Page:Weird Tales volume 38 number 03 CAN.djvu/98

 no dignitaries. Only loneliness. They flashed through the station and out. As the el thundered along in its cavern between buildings, here and there Larue fleetingly glimpsed a face at a tenement window or a person gesticulating.

These people knew the el. They had lived with it for years just as he had, lived with its noise and rattle and dirt, and they knew it had died at noon that day, died forever-more, and yet here was this monster ghost thundering again, this magic symbol of the railroad on stilts that refused to die. He could tell from some of the flash glances that they were startled, disbelieving what they saw—a yellow finger of light and then the rumbling clattering black train following the thin cone of brilliance, speeding through the night on the condemned el. And they knew as he knew that the train must stop, for men had killed the creature called the el. They had cut at it and torn at it and broken its structure. Larue's mouth went dry. Thin factory funnels, gray in the night, loomed past outside.

From that he knew they weren't many blocks from the ramp that led up onto the bridge. And the bridge tracks, he knew, were already in a state of partial demolition. He staggered forward, then again the car swayed beneath him. As he edged closer to the motorman's compartment at the very front and right of the first car, the fear that no one would be within that compartment took him by the throat and seemed almost to shake him in rhythm to the swaying of the car.

With a great effort of control, he threw himself ahead, wrenching at the motorman's door. He pulled it open and the words burst forth then.

"Oh, Pete! God, man, I'm glad to see you! Look, you've got to pull this thing down. You know the tracks are down up ahead!"

Gone was the picture of the watchman lying back there in the yards, for here instead of nobody, instead of some ghost, was old Nevers crouched reassuringly as always over his controls.

"Pete," said Larue again, grabbing the man's craglike shoulder, "slow her down. The bridge's not far away."

But the old man just sat there, his eyes staring ahead.

The moment of relief was gone for Jack Larue. The foundry worker cursed and pleaded. He wedged himself into the tiny compartment with the motorman. He screamed at Nevers.

"For God's sake, man, don't you understand? There's no more track up ahead. I saw them pulling it up myself. You'll wreck her, I tell you, Pete. You've got to listen to me."

The el jiggled bale fully around the corner and then Larue sensed rather than saw its upward pull. The grade leading toward the ramp! Larue screamed then and looked ahead. The yellow cone of light fumbled through the darkness and then picked out the ramp far ahead. Larue looked away and at Nevers again.

"You're crazy, man," he screamed. "Stop her, Nevers, for God's sake!"

UT the motorman sat his seat with steely determination. The light that fell in irregular squares in the compartment seemed to strike and reflect from Nevers. There was a quality about the man that terrified Larue. Suddenly he flung himself across the motorman's body and lurched frantically at the controls. He got one hand on the brake and the other hand closed over the long metal lever that controlled the speed. His arms and back strained with the frenzied effort to move them against Nevers' strength and will. He could not. The old man possessed a superhuman steel-like strength. The metallic resonance of the steel el structure suddenly gave way to the ominous hollow-like nimble of the ramp. The wooden cross-beams beneath the ties echoed back the thumping of the train like evil demons pounding in derision. Larue redoubled his efforts and each split second seemed an eternity of fear and struggle and decision.

He jerked his hands from the levers and turned them on Nevers. He struck the man with all the strength of his hard workman's body. His hand cracked and bled and broke against the rocklike