The Valediction

OHIO, 1901

It was my first time acting as an expressman. I and my fellow Pinkertons had advised the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Company that a heist attempt was to be reasonably expected on a federal shipment from Baltimore to Cincinnati and they had requested I be present in the express car. I remember the car smelled of new wood and leather and a faint hint of burning coal from the engine at the front. To an untrained eye, the car from the outside resembled a standard passenger car, and was made to, in order to disguise its highly valuable content. They reserved the car especially for myself and the two other expressmen hired to safeguard the vault.

The two other gents were mostly quiet the entire journey; one sat hunched over his lap grasping a revolver and the other smoked and slouched and kept one hand on his carbine at all times, and the most I heard from them for three hundred miles was the occasional cough or grunt. I myself read my copy of David Copperfield twice over before we reached Grafton. I never had trouble reading during the train rides despite the rocking and swerving. Talking to people was the difficult thing, even if I wasn't riding a train.

We had just left the Chillicothe station when the man holding the carbine decided suddenly to try and be polite.

"You a Pink, ain't'chya?" He said leaning towards me with thick West Virginian accent.

"I don't imagine I am," I replied.

"I can smells 'em. Ain't nevuh seen ya with the comp'ny b'fore and ain't heard 'bout no new hires. Why put someone green in a car this important?"

"Perhaps I am rightly qualified for a job this important."

"Hell, that'd be first. Where'd ya say yous was from?"

"Never said I was from anywhere."

"Alight, wiseass, then where's ya from then?"

"Chicago."

"So what's a feller from Chicago doin' on a federal rail line to Ohio?"

"I was unaware such an instance was strange."

At this point, the other man with the cigarette butted in and said, "For Chrissake, shut up, you hick!" I quite liked him for that.

"Ease up on me, brother. I was just inquirin' to the man's circumstances is all. Should I focus my interrogations to you, then?"

The man with the cigarette drew in his tobacco lighting up his long face and sat up straight and said, "My name is Franklin Gallagher. I was born and raised in Clayton, Delaware. I've worked with the line for four years now and I have a birthmark on my thigh in the shape of a horse. Are you satisfied or must we suffer more of your unbearable questions?"

The man with the revolver smirked. "No need to be so hostile." When he said the word "hostile," he said it in a very exaggerated way, dragging the final syllable on for too long. His short, fat face with a red beard curled into a smile and turned again to me.

"Wouldn't be surprised if yous was a Pink. I heard there was a threat made by some gang robber. Said he'd rob the train and make it Scot free," he said with a sense of admiration in his tone.

The robber he was referring to was a British man named Henry St. Mark, a photographer-turned-villain who led a troupe of clowns called the All Saints Gang. In Chicago, I had followed several developments in previous cases regarding the gang which led me to a coded telegram I intercepted. I deduced that Henry, who was referred to by the papers as "Holy Hal," had planned to rob the contents of one B&O Co. cargo and passenger line departing from Baltimore, Maryland on the 14th of March destined for Cincinnati, Ohio. The contents carried by the train that were so eagerly sought after by Holy Hal were not disclosed by the rail company, much to the disapproval of my chief and myself; all I knew was the combination to the safe that housed the strongbox locked with a key of which I knew not the whereabouts.

"Yer first time?" The man with the revolver asked me.

"No. I've been on a train before," I replied.

"You IS a wiseass."

To my luck, he barely spoke again for another twenty minutes. I watched in the sweet silence out the window to the green fields and forests of rural Midwest America. I grew up in Chicago and didn't see much of the natural world until university. I recall distinctly the lack of grime and smog and how yellow the sun looked rather than the white-gray it usually displayed through the urban atmosphere.

The clacking of the train on the tracks shifted its noise to a screech as disagreeable metals collided with each other that I deduced was the locomotive veering off onto the ground. I had figured that someone, in all likelihood the All Saints Gang, had destroyed the tracks to derail us, which made sense because Chillicothe to Greenfield was the longest and least inhabited section of the journey. Fortunately, the train remained upright and none of the passenger cars seemed in any danger of injuring its inhabitants.

"Geet ready boys!" The man with the carbine yelped.

A crack shattered the glass to our car and I watched the man drop to his stomach. The man with the cigarette, who called himself Franklin, revealed his carbine and cocked the hammer down.

"Ready yourself, boy!" He exclaimed.

I clasped my shotgun and moved with the other man to a good spot of cover facing the door. We knelt behind a makeshift wooden barricade set up with the door in front and the dead man behind that was meant more for concealment than actual protection from firearms. Franklin beside me outstretched his carbine and bravely I readied myself as best I could but in truth, I was no warrior; I was a private detective. Still, I steeled myself and aimed my shotgun at the door. Lucky I had a slug-thrower with a spreading shot to compensate for my shaking hands. The remaining man and I waited for what seemed an hour (but truthfully was around five minutes because time slows itself when eternity knocks upon its door) and still nothing came. I dared not break my gaze.

It was quiet. The only sounds I could hear were the muffled shrieks of passengers in the cars before us. That silence was finally broken by the cocking of two pistols and a midlands British accent.

"Which of you gents has the strongbox key?"

Franklin closed his eyes in defeat. "Go to hell," he said. The British voice shot him in the back of his head. The splatter shook me as gray matter and blood baptized my face. The British man, who by now I was sure was Holy Hal, then said to me, "Rummage through his clothes and find the key, would you?" I had no choice but to comply.

The pool was growing and soaked dead Franklin's attire. I gently combed through his clothes as respectfully as possible and found the key in his left pant pocket.

"Get up," Hal said.

I rose with caution and hands raised and reached behind so that he could take the key.

"Now open the safe."

Holy Hal kept himself behind me as I made my way to the safe. I cursed myself for such cowardice and wondered how the man had snuck up behind me. The black safe sat at the end of the car as the furthest from the door and I crouched down turning the dial. The safe unlocked and I opened the door for him.

"Do me a favor, love, and check to see if the key fits."

He handed me the key and I begrudgingly took it to the lockbox. The key fit snuggly into the lock and I opened it up. Inside the box was neither treasure nor money nor bonds nor anything I could perceive as something valuable. It was a folded piece of writing paper and a pocket watch.

"Thank you so much, darling." And then Hal shot me in the head.

I fell face first upon the floor with my own blood pillowing me against the carpet flooring. Before I lost consciousness, I saw Hal reach into the safe and retrieve the items. He left towards the door and before he exited the car, he turned to me and dead Franklin and said, "By your leave, gents." When he turned to say that I caught a glimpse of his face. The short, fat faced man with the revolver who slurred with his West Virginian accent threw me and dead Franklin a valediction in his native British accent. I thought how stupid I was to not check the backgrounds of the two expressmen or even see if his play at being shot yielded any blood. That was the last thing I thought before the blackness blanketed my vision.

I awoke in a hospital bed with my lip drooped to the left and fellow agents around me. I could tell that pain was present but I all I felt was shame and humiliation and the drive to catch the dastard who shot me.