Harry pulled Stick aside and said to him quietly, “Get Dougie out of the house.”

Stick nodded and slipped out of the room. Harry took a knee and smiled at Tyler.

“Hey, Tyler. You mind if we slow that train down for a second? I want to talk to you.”

Tyler eased back on the transformer throttle. The train came to a stop and went silent.

“I’m real sorry about what happened to your dog.”

The boy’s lower lip extended and he said, “Mom said he must have got rabies or something.”

“You never saw him act like that before?”

Tyler’s head went back and forth.

Harry laid a hand on his shoulder. “Anyway, I just came up to see how you were doing, and let you know your mom will be okay but she’s a little upset.” He took a moment to admire the train set. It consisted of a steam engine, a gondola car with three large canisters that looked like milk jugs, a flatcar with a load of barrels, a coal car, and a caboose.

“That’s a pretty nice setup you have there, Tyler.”

Sadly, the boy said, “I guess.”

“Why don’t you turn it back on, show me how it works.”

Tyler turned the throttle on the transformer and the train started to go around the loop.

“I love the sound it makes,” Harry said. “That choo-choo sound.”

“It’s supposed to have a whistle, but it doesn’t work.” To demonstrate, Tyler pressed a red button on the transformer labeled whistle. The engine did not make a sound.

“See?”

“Let me try it.”

Tyler took his thumb off the button. Harry shifted over, pushed down on it with his thumb.

Felt a small tingle.

Held his thumb there for several seconds. Harry could hear nothing out of the engine but the chuffchuffchuffchuffchuffchuffchuff sound it had been making all along.

But then he thought he did hear something.

“What was that?” he asked Tyler.

“What was what?”

Harry took his finger off the button, listened. He didn’t hear what it was he’d thought he’d heard a moment earlier.

“Do your neighbors have a dog, too?”

The boy nodded. “Scruffy.”

Harry got up, went over to the window, and raised it open far enough to feel a cool breeze blow into the room.

“Tyler, hit the whistle button again and hold it.”

Tyler did as he was told.

Next door, a dog began to howl and bark furiously.

Thirty-Four

As his stay in Lucknow continued, Edwin Nabler could not have been more pleased with how things were going.

Since opening his shop here he’d sold nearly two dozen train sets, and results were trickling in. Best to go slow. Not a good thing to attract attention too quickly, and he felt he was just riding the edge of that. But there had definitely been some successes.