Sleuths by Bill Pronzini Read Free Book Online Page A

shag-cut tobacco, listening to the steady, throbbing rhythm of steel on steel, while Gaunt smoked his cigar with obvious pleasure. The process took more than ten minutes, at the end of which time the fugitive got leisurely to this feet and started forward again. A return to his seat in the coach? No, not yet. Instead he entered the gentlemen's lavatory and closed himself inside.
    Quincannon stayed where he was, waiting, his eye on the lavatory door. His pipe went out; he relighted it. Two more men—a rough-garbed miner and a gaudily outfitted drummer—came into the smoker. Couplings banged and the car lurched slightly as its wheels passed over a rough section of track. Outside the windows a lake shimmered into view on the southern desert flats, then abruptly vanished: heat mirage.
    The door to the lavatory remained closed.
    A prickly sensation that had nothing to do with the heat formed between Quincannon's shoulder blades. How long had Gaunt been in there? Close to ten minutes. He tamped the dottle from his pipe, stowed the briar in the pocket of his cheviot. The flashily dressed drummer left the car; a fat man with muttonchop whiskers like miniature tumbleweeds came in. The fat man paused, glancing around, then turned to the lavatory door and tried the latch. When he found it locked he rapped on the panel. There was no response.
    Quincannon was on his feet by then, with the prickly sensation as hot as a fire-rash. He prodded the fat man aside, ignoring the indignant oath this brought him, and laid an ear against the panel. All he could hear were train sounds: the pound of beating trucks on the fishplates, the creak and groan of axle play, and the whisper of the wheels. He banged on the panel with his fist, much harder than the fat man had. Once, twice, three times. This likewise produced no response.
    "Hell and damn!" he growled aloud, startling the fat man, who turned quick for the door and almost collided with another just stepping through. The newcomer, fortuitously enough, was Mr. Bridges.
    When the conductor saw Quincannon's scowl, his back stiffened and alarm pinched his sallow features. "What is it?" he demanded. "What's happened?"
    "Even Gaunt went in here some minutes ago and he hasn't come out."
    "You don't think he—?"
    "Use your master key and we'll soon find out."
    Bridges unlocked the door. Quincannon pushed in first, his hand on the butt of his Navy Colt—and immediately blistered the air with a five-jointed oath.
    The cubicle was empty.
    "Gone, by all the saints!" Bridges said behind him. "The damned fool went through the window and jumped."
    The lone window was small, designed for ventilation, but not too small for a man Gaunt's size to wiggle through. It was shut but not latched; Quincannon hoisted the sash, poked his head out. Hot, dust-laden wind made him pull it back in after a few seconds.
    "Gone, yes," he said, "but I'll eat my hat if he jumped at the rate of speed we've been traveling."
    "But—but he must have. The only other place he could've gone -"
    "Up atop the car. That's where he did go."
    Bridges didn't want to believe it. His thinking was plain: If Gaunt had jumped, he was rid of the threat to his and his passengers' security. He said, "A climb like that is just as dangerous as jumping."
    "Not for a nimble and desperate man."
    "He couldn't hide up there. Nor on top of any of the other cars. Do you think he crawled along the roofs and then climbed back down between cars?"
    "It's the likeliest explanation."
    "Why would he do such a thing? There's nowhere for him to hide inside, either. The only possible places are too easily searched. He must know that, if he's ridden a train before."
    "We'll search them anyway," Quincannon said darkly. "Every nook and cranny from locomotive to caboose, if necessary. Evan Gaunt is still on the Desert Limited, Mr. Bridges, and we're damned well going to find him."
    The first place they went was out onto the platform between the lounge car and