life here but Larue and the remote, twinkling stars above The train that moved could not, should not be real. It was a trick of his imagination. It was the liquor he had consumed This yard, these cars were dead, dead as the watchman who lay crumpled over the platform.
Yet even as he thought these things, Larue sprinted forward. He headed across the yard, alternately leaping and stumbling over tracks. Ahead, luring him on with a peculiar, horrible, and magical magnetism was the squeaking, rumbling thing gathering speed, its three funereal black cars sliding wraithlike through the yards. Larue was close by now. He grabbed at a side rail and missed. It was Nevers he knew running the train. Nevers who'd killed, but most of all, who'd pushed him, Jack Larue. People didn't push Larue. The anger flowed back into him and charged blood and energy into his lagging legs. He sprinted mightily and caught the rail at the end of the last car. He pulled himself upward and then lay panting on the back platform. His head still throbbed where Nevers had shoved him earlier that day.
With a series of ominous jerks the train gained speed and Larue watched the black ties flash out from under the belly of the car. Not until then did the impossibileness of his situation strike him. The train was going too fast by now for him to get off... running a trip that had never been meant, for the el was no more after noon that day. This unscheduled run was sheer madness. Suddenly, with horror, the memory of the demolition crew on the bridge came back to Larue. Good God, by now a lot of those bridge rails would have been pried and ripped and loosened. What was Nevers thinking of... if it was Nevers!
Larue got to his feet and started into the interior of the coach, feeling his way up the black aisle, his hands guiding him as he touched the worn backs of the seats. The train lurched around a curve and Larue teetered to keep his balance. Never in his years of riding the elevated had it traveled so fast, of that he was sure. Lights from houses they passed flickered feebly through the dirty glass windows and the seat backs took on the sepulchral outlines of ghostly monsters. He forced himself onward and gained the division between car number three and number two.
Looking ahead along the aisle, he could see through the open front the swath cut by the headlight. Lord, there was something eerie about this. He fought hack the whimpering cry that rose in his throat. Suppose no one was aboard Suppose the train were running by itself! Even as the superstitions of his ancestors threatened to crowd his mind, Larue's reason fought them back. Of course, there was a man up there. It was Nevers, he thought. Or maybe it wasn't Nevers. Could be there was some reason for this trip. An inspector going down the line a ways for some purpose. A thin chance, but the idea bolstered him.
He stumbled through the silent middle car and came to the first. His steps slowed, his fears powerful within him again. The car grew brighter around him as the train thundered into a more brightly lit section. The Fender Street station loomed ahead. But desolate tonight. No persons watching, no lines of children with flags, no band,
