CHAPTER XI
THE HOLD-UP AT CASEY’S TANK
Itwas Sunday in St. Louis, and in East St. Louis as well, but there was no rest for the officials of the Vandalia Line. Little Jack, the messenger boy, and Tommy, the pump boy, were being examined by the superintendent. The boys told their story without embarrassment. A boy who has been messenger for a year in the roadmaster’s office, and another boy who has been up against the White Mail with his mule, when the Mail was making little less than a mile a minute, are not going to get rattled when telling a simple story. When the superintendent had heard that Two-card Charley, Jim, and Pete were going to rob the Midnight Express on Monday night, he began to work the wire that went to Chicago.
Then, as now, Chicago was the headquarters of the famous Watchem Detective Agency, and the Vandalia wanted a good detective, right away, regardless of expense.
Now, the elder Watchem happened to be a personal friend of the President of the Vandalia Line, and he would send none other than his boy, Billy, who had already made a world-wide reputation as a criminal catcher. But Billy was away chasing a bank robber through the Michigan forests, and could not be found.
Late in the afternoon the Superintendent grew impatient, but the head of the Chicago agency assured him that a detective would reach the river in time to take the Midnight Express on Monday night.
When the last train over the Alton left Chicago that Sunday night, with no detective on board, the Superintendent went swearing to bed. When all the morning trains pulled out on Monday, bringing no help, the Superintendent said, over the wire, to Watchem, that he would give the business to Theil. Whereupon, old man Watchem reached over to Indianapolis, touched the President, and the President said, over the wire, to the Superintendent, “Leave it all to Watchem,” and he left it, and sulked in his tent the day.
The Michigan pines were making long shadowson Monday afternoon when Billy Watchem came to the lake-side and caught a wire from his father, bidding him hurry home.
“Step lively,” said Billy to his burglar, “you’re not the only robber on the road. There is work for me near the home office;” and so the men made haste.
The lamps had been lighted about the post office when young Watchem rushed into the office of the Chicago & Alton and asked for a special engine to carry him to East St. Louis. In his haste he got on the wrong spur, and stumbled over a little, inexpensive, but extremely officious official, whose business it is to pass upon the credentials of country editors and see that the company’s advertisements are properly printed.
“For whom do you want a special?” asked the keeper of the clippings.
“For myself; that’s ‘‘whom.’”
Now, the keeper of the clippings gave the young man one withering glance, and turned away with a hauteur in the presence of which the President would have paled, as the morning star pales before the rising sun.
At that moment a comfortable looking man stepped from the elevator. That was the little man’s chief.
“Hello, Billy,” said the General Passenger Agent, giving the young detective a glad hand, “are you all packed?”
“All packed,” said Billy, glancing at a hand grip that till now had been hidden beneath a fall overcoat that hung on his arm.
“Then let us be off. We’ve got a special engine and Pullman car waiting at the station for you,” and the two men went down together.
“Now, have I made of myself an ass?” mused the keeper of the clippings. “I would have wagered my position that he was the editor of the Litchfield Lamplight, and he goes to the river by special train over our road. Ay, over the Alton,” and he closed his desk with a bang.
“I want you to make a mile a minute to-night,” said the General Passenger Agent, offering a cigar to the engineer, as the slim eight-wheeler moved out of the station shed.
As the car clicked over the switches, the young detective turned to a cold lunch that the black boy had builded in the buffet, for hehad not eaten since morning. He had scarcely commenced his meal when the heavy sleeper began to slam her flanges up against the rail and show him that she was rolling. The Alton was one of the oldest of the western roads, and upon this occasion she would take her place as pace-maker for the rest, just as she had taught the Atlantic lines the use of sleeping and dining cars. Indeed it is here, upon these very rails, that we are wont to picture young Mr. Pullman, with a single blanket and a wisp broom, swinging himself into his first sleeper, that was not his, but a rented car.
By the time young Watchem had finished his “tea” the roar of passing towns was coming closer and closer together. When the flying engine screamed for a crossing, the whistle sounded above his head, and far away in the rear of his car a rain of fire was falling in the furrowed fields.
As well might the engine have been running light, for the one sleeper only served to steady her. She was making a mile on a shovel of coal, and five posts on a single fire.
“What’s that?”
“Lexington,” said the porter, bracing himself with a hand on a seat at either side of the aisle. “I tell you, boss, we’re flyin’. Dey don’ mak’ no swiftah ingin dan de nine-spot; an’ ef yo’ heah me shout, dat man Jim know how t’ hit ’er, too.”
“What’s that?”
“Bloomin’ton, sah. I tell you, boss, dese towns am brushin’ by de windahs to-night lak telegraph poles—we’re flyin’, boss,—flyin’, da’s all.”
At a station where they took water, the despatcher asked the engineer if he could stand the strain to cover the entire route. They were holding the Midnight Express at the river. This was the most important train on the Van. “Tell him yes,” said the engineer to the operator, as he opened the throttle. The Alton was making history.
“We’re goin’ through, Mickey,” shouted the engineer, holding his open watch in the thin glare of light that shot up behind the furnace door that was on the latch.
“Good!” said the fireman, catching the enthusiasm that was contagious in the cab.
When the two men had worked so, nervously alert, for another hour, they were drunk with the excitement of the trip. They could not talk for the roar and roll of the engine, but they could see each other in the dim light, and smile at each other across the cab.
As tank after tank they passed without stopping, the fireman would look over at the engineer, and the driver, making the sign of a man drinking (which means “water” on an engine), would jerk his thumb over his shoulder, and the fireman would go back and sound the engine tank and show the wet line on the shovel handle to the engineer, and he would raise his right hand and wriggle his wrist, which means “All right, let ’er go.”
Then he would take off his cap, hold his head out of the cab window, and cool his temples in the dewy twilight. He had no thought now of danger; not the faintest appreciation of the risk he was running. He would drive her so to the very edge of the Mississippi, and, if the lights were white, and the switches right, and if it were necessary, he would take the trackless, tieless skeleton of the big bridgethat was being built over the broad river. They were flying.
The President of the C. & A., by a singular coincidence, was watching at the Columbia Theatre in Chicago, men and women going ’round the world in eighty days. “This,” thought the railway man, “is play-acting, and you can’t prove it. But this,” he would add, as message after message was passed into his box, “this play that the Alton is putting up to-night is the real thing.”
The Midnight Express was thirty minutes over-due to leave when the driver of the special, pale but calm faced, dashed up to the station at East St. Louis and brought them to a stand with an emergency stop.
“This is no boy’s business,” growled the Superintendent, as he hurried the young man from the special to the rear of the Midnight Express. “Where’s your father?”
“In Chicago. Got any instructions?”
The Superintendent handed the voyager an envelope containing a letter, his transportation, and a check for an upper berth.
“Thank you,” said the young man, and,ignoring the insult to his tender age, he swung himself into one of the sleepers that were gliding by.
Side by side with the Midnight Express came the O. & M. broad gauge, lumbering along, her high wheels climbing the cold steel rails that lay in “splendid isolation,” with six feet of earth between them. The O. & M. Cannon Ball was jealous of the Midnight Express. In fact it was the coming of the new line, with her narrower, swifter engines, that caused the rails of the O. & M. to get together on a sensible gauge, that has since become a standard for American railways. Side by side the two trains passed the last lights of the city, and found the open fields. Of course there would be a race. Everybody knew that, and when the big engine had got her short train well under way, and her smoke lay across the Van Line in the glare of the light of the Midnight Express, she whistled the other man ahead. Under these circumstances that constitutes a “dare,” and no self-respecting engineer will take it. The Van answered the signal. The Express was a heavy train, andbefore the driver could get them going (he would not tear the fireman’s fire, full of green coal) he was looking into the tail lights of the Cannon Ball. Five miles out the broad gauge had reached the limit of her speed. The black plunger at the head of the Night Express was hanging at her flank, as you have seen a farm-dog hang at the side of a sow, racing up through a field, with only a row of corn between them. Gradually she began to gain. To the joy of her driver and all of her passengers, she began to crawl up. Her headlight could no longer be seen from the sleepers behind the Cannon Ball—only the glare of it. Now her stack stood opposite the mail car on the O. & M. She would soon have the sow by the ear. There was not a man, woman, or child on either of the two trains that did not enter into the excitement of the chase. Now the headlight of the broad gauge engine shone full on the face of the daring driver of the Midnight Express, who was looking back from the cab window. He whistled the man ahead, and a moment later the Van flyer, swinging into a shallow cañon near Collinsville,showed her tail lights to the Cannon Ball.
Of all the people on the two trains, the man who was to occupy lower seven and the man who was to occupy upper seven were least interested in the race. The former kept his thin face, with its receding forehead, pressed to the pane, peering into the night, and thinking wild and awful thoughts.
“What are these common carriers but soulless corporations, oppressors of the poor,—the poor that are growing poorer, as the rich grow richer. Something is radically wrong. The world owes me a living and I mean to have it.”
These and many other thoughts were running through the young man’s almost empty head. Beside him lay a copy of the “Police Gazette” and a small yellow-back branded “Dead on the Desert;” and when young Watchem, who held a check for upper seven, saw the literature, he guessed that this must be Two-card Charley, the amateur and somewhat theatrical young highwayman. Noting the almost expressionless face and the nothingness of the man’s physique, thestrong young detective felt sympathy for this would-be criminal.
Retiring to the smoking-room the detective read his letter of instructions, which was little more and no less than the story of how the messenger boy and the pump boy had overheard the three conspirators conspiring to rob the Midnight Express. In Pete, the chicken-hearted, the shrewd detective recognized “Epsom Pete,” who had held up a stenographer and burglarized a box car in Kansas City. Of Two-card Charley he knew nothing, save the little he had gathered from a few moments’ observation. To begin with, Charley smoked cigarettes excessively, and that made him wakeful and nervous. He ate opium, and that wrecked his morals. But Jim—“Cheyenne Jim,” as he called himself—was a hard nut. His knife-handle, as Watchem was well aware, was notched for two Chinamen, a sheriff, and a Sioux. He was a coward. All his men had been killed going, and a conscienceless coward had no business with a gun. This man must be handled gingerly or somebody would get hurt.
Presently Charley came and sat in the narrow smoking-room opposite the detective, but with his gaze bent upon the black window.
“Charley,” said Watchem, puffing at a cigar which he was attempting to re-light, and instantly Charley’s right hand went back toward his pistol pocket, “we’re going to have a hard winter, I think,” he added, between puffs.
“Sir,” exclaimed the robber, bringing his hands in front of him again, “you have me at some disadvantage.”
“Oh, no! but I’d like to have you so; s’pose you give me your gun.”
Again Charley’s hand went back and his face went chalk white.
“Not so fast, not so fast, my boy,” said the detective, shoving the point of his own pistol up to Charley’s chin; “slowly now. That’s it, butt first. Now we can talk.”
But Charley only glared at the detective and refused to say a word. He had read in the various “works,” with which he was more or less familiar, that the real game robber never gave up to a detective.
When the fresh locomotive that had beenhooked on at Effingham had galloped over the Ambraw bridge and stopped at Greenup, Epsom Pete boarded the blind baggage, and a moment later the black steed, snorting in the frosty morn, was dashing away across Fanchers’ farm.
The detective took a pair of handcuffs, which he happened to have in his grip, and festooned them upon Charley’s wrists. Stepping out on the rear platform he cut off a few feet of surplus bell rope that hung on the railing, and fettered Charley’s feet, so that he might not jump off and lose himself.
When the engineer whistled for Casey Tank he cut the cord and marched the robber-chief up through the train. When the engine had been placed, the detective, standing on the rear end of the day coach, fired three shots, imitating as well as he knew how “the measured beating of my lady’s heart.”
Leaping to the ground, he pushed Charley along in front of him until they came to Pete, cutting the coupling. “Come on, Pete,” said Watchem, and Pete, wondering who the new captain could be, followed on to the locomotive.
“Speak to the gentleman on the engine,Charley,” said the detective. “Call him off or I shall be compelled to kill him.”
“Jim,” said Charley, dramatically, “we have been betrayed. This train is loaded down with detectives and deputy sheriffs. We are surrounded, drop your gun.”
“Just hand it over to the engineer, please,” said Watchem. “There, that’s better. There’s not so many of me that I feel like fighting the whole band.”
“An’ now,” said Pete, facing Two-card Charley, “I reckon here’s whar’ we ’pologize an’ bow ourselves out.”