I have always enjoyed train travel. The leisurely progression; the rhythmic reverberation that soon fades from your awareness; the stately service performed against all odds in confined spaces; the endless panorama Americana outside the glass; the deference of porters, waiters and other staff, mostly well-spoken Negroes, offered up in a kind of ironic theater, paean to a past long gone and perhaps mythic, when white men must have felt born to such compliance and respect.

The war had changed so much, and so many, but there are always those who cling stubbornly to old entitlements, old relationships, while yet looking into the eyes of modern times. And so we have these awesome rail lines, these gleaming worlds on wheels, so sleek and sparkling, so filled with convenience, and even I can’t fail to enjoy the luxuries they offer. For the price of a ticket, and a bit more, I can sleep in my own compartment, a charming and practical study in the use of space, have full use of lounges, a fine restaurant, porters both public and private, and the obliging obsequiousness of soft-spoken, interchangeable waiters. I always considered it money well spent, despite the increasing popularity of long-distance travel by plane and by automobile. Perhaps I am a hypocrite, and less modern than I would wish.

I am by profession a private investigator and, by profession, am always aware of the clock. I charge by the hour or by the day, for my time and competence, and so perhaps, for me, trains have even greater appeal in their graceful slowness, their contained bubbles of private time and place. On board, I can forget the clock, except to meet more pleasant schedules of dining and destination, so long is it is the arrival point for others and not yet my own. Rail lines stretch from coast to coast in our 48 states, a web of commerce and contact that, unlike cars and motor courts and aeroplanes, allows me time to think, to stretch my imagination with a book, and to slow my more usual pace. Between boarding and my final stop, I am free to be someone else entirely, and to leave other peoples’ private lives alone. In those suspended moments, hours, days, no investigation hangs heavy in my hands, no outcomes in the balance, and I make every attempt to utilize that freedom to its utmost.

Right now, I am seated in the smoking car and reading the latest romantic novel. You’d think, and people have often expressed such in surprised tones, that I would favor mystery novels; Agatha Christie or Sherlock Holmes. You’d think that, but you’d be wrong; too much like work, such novels, and they provide no escape for me. Between solving the crimes ahead of schedule and laughing at the mistakes of author amateurs, I have learned to avoid those fictions, keeping mystery for my meal ticket and nothing more. Right now however, meals were on my mind, as I enjoyed my Camels in the smoking lounge and hid behind my current book, yet another steamy story of star-crossed lovers. Dinner service would begin at six, a few minutes from now, and my stomach was growing impatient.

I was, in fact, indulging in yet another of my enjoyments and watching the other passengers over the top of my book. The cigarette and novel kept intrusions, no matter how well intentioned, at bay; and left me the luxury of observation without penalty. A few others sat in the lounge with me, mostly with cigarettes (machine made, you seldom saw any man roll his own in such a place) but a few with the headier wreaths of cigar smoke about their persons. There was, I knew, a pipe-smoker on board but he was not in evidence just now. Only one woman was visible, perhaps in her twenties and very pretty, and she held her cigarette somewhat defiantly; I understand there are still those who think it an inelegant pastime for women. Still, she was clearly no novice to the act, holding the lipsticked filter tip between her fingers with confidence. Modern women, with their aggressive attitudes forged during wartime, can be very charming, but more so in small doses.

A porter, an older Negro in a sharply pressed railway uniform, came near to my seat and nodded to me, his face bland and impersonally respectful. I had tipped him earlier to remind me when the dinner hour arrived and he, like all the rail porters, was unfailingly punctual. I nodded back, closed my book, and began to make my way to the dining car that connected this lounge and the nearby sleeping car of private compartments, with its ten roomettes and six double bedrooms. The further side of the lounge was actually a bar, though there was a much larger bar two cars behind that served a more general gathering of the westbound train’s passengers.

Mainly because of proximity but also because it was small, this particular bar served mostly those who shared the compartmented car nearest it, the one where I slept on this and most of my trips. Right now, it held quite a few of my fellow passengers, either enjoying pre-prandial drinks or, perhaps, substituting them for the evening meal itself. At least two appeared to be veterans, dressed in army uniforms and looking, even five years after the war, somewhat shell-shocked, as if victory hadn’t fully penetrated their consciousness.

I couldn’t blame them, either for the drinking or the demeanor; my own brother had been much the same way before his suicide. Still, I knew my understanding was limited; I had been just a bit too old to serve myself. Whether that had been a blessing or a curse, I could never quite decide. My father had been a rabbi, my brothers and I raised to abhor war and violence, but the rumors that filtered out of Europe during the war, and the confirmation that followed its completion, awoke in me a hatred that has made me wish, in moments I am not proud of, for some distinctly ungentle response. That I had not fought there, against that which I have come to loathe, might haunt me for all my life. But what had my brother felt, in the months after his return from Germany; what had he done, or seen, that drove him to take his own life? And would he, could he, have done so if our father had still been alive? I would never know but that did not stop me from my imaginings.

As I passed the bar, the older gentleman who had lately been my dining companion stood and, after signing his name to the bar tab, joined me with a quiet greeting; thus mustered, we walked into the long dining car together. It seemed a little more crowded than the lounge but only because of the table arrangements, close but tidy seating for just under fifty persons with a partition between diners and the kitchen. As we took our reserved seats, a waiter hurried up with menus and a pitcher of iced water.

My dining companion smiled and reached into his jacket for a pack of the cigarettes he smoked, those vile Gitanes so beloved by the French. It is worse, to my mind, when Americans deliberately adopt European vices. There is nothing glamorous in a lungful of such raw stuff, nothing elegant in overpaying for what is grown better in our own country. Still, this is, as people like to say, a free country. I tapped out another Camel and lit it, purely in self-defense. The waiter brought bread and poured our before-dinner wine, nodded to my quiet "Thank you, George," and departed in catlike silence.

Other diners began to slowly fill in the empty spaces at the white-clothed tables, entering the car chattering and greeting one another. Several obviously married couples entered and were seated together, with one or two children here and there, though none particularly small, thankfully. Others, less obviously connected, entered singly or in groups, all attended to by the hovering and helpful jacketed waiters. I noticed the pretty young woman from the lounge, sans cigarette, taking a seat across the aisle from us, in the company of a youthful, though somewhat heavyset, man with the strong, healthy look of a professional athlete. His suit was expensive though, so perhaps he wasn’t one. With his size, I mused, he most probably had to have even his shirts made to order.

My companion nodded, as he also had at lunch, to another graying, well-dressed gentleman of about his same age who was, as he had been earlier, accompanied by a tanned, much younger man of striking, almost movie-star, good looks. They greeted us politely but went on to their own chairs, two tables over from ours. They sat down and began talking earnestly to one another, in low voices, while their waiter arranged drinks and bread between them. I saw my companion’s eyes follow them, expressionless, then turn to me without comment. We smoked in silence for a few moments as we contemplated the evening’s menu. After our order was taken, my companion looked at me, smiling faintly.

"Have you had your wished-for restful day today?" he asked.

He had, from the first, found it amusing that I regarded train travel as an end unto itself, as an escape of sorts, when so many looked on it as a practicality, a way to get from point A to point B. I took a sip of the wine, a young, fruity pinot noir that felt delightful on my tongue, and studied him. He was perhaps twenty years older than I was, a distinguished looking fellow, his temples shot with iron grey and a small, neat moustache above rather thin lips. His suit was immaculate, so neat and correct that he bordered on being foppish yet managed to stop just short, leaving him crisp, elegant and dapper. What he did for a living, I had no idea and even less interest; I prefer, when off-duty, to let those ordinary little mysteries lie undisturbed.

We met when I boarded in Burlington, he’d been caught without change at the newsstand and I’d chipped in, buying his Times along with my own lurid paperback. His comments on my reading choice had started us talking, and that had carried naturally over into the lounge and, later, the dining car for lunch. It wasn’t that I objected to conversation; it was only that I wanted no talk of my work, of crimes and courtrooms, while pursuing my various escapes. In this, he seemed happy to oblige me.

I’d mentioned my profession in passing, as partial explanation for my reading purchase, but he’d not pestered me with the usual sensationalist questions about crimes and corpses. In this, my companion was perfectly suited to me, as he could chat, or, equally, be silent, with an urbane air of near-indifference that asked nothing too complex of me in return. For this, I was grateful enough to continue in his company for the duration of this trip. His question was asked with amusement without being really inquisitive; like me, he seemed willing to converse on surface topics.

"Yes, in fact, I have" I told him, setting down my glass. I smiled at him in return.

"And how is your…heroic adventure novel?" His eyes twinkled as he asked me this. I laughed.

"I have no complaints" I said, in a mock serious tone, "The wench was in love by page thirty, but, alas, her father objects to the liaison." My companion arched an eyebrow.

"Does he? And how could that be? Surely all the world loves a lover."

I smiled. "So they say, but I’ve never noticed that to be true, either in fiction or in life. In our heroine’s adventures, it transpires that she has, according to her family, unwisely given her heart to a penniless lad, albeit an astonishingly handsome one."

"Hmm. She loves him, despite his poverty and her society’s objections?"

"Oh, yes, desperately and devoutly" I told him, tapping the cover of the book that lay beside my napkin.

"And does he love her, as well?" he asked.

"More, perhaps, he has offered to fight a duel for her honor. And all this by page 100." I said, with a smile.

"Ah, so love may yet be the death of the poor boy."

"Indeed. I have, in fact, had occasion to notice in my work how often love can prove fatal, so I have no quarrel with the authoress on that point." I told him, lifting up my wineglass again.

He studied my face, suddenly very serious, his French cigarette held aloft and trailing bluish smoke.

"I have never known love to be fatal, at least not literally," he finally said, "but I’ve certainly known it to be deleterious to the health."

I laughed politely, hoping I was not about to hear of his own romantic adventures. There was a limit to what I would endure for mere company. He did not disappoint me.

Glancing at the book, he smiled, a trifle more sadly than before, and asked, "But surely, in the end, true love will overcome even society’s objections and her father’s mercenary instincts?"

"I don’t know, for I like to leave conclusions till all the facts are in, but…well…my experience has been otherwise."

He frowned slightly. "Your experience as a reader or your experience as a detective?"

"Either, if you like," I said, "Though the only happy endings I’m acquainted with are in the realm of fiction. So, perhaps you’re right, my friend, and these two particular lovers will, somehow, live happily…ever after."

He regarded me for a moment, a little more seriously than the subject warranted.

"I’d certainly like to think that did happen, now and then" he told me, at last.

I laughed, lightly, but was saved from answering by the timely arrival of our first course.

After dinner, I joined my friend, along with some few other sated passengers, for port and cigarettes in the lounge. I then took my quixotic book and myself back to my roomette, my small compartment in the sleeping car known informally as the Oscar Wilde. That name had so amused me, bestowed because it was traditional for couples to book rooms in it for salacious, and socially reprehensible, purposes, that I had, after first encountering it, continued to book its rooms for my little vacations and distractions.

Our Zephyr took us westbound through Reno, after all, so that divorcing couples, and indeed singles anxious to be legally so, boarded her often with serious, and sometimes secret, purposes. All sorts of illicit couples frequented the car, it was said, and the railroad line chose the staff with an especial eye to known reliability and discretion. The porters were said to be virtually unbribable; whether or not this was true, it surely brought in a good deal of widely varied, if not outright illegal, business. Undercover lovers met, covert deals were struck, fortunes were made and lost, some lovers casting aside their vows while others swore new ones, and cloak-and-dagger conversations might, at any time, carry on right under the noses of more innocuous passengers, who went about their travel business all unknowing. In the Oscar Wilde, all such was on the Q.T, and far more hush-hush than any spy ring.

Whatever might happen in this car, laws notwithstanding, claimed the regulars, would forever stay within this car. Thus it was said that this streamliner, the California Zephyr, and most particularly this car, the Oscar Wilde, was the safest place for Americans’ most clandestine encounters. While I was not engaged in any activity more racy than my penchant for romantic novels, I do enjoy the atmosphere of anonymous intrigue and secret adventures, so long as I am not called upon to join in, or to actually know, anyone’s secrets. For that, and far too frequently, I have my profession.

But that, of course, was precisely what I was dodging here in my roomette’s tiny bed, with my amorous, but fortuitously fictional, escape. With only the small reading light on above my head, and in my comfortable cotton pajamas, I turned the pages, curious about, but not too terribly engaged in, my lovelorn heroine’s florid miseries. I prefer to keep my distance when I’m not being paid to be a snoop. I am not, by nature, a man who pries into the affairs of others. Quite frankly, this makes my chosen profession as much a mystery to me as anything I have been called upon to solve. I was therefore relishing my privacy, my cloistered room, small as it was, and my book of purple prose, when, drowsy, I finally fell into sleep.

The knocking at my door, a rapid hard hammering so unlike the porter’s usual diffident tapping, startled me awake. Rubbing at my eyes, and pained by the light I’d forgotten to extinguish, I stood and grabbed at my wristwatch beside the sink. Bleary-eyed, I could make out that it was just after three in the morning, much too early for the porter. The pounding at my door continued; if anything, it was increasing in volume. Stifling a yawn and clutching for my robe, I opened the compartment door, and then froze, astonished.

At my door, still fully dressed in his well-cut suit and Italian shoes despite the hour, was Flynt, my dining companion. His eyes were frantic, his face sweaty, and one arm was upraised as if to deliver yet another hammer blow to my poor door. His gold cufflink gleamed in the subdued nighttime lights of the Pullman aisle as he allowed his arm to drop.

"Oh God, Michael, thank God, you’ve got to…please, you’ve got to help me," he began to stammer out, staccato fashion, "Help my friend, I mean, oh God, please, you have to. I’ll do anything, pay anything, only please, please don’t say no; don’t refuse us." He stared at me, wild-eyed and rumpled. I stared back, the beginnings of annoyance very likely on my face. I have an intense dislike of scenes, of dramatic gestures in general, and the excess theater that so many people inject into their lives. Whatever this was, I was entirely sure that I’d prefer to sleep.

"Why don’t you tell me what the problem is." I said, not bothering to hide my irritation. How he could presume on our brief and casual acquaintance to wake me in this fashion was beyond me. Had he lost at cards; did he need a loan? Was he drunk? He seemed, unfortunately, cold sober. He took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. He made as if to reach for me, through the doorway for my arm, but I pulled back, trying not to give too much offense with the action. As he gathered his wits, I slipped on my robe and tied the sash. "Well?"

He swallowed. "My friend, he needs your…professional services. It’s an emergency, I wouldn’t wake you like this, bother you, if it weren’t a terrible emergency, I swear it."

"I am not a doctor; I’m a detective." I told him, clenching my jaw. Emergency, indeed.

"I know that, that’s why I’m here," he said, more calmly but still with a glint of panic in his eyes. "You’ve got to help me, help us. I’ll pay you, pay anything, I’m offering to hire you."

"Hire me? You need a detective, on a moving train, at 3 a.m.?" I didn’t bother to keep the sarcasm from my voice.

He swallowed again, hard. His jaw trembled, as if he were fighting not to cry. In fact, now that I was awake enough to notice, it seemed as if he might have been crying before he arrived. His eyes were red and a little swollen.

Staring into my eyes, he whispered, "They’re going to arrest him, Michael. Please, you have to help."

I frowned. "Arrest whom?"

"My friend," he answered, his voice low and rough, "You spoke to him in the dining car today, at lunch and at dinner, too. He…we…we went to school together; we’ve been friends for years." He gazed at me, intent and still fighting for composure. "Please, they’re going to arrest him in Reno. You’ve got to help."

"Arrest him for what? It’s the middle of the night. Was there a card game, some disagreement?"

"No." he said, almost inaudibly. Those were tears, most definitely, moistening his eyes.

"Well, then, for what? Damn it," I began, "you can’t wake a man up and expect him to-"

"Murder." The word was a bare whisper.

I closed my mouth, stunned. "What did you say?"

"Murder, Michael, murder. When the train stops in Reno, they’re going to arrest him for murder" He said, exhaling heavily. "There’s a…dead body in his room." His voice shook on that last sentence.

"Will you come; will you help us?" he asked.

Murder on the Oscar Wilde? I felt my professional curiosity stirring, like a cat waking. I sighed and closed my eyes.

"Yes."

He gasped aloud, relieved, and took a shuddering breath. He tried to smile but the effect was less than perfect.

"Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful," he said, numbly repeating it like a prayer. "What, ah, what do we, do you-"

"You take me to see your friend" I told him, and then held up my hand. "But…first things first."

At his expression, I elaborated.

"First, you let me find my cigarettes."