The Wall Lake Mystery

Chapter 30: The Blizzard

As our journey wore on, the train chugged along with decreasing speed as thousands of snowflakes outside fell with increasing violence. We passed several farmhouses at a crawl at ten minutes to five and it was not fifteen minutes later that the train halted entirely. The other passengers on the train, though few in number, began to mutter amongst themselves with displeasure and even Holmes was drumming his fingers loudly on a windowsill when an apologetic porter entered the car.

"I'm afraid we will be waiting here for a short time. I apologise for the inconvenience, sirs and madams, but we are experiencing whiteout conditions severe enough the conductor considers it unsafe to continue at present."

A thin gentlemen in overalls and wire-rimmed spectacles scowled. I recognised him as one of the farmers I met over lunch at the inn a few days previously. "When does your conductor plan on moving again?" Johansen asked.

The porter shook his head. "We'll have to wait and see how quickly the snow and wind dies down. Right now, if we were to step outside, I'm not sure a man would be able to wave a hand in front of his face and see it."

Johansen, Holmes and others muttered under their breaths, but the porter said no more and departed the car before anyone could shoot the messenger.

Holmes turned to me. "We seem to have gone from frying pan to fire," he said.

I nodded. "With any luck, the blizzard will begin subsiding in a few minutes."

It did not.

The porter returned twenty minutes later to inform us they were putting the engines out completely to conserve water and fuel. "It may grow rather cold," he said. "But we cannot risk using all our fuel before this weather clears up."

A woman in a thick shawl cursed the poor man roundly, and he coloured.

I tapped him on the arm as he passed. "Is there any way we can help with this situation?" I asked.

He shook his head. "Not at the moment, at any rate."

As the young porter predicted, the train was growing cold, and I began to think we may have done better remaining in Fletcher.

"Do you have your notes?" asked Holmes, distracting me from my glum thoughts.

"Yes, right here," I replied, pulling the little book from my pocket and handing it to him. "I have not yet written anything of our conversation with Miss Meyer, but most everything else is up to date, I think."

Holmes nodded and thumbed through the pages. He handed it back to me a few minutes later but said nothing.

I shivered. Snowflakes the size of sixpence swirled about the train, rendering everything a foot or more beyond the car windows invisible. Somewhere toward the front of the car, a young child began to cry.

The porter returned several minutes later. "Visibility conditions are not improving, but we are liable to be stuck here till tomorrow if we don't start moving. We need another fireman to shovel in coal if we are to speed up quickly enough to push through this snow." The porter looked around the car, but the passengers around me all began taking a sudden interest in their boots or the blizzard outside.

I set my doctor's bag in Holmes' lap and stood. "What do I need to do?"

The porter looked me up and down a moment in surprise, but when no other volunteers presented themselves, motioned for me to follow him to the front of the train. I had never been in the engine car of a locomotive before. There were pipes and dials and levers all around, as well as several crates of coal. It was hot and foul-smelling. Two men were there, one seated at the controls and another shovelling coal into the locomotive's furnace. Both were ruddy and covered in a thin layer of coal dust.