Double Indemnity - James M. Cain [18]
"Kiss me."
I looked at my watch, held it up to her. It was still seven minutes before the train would leave. She needed a six-minute start for what she had to do. "Listen, Phyllis, there's no use of you waiting around here. Why don't you blow?"
"Well—you don't mind?"
"Not a bit. No sense dragging it out."
"Good-bye, then."
"Good-bye."
"Have a good time. Three cheers for Leland Stanford."
"I'll do my best."
"Kiss me again."
"Good-bye."
For what I had to do, I had to get rid of this guy, and get rid of him quick. I hadn't expected anybody out there. There seldom is when a train pulls out. I sat there, trying to think of something. I thought he might leave when he finished his cigarette, but he didn't. He threw it over the side and began to talk.
"Women are funny."
"Funny and then some."
"I couldn't help hearing that little conversation you had with your wife just now. About where she parked, I mean. Reminds me of an experience I had with my wife, coming home from San Diego."
He told the experience he had with his wife. I looked him over. I couldn't see his face. I figured he couldn't see mine. He stopped talking. I had to say something.
"Yeah, women are funny all right. Specially when you get them behind the wheel of a car."
"They're all of that."
The train began to roll. It crawled through the outskirts of Los Angeles, and he kept on talking. Then an idea came to me. I remembered I was supposed to be a cripple, and began feeling through my pockets.
"You lose something?"
"My ticket. I can't find it."
"Say, I wonder if I've got my ticket. Yeah, here it is."
"You know what I bet she did? Put that ticket in my briefcase, right where I told her not to. She was to put it here in the pocket of this suit, and now—"
"Oh, it'll turn up."
"Don't that beat all? Here I've got to go and hobble all through those cars, just because—"
"Don't be silly. Stay where you are."
"No, I couldn't let you—"
"Be a pleasure old man. Stay right where you are and I'll get it for you. What's your space?"
"Would you? Section 8, Car C."
"I'll be right back with it."
We were picking up speed a little now. My mark was a dairy sign, about a quarter of a mile from the track. We came in sight of it and I lit my cigar. I put my crutches under one arm, threw my leg over the rail, and let myself down. One of the crutches hit the ties and spun me so I almost fell. I hung on. When we came square abreast of the sign I dropped off.
Chapter 7
There's nothing so dark as a railroad track in the middle of the night. The train shot ahead, and I crouched there, waiting for the tingle to leave my feet. I had dropped off the left side of the train, into the footpath between the tracks, so there wouldn't be any chance I could be seen from the highway. It was about two hundred feet away. I stayed there, on my hands and knees, straining to see something on the other side of the tracks. There was a dirt road there, that gave entry to a couple of small factories, further back. All around it were vacant lots, and it wasn't lit. She ought to be there by now. She had a seven-minute start, the train took six minutes to that point, and it was an eleven-minute drive from the station to this dirt road. I had checked it twenty times. I held still and stared, trying to spot the car. I couldn't see it.
I don't know how long I crouched there. It came to me that maybe she had bumped somebody's fender, or been stopped by a cop, or something. I seemed to turn to water. Then I heard something. I heard a panting. Then with it I heard footsteps. They would go fast for a second or two, and then stop. It was like being in a nightmare, with something queer coming after me, and I didn't know what it was, but it was horrible. Then I saw it. It was her. That man must have weighed 200 pounds, but she had him on her back, holding him by the handle, and staggering along with him, over the tracks. His head was hanging down beside her head. They looked like something in a horror picture.
I ran over and grabbed his legs, to take some of the weight