Night Train Lane, a fearsome tackler who was perhaps the finest cornerback in pro football history, died Tuesday in Austin, Tex., his hometown. He was 73.

The cause was a heart attack, his son Richard Lane Jr. said.

When he obtained a tryout with the 1952 Los Angeles Rams, the defending National Football League champions, Dick Lane was an unknown 24-year-old who had played football in junior college and then spent four years in the Army. By season's end, he had 14 interceptions in a 12-game schedule to set a single-season record that still stands even though teams now play 16 games.

He had also gained an intriguing nickname.

Originally envisioned as a receiver, Lane was tutored by Tom Fears, a future Hall of Fame end, while a rookie at the Rams' training camp.

''Fears liked to play records, and his favorite was 'Night Train,' '' Lane once recalled. ''Every day I'd be going to his room and he'd be playing it. He roomed with a guy named Ben Sheets, and whenever I'd walk into the room, Sheets would say, 'Here comes Night Train.' He started calling me that, and it stuck.''

The association with that recording by the Buddy Morrow band was more than happenstance. Having thought of a career as a piano player while a youngster, Lane was a lifelong jazz devotee. When he was nearing the end of his football career, he married Dinah Washington, known as the Queen of the Blues.

Playing 14 seasons in the N.F.L., with the Rams, the Chicago Cardinals and the Detroit Lions, Lane had 68 interceptions and is third on the career list, behind Paul Krause (81) and Emlen Tunnell (79). He was named the top cornerback in the league's first 50 years by the Pro Football Hall of Fame and was chosen as one of four cornerbacks on the N.F.L.'s 75th anniversary team.

Lane was a unanimous selection to the Hall of Fame in 1974, led the league in interceptions twice (1952 and '54) and was All-Pro five times and a Pro Bowl choice six times.

''Night Train was the best defensive back ever to play the game,'' Herb Adderley, the Green Bay Packers' Hall of Fame cornerback, once said. ''I've never seen a defensive back hit like him. I mean, take them down, whether it be Jim Brown or Jim Taylor.''

The broadcaster Pat Summerall, a kicker and end who was Lane's teammate on the Cardinals, said, ''I played with him and against him, and he's the best I've ever seen.''.

At 6 feet 3 inches and 210 pounds, Lane was bigger than most receivers. He was known for his Night Train Necktie, wrapping his arms around the neck of an offensive player and hurling him to the ground, a tackling maneuver that was eventually banned.

That Lane even reached the world of professional athletics represented a stunning achievement.

His mother was a prostitute, his father a pimp, and he was abandoned when he was 3 months old. A widow with two children of her own, Ella Lane, heard cries coming from a trash bin near her Austin home, and found him, covered by newspapers. She raised him.

Lane was a rough-and-tumble teenager. When a losing opponent in a pool-hall game refused to pay off a bet of a few cents, Lane picked up a ball and hurled it at the boy, striking him in the back of the neck and knocking him down. That brought him his first nickname, Cue Ball.

Lane played football at Scottsbluff Junior College in Nebraska and, as a soldier, at Fort Ord in California. He worked in an aircraft plant after his Army service, then persuaded the Rams to give him a chance.

Lane shored up the Rams' defense with his record-breaking 14 interceptions in 1952, but they could not repeat as champions, losing to the Lions in a conference title playoff.

He played two years for the Rams, six years with the Cardinals and six seasons with the Lions, but never appeared on a championship team. He later coached at Central State in Ohio and Southern University in Louisiana and supervised Police Athletic League programs in Detroit.

In addition to his son Richard Lane Jr., of St. Louis, he is survived by another son, Richard Walker of Detroit; a stepson, Bobby Grayson, of Chicago; and four grandchildren.

In July 1963, he married Dinah Washington, who had emerged as a rhythm and blues recording star in the 1940's while appearing with Lionel Hampton's band. She died in December 1963 at age 39 of an overdose of pills at the couple's home in Detroit.

During his playing days, Lane often visited nightclubs on the road, and he saw an affinity between athletes and jazz musicians.

''A musician's got to have a style -- maybe it's a way of holding the horn or playing a phrase,'' Lane once remarked. ''That's what I was always after. I wanted to create my own style of playing.''