Train a Com'in! (Part 1)
When Kelly Ann Vanderhilt, heiress to the fabulous Vanderhilt Patent Medicine Empire, woke up that morning, she knew it was going to be a bad day.
It should have been a wonderful day. It was her 18th birthday and this was the summer that would seen her presented to society at a magnificent ball at the Vanderhilts' marvelous mansion in Newport, Rhode Island. Unfortunately, however, a series of tragic events had ruined her spring.
It has all started on April 15th, of 1912, when her parents, returning from a Spring vacation in Europe on the Titanic, perished at sea.
Things did not get much better when a month later, her aunt, and guardian, Suzanne, who was a ten years older than her, made unwelcome sexual advances toward her. While Kelly Ann was aware that some girls liked other girls, she had no interest herself in such an arrangement and was shocked that her trusted aunt would attempt to force her into a romantic liaison. Kelly Ann sternly rebuffed the woman's advances.
And now this: Kelly Ann had been awakened in the wee hours of the morning by a cloth over her face with sickly sweet smell. She had immediately fallen unconscious and was now only awakening again.
She opened her pretty, vivid blue eyes and over her head was the sky. The pillow under her head felt like hard and almost like a stone. Glancing around she realized the back of her neck wasn't sitting on a stone, however, but the iron rail of a railroad track somewhat softened by the coverlet from her bed. She attempted to sit up, by then realized that her arms were stretched out on either side of her and tied, by the wrists, to the same rail. Moving her feet was also impossible as her ankles spread wide apart, were tied to the opposite rail. She was cushioned from the ties and the gravel below herback by the same coverlet under her head and by her long nightgown.
Trying to figure out how she got into this situation she looked past her feet where a tall, dark, and somewhat handsome fellow with a rakish look, stood, reading a sheet of paper.
"Excuse me, sir," she said, "would you be able to help me here? I seem to have gotten tied to this railroad track, somehow."
The man looked up from the paper, and replied, "Well, normally I would help a lady in need, but you see since I just finished tying you to that railroad track, untying you would seem to be a bit, counterproductive, wouldn't it?"
This made her a bit testy. "Sir, do you know who I am? I will speak to the police and have you arrested!"
"Well, I know precisely who you are and that's why you are tied to the track," he replied. Cocking his head as they heard the sound of a train whistle echoing up the valley, he continued, "And I suspect that, sadly, in no more than a half an hour, you won't be talking to anybody ever again."
Kelly Ann was a bright girl and looked around to assess her situation. They were in a narrow valley, filled with trees and no sign of civilization nearby. The track she was currently laying on was a tight curve and it was impossible to see anything more than a few hundred feet up or down the rails. She realized that it was unlikely that the engineer of a train barreling around the curve would even catch sight of her, let alone be able to stop his locomotive, before his iron monster was on top of her.
"Sir, why would you to such an evil thing as this!?!" she cried.
"Well, miss, it's nothing personal. Just business," he replied.
"Business! Somebody paid you to do this? Who?" she demanded.
"Your aunt, Suzanne."
Kelly Ann remembered the woman's anger when she had been rejected.
"You mean she paid you to do this just because I..I wouldn't give into her...sexual demands?" said Kelly Ann, aghast.
"No, your rejection of her is behind your manner of death. The reason for you death is that today is your 18th birthday," he answered.
"My birthday?"
"Yes. Perhaps you were not aware than your parents' will states that on your 18th birthday, you inherit the entire estate," he explained. "As things stand since you have not written your own will this morning, upon your death the entire estate will pass to your closest relative, you aunt.
"Listen, I'm now filthy rich and I can give you twice the amount my aunt is paying you, if you just let me go!" she offered.
"Well, that's a tempting offer, Miss," he replied. "but, I just don't feel its ethical."
"Not ethical?!?"
"Well, yes, I already have a contract with your aunt for this job. If I dropped that contract to take up one with you, it just won't be right, would it?" he answered.