The Convivial Codfish by Charlotte MacLeod Read Free Book Online Page A

hands, placed it in the hollowed-out back of the carved ice swan, picked up his tray now bearing only the used can opener and the emptied tin, and stepped through the vestibule from the dining car to the caboose, from which the serving was evidently being done.
    A waitress who’d been hovering in the background now stepped up to the table and began spreading the sweet butter on the bread and toast, spooning out the expensive fish eggs, adding sprinkles of egg yolk and onion, laying them on a tray for another waitress to pass among the guests. Max didn’t care much for caviar, so he shook his head when the tray got to him. Marcia Whet was aghast.
    “You horrid man, how could you?”
    “Sorry, I just don’t happen to like it.”
    “But you could have taken one anyway, and slipped it to me. Then I’d get more than my fair share without looking quite so piggish.”
    As a rule, nobody eats much caviar because it is so rich. Either because the Tolbathys’ was such a special kind, though, or because there still wasn’t anything else being served, the bowl emptied quickly. People were going up to the table and manufacturing their own appetizers. Max rather expected the man with the chain to come back and refill the swan, but he didn’t. Instead, one of the waitresses took the empty dishes from the epergne and went off, Max hoped, to get some hors d’oeuvres that were more to his taste. He was feeling hungry.
    He was also feeling the motion of the train as he had not done before. They’d speeded up, for some reason. Passengers who’d been balancing themselves easily against the gentle rocking of the cars were grabbing frantically at anything they could hang on to. Hester Tolbathy looked startled, Tom Tolbathy furious. He set down the drink he’d been sipping and started forward. Max forgot about food and moved to follow Tom.
    That was when the train stopped, so abruptly that bottles and glasses went flying off the bar. The great silver epergne slid off its table, the swan splintered into icy fragments. Passengers crashed to the floor. Tom Tolbathy turned and hesitated, clearly torn between duty to his guests and concern for his train.
    The train won. Tom hurried through the parlor car, through the coal tender where, mercifully, the potbellied stove had not fallen over and started a fire. He either didn’t notice or didn’t care that Max Bittersohn was right with him; but wrenched open a connecting door and stuck his head into the engine cab.
    “Wouter, what the hell—”
    Tom Tolbathy didn’t say any more. His brother was not at the controls. He was huddled, face down, into the tiny space on the floor of the cab.

CHAPTER 5
    “O H MY GOD, WOUTER! Hey, old fellow, what’s the matter?”
    Tom Tolbathy was down on the floor beside his brother, pulling his body half-upright, slapping at his cheeks, trying to bully him back to consciousness. Max noted the lolling head, the half-open eyes and mouth, and put a hand on Tom’s shoulder to make him stop.
    “I’m afraid he’s not going to wake up, Tom.”
    “What do you mean? What’s the matter with him?”
    “I think he’s dead. Let me down there a second, will you?”
    Tom shifted. Max took his place beside the fallen engineer. After a little fumbling, he shook his head.
    “I can’t find any sign of life. Did your brother have heart trouble, do you know?”
    “Wouter? Never. Sound as a bell. At least he always said he was. Damn it all,” Tolbathy’s face screwed up as if he wanted to cry, “he can’t be dead.”
    All Max could say was, “We’d better get a doctor. How far are we from the house?”
    Tom shook his head, as if to get his brain started. “I’ll have to find out where we are. It’s so damned dark out here—”
    He took a battery lantern from a hook behind the control panel and leaned out the cab window. Max bent over Wouter Tolbathy again. Considering that he held his doctorate in fine arts rather then medicine, he knew a surprising lot