The Andre Norton Megapack - 15 Classic Novels and Short Stories

suh.” Obediently he shut his eyes. A blanket was pulled up, tucked in about him. For a moment a warm hand rested protectingly on his shoulder. And that reassuring pressure carried over with him into sleep, as if what he had long sought without recognizing was his, never to be lost again.

PART 3: MYSTERY
    MURDERS FOR SALE (1953)
(also published as SNEEZE ON SUNDAY)

MURDERS FOR SALE (1953)
    (Written with Grace Allen Hogarth)
    Chapter 1
    Fredericka Wing looked at her watch for the second time in ten minutes. If she didn’t get to South Sutton before noon she might miss Miss Hartwell, and that would be disastrous.
    The sun burned through the back of her linen dress, and her stockings felt sticky behind her knees. July in New England could be hot, as she had reason to know from her own childhood. But the country should be better than New York.
    She looked a third time at her watch and then, with a frown of annoyance, picked up her suitcase and sought the shelter of the station platform. She walked around to the track side of the one-room building where the words SUTTON JUNCTION were inscribed in Gothic capitals, once gilt, now tarnished and barely decipherable. A large man in shirt sleeves sat on a packing case near the door, chewing noisily and spitting at regular intervals in the general direction of the tracks.
    “Train late?” Fredericka asked, trying to keep the note of impatience from her voice.
    The man did not answer. He continued to chew steadily and for a moment, she thought he must be deaf. Then he took a plug of tobacco from his pocket and opened his knife with his pudgy right hand and said slowly: “Reckon Cy’s doin’ his shoppin’. Usually do on Sat’day mornin’s. Be long soon now, I wouldn’t wonder. Train for Worcester’s not due in fer another quarter hour.”
    Fredericka sat down on the other end of the packing case.
    “Cy is the engineer, I suppose,” she said.
    “Yep. Don’t make no difference Sat’day forenoon. Ain’t nobody to speak of come from New York till the a’ternoon train.”
    It was obvious to Fredericka that being a stranger, not the fact that she was the only passenger, made her “nobody to speak of.” She was contemplating a suitable answer when, with a hoot of surprise, the midget engine and its single car charged out of the woods as if by magic.
    The fat man lumbered to his feet and Cy climbed down from his cab. A moment later a man in a light suit hurried from the train and stopped near Fredericka to bend over and fasten the strap of his brief case. Then he straightened up and, for a moment, looked intently at Fredericka, who returned his appraisal and then dropped her eyes in sudden embarrassment. But she had had time to see that the man’s gray eyes really were what novelists describe as “steely,” the face set in stern lines and the forehead high. His hair was graying at the temples and his body had lost the leanness of first youth.
    Forties, Fredericka thought, and I’m blushing as though I were in my teens instead of a safe thirty-five.
    “Hi, Colonel.” The low rumbling sound came from Fredericka’s friend, the fat baggage man, who now stood behind her to rest from the great effort of drawing a half-filled mail bag across the platform.
    “Hi yourself, Willy,” the man called Colonel answered. He unfolded a neatly rolled newspaper and sat down on the packing case. Fredericka, having no excuse to linger, now walked purposefully across the track to her waiting train.
    A twenty-minute wait for a ten-minute journey, she thought as she settled herself on the dusty plush seat. And now most likely another ten minutes to add to it. But even as she thought this, the engine gave its warning toot and began to push itself backwards out of the station. Except for Fredericka, the car was empty and, in spite of herself, she couldn’t resist the temptation to go across the aisle and look out of the window. The man called Colonel had put aside his paper and now seemed to be looking directly at her own peering face. She ducked quickly and returned at once to her seat as, again, she felt her cheeks burn hotly.
    “Now whatever possessed me to do that?” she asked aloud, and then: “Behaving like a schoolgirl.” But the intent gray eyes followed Fredericka all the short journey to South Sutton and were only forgotten when the excitement of arrival and settling in to her new job put every other thought from her mind.
    When Fredericka climbed down from the train