Kitabı oku: «Ralph, the Train Dispatcher: or, The Mystery of the Pay Car», sayfa 2

CHAPTER III – TROUBLE BREWING

The strange boy appeared upon the scene so suddenly that Ralph decided he must have reached the roadbed from the other side of the embankment.

The young engineer faced him with a slight start. To his certain knowledge he had never seen the lad before. However, his face so strongly resembled that of some one he had met recently it puzzled Ralph. Whom did those features suggest? Ralph thought hard, but gave it up.

“Did you wish to see me?” he inquired.

The boy had a striking face. It was pale and thin, his clothes were neat but shabby. There was a sort of scared look in his eyes that appealed to Ralph, who was strongly sympathetic.

“I know you,” spoke the boy in a hesitating, embarrassed way. “You don’t know me, but I’ve had you pointed out to me.”

“That so?” and Ralph smiled.

“You are Ralph Fairbanks, the engineer of the Overland Express,” continued the lad in a hushed tone, as if the distinction awed him.

“That’s right,” nodded Ralph.

“Well, I’ve heard of you, and you’ve been a friend to a good many people. I hope I’m not over bold, but if you would be a friend to me-”

Here the strange boy paused in a pitiful, longing way that appealed to Ralph.

“Go ahead,” he said.

“I heard this gentleman,” indicating Mr. Fry, “offer to sell the chickens down the embankment. I’m a poor boy, Mr. Fairbanks-dreadfully poor. There’s reasons why I can’t work in the towns like other boys. You can give me work, though-you can just set me on my feet.”

“How can I do that?” inquired Ralph, getting interested.

“By buying me those chickens. I’ve got the place for them, I’ve got the time to attend to them, and I know just how to handle them. Why,” continued the speaker excitedly, “there’s nearly two hundred in prime trim gathered in a little thicket over yonder, and there’s double that number among the wreckage, besides those that are hurt that I can nurse and mend up. If you will buy them for me, I’ll solemnly promise to return you the money in a week and double the amount of interest in two.”

“You talk clear and straight and earnest, my lad,” here broke in the claim agent. “What’s your name?”

“Glen Palmer.”

“Do you live near here?”

“Yes, sir-in an old abandoned farmhouse, rent free, about a mile north of here.”

“With your folks?”

“No, sir, I have no folks, only an old grandfather. He’s past working, and, well, a-a little queer at times, and I have to keep close watch of him. That’s what’s the trouble.”

The claim agent took out his note book.

“Look here,” he spoke, “if Fairbanks will vouch for you, I’ll tab off the chickens to you at fifteen dollars, due in thirty days.”

“O-oh!” gasped the lad, clasping his hands in an ecstacy of hope and happiness. “I’ll be sure to pay you- Why, with what I know I can do with those chickens, I could pay you ten times over inside of a month.”

“Mr. Fry,” said Ralph, studying the boy’s face for a moment or two, “I’ll go security for my friend here.”

“Say-excuse me, but say, Mr. Fairbanks, I-I-”

The boy broke down, tears chocking his utterance. He could only clasp and cling to Ralph’s hand. The latter patted him on the shoulder with the encouraging words:

“You go ahead with your chicken farm, Glen, and if it needs more capital come to me.”

“If you only knew what you’ve done for me-for me and my old grandfather!” faltered Glen Palmer, the deepest gratitude and feeling manifested in tone and manner.

Ralph felt sure that the lad had a history. He did not, however, embarrass him with any questioning. He liked the way that young Palmer talked and bustled about as soon as the word was given that his proposition was accepted. With an eager face he announced that he had a plan for getting the chickens to his home, and darted off at breakneck speed, waving his hand gratefully back at Ralph a dozen times.

Ralph and the claim agent reached the dummy to find Cohen hanging around it in great mental distress. Fry invited him to ride in the cab, and tormented him by talking about his bargain clear back to the roundhouse. Then he relieved Cohen’s distress, which bordered on positive distraction, by releasing him from his contract.

Mrs. Fairbanks greeted Ralph with her usual loving, kindly welcome when he reached home. The old family cottage was a veritable nest of comfort, and the young engineer enjoyed it to the utmost. There was always some special favorite dainty awaiting Ralph on his return from a trip, and he had a fine appetizing meal.

“We had a visitor today, Ralph,” said Mrs. Fairbanks, as they sat chatting in the cozy sitting room a little later.

“Who was that, mother?”

Mrs. Fairbanks with a smile handed her son a card that had been lying on the mantle. Ralph smiled, too, as he looked it over.

“H’m,” he said. “Quite dignified, ‘Mr. Dallas,’ our old friend Zeph, eh? What’s this mysterious monogram, cryptogram, or whatever it is, way down in the corner of the card?”

“It looks like two S’s,” suggested Mrs. Fairbanks.

“Oh, I can solve the enigma now,” said Ralph with a broader smile than ever. “It is ‘S. S.,’ by which Zeph means and wants mystified others to half guess means ‘Secret Service.’ There’s one thing about Zeph, with all his wild imaginings and ambition along the railroad line, he sticks to his idea of breaking in somewhere as an active young sleuth.”

“We think a lot of Zeph, Ralph, and we mustn’t forget that he did some bright things in helping that poor little orphan, Ernest Gregg, to health and happiness.”

“Yes, Zeph deserves great credit for his patience and cleverness in that affair,” admitted Ralph warmly, “only the line he is so fascinated with doesn’t strike me as a regular business.”

“How about Mr. Adair, Ralph?” insinuated his mother.

“That’s so, Bob Adair is the finest railroad detective in the world. If Zeph could line up under his guidance, he might make something practical of himself.”

“I think he has really done just that.”

“I am delighted to hear it,” said Ralph, and watching the glowing embers in the grate in a dreamy fashion he mused pleasantly over his experience with the redoubtable Zeph, while his mother was busy tidying up the dining room.

It was a good deal of satisfaction for Ralph to recall Zeph Dallas to mind. Zeph, a raw country youth, had come to Stanley Junction in a whole peck of trouble. Ralph had always a helping hand for the unlucky or unfortunate. He became a good friend to Zeph and got him a place in the roundhouse. Zeph made a miserable failure of the job. The height of his ambition was to be a detective-like fellows he had read about.

Zeph finally landed, as he expressed it, with both feet. The son of a prominent railroad official became interested in hunting up the relatives of a forlorn little fellow named Gregg. He had plenty of money, and he hired Zeph to assist him. The latter showed that he had something in him, for his wit and energy not only located the wealthy relative of the orphan outcast, but upset the plots of a wicked schemer who was planning to rob the friendless lad of his rights.

“What did Zeph say about Mr. Adair, mother?” inquired Ralph, as Mrs. Fairbanks again entered the sitting room.

“Nothing clear,” she explained. “You know how Zeph delights in cuddling up his ideas to himself and looking and acting mysterious. He was very important as he hinted that Mr. Adair depended on him to ‘save the day in a big case,’ and he said a great deal about a ‘rival railroad.’”

“Oh, did he, indeed?” murmured Ralph thoughtfully.

“Zeph told me to advise you, very secretly he put it, to look out for trouble.”

“What kind of trouble?”

“Particularly, he said, in the train dispatcher’s department.”

“Hm!” commented the young engineer simply, but his brow became furrowed with thought, and he reflected by spells quite seriously over the subject during the evening.

Fogg had forgotten all about his fears of the day previous when he reported at the roundhouse the next morning. He grinned at his young comrade with a particularly satisfied smirk on his face, and made the remark:

“You see before you, young man, a person full of the best chicken stew ever cooked in Stanley Junction. I say, Fairbanks, if you’d kind of slow up going past Bluff Point we might grab off enough more of those chickens to do for Sunday dinner.”

“We? Don’t include me in your disreputable pilferings, Mr. Fogg,” declared Ralph, “you may get a bill for the two fowls you so boastingly allude to.”

“Hey.”

“Yes, indeed. In fact,” continued Ralph with mock seriousness, “I don’t know but what I may have a certain interest in enforcing its collection.”

The young engineer recited the episode of the salvage sale of the chickens to Glen Palmer.

“Quite a windfall, that,” commented Fogg. “Another fellow to thank his lucky stars that he ran up against Ralph Fairbanks. Sort of interested in this proposition myself. I can hardly imagine a finer prospect than running a chicken farm. Some day-”

The rhapsody of Fireman Fogg was cut short by the arrival of the schedule minute for getting up steam on the Overland racer. The bustle and energy of starting out on their regular trip made engineer and helper forget everything except the duties of the occasion. As they cleared the limits, however, and approached Bluff Point, Ralph watched out with natural curiosity, and Fogg remarked:

“Hope a few more chickens drop into the cab this morning.”

Ralph slowed up slightly, they struck the bluff curve, and as they neared the scene of the freight wreck of the previous day he had a good view of the embankment where the two abandoned cars lay.

“Some one there,” commented Fogg, his keen glance fixed on the spot.

“Yes, our young friend Glen Palmer and an old man. That must be the grandfather he talked about. They are very industriously at work.”

The two persons whom Ralph designated were in the midst of the wreckage. The old man was prying apart the netted compartment of the car and into this the boy was reaching. Near at hand was an old hand cart. It carried a great coop made of laths, and was half filled with fowls.

As the train circled the spot the boy below suspended his work and looked up. He seemed to recognize Ralph-or at least he knew his locomotive.

Ralph nodded and smiled and sounded three quick low toots from the whistle. This attracted the attention of the old man, who, standing upright, stared up at the train, posed like some heroic figure in plain view.

“I say!” ejaculated Fogg with a great start.

The young engineer was similarly moved. In a flash he now traced the source of the puzzling suggestiveness of something familiar in the face of Glen Palmer the day before.

“Did you see him?” demanded Fogg.

“Yes,” nodded Ralph.

“The old man-he’s the one we saw with those two suspicious jailbird-looking fellows down the line yesterday.”

CHAPTER IV – THE WIRE TAPPERS

“I don’t like it,” spoke Fogg with emphasis.

“Neither do I,” concurred Ralph, “but I fancy the sensible thing to do is to make the best of it.”

“While somebody else is making the worst of it!” grumbled the old fireman. “What brought up the confab with the old man at the terminus, anyway?”

“He just called me into the office and gave me the warning I have told you about.”

“Queer-and pestiferous,” said Fogg with vehemence. “I don’t mind a fair and square fight with any man, but this stabbing in the back, tumbling into man traps in the dark and the like, roils me.”

The Overland Express was on its return trip to Stanley Junction. Outside of the incident of the recognition of the old grandfather of Glen Palmer at the bluff curve, nothing had occurred to disturb a smooth, satisfactory run. Ralph and Fogg had discussed the first incident for quite some time after it had come up.

“I don’t like the lineup,” Fogg had asserted. “Here one day you run across that old man in the company of two fellows we’d put in jail on mere suspicion. The next day we find the same old man cleaning up a wreck. Is that part of some villanious programme? Did some fine play send that chicken car down into the ditch, say?”

“Decidedly not,” answered Ralph. “It doesn’t look that way at all. Even if it did, I would vouch for young Palmer. He had no hand in it. I’ll look this business up, though, when we get back home.”

“H’m, you’d better,” growled Fogg, and the fireman was back in his old surly suspicious mood all of the rest of the run.

Now, on the return trip, Fogg was brought up to a positive pitch of frenzy. It was just after their layover at Rockton when a messenger had come from the assistant superintendent to the roundhouse. The waiting hands there knew him. He approached Ralph, addressed him in a low confidential tone, and the two proceeded to headquarters together. It was the sentiment of the majority that the young engineer of the Overland Express was “on the carpet for a call down.”

Ralph came back from the interview with the railway official with a serious but by no means downcast face. He parried the good natured raillery of his fellow workmen. It was not until he and his fireman were well out of Rockton on their return trip that he told Fogg what had taken place in the private office of the assistant superintendent.

There was not much to tell, but there was lots left to surmise, and worry over, according to Fogg’s way of thinking. The railroad official had pledged Ralph to treat the interview as strictly confidential, except so far as his fireman was concerned. There was trouble brewing unmistakably, he told Ralph. The latter had weathered some pretty hard experiences with personal enemies and strikers in the past. The official wished to prepare him to battle some more of it in the future.

Bluntly he informed Ralph that two rival roads were “after the scalp” of the Great Northern. They could not reach the Overland schedule of the latter line by fair means, and they might try to break it by foul ones. The official gravely announced that he felt sure of this. He would have later specific information for Ralph. In the meantime, he wished him to exercise unusual vigilance and efficiency in overcoming obstacles that might arise to delay or cripple the Overland Express.

Two things rather startled the young engineer, for they seemed to confirm hints and suspicions already in the wind. In a guarded way the official had referred to “harmony in the train dispatcher’s office.” He had next made an allusion to the fact that if competitive rivalry grew fierce, it might attract under cover a lot of disreputable criminals, and he spoke of extra precaution when the pay trips of the line were made, tallying precisely with suspicions already entertained by Ralph.

It was a very cold night when the train started out on its return trip. It was clear starlight, however, and once on the free swing down the glistening rails, the exhilarating swirl of progress drove away all shadows of care and fear. The magnificent locomotive did her duty well and puffed down to the regular stop beyond The Barrens an hour after daylight fresh as a daisy, and just as pretty as one, Fogg declared.

“They’re going to miss us this time, I reckon,” spoke the fireman with hilarity and relief, as they later covered the first fifty miles beyond the Mountain Division.

“If any one was laying for us, yes, it seems so,” joined in Ralph. “We are pretty well on our way, it’s daytime, and likely we’ll get through safe this trip.”

Both were congratulating themselves on the outlook as they struck the first series of curves that led through the long stretch of bluffs at the end of which they had encountered the torpedo warning just seventy-two hours previous. There was no indication of any obstruction ahead, and the locomotive was going at good speed.

It was almost a zigzag progress on a six per cent. grade for a stretch of over ten miles, and five of the distance it was a blind swift whiz, shut in by great towering bluffs without a break.

Suddenly at a sharp turn Fogg uttered a shout and Ralph grasped the lever with a quick clutch.

“What was that?” gasped Fogg.

“Maybe a flying rock,” suggested Ralph. He spoke calmly enough, but every nerve was on the jump. The crisis of the vigilance since the run commenced had reached its climax of excitement and strain.

“Something busted,” added Fogg a trifle hoarsely, “something struck the headlight and splintered it. See here,” and he picked up and showed to Ralph a splinter of glass that had blown in through the open window on his side of the cab.

“Whatever it was it’s past now and no damage done,” declared Ralph. “There’s something twisted around the steam chest, Mr. Fogg.”

“So there is,” assented Fogg, peering ahead. “Guess I’ll see what it means.”

Ralph did not have to let down speed to accommodate his expert helper. Fogg was as much at home on the running board with the train going a mile a minute pace as a house painter on a first-floor scaffold. He crept out through his window.

Ralph lost sight of him beyond the bulge of the boiler and while watching ahead from his own side of the cab. Fogg was nearly three minutes on his tour of investigation.

“There’s something to think about,” he declared emphatically as he dropped two objects on the floor of the cab.

“What is it?” inquired Ralph with a curious stare.

“Wait till I mend the fire and I’ll show you something,” said the fireman. Then, this duty attended to, he took from the floor a long piece of wire wound around a part of a device that resembled a telegraph instrument.

“See here,” explained the fireman excitedly, “I’ve got it in a word.”

“And what is that, Mr. Fogg?”

“Wire tappers.”

“Or line repairers,” suggested Ralph.

“I said wire tappers,” insisted Fogg convincedly, “and I stick to it. They were at work back there in the cut. Their line must have sagged where they strung it too low. Our smokestack struck it, whipped the outfit free, stand and all, and that metal jigger there swung around and struck the headlight.”

“What stand-was there a stand, then?” inquired Ralph.

“Must have been, for pieces of it are out on the pilot. Say, something else, too! The whole business came that way. Look at that.”

Fogg lifted a small strap satchel from the floor of the cab as he spoke. This was pretty well riddled. In the general swing of the outfit its side must have come in contact with some sharp edged projection of the locomotive. Then, one side torn open from which there protruded some article of wearing apparel, it had landed on the pilot where Fogg had found it.

“Line repairers do not carry little dinky reticules like that,” scornfully declaimed the fireman. “There’s a dress shirt, a fancy vest and a pair of kid gloves in it. The old man at terminus was right. Some one is trying to do up the Great Northern.”

“Put these things away carefully,” directed Ralph, his face thoughtful, and as they ran on it grew anxious and serious.

When they passed the scene of the freight wreck three days previous, they found the debris cleared away and no sign of the boy and old man who had interested them. A wrecking crew had men at work and only a litter of kindling wood marked the scene of the tumble down the embankment.

When they reached their destination Ralph made a package of the articles Fogg had found on the pilot and proceeded to the office of the general superintendent. That functuary he found to be absent. He followed the promptings of his own mind and proceeded to the office of the road detective, Bob Adair.

A bright young fellow named Dayton, the stenographer of the road detective, announced that Mr. Adair was off duty away from Stanley Junction.

“How soon can you reach him?” inquired Ralph.

“Oh, that’s easy,” replied Dayton.

Adair was a warm friend of Ralph. The latter knew the official reposed a good deal of confidence in young Dayton. He decided to tell him about the supposed discovery of the wire tapping outfit.

“Good for you,” commended Dayton. “You’ve hit a subject of big importance just at present, Mr. Fairbanks.”

“Is that so.”

“Very much so. I’ll get word to Mr. Adair at once. He happens to be in call this side of the Mountain Division. This discovery of yours fits in-that is, Mr. Adair will be glad to get this bit of news.”

“I understand,” returned Ralph meaningly. He was a trifle surprised to see Dayton begin a message in cypher to his chief.

“It looks as if Mr. Adair doesn’t even trust the wires just now,” soliloquized Ralph as he started for home.

The first thing he did after supper was to undo the parcel containing the telegraphic device and the satchel.

The latter, as Fogg had stated, contained a shirt, a fancy vest and a pair of gloves. These bore no initial or other marks of identification. They were pretty badly riddled from their forcible collision with some sharp corner of the locomotive-so much so, that a pocket, ripped clear out of place, revealed a folded slip of paper. This had suffered in the mix-up, like the garments. Ralph opened it carefully.

It was tattered and torn, sections were gouged out of it here and there, but Ralph devoted to its perusal a thorough inspection.

His face was both startled and thoughtful as he looked up from his desk. For nearly five minutes the young railroader sat staring into space, his mind wrestling with a mighty problem.

Ralph arose from his chair at last, put on his cap and went to the kitchen where Mrs. Fairbanks was tidying up things.

“I’m going away for an hour or two, mother,” he announced.

“Nothing wrong, I hope, Ralph,” spoke Mrs. Fairbanks, the serious manner of her son arousing her mothering anxiety at once.

“I don’t know,” answered Ralph. “It’s something pretty important. I’ve got to see the paymaster of the road.”