'What? No, no, no need to wake them up.'

'But… the Canadian might not have stopped…'

'Of course it would, when it saw the fusees.'

Their faith amazed and frightened me. The Conductor of the Canadian said that he would radio ahead to Kamloops and both trains would stop there again, when there were multiple tracks, not just the one. Kamloops, he thought, would be getting worried soon that the race train hadn't arrived, and he went off to inform them.

I walked back behind the horse car and boarded the race train, and almost immediately met George's assistant who was walking forwards.

'Where's George?' I said urgently.

He was worried. 'I can't find him.'

'There's one place he might be.' And please let him be there, I thought. Please don't let him be lying miles back in some dreadful condition beside the track.

'Where?' he said.

'In one of the bedrooms. Look up the list. In Johnson's bedroom.'

'Who?'

'Johnson.'

Another sleeping-car attendant happened to arrive at that point.

'I still can't find him,' he said.

'Do you know where Johnson's room is?' I asked anxiously.

'Yes, nearly next to mine. Roomette, it is.'

'Then let's look there.'

'You can't go into a passenger's room in the middle of the night,' he protested.

'If Johnson's there, we'll apologize.'

'I can't think why you think George might be there,' he grumbled, but he led the way back and pointed to a door. 'That's his.'

I opened it. George was lying on the bed, squirming in ropes, fighting against a gag. Very much alive.

Relieved beyond measure, I pulled off the gag which was a wide band of adhesive plaster firmly stuck on.

'Dammit, that hurt, eh?' George said. 'What took you so long?'

George sat in his office, grimly drinking hot tea and refusing to lie down. He was concussed, one could see from his eyes, but he would not admit that the blow to his head that had knocked him out had had any effect. As soon as he was free of the ropes and had begun to understand about the hot box, he had insisted that he and the Conductor from the Canadian had a talk together in the forward dome car of the race train, a meeting attended by various other crew members and myself.

The despatcher in Kamloops, the Canadian's Conductor reported, had said that as soon as the race train could set off again, it would proceed to Kamloops. The Canadian would follow ten minutes later. They would also alert a following freight train. The race train would remain at Kamloops for an hour. The Canadian would leave Kamloops first so that it fell as little behind its timetable as possible. After all the journal-boxes of the race train had been checked for heat, it would go on its way to Vancouver. There wouldn't be any enquiry at Kamloops as it would be past three in the morning-Sunday morning-by then. The enquiry would take place at Vancouver.

Everyone nodded. George looked white, as if he wished he hadn't moved his head.

The race train's engineer came to say that the box had been finally opened, it had been dry and the oily waste had burned away, but all was now well, it was cool and filled again, it was not dripping out underneath, and the train could go on.

They wasted no time. The Canadian's crew left and the race train was soon on the move again as if nothing had happened. I went with George to his office and then fetched him the tea, and he groggily demanded I tell him from start to finish what was going on.

'You tell me first how you came to be knocked out,' I said.

'I can't remember. I was walking up to see the engineers.' He looked puzzled. 'First thing I knew, I was lying there trussed up. I was there for ages. Couldn't understand it.' He hadn't a chuckle left in him. 'I was in Johnson's roomette, they said. Johnson did it, I suppose. Jumped me.'

'Yes.'

'Where is he now?'

'Heaven knows.' I told George about Johnson's attacking me and how I'd left him, and how I hadn't seen him anywhere on the way back.

'Two possibilities,' George said. 'Three, I suppose. Either he buggered off somewhere or he's getting a ride on the Canadian right now.'

I stared. Hadn't thought of that. 'What's the third?' I asked.

A tired gleam crept into George's disorientated eyes. 'The mountain where we stopped,' he said. 'That was Squilax Mountain. Squilax is the Indian word for black bear.'

I swallowed. 'I didn't see any bears.'

'Just as well.'

I didn't somehow think Johnson had been eaten by a bear. I couldn't believe in it. I thought I must have been crazy, but I hadn't believed in bears all the time I'd been out there on black bear mountain.

'Know something?' George said. 'The new rolling stock can't easily get hot boxes, the axles run on ball-bearings, eh?, not oily waste. Only old cars like the horse car will always be vulnerable. Know what? You bet your life Johnson took most of the waste out of that box when we stopped in Revelstoke.'

'Why do you say oily waste?' I asked.

'Rags. Rags in the oil. Makes a better cushion for the axle than plain oil. I've known one sabotaged before, mind. Only that tine they didn't just take the rags out, they put iron filings in, eh? Derailed the train. Another railwayman with a grudge, that was. But hot boxes do happen by accident. They've got heat sensors with alarm systems beside the track in some places, because of that. How did that Johnson ever think he'd get away with it?'

'He doesn't know we have a photo of him.'

George began to laugh and thought better of it. 'You kill me, Tommy. But what was my assistant thinking of, sending you off with the fusees? It was his job, eh? He should have gone.'

'He said I'd go faster.'

'Well, yes, I suppose he was right. But you weren't really crew.'

'He'd forgotten,' I said. 'But I thought he might have warned the Lorrimores… and everyone else… to get them out of danger.'

George considered it. 'I'm not going to say he should. I'm not going to say he shouldn't.'

'Railwaymen stick together?'

'He's coming up to his pension. And no one was as much as jolted off their beds, eh?'

'Lucky.'

'Trains always stop for flares,' he said comfortably.

I left it. I supposed one couldn't lose a man his pension for not doing something that had proved unnecessary.

We ran presently into Kamloops where the axles were all checked, the radio was replaced, and everything else went according to plan. Once we were moving again, George finally agreed to lie down in his clothes and try to sleep; and two doors along from him I tried the same.

Things always start hurting when one has time to think about them. The dull ache where Johnson's piece of wood had landed on the back of my left shoulder was intermittently sharply sore: all right when I was standing up, not so good lying down. A bore. It would be stiffer still, I thought, in the morning. A pest for serving breakfast.

I smiled to myself finally. In spite of Johnson's and Filmer's best efforts, the great Transcontinental Mystery Race Train might yet limp without disaster to Vancouver.

Complacency, I should have remembered, was never a good idea.