Bell stepped into the pitch-black corridor and shut the door behind him. As far as he could see, the corridor was empty. He could hear people shouting in their staterooms. They sounded more confused than frightened. Train wreck was never far from any traveler’s mind, but the Limited’s stop, while sudden, had not ended in the splintered wood, twisted metal, smashed bones, and burning flesh that got their names among the dead and injured in tomorrow’s newspapers.

Bell stood still with his back pressed against the door. His eyes adjusted to the dark in seconds. The corridor was still empty. He could see the shapes of the windows on the opposite side of the narrow corridor outlined by the starlight that bathed the high-desert floor. Outside in the starlit dark he saw a flicker of motion. Were his eyes playing tricks or did he see horses clumped close together, a hundred yards from the train? It was too far and too dark to see if they were saddled, but wild animals so near the thundering derailment would have stampeded to the far side of the mountains by now. These were horses with men.

Bell saw a flashlight at the head end of the car and, in its flickering back glow, the snow-white uniform of the Pullman porter, Edward, roused from a nap in his pantry. Bell closed one eye to protect his night vision. He sensed motion behind Edward. Before he could shout a warning, the porter crumpled silently to the floor. His flashlight fell beside him, arcing its beam along the corridor toward Bell.

A stateroom door flew open, and a fat man in pajamas stepped out, shouting, “Porter!”

More doors banged open. Passengers stumbled into the dark corridor, and Bell realized that the Acrobat’s plan had suddenly gone wrong. He saw the shadowy figure who had knocked down the porter move oddly, thrusting one arm out and folding the other across his face.

Bell smelled a familiar scent and covered his eyes. He heard a champagne cork pop. A blaze of intensely white light flooded the corridor. Blinded, the passengers fell back into their staterooms, crying out in fear and dismay.

No one stood between the Acrobat and Clyde Lynds’s door except Isaac Bell.

Bell had remembered from his circus days the peculiar odor of flash cotton. The clowns loved the gag of igniting cloth impregnated with nitrocellulose to shoot fire from their fingertips, and he had recognized its smell in time to avoid being blinded.

He charged into the dark straight at the starlit simian shape of the Acrobat.

“I can’t see!” cried the fat man, stumbling back into the corridor. The tall detective slammed into the fat man. Both lost their footing, and the pair went down in a tangle. Bell somersaulted off and rolled to his feet. The fat man grabbed his ankle in a surprisingly strong grip.