She had betrayed me to her kin, and I had died.
For a moment I considered killing this woman. There were too many men all about us; I should have to flee instead. I stood up, gathered my Gladstone and typewriter, gave her a long hard look, and went forward to the next coach. She must have been completely baffled.
After a few minutes I grew restless. I was enclosed by the walls of this conveyance, and vulnerable to attack. We came into a small city. The train left it, moving slowly. I suppose it was waiting for another train some distance ahead to be shunted off its track. I could stand the confinement no longer. I put my machine under my left arm, took the Gladstone in my left hand. (Always leave one hand free for emergencies.) I went out to the platform between the cars. A conductor was standing there counting tickets.
"Shouldn't change cars with all that luggage, sir," he said. "Train rocks a good deal and it's dangerous."
He took a step toward me. I put up my hand to tear out his throat and realized that he was simply going to pass by. I pressed against the wall. He went into the next car. I would have to watch myself. Needless killing at this stage of my flight would only complicate matters. I swung down to the last step, waited for a level stretch of cindery earth, and dropped off. The train was going perhaps twenty-five miles an hour. I lit as easily, as safely as a leopard bounding from a tree. I began to think there was nothing I could not accomplish in the way of strength and agility.
I walked back into the small city. Instinctively I sought the lower districts—not Skid Row, but the tenements and cheap hotels of the poor. I took a room in one of the latter. I barricaded the door and put up a makeshift burglar alarm on the window sill: a couple of glasses, a water pitcher, other objects, all perched precariously on the edge so that nothing could come in without knocking them off and rousing me. Then I crawled into bed and slept for twelve hours.
In the evening I had a meal and the papers sent up to me. I read them while I chewed on leathery steak coated with half-congealed grease, and tiny potatoes as appetizing as the boiled eyes of iguanas.
The papers had it all. My name, life story, photos, even a list of the magazines for which I had written. Brutal Slayings ... Writer on Rampage ... Have You Seen This Man ... all the rest of the trite screamers.
Then I came to the local paper. It was thought I might be here. It was thought that the man who acted so strangely on the west-bound train that morning, and who vanished at a point several miles out of town, might have been Cuff the Murderer. Descriptions tallied. Tentative identification had been made from telephotos. My lip lifted in a silent snarl. The hounds were baying close.