The press operator rapidly wrote out the message coming over the wire, took the finished sheet, folded it, and sent it down a chute. This led to the room below where messengers were waiting for the service. The duplicate sheet he slipped over a spindle. Ralph hurriedly reached his side.
“Let me look at that last flimsy, will you?”
“Cert,” bobbed the accommodating operator, handing it to Ralph.
The latter read the hurriedly traced lines with a falling face.
“That’s my 30,” announced the operator, shutting off his key and arising to drop work for the night.
Ralph paid no attention to him. The young railroader was conscious of a decidedly painful impression. He had heard nothing of Glen Palmer or his grandfather since the night the jumbled up “Look out for the pay car” telegram had arrived. Ralph, however, had frequently thought of the lad whom he had started in at the chicken farm.
Young Palmer had been disappointing. All along the line Ralph had to admit this. Once in a while, however, when he realized the lonely bedouin-like existence of Glen, certain pity and indulgence were evoked. Now, however, a grave, hurt look came into Ralph’s eyes.
“Too bad,” he said, softly and sorrowfully. “I fancy Bob Adair was right.”
The road detective had forcibly expressed the opinion that Glen Palmer had been a jail bird. More than that, Adair believed him to be in league with the conspirators. Ralph thought not. Glen had sent him two warning messages under extraordinary circumstances. The press telegram just over the wires, however, certainly coincided with the charges of Ike Slump that Glen was a criminal.
It was one of a batch of items that had come over the commercial line that evening. The message was dated at a small interior city, Fordham, and it read:
“The system adopted by the Bon Ton department store here to discourage theft, bore practical results today, and their publicly offered reward of ten dollars was claimed by an amateur detective. The latter discovered a boy in the act of removing a valuable ring from a display tray, and informed on him. The thief was searched and the stolen article found secreted on his person. He unblushingly admitted his guilt. The thief gave the name of Sam Jones, but some papers found on him disclosed his correct name, which is Glen Palmer. He was brought before Justice Davis, who sentenced him promptly to sixty days in the county workhouse.”
“What’s hitting you so glum, Fairbanks?” inquired Glidden, as Ralph kept poring over the telegram in a depressed way.
“A friend of mine gone wrong,” replied Ralph simply.
He was glad that he was not called on for any further explanation. Just then Tipton broke in with a crisp short wire--No. 83 had just passed, only fifteen minutes late.
“She’s getting in among the bad mountain cuts,” observed Glidden, as Ralph crossed off the station on his check card. “If the pull isn’t too hard, I reckon she’ll make her first switch nearly on time.”
There was now in the dispatcher’s room a dead calm of some duration. Glidden sat figuring up some details from the business of the night. Ralph rested back in his chair, thinking seriously of Glen Palmer, and wondering what mystery surrounded him and his grandfather.
The silence was broken finally with a sharp tanging challenge, always stimulating and startling to the operator. It was the manager’s call:
“25--25--25.”
Ralph swept his key in prompt response.
“Hello!” said the aroused Glidden, listening keenly, “thought Tipton was off for the night after 83 had passed. What’s--that!”
Ralph, deeply intent, took in the rapid tickings eagerly. The message was from the station which had reported No. 83 passed in good shape three-quarters of an hour before.
Here was the hurry message that came over the wire:
“83 something wrong. Just found brakeman of train lying in snow at side of track. Hurt or drugged. Mumbled about foul play. Catch Maddox and advise conductor of 83.”
“I say!” exclaimed Glidden, jumping to his feet. “Get Maddox, Fairbanks. 83 is due or passed.”
“M-x M-x--stop 83,” tapped Ralph quickly.
“Too late,” muttered Glidden in a sort of groan. “Thunder! she can’t be reached till she gets to Fairview, forty miles ahead.”
Maddox had wired back to headquarters the following message:
“83 just passed after coaling. Fairview reports four feet of snow in the cuts. No stop this side.”
Then Ralph did the only thing he could. He wired to the operator at Fairview:
“Hold 83 on arrival for special orders.”
The sleepy look left Glidden’s eyes and Ralph was all nerved up. There had come a break in the progress of the substitute pay car, and both felt anxiously serious as to its significance.
“There’s something mighty wrong in this business,” declared Glidden.
“It looks that way,” assented Ralph.
“Get Tipton.”
Ralph called over the wire and repeated.
“Something has shut out Tipton,” he reported.
“Wires down or cut,” observed Glidden. “Try Maddox.”
Ralph did so.
“Maddox not open,” he said. His mind ran over the situation. He recalled a night like this when he and Fireman Fogg had run alone a battered locomotive over the same stretch of road on a Special for President Grant of the Great Northern. It had been a hairbreadth experience, and he wondered if No. 83 would get through.
One o’clock--two o’clock. The young dispatcher and his first trick man found it hard to endure the irksome monotony of those two anxious hours. It was like a tensioned cord breaking when at last the welcome call from Fairview came over the wires.
“83,” the message ticked out, “crippled; six feet of snow ahead, and will have to lay over. Send orders.”
“She’s got through safe, that’s a consolation,” said Glidden, with a vast sigh of satisfaction.
Ralph simply clicked an “O. K.” It had been arranged that at Fairview the conductor would wire for instructions. These had been purposely withheld for secrecy’s sake. A transfer of two pay safes was due at the next station and Ralph waited, knowing that as soon as he could leave his train the conductor would send a personal message.
Suddenly the instrument began to click again.
“From conductor 83: metaphor, resolve, adirondacks, typists.”
“What!” shouted Glidden, jumping to his feet in a frenzy.
Ralph’s hand shook and the color left his face.
Translated, the message from the conductor of train No. 83 meant:
“The substitute pay car has disappeared.”
Long before the whistles blew for seven o’clock at Stanley Junction the news had spread like wildfire--train No. 83, carrying the substitute pay car, containing two hundred thousand dollars in cash and a king’s ransom in bullion for the banks, had disappeared.
Somewhere between Fairview and Maddox, the time, and means unknown, the car containing all this treasure had been boldly stolen, disconnected from the train, had vanished.
One minute after receiving the startling cypher message, Ralph had telephoned to the superintendent of the road at his home in Stanley Junction. Within an hour that official and two assistants in hastily donned garb and with perturbed faces were at headquarters trying to solve a situation enshrouded in the densest mystery.
The wires were kept hot with messages to and from Fairview. The conductor of No. 83 could simply repeat his amazing story. When the train arrived at Maddox they found the precious treasure car missing. Their crippled engine could not be brought into service. The snow-clogged rails offered no chance for a hand car.
Had the car broken loose? was the question put. No, was the answer. The bumper of the last milk car showed no evidences of unusual strain or break. The coupling pin had simply been removed, how far back the line it was impossible to surmise, certainly between Fairview and Maddox.
And then, linking in the discovery of the brakeman lying drugged or hurt at the side of the track by the station agent at Tipton, the irresistible conclusion was arrived at by the anxious railroad officials that their careful plans to delude the conspirators and safely get the substitute pay car through had failed utterly.
There was only one thing to do. This was to make an immediate search for the missing car. Belleville, ten miles distant from Fairview, was wired an urgency call. The snowplow service with one caboose was ordered out. The division superintendent at Belleville was instructed concerning the situation, and at four a. m. the train started for Fairview, to plow its way back over the route of No. 83 to seek a trace of the missing car.
It was before daylight when a report came in. Nowhere along the sharp curves or deep gullies of the route was a single trace of the car discovered. It had disappeared as absolutely and completely as if the earth had opened and swallowed it up.
The falling snow had obliterated all recent marks on its surface. By the merest chance, ten miles out of Maddox, the division superintendent had noticed a small mound that was unfamiliar. Stopping the train, an investigation disclosed the two guards who had been locked in the pay car when it left Rockton.
It had been hard work to arouse the men, but finally one of them was restored to consciousness sufficiently to relate a clear story.
Their instructions had been simple--to use their rifles if any stranger attempted to enter the car on its journey. Between stations the brakeman on duty on the rear platform of the car was allowed to enter to get warm. He had always, however, given an agreed-on signal at the door of the car.
It was just after leaving Tipton that his familiar knock had called one of them to the door to let him in. Taken completely off their guard, as four men one after the other jumped in among them, the guards had no opportunity to seize their firearms. They had been knocked down on the floor of the car, cloths drugged with some subtle acid had been held over their faces. They knew no more until they had been discovered by the division superintendent.
“It’s easy to guess it out,” whispered Glidden to Ralph while the officials in the room were piecing all these bits of information together.
“Yes,” responded Ralph, “the conspirators in some way received advance information of every step we intended to make.”
“They must have got aboard secretly beyond Tipton, or have been hidden in the last milk car,” suggested Glidden. “They jumped on and doped the brakeman, disposed of him, later of the two guards, and were in possession. The division superintendent reports that the wires were found cut just out of Tipton. The crowd had planned out everything to a second, with conspirators posted all along the line.”
“But the missing car,” said Ralph thoughtfully; “what has become of it?”
Neither he nor Glidden could figure out a solution of this difficult problem. Even the experienced official after a long confab gave it up. The only thing they could do was to order a hasty search for Bob Adair, the road detective, to rush to the spot with all the force he needed.
The superintendent spoke pleasantly to Ralph and Glidden as the day force relieved them. He even forgot his anxieties long enough to commend them for the hard work they had done and the close tab they had kept on all the occurrences of the night.
“It’s a bad mess for the Great Northern,” he said with a worried face, “and it proves that our enemies are not as dull as we thought they were.”
Ralph went home tired out. He found it hard, however, to get to sleep. The strain and excitement of the preceding twelve hours told severely on his nerves. All through the morning his vivid dreams were of snow blockades, cut wires, and stolen treasure cars.
On account of their special service on behalf of the pay car affair, Glidden and himself were relieved from duty for twenty-four hours. The old dispatcher dropped in at the Fairbanks home shortly after noon.
“Have they found any trace of the missing pay car?” at once inquired Ralph.
“Stolen, you mean,” corrected Glidden. “No. Theories? Lots of them. She was simply cut off from the train. She couldn’t have derailed, for there’s no trace of that unless she went up in the air. Of course, whoever manipulated her sent her off on a siding among the mountains on a down grade.”
“And that is the last known of it. Well, what later?”
“Adair will be over to find out soon, or else he won’t,” retorted Glidden crisply. “You know that web of old abandoned sidings and spurs branching out the other side of Maddox?”
“Near Eagle Pass, you mean?”
“Yes. The superintendent thinks the car will be found somewhere on the branches, looted, of course, for the robbers have had hours to handle the booty.”
Nothing but theory, however, resulted from official investigations during the ensuing two days. The following Monday morning the assistant superintendent met Ralph on his way to work. The missing car problem was still unsolved, he told the young railroader.
Adair and his men had explored every spur and siding the entire length of Eagle Pass. Not a trace of the stolen car had been discovered, and the road officer was working on a theory that it might have been run off on connecting private switches onto the Midland Central, and the collusion of important influences exercised.
When Ralph got home that evening he found an old time friend awaiting him. It was Zeph Dallas, just arrived.
“Why, hello!” hailed Ralph heartily, walking into the sitting room where he had spied Zeph. “I’m glad to see you, Zeph--why, what’s the matter?”
Zeph was indeed an object to excite wonderment and attention. His face was about the forlornest that Ralph had ever seen. His eyes were like two holes burned in his head, his clothes were wrinkled as if he had slept in them for a week.
In a limp, hopeless fashion the “boy detective,” all his plumes of ambition sadly trailing in the dust of humiliation and defeat, allowed his hand to rest lifelessly in that of Ralph. His throat choked up with a sob, and his eyes filled with tears.
“Ralph,” he almost whispered, “they’ve fooled me, I’m beaten out.”
“You mean the men who stole the pay car?”
“Yes; oh, they put it over on me good. They pulled the wool over my eyes. I thought I had them, and they let me think so. I’ve got to find them, I’ve got to make good, or I’ll never hold up my head in Stanley Junction again.”
“You did the best you could, I am sure, Zeph,” encouraged Ralph soothingly.
“The best won’t do!” almost shouted out Zeph. “There’s got to be better. Oh, Ralph, it will break my heart if I fail. I’ve got to find that stolen pay car, and you’ve got to help me.”
“Mr. Fairbanks?”
“Yes, sir.”
“This is the office of the general superintendent. He wishes to see you immediately.”
“I will report at once.”
Ralph put down the telephone receiver, exchanged his office coat for street wear, and within five minutes was admitted into the private office of his superior official.
The superintendent looked bothered and his eyes were fixed on a great array of documents on the desk before him. Ralph’s brisk step and bright face seemed to rouse him, and with a word of welcome he said:
“Sit down, Fairbanks.” Ralph wondered why he had been sent for. He hoped it was concerning the pay car mystery. There was not an hour in the day that in some shape or other this perplexing puzzle did not come up before him. More than one of his friends was vitally interested in the outcome of that baffling case. For the sake of Bob Adair and Zeph Dallas, he sincerely wished that the mists of secrecy and vagueness might be cleared away.
“Unfinished business,” spoke the superintendent after a pause, almost irritably brushing aside a heap of papers directly before him. “Will it ever be finished?” he added with a sigh. “Fairbanks,” and the official singled out a letter from among the heap of documents, “I am afraid I must ask you to go on special duty.”
“Very well, sir,” said Ralph at once.
“Always ready, always willing,” commended the superintendent with an approving glance at the young railroader. “I wish there were more like you, Fairbanks. You know the bother and stress we are in. This pay car business has upset the whole official force, and we are still in the dark.”
“But Mr. Adair is on the case,” submitted Ralph.
“It has been of no use. He has made an investigation along every inch of the road where the car might have disappeared. He has given up, discouraged. Here is his last report. He mentions you.”
“Mentions me?” repeated Ralph.
“Yes. That is one reason why I have sent for you. He reports from Fairview, and asks us to send you to him on Wednesday.”
“That is day after tomorrow,” said Ralph.
“Exactly. What his plans are I cannot tell you, but he refers to some efficient work you have done in his line in the past, and requests us to detail you specially in his service. What do you say, Fairbanks?”
“I am at your orders, sir.”
“Very good. That settles one part of the business. The other may not come so welcome to you, but you must be our man. Glance over that, will you?”
The official handed Ralph a card covered with calculations. There were bewildering figures, so many cars, so many used per day, so much profit. The totals were enormous.
“The Overland Fruit Dispatch,” explained the superintendent, “is out for bids on the transfer of their cars east from Rockton.”
“I heard something of that.”
“We are out for the contract. It means a big thing for us. So is the Midland Central. That means war, or, rather, more war. Their schedule beats ours by ten minutes. We must beat them by two hours. The test run began at ten o’clock this morning. Porter and Winston, both good men, run as far as Portland. I am not afraid in broad daylight. Nearly all the trouble has been east of that point--you understand?”
“Perfectly,” assented Ralph--“you are afraid of some trickery on the part of our rivals?”
“Yes. I want you to reach Portland and catch the special at four p. m. If the new locomotive crew look good to you, just superintend. But rush that train into the yards by the stroke of eleven p. m., or we lose the contract.”
“I think I can do it,” said Ralph.
“Very well, we give you free rein. Dismiss the crew and find a new one, as you like. You have orders for clear tracks over everything else. Lay out your schedule, give Glidden charge of the wires at headquarters, and get us that contract.”
“I will catch the first west through and report at eleven o’clock to-night,” promised Ralph confidently.
“Good for you, Fairbanks,” commended the superintendent, slapping Ralph encouragingly on the shoulder.
The next was a busy hour for Ralph. He studied the schedules, posted Glidden, took a hurry run for home and caught the train just as it was pulling out of the depot. Ralph reached Portland at half-past three in the afternoon.
The special was on time and due in thirty minutes. She was to take water and coal at the yards, and Ralph, making himself known to the operator there, loitered outside. He saw the relief engineer appear. He was a man he did not know, and something about his face and manner impressed the young railroader rather unfavorably.
The man set his dinner pail near the steps of the switch tower and walked about with the air of a person looking for some one. Then at a low whistle he started for a pile of ties some distance away. A man lurking there had beckoned to him. Ralph watched closely but drew back out of view. His keenest wits were on the alert in a second. He had recognized the lurker as a former unreliable employe of the Great Northern, discharged at the time of the great strike.
Ralph feared this fellow might recognize him and dared not approach him any nearer. The twain conversed for only a moment. Then the lurker handed the engineer a bag. It held apparently about a bushel of some kind of stuff. The engineer took it and returned to the tower, his companion disappearing.
Just then the special came down the tracks. The locomotive was disconnected and the tired and grimed crew drove for the dog house.
In a minute or two the relief engine came down the tracks in charge of the fireman of the run. Ralph looked over the man. He had all the appearances of an honest, plodding fellow. After he had hitched to the train he got down to oil some cylinders. The engineer piled aboard with his bag, chucked it under the seat, and alighted again and went back to meet the conductor from the caboose.
Of that bag Ralph had been suspicious from the start. He now deftly took the engine step, hauled out the bag, thrust it under the fireman’s seat, swung shut its swinging board, and sat down at the engineer’s post.
“Hello!” exclaimed the fireman, stepping up into the cab--“who are you?”
“Your engineer this trip.”
“Eh? Where does Bartley come in?”
“He don’t come in,” replied Ralph definitely.
“Your name Bartley?” inquired Ralph, as the engineer and the conductor came up to the locomotive.
“That’s me,” smartly responded the man with a wondering look at Ralph.
“Well, you are relieved from duty on this special trip,” advised Ralph.
“Hey--who says so?”
“The general superintendent. Is that right, operator?”
The towerman nodded, beckoned Bartley aside and made some explanations to him. His auditor looked sullen and ugly. Ralph did not leave the post of duty he had assumed, meantime giving the conductor an idea of how affairs stood.
“Hold on, there,” spoke Bartley in a gruff tone, as the train got ready to start out. “I’ve got some personal property in that cab.”
“All right,” nodded Ralph in quite a friendly way--“get it out.”
“Bag of apples for a mate down the line,” mumbled the engineer, reaching under the seat. “Bag of--thunder! they’ve gone.”
The conductor had run to the caboose. The engineer drew back from the empty void under the seat in a puzzled, baffled way. Ralph beckoned to the operator.
“Watch that man,” he ordered in a quick whisper. “If he tries to send any messages ahead advise the operator to report instantly to headquarters.”
Then Ralph opened the throttle and sent the test special on her dubious way, leaving the discomfited Bartley glaring after him in baffled suspicion and distrust.
“What’s up--something?” declared the fireman of the special as the train cleared the yards at Portland.
“Yes,” replied Ralph, watching out for signals and testing gauges and airbrakes. “This is up: What kind of a man is your engineer, Bartley?”
“He’s not my engineer at all,” retorted the fireman rather testily, “and I was sorry when I was listed with him. He’s a bossing, quarrelsome sort of a fellow. He don’t train with my crowd, and I’m glad you’re on in his place. You’re Fairbanks, eh? Well, I’ve heard of you.”
“Nothing bad, I hope,” challenged Ralph with a smile.
“Almost too good to last.”
“Oh, by the way, I want to say to you that this trip is going to give you a great chance.”
“For what?” inquired the fireman, big eyed and interested.
“To make a record.”
“It isn’t much of a run.”
“Yes, it is, and a great deal depends on it. The general superintendent is watching this run. It means a record and money for the Great Northern. We may strike trouble. Everything depends on landing these cars in the yards at Stanley Junction by eleven p. m. to-night.”
“I’m with you, Mr. Fairbanks,” said the fireman earnestly. “I don’t know all you do, but I’ll follow orders to a T.”
“That’s the ticket. Look here.”
They were running easily over an air line, and Ralph had an opportunity to reach under the fireman’s seat and pull into view the bag he had stored there.
“I say, who put that there?” demanded the fireman with a stare.
“I did. It belonged to Bartley. It’s the ‘personal property’ he was so anxiously searching for.”
Both looked into the bag. Ralph reached in and drew out a white object about the size of an egg. There were a good many others of these in the bag. It crisped in his fingers, as he turned it over inspecting it. He smelled of it, tasted of it, and a queer looking smile hovered over his lips.
“Do you know what it is?” he inquired.
The fireman fumbled it gingerly and then shook his head in the negative.
“It’s soda--caustic soda,” said Ralph. “There’s enough more in there to start a laundry. This black stuff,” and he drew out one of a hundred dark colored cubes--“it tastes like salt. Ah, I think I guess it out. Witness this,” he continued to the fireman, “Bartley sneaked that bag aboard. I wish to keep it for evidence.”
“Evidence of what?”
“Trickery, conspiracy. To my way of thinking he intended using that soda to churn the water in the boiler, and half a dozen of those salt bricks would smother the best fire you ever built.”
“Thunder!” ejaculated the fireman excitedly, “there is something up, indeed.”
“So much so, that we want to keep our eyes wide open every foot of the way,” said Ralph emphatically. “In my opinion Bartley was bribed to cripple this locomotive so she couldn’t pull through on time.”
“The villain!” commented the fireman.
“Now all we’ve got to do is to beat that game,” resumed Ralph, “and I’ll guarantee you honorable mention and a raise if you help me.”
“Anybody would help you,” declared the fireman enthusiastically, gratified at the confidence reposed on him--“they don’t raise such engineers as you every day.”
“I am a dispatcher at present,” said Ralph, “and a trifle rusty at the old trade, I find.”
Rusty or not, Ralph now entered heartily into the zest of pushing the special through. Twenty miles on the main, to shorten the route a run was started over the Itica branch, forty miles in length. The special had full swing for the east, as headquarters was keeping tab of the train every minute.
There was a stop at Laketon, thirty miles farther on. It came on signal, and Ralph expected something had happened. He read twice the flimsy handed to him by the operator.
It was from the dispatcher at Portland, but via Glidden at headquarters. It advised Ralph that the treacherous engineer, Bartley, had sent a cypher dispatch to some one at Itica.
Itica was ten miles ahead. Here the Great Northern branch tracks crossed those of the rival road on the signal interlocking system.
“I will be glad when we get past Itica,” decided Ralph mentally, after a sharp twenty minutes’ run, as he came in sight of the crossing tower and got the stop signal; a glance ahead told him that it was doubtful if he got past Itica at all.
There was a single track at this point, and it crossed here the double track of the rival line. Blocking the Great Northern completely, a double-header stood slantwise, sagging where it had torn up the ground ripping out a cross-section of the interlocking rails.
The switchman came up to the special as Ralph slowed down.
“It’s stalled, you are,” he observed.
“I see that,” said Ralph.
“A thrick.”
“You think that, do you?”
“I know it. ’Twas done a-purpose. We’ve had no kind of throuble here before. They just pulled those two old wrecks to the crossing and derailed them a-purpose.”
Ralph left his fireman in charge of the engine and ran up into the signal tower. He came down in a few minutes and consulted with the conductor. The fireman studied his set grave face intently as he resumed his place at the throttle. Ralph pulled the whistle as a back up signal. Then the train, composed of ten refrigerator fruit cars and the caboose, began retracing the course the special had just come.
Ten miles backing, and the special arrived at the station where Ralph had received the message from headquarters. He had a brisk brief talk with the operator there, calling the conductor into the consultation. There was some switching, and the locomotive, headed right, started from the main in a southerly direction.
“I say, Mr. Fairbanks,” the fireman expressed himself in some wonderment, “of course you know where you are going.”
“I hope I do.”
“Well, I don’t,” blankly confessed the fireman. “This is the old Eagle Pass cut off, isn’t it?”
“It was, once. I hope it is now.”
“Why, it hasn’t been used for years.”
“We’re going to use it.”
The fireman looked blank. Except for some old fashioned targets, there was nothing to show that they were traversing the rails, for the snow lay on a dead level.
“I can’t go back the main forty miles, make up forty more, and get to the Junction anywhere near schedule,” explained Ralph. “We have already lost time from that blockade at Itica our rivals fixed up for us. If we can get through to the Mountain Division tracks over this stretch, We save over two hours’ time.”
“Aha, I see your idea,” exclaimed the fireman, aroused. “I’m with you.”
Ralph was trying a dangerous experiment, and he knew it. Time was the essential, however, and the risk must be taken. They felt their way cautiously. It was nearly dusk now, and he did not fancy getting caught after dark among those lonely mountain gullies.
The pilot had to clear the way of snow. There was a tremendous rattling of the coaches as they sunk with the track and struck uneven reaches. At a trestle structure the train shook visibly. The fireman uttered a great sigh of relief as the last car passed safely over it.
They were on a down slant on a sharp curve when a shock that was something terrific ran through the train. Ralph threw on the air lightning quick and closed the throttle with a jerk.
The young railroader was fairly lifted from his seat and the fireman went spinning to the bottom of the cab.
“Thunder!” he shouted, “what have we struck?”
Ralph got down to find out. The conductor came running up while he was making his inspection. They discovered a queer situation.
Chained to the track were three ties. They did not look as if they had been placed there for a bumper. But Ralph did not waste time theorizing. With what tools the locomotive afforded they set to work and soon removed the obstruction.
Just an hour later they cleared the old rickety cut off. It was dark now. They ran down the main line ten miles, and at The Barrens took coal and water, while Ralph was busy with the station operator in communication with headquarters.
He calculated closely as they started on the long home run. It would take some steam and the best of luck to reach the yards at Stanley Junction by eleven p. m.
At nine o’clock they passed Revere without stopping. At ten they switched at Wayne, forty-five miles from terminus.
It lacked just ten minutes of eleven o’clock when the special came in sight of the lights of the Junction. To follow the main and risk a stoppage at the limits would never allow of an arrival on the time set.
“I have got an idea,” said Ralph, slowing up as they neared the first siding of the yards in-tracks.
“Go to it, then--anything to pull through on time,” responded the fireman with vigor.
Ralph jumped down from the cab, unset a switch, glanced ahead down the open track, and then glanced at his watch.
“Eight minutes,” he said, quite excited now. “Crowd on every pound of steam you can. We may make it by a bare scratch.”
Ahead was the outline of the fence of the yards. The gate to its west special track outlet was shut after working hours, Ralph knew well, but it was a flimsy affair used less for protection than to exclude intruders.
“Four minutes,” he spoke, and the flying locomotive was rushing ahead with a grinding roar.
“Three.”
They took the gate, sending its frail boards flying up into the air in a cascade of riven splinters.
“Arrived!” shouted the fireman triumphantly.
Ralph started to let down speed. Just then something happened. The brake beam of the truck under the tender dropped, causing the wheels to leave the rails.
The locomotive played a veritable “crack the whip” with the cars behind, became separated from the train, and traveled fully four hundred feet before she stopped.
The train broke in three sections. The wheels seemed to be smashing through logs, rails and stones. The noise was deafening. A yardman said later that as the train burst through the switches each car seemed to carry beneath it a huge ball of fire, caused by the wheels being dead-locked by the automatic brakes.
Not a car was smashed, and no two cars were left on the same tracks or pointing the same way. The caboose had its rear wheels on one track and its front wheels on the track south. The cars were standing in every direction, but not a person was hurt, not a car was invalided.
Ralph ran up to the yardmaster and held out his watch to him.
“Verify the arrival,” he ordered hastily.
“Yes, 10:58, two minutes ahead of time,” said the man with a stare of wonderment. “We were expecting you, Fairbanks, but--not in that way!”
Ralph Fairbanks sat at work on the task apportioned him by the general superintendent six hours after he had delivered the California fruit special “on time.”
The young railroader went at the missing pay car case just as he started at anything he undertook--with ardor and intelligence. He lined up all the facts in order, he met Adair down the line at Maddox, and Zeph Dallas was with him.
By three o’clock in the afternoon Ralph knew all there was to gather up as to the details of the missing pay car. It was not much to know. No trace of it had been found. There were a dozen theories as to what had become of it. Two of Adair’s helpers favored one looking to the bold running off of the car after being detached by a “borrowed” engine of the Midland Central, and were working along that line.
Adair told Ralph that he was anxious to get after the five men with whom Zeph Dallas had been making friends for a week or more. Their leader was Rivers, and there was no doubt that this crowd had worked on the pay car robbery.
As Zeph had tearfully narrated to Ralph when he had implored his aid, the crowd had fooled him completely. From the start they must have had an inkling as to his identity. Working on that knowledge, as Zeph expressed it, they had simply “had fun with him.”
The deceptive Rivers had left false telegrams purposely in Zeph’s way. He had got up fictitious interviews with his confederates to which Zeph had listened, believing himself a shrewd eavesdropper.
They put up a plausible plan which diverted his investigations entirely from their real intentions, and this was how he never dreamed for a moment that they had the slightest hint as to the starting of the substitute pay car out of Rockton.
The day of that event they had sent Zeph on a fool errand to pretended accomplices at a desolate spot thirty miles from any railroad. Returning to the old camp of the conspirators the next morning foot sore and wearied, Zeph had found it utterly abandoned. The crowd had deserted him for good, and he was left “to hold the bag,” as he ruefully expressed it.
There was “one great big thing” that Zeph had done, however, and Ralph encouragingly told him so. He had managed to get possession of papers and lists that gave the names and plans of the conspirators who were acting for the rival road, and also the cypher telegraphic code they used.
So valuable did Adair consider this information, that he declared it would not only result in proving where the real responsibility rested for the various loss and damage of late to the Great Northern, but he believed that when confronted with the proofs the Midland Central officials, rather than court legal proceedings would foot every dollar of the expensive bill run up by their spies, even to the pay car loss.
So, after telling Ralph that he should spend a day in consultation with the superintendent and others at Stanley Junction, and to advise him at once of any new discoveries of importance, the road officer left Ralph and Zeph hopefully to their own devices.
At exactly ten o’clock the next morning as the general superintendent and Adair sat in earnest consultation at headquarters. Glidden arrived in great haste with a telegram.
“A pink, sir,” he reported to the head officer. “Was in cypher. From Fairbanks.”
“Hello!” commented Adair, rising from his chair interested. “That’s good. He never wastes electricity unless he has something to tell.”
“Why,” almost shouted the superintendent, roused up to tremendous excitement, “he has found the missing pay car!”
“He beats me, and that’s fine, quick work!” declared Adair. “I told you he was a genius, and I knew what I was about when I sent for him.”
“Listen to this,” continued the superintendent hastily: “Pay car found--north Eagle Pass. Smashed. Empty. Adair must come at once.’”
“I guess so,” nodded the road detective with animation. “What a record: Roundhouse wiper, towerman, fireman, engineer, train dispatcher, and now beating the special road service right on its own grounds! Chief, where are you going to put Fairbanks next?”
“Something better and something soon,” said the gratified superintendent. “He deserves the best.”
“There’s nothing better than chief dispatcher,” declared old John Glidden, loyal to the core to the proud traditions of his calling. “You just keep Fairbanks right at my side--we’re both happy and useful right here.”
Adair waited for no regular train. A special locomotive took him down to Maddox, to find Ralph and Zeph awaiting him in a private room off the operator’s office.
“Found the pay car, eh, Fairbanks?” challenged the road detective briskly.
“Yes, Mr. Adair--what was left of it.”
“Knew you would, if anyone did. So I bungled? Well, I’m glad to learn what I don’t know. Give us the details.”
Ralph was brief and explicit. The first investigating party under Adair’s direction had traversed all the southern cut offs. They had forgotten or neglected the one over which Ralph had made his sensational run with the California fruit special. It was no wonder that the division superintendent had considered it impossible, for at places the fruit special had ploughed up dirt and dead leaves matted down over the rails two feet thick.
At all events, recalling the obstruction of the chained ties, Ralph and Zeph had gone to the spot.
“That obstruction,” explained Ralph, “had certainly been placed before the theft of the pay car, anticipatory of what was planned to happen.”
“Yes, it looks that way,” nodded Adair thoughtfully.
“The car must have run on strong gravity to the bumper, and went over the edge of the roadway at that point. She struck down over one hundred feet, breaking through the tops of trees. The snow later covered all traces of the descent. You will find the car lying near an old abandoned quarry house, a mere heap of kindling.”
“And the safes and the money parrels?”
“Not a trace. However, Mr. Adair, it is no easy way to get out of the ravine with those stout heavy bank safes, and I advise that a guard be left in the vicinity.”
“You have solved the mystery of the pay car, Fairbanks,” said the road officer in a gratified tone--“now to find out what has become of the plunder.”
“You will remain here, Mr. Adair?” inquired Ralph.
“Until I have made a thorough investigation and placed my men, certainly,” responded the detective.
“I wish to put in a few hours at a side line investigation, if you please, and may not see you again until tomorrow, and I wish to take Dallas with me.”
“All right,” said Adair. He looked as if he would like to know more of Ralph’s plans, but he had too much confidence in his young helper to question him.
As to Ralph, he had a decided reason for not explaining to the road officer. Glen Palmer was on his mind strongly, and a good many strange things that Glen had told him had impressed him with the conviction that the grandfather of the unfortunate Glen had been a pretty important element in the plots of the conspirators all along the line.
Zeph, while at the camp of the plotters, had heard considerable they did not intend him to hear. They had spoken of the Palmers--grandfather and grandson, many times.
“From what they said,” declared Zeph, “I could easily decide that they discovered old Palmer, knowing him to be just the man they could use. Without Glen knowing it, they got him away from home several times. They played on his simple vanity, making him believe they would later get him a great job with a big railroad. Glen was heart-broken when he discovered this. The crowd finally got his grandfather in captivity. Glen tried to rescue him, and they caged him up, too.”
“I begin to understand the circumstances under which the poor fellow sent those two warning messages,” murmured Ralph. “Thief or no thief, he was loyal to me.”
“I think it, too, and I think he could tell you lots,” said Zeph. “I know his grandfather could. Both escaped finally, but where they went I don’t know.”
Ralph knew at least where Glen was. He remembered the town at which his arrest had been reported. It was less than twenty miles distant, and they caught a fast freight. Ralph went at once to the workhouse of the thriving little town. He inquired for Glen Palmer, but was informed that the following day was visitor’s day, and that the rules were never broken except on special orders from the superintendent, who was absent at present.
“I will call tomorrow, then,” said Ralph. “I wish, though, you would see Glen Palmer and tell him so. He may have some important message for me.”
“You guessed it, sure enough,” reported the prison guard, returning with a folded fragment of a note. “Young Palmer was frantic to know you was here, and says please don’t forget and come tomorrow.”
“I will certainly be here, or some one representing me,” promised Ralph, and then he read the note, which ran:
“I am terribly anxious to know if my grandfather arrived safely at the home of my friend, Gregory Drum, at Ironton, where I sent him a few days ago.”
Ralph and his companion went on to Ironton at once. They located the Drum residence, but did not find its proprietor at home. His wife, a thin, nervous lady, told how a few days before an old man named Palmer had come there, saying that his son was well known to her husband, which the lady believed to be true.
“He acted so strange I was nearly frightened to death,” narrated the lady. “The second day here I found him astride of the roof ordering some imaginary men to string it with wires. The next day a neighbor came running in to tell me that he was up on a telegraph pole with a little pocket clicker. My husband was away, I was frightened for the man’s good as well as my own, and I had him taken in charge by the town marshal. He’ll treat him kindly till my husband returns, and Mr. Palmer will be in safe hands.”
Ralph followed up this explanation by going at once to the marshal’s headquarters. There was a low, one-story building with an office, and a barred room comfortably furnished beyond. The marshal listened to Ralph’s story with interest.
“I’ll be glad if you can make head or tail out of the old fellow,” he said, and led the way into the barred room.
“Hello!” exclaimed Ralph, with a violent start as he entered the apartment.
“Thunder! I say, where did you get him?” ejaculated Zeph Dallas, with an amazed stare.
Across a cot lay a man asleep. He wore a stained bandage across his head and was haggard and wretched looking.
“Oh, that?” replied the marshal. “That’s mystery No. 2. That’s a bigger puzzle than the old telegrapher. He’s the man we picked up mad as a March hare, with twenty thousand dollars in banknotes in his pockets.”
“Zeph,” spoke Ralph in a quick whisper, “you know who it is?”
“Sure, I know who it is,” responded Zeph with alacrity. “It’s Rivers, the king bee of the pay car robbers.”
The young train dispatcher had made a momentous discovery. He beckoned Zeph to follow him on tiptoe so they should not disturb nor be seen by Rivers. They somewhat surprised the marshal by crowding out of the room.
“There’s the queer old fellow, Palmer, you asked about,” said the official, pointing to a form occupied at a table at the other end of the room. “Don’t you want to see him?”
“No, not just now,” replied Ralph, drawing the man confidentially to one side. “We have not come here out of curiousity, but on a question of great importance. I represent the Great Northern Railroad, and you can help us very greatly.”
“Can I? Good. I’ll do it, then,” instantly answered the marshal. “I’m not used to having such heavy cases as those two in there, and they pester me.”
“Tell us about the man who seems hurt and sick.”
“Why, he was brought in a few nights since by our man who watches the rivermen. They’re a rough, bad lot. He found this man on a carouse in one of their haunts. Showing all kinds of money. He watched them, and jumped in just as they attacked the man and were about to rob him. We found over twenty thousand dollars in bank notes on the man--think of that! Only once since then has he entirely recovered from that cut on his head, and refused to give his name or say a word, except that his money came from a gold mine.”
“Yes, a gold mine on wheels,” observed Zeph pointedly.
“The man’s mind is affected by the blow he got, and only a few minutes at a time has he been rational. He offered me all his money if I’d let him go. Funny thing, though; in one of his spells early this morning I found him whispering to old Palmer.”
“Did you?” pressed Zeph eagerly.
“The old man ain’t right, you know, but he sticks to that click-clack contrivance all the time. I watched the two, and the prisoner promised Palmer all kinds of things if he’d get free and send a certain message to a certain party, or somehow get the telegram sent. Well, since then the old man has been terribly busy with his play telegraph device, and excited, too. About an hour since he calls me to him, and says he will certainly get me a thousand dollars if I will take a message to the operator here. Only ten words, he says--one hundred dollars a word. I told him I wouldn’t do anything until the sheriff came back tomorrow. He said only ten words. I asked him what ten words, and he shot out a lot of gibberish I couldn’t take in.”
“A cypher telegram,” murmured Zeph.
“Well, I left it that way.”
“Let me lurk around a bit, will you?” inquired Ralph.
“Certainly,” assented the marshal.
For the next ten minutes Ralph, hidden in a corner of the detention room, posted himself and listened. When he came out his face was excited and eager.
“Don’t let those prisoners send out a word or see a single person until I come back to you,” he directed the marshal.
“All right. Found out something?”
“I think I have. I’ll know for sure inside of six hours.”
“And let me know, too. You see all this bothersome mystery is worrying me.”
“You first of all,” declared Ralph, “and you won’t lose by coöperating with us.”
“I see you’re smart boys,” observed the inexperienced marshal, “and I trust in your word to straighten out this tangle.”
“What, Ralph?” broke in Zeph eagerly, as they left the place.
“I think I’ve got the clew.”
“To what?”
“The whole pay car business--at least the start of one.”
“Tell me about it.”
“I simply listened to Glen’s grandfather at his dummy ticker. Poor old man! He fancies he is being sought for by great railroad systems all over the world to take charge of their business. He ticked off all kinds of telegrams to important people. Then I caught the thread of a message he seemed to have particularly on his mind. It is just ten words, and of course must be the one he wanted the marshal to send. There it is.”
Ralph showed a card on the back of which he had penciled down the following words:
“Rajah Sun and Moon Aeroplane Spectacles exemplar. Pardon Star Mudji.”
Quick as a flash Zeph hauled out the written screed he had acquired while in the company of the conspirators. It comprised the formula of their cypher code.
“Advise Jem and Parsons,” he translated at once. “Barn loft plunder. Get me bail.” “Who to, Ralph?” he inquired eagerly--“the telegram.”
“Mrs. Hannah Clifton, Dunbar Station.”
“A relative, I’ll bet. You’re right, we’ve got the clew! ‘Barn loft plunder.’ Ralph, Dunbar Station, quick!”
“Yes,” said the young dispatcher quietly, “that’s our terminus, as quick as we can make it.”
Ralph’s special pass furnished him by the road officer came in good.
It brought them a lift on an urgency locomotive and another on the tender of the Daylight Express. At three o’clock that afternoon after due inquiry the two friends approached a house in a lonely settlement at the edge of Dunbar Station.
As they neared the house a woman knitting on its steps arose hurriedly, ran into the house and shut every door and window about the place.
“Acts sort of scared, eh?” suggested Zeph, as they approached the front of the house.
“Or suspicious,” remarked Ralph.
“Stop right there. Who are you, and what do you want?”
The boys paused summarily, a bit taken off their balance. Very suddenly the barrel of a long shotgun was thrust through the slats of one of the wooden shutters, and the voice which challenged them showed no timidity or nonsense.
“We want to see Mrs. Hannah Clifton,” replied Ralph politely, revealing himself.
“What for?” demanded the uncompromising invisible challenger.
“Why--er--that is--” began the rattled Zeph stammeringly.
“Shut up,” whispered Ralph unceremoniously. “In behalf of Mr. Rivers,” added Ralph ahead.
“He sent you, did he?”
“We just came from him.”
“On business, I suppose?”
“Yes, madam.”
“All right, then he gave you a word.”
“Password!” whispered Zeph desperately.
“Sun and Moon,” ventured Ralph recklessly.
“Wrong!” cried the woman as quick as lightning. “I see your game. You’re guessing. If you don’t make yourselves scarce in two minutes, I’ll fire.”
She did not wait the limit. The fowling piece scattered skithering bird shot with a flare just as the intruders got out of range.
“She’s too keen for us--get to the barn, Ralph,” suggested Zeph breathlessly.
“Yes, run,” ordered Ralph.
They reached it, ran to cover and peered out. The woman, gun in hand, dashed from the house in the direction of a nest of small huts in the vicinity.
“She is going to rouse up some of her friends, I have not the least doubt,” observed Ralph. “Quick action, Zeph. That telegram said ‘barn loft!’”
“Whoo-oop!”
Already the impetuous Zeph had acted on the impulse of the moment. He was up in the loft already. Mingled with his chucklings were the rustlings of hay, a dragging sound. Down on Ralph’s head came a bulky object as he started up the cleated side of the barn.
“Bags--two of them! Money! Pay envelopes!” gasped the young road officer in a transport of wild excitement. “Rivers hid them here. The woman don’t know. Hustle, get out. She may bring a mob after us. Oh, I’m a--I’m a great detective at last!”
“You are, and always were,” cheered Ralph with a happy smile. He felt well satisfied. The very feeling of the stuffed bags, a mere glance at their contents, told the young railroader that they were lugging to safety a fortune probably amounting to over two hundred thousand dollars.
They lost no time in cutting across the fields towards the town, each bearing a share of the precious burden.
At the local bank Ralph amazed the proprietor by demanding that the bags be locked up in his strongest vaults as the property of the Great Northern railroad.
Then he hurried to the office of the company railroad operator at Dunbar Station.
There was a brief explanation, a quick call for headquarters, the urgency signal, 25, and Ralph could fancy loyal old John Glidden at headquarters throwing open the entire lines for final orders in the great pay car mystery case.
East, west, south the messages flew: to the general superintendent, to Bob Adair, to the marshal, to the paymaster at Stanley Junction.
The unobtrusive station operator stared in bewilderment at the quick, natty stranger, who seemed to have no trouble in keeping track of a dozen different messages at once. It took Ralph fully an hour, with details, repeats and clean up. He arose from the instrument with a satisfied face.
“I’ve done my work, Zeph,” he said, “and I’m going back to headquarters. You are to wait here for instructions from Mr. Adair. They will come sharp and brisk, don’t be afraid. We have started the ball rolling, the rest will be easy.”
“What are you doing here, Fairbanks?”
Ralph had just entered the train dispatcher’s office after a good night’s sleep and sat down at his usual post of duty.
He felt pretty good, for he was rested up, and Glidden had spared a minute from some rush business to tell him that Adair had coralled the whole crowd of conspirators, bank bullion and all.
The general superintendent of the Great Northern, however, seemed to feel even better than Ralph himself. He had swung into the office with bright eyes and a beaming face, and while his challenge might sound to the uninitiated like a conventional call down, the head official looked as if he would like to grab the hand of his loyal, useful young assistant and hurrah at him.
“Getting back to routine, sir,” said Ralph with a pleasant laugh.
“Wrong box.”
“I’m afraid I don’t quite understand,” began Ralph.
“Don’t. Then I’ll show you,” announced the official with a forcible chuckle. “Can’t have insubordination and men out of place in this service. There’s your desk,” and seizing Ralph by the arm the superintendent led him past the counter into the little office rarely occupied, and marked on its door “Chief Dispatcher--Private.”
“I will need your signature to get some autograph pads made,” continued the official, picking up the stand containing the various rubber stamps in use. “What are you staring at, Fairbanks?”
“You don’t mean--”
“Promotion? oh, yes, I do. That was settled on after the fruit special affair, but so many rushing things came along since we couldn’t get around to you. Just make out a list of your new office requirements and changes in men and routine, and I’ll O. K. them.”
There was a suspicious sound in the open doorway. It was half between a sniffle and a chuckle.
“Here, you old rascal!” cried the superintendent, reaching out and grabbing the escaping Glidden, “no hanging around here,” and he dragged him into the room. “First official act, Fairbanks, discharge this man. Then make him assistant manager. He’s too fine for a simple first trick man.”
“Oh, but you’re doing things!” commented the old operator, trying to disguise his aroused emotions.
“For those who have done things for us, exactly,” answered the superintendent briskly. “Both of you come to my office at 10 a. m. You will probably be interested in hearing the final wind-up of the pay car mystery.”
It was certainly a remarkable meeting, that which the two friends attended.
Bob Adair was there with his report, brisk, animated and proud of his success. Zeph Dallas, excited and delighted, seemed to grow a foot when the superintendent gave him a personal word of praise for his efforts.
The initial work of Ralph Fairbanks had started in action all the efficient machinery of the road. As Zeph described it, once the first clew got to Adair he just seemed to spread out a great net and caught everybody and everything in it.
By midnight five of the principal conspirators had been run down and locked up. Some confessions were the result. Best of all, these brought out the secret connection of these men with the rival road.
“There is a pretty heavy bill to pay, but certain officials of the Midland Central will be glad to pay it,” declared Adair.
“What had the robbers done with the bank bullion?” inquired the superintendent.
“They had no means of breaking open the strong safes quickly, and dropped them all down the well near the old deserted hut in Eagle Pass, intending to return later when the chase was over and rifle them at their leisure.”
“Yes, that was the real gold mine Rivers boasted about,” submitted Ralph.
“We have secured a list of all the ‘suspicious’ men among the telegraphers,” continued Adair. “They will trouble us no further with delays, smash-ups and cut wires. Chief Dispatcher Fairbanks has already cleared the service, and the Great Northern can go on its way smoothly.”
There was one favor Ralph asked before the conference broke up. This was that the fireman who had helped him in the record run of the California fruit special be remembered. It was granted, and the honest fellow was given a promotion.
“On the side, Fairbanks,” said the road officer, familiarly linking Ralph’s arm as they left the office of the general superintendent, “I wish to express a change of opinion on one subject.”
“What is that, Mr. Adair?” inquired Ralph.
“Glen Palmer.”
“You have seen him?” asked Ralph with interest.
“Yes, and you will see him, too, as soon as he is pardoned, which will be within twenty-four hours, if the influence of the Great Northern counts for anything. He is a noble young fellow.”
“I thought that all along.”
“I didn’t, and I am ashamed of myself for the sentiment. He is no thief, and never was a thief.”
“Not even--”
“The department store episode? No. He was trying to escape from the conspirators, who pressed him closely. He found himself stranded without a penny in an unfriendly town. In order to get the money to place his aged relative in a position of safety, he pretended to take the jewelry we know about so his grandfather could claim the ten dollars reward and carry out their plans.”
“I am truly glad to hear this,” said Ralph warmly. “And the convict portrait Ike Slump had?”
“Is really that of a cousin very much resembling Glen. He was the cause of Glen’s wanderings and troubles. He was a sad scamp, but his health is broken. He escaped from jail, and Glen was willing to shoulder his identity until he got safely out of the country, where he now is trying to redeem his broken past.”
“What of the old grandfather, Mr. Adair?”
“Glen wishes to repurchase the chicken farm. He loves the business. His grandfather is at heart a harmless old man, and Glen believes would soon forget his vagaries and settle down to a happy life.”
“They shall have all the help I can give them,” promised Ralph heartily.
Adair accompanied Ralph as far as the dispatcher’s office. Glidden had preceded them. He just sat down at the operating table when a click at his instrument caused first trick man, second trick man, copy operator and Ralph himself to listen attentively.
A call had come giving a “sine” or signature that never ran over the wire without making every man in the dispatcher’s office sit up and take notice--the “sine” of the president of the Great Northern himself.
“For you, Mr. Fairbanks,” spoke the old operator with a vast chuckle and excessive politeness: “Mr. Fairbanks, Chief Dispatcher Great Northern: Congratulations.”
“Fairbanks,” spoke the road officer, grasping the hand of the young railroader warmly, “I’m proud of you!”
Ralph flushed with pride and pleasure. But however warmly the generous words of commendation from the railroad men thrilled the young chief dispatcher, they paled into insignificance when the lad, on reaching home that night, heard his mother say:
“Ralph, my son, you have made me very proud!” And then, woman-like, she added: “But don’t do it again, Ralph. You--you might get hurt!”
“All right, mother,” he promised, as he kissed her. “Only I don’t believe those chaps will have a chance to make trouble for me or the railroad again--that is, not right away.”
THE END
This Isn’t All!
Would you like to know what became of the good friends you have made in this book?
Would you like to read other stories continuing their adventures and experiences, or other books quite as entertaining by the same author?
On thereverse sideof the wrapper which comes with this book, you will find a wonderful list of stories which you can buy at the same store where you got this book.
Don’t throw away the Wrapper
Use it as a handy catalog of the books you want some day to have. But in case you do mislay it, write to the Publishers for a complete catalog.
THE RAILROAD SERIES
By ALLEN CHAPMAN
Author of the “Radio Boys,” Etc.
Uniform Style of Binding. Illustrated.
Every Volume Complete in Itself.
In this line of books there is revealed the whole workings of a great American railroad system. There are adventures in abundance--railroad wrecks, dashes through forest fires, the pursuit of a “wildcat” locomotive, the disappearance of a pay car with a large sum of money on board--but there is much more than this--the intense rivalry among railroads and railroad men, the working out of running schedules, the getting through “on time” in spite of all obstacles, and the manipulation of railroad securities by evil men who wish to rule or ruin.