Kitabı oku: «The Wreckers», sayfa 16
XXIX
The Murder Madman
I knew what we were up against when we headed down to the railroad lay-out, the chief and I, leaving the good old major thoughtfully puffing his cigar in the club smoking-room. With a strike due to be pulled off in a little more than three hours there were about a million things that would have to be jerked around into shape and propped up so that they could stand by themselves while the Short Line was taking a vacation. And there was only a little handful of us in the headquarters to do the jerking and propping.
But it was precisely in a crisis like this that the boss could shine. From the minute we hit the tremendous job he was all there, carrying the whole map of the Short Line in his head, thinking straight from the shoulder, and never missing a lick; and I don't believe anybody would ever have suspected that he was a beaten man, pushed to the ropes in the final round with the grafters, his reputation as a successful railroad manager as good as gone, and his warm little love-dream knocked sky-winding forever and a day.
Luckily, we found Fred May still at his desk, and he was promptly clamped to the telephone and told to get busy spreading the hurry call. In half an hour every relief operator we had in Portal City was in the wire-room, and the back-breaking job of preparing a thousand miles of railroad for a sudden tie-up was in full swing. Mr. Perkins, as division superintendent, was in touch with the local labor unions, and a conference was held with the strike leaders. Persuading and insisting by turns, Mr. Norcross fought out the necessary compromises with the unions. All ordinary traffic would be suspended at midnight, but passenger trains en route were to be run through to our connecting line terminals east and west, live-stock trains were to be laid out only where there were feeding corrals, and perishable freight was to be taken to its destination, wherever that might be.
In addition to these concessions, the strikers agreed to allow the mail trains to run without interruption, with our promise that they would not carry passengers. Hoskins and his committee bucked a little at this, but got down when they were shown that they could not afford to risk a clash with the Government. This exception admitted, another followed, as a matter of course. If the mail trains were to be run, some of the telegraph operators would have to remain on duty, at least to the extent of handling train orders.
With these generalities out of the way, we got down to details. "Fire-alarm" wires were sent to the various cities and towns on the lines asking for immediate information regarding food and fuel supplies, and the strike leaders were notified that, for sheer humanity's sake, they would have to permit the handling of provision trains in cases where they were absolutely needed.
By eleven o'clock the tangle was getting itself pretty well straightened out. Some of the trains had already been abandoned, and the others were moving along to the agreed-upon destinations. Kirgan had taken hold in the Portal City yard, and by putting on extra crews was getting the needful shifting and car sorting into shape; and the Portal City employees, acting upon their own initiative, were picketing the yard and company buildings to protect them from looters or fire-setters. Mr. Van Britt's special, so the wires told us, was at Lesterburg, and it was likely to stay there; and Mr. Van Britt, himself, couldn't be reached.
It was at half-past eleven that we got the first real yelp from somebody who was getting pinched. It came in the shape of a wire from the Strathcona night operator. A party of men – "mine owners" the operator called them – had just heard of the impending railroad tie-up. They had been meaning to come in on the regular night train, but that had been abandoned. So now they were offering all kinds of money for a special to bring them to Portal City. It was represented that there were millions at stake. Couldn't we do something?
Mr. Norcross had kept Hoskins and a few of the other local strike leaders where he could get hold of them, and he put the request up to them as a matter that was now out of his hands. Would they allow him to run a one-car special from the gold camp to Portal City after midnight? It was for them to say.
Hoskins and his accomplices went off to talk it over with some of the other men. When the big freight conductor came back he was alone and was grinning good-naturedly.
"We ain't aimin' to make the company lose any good money that comes a-rolling down the hill at it, Mister Norcross," he said. "Cinch these here Strathcona hurry-boys f'r all you can get out o' them, and if you'll lend us the loan of the wires, we'll pass the word to let the special come on through."
It was sure the funniest strike I ever saw or heard of, and I guess the boss thought so, too – with all this good-natured bargaining back and forth; but there was nothing more said, and I carried the word to Mr. Perkins directing him to have arrangements made for the running of a one-car special from Strathcona for the hurry folks.
Past that, things rocked along until the hands of the big standard-time clock in the despatcher's room pointed to midnight. Mr. Norcross and I were both at Donohue's elbow when the men at the wires, east and west, clicked in their "Good-night," which was the signal that the Pioneer Short Line had laid down on the job and gone out of business. I couldn't compare it to anything but a funeral bell, and that's about what it was. No matter how short the strike might be, it was going to smash us good and plenty. And whatever else might come of it, it was a cinch that it would squeeze the last little breath of life out of the Norcross management for good and all.
As if to confirm that sort of doleful foreboding of mine, Norris, who was holding down the commercial wire, came over to the counter railing just then with a New York message. I saw the boss's eyes flash and the little bunchy muscle-swellings of anger come and go on the edge of his jaw as he read it, and then he handed it to me.
"You may endorse that 'No Answer' and file it when you go back to the office," he said shortly, and then he went on talking to Donohue, telling him how to handle the trains which were still out and moving to their tie-up destinations.
Of course, I read the message; I knew there was nothing private about it so far as I was concerned, since it had been given me to put away in the files. It was dated from the Waldorf-Astoria at midnight, which, allowing for the difference in time between New York and Portal City, meant that it had been sent at nine o'clock by our time. Somebody in our neck of woods was evidently keeping in close wire touch with Mr. Dunton, for though the strike vote was only a little more than an hour old when he sent the telegram, he evidently knew all about it. This is what I read:
"To G. Norcross, G. M.,
"Portal City.
"Your administration has been a conspicuous failure from the beginning. Compromise with employees on any terms offered and prevent strike at all costs. That done, you are hereby directed to wire your resignation to take effect one week from to-day.
"B. Dunton, President."
It had hit us at last; not a decent request, mind you, but a blunt, brutal demand. The boss was fired. No word had come from Mr. Chadwick, and there could be but one reason for his silence. In some way, perhaps through the late boosting of the stock, the New Yorkers had squeezed him out. We were shot dead in the trenches.
I didn't understand how the chief could take it so quietly, unless it was because he had been hammered so long and so hard that nothing mattered any more. Anyhow, he was just standing there, talking soberly to Donohue, when once more the Strathcona branch sounder began to click furiously, snipping out the headquarters call.
Donohue cut in and we all heard the Strathcona man's new bleat. The way he told it, it seemed that one member of the party that had chartered the special to come to Portal City had got left, and this man was now in the Strathcona wire office, bidding high for an engine to chase the train and put him aboard.
At first the boss said, "No," short off, just like that; adding that it wouldn't be keeping faith with the strike committee. But at that moment Hoskins blew in again, and when he was told what was on the cards, he took a little responsibility of his own.
"Go to it, Mister Norcross, if there's any more money in it f'r the railroad," he told the boss. "I'll stand f'r it with the boys." And then to Donohue: "Who'll be runnin' this chaser engine?"
"It'll be John Hogan and the Four-Sixteen," said Donohue. "There's nobody else at that end of the branch."
The arrangement, such as it was, was fixed up quickly. The man who was putting up the money seemed to have plenty of it. He was offering five hundred dollars for the engine, and a thousand if it should overtake the special that side of Bauxite Junction.
I guess the bleat unravelled itself pretty clearly for all of us; or at least, it seemed plain enough. A mining deal of some kind was on, and this man who was left behind was going to be left in another sense of the word if he couldn't butt in soon enough to break whatever combination the others were stacking up against him.
In just a few minutes we got the word from the Strathcona operator that the money was paid and the chaser engine was out and gone. The special train had fully a half-hour's start, and with the hazardous grades of Slide Mountain and Dry Canyon to negotiate, it didn't seem probable that the light engine could overtake it anywhere north of Bauxite. That wasn't up to us, however. Kirgan had come in to say that our good-natured strikers had thrown a guard into the shops and were patroling the yard, when Fred May showed up, making signals to me. I heard him when he edged up to the boss and said: "There's a lady in the office, wanting to see you, Mr. Norcross."
"Holy Smoke!" said I to myself. I knew it couldn't be anybody but Mrs. Sheila, at that time of night, and I saw seventeen different kinds of bloody murder looming up again when I tagged along after the boss on the trip down the hall to our offices.
The guess was right, both ways around. It was Mrs. Sheila, and she had the major with her. And the air of the private office was so thick with tragedy that it made the very electrics look dim and ghostly. Mrs. Sheila didn't have a bit of color in her face, and her eyes had a big horror in them that was enough to make your flesh creep.
I won't attempt to tell all that was said, partly by the good old major and partly by Mrs. Sheila. But the gist of it was this: Collingwood had continued his booze fight in his rooms at the Bullard until he had worked himself up to the crazy murder pitch. Then he had gone on the warpath, hunting for Hatch. Just how he had contrived to dodge Hatch's spotters, who were doubtless keeping cases on him, did not appear. But that was a detail. He had dodged them, had learned that Hatch and a bunch of his Red Tower backers had gone to Strathcona on a mining deal, and had started to drive to the gold camp in an auto to get his man.
Before leaving Portal City he had written a letter to Mrs. Sheila, telling her what he was going to do, and that when he got through with it, she would be free. The letter, which had been left at the hotel, had been delayed in delivery – had, in fact, just been sent out to the major's house by the night clerk who had found it.
Long before the story could get itself fully told, the different gaps in it were filling themselves up for me – and for Mr. Norcross, as well, I guess. When Mrs. Sheila came to the auto-drive part of it, the boss whirled and shot an order at me.
"Jimmie, chase into the despatcher's office and find out the name of the man who chartered that following engine!" he snapped; and I went on the run, remembering that in the strike excitement and hustle it hadn't occurred to anybody to ask the man's name or that of the particular "mine owner" who had chartered the special train.
Donohue got the Strathcona operator in less than half a minute after I fired my order at him, and the answer came almost without a break:
"Charter of special train was to R. Hatch, of Portal City, and of engine 416 to man named Collingwood."
Gosh! but this did settle it! I didn't run back to the office with the news – I flew. It was like firing a gun in amongst the three who were waiting, but it had to be done. The major groaned and said, "Oh, good God!" and Mrs. Sheila sat down and put her face in her hands. The boss was the only one who knew what to do and he did it: vanished like a shot in the direction of the despatcher's office.
In about fifteen of the longest minutes I ever lived he came back, shaking his head. I knew what he had been doing, or trying to do. There was one night telegraph station on the branch – at a mining-camp half-way down the grade on Slide Mountain – and he had been trying to get word there to stop the wild engine.
"He has either bribed or bullied his engine crew," he told the major. "I wired and had a stop signal set for them at the Antonio Mine, but they overran it, going at full speed down the hill."
It was plain enough now what Collingwood was trying to do. The murder mania had got a firm hold of its weapon. Collingwood knew that Hatch was on the special, and he was going to chase that one-car train until it made a stop somewhere and then smash into it for blood. After Mr. Norcross had talked hurriedly for a minute or two with the major he went back to the despatcher's room and I went with him. There was a word for Donohue, telling him to call all night stations ahead of the special. The operators were to give the special the "go-ahead," and after it had passed, to set their signals against the following engine.
As Donohue cut in on the branch wire, Nippo, at the canyon mouth, broke in to say that the special had gone by fifteen minutes earlier, and that the following engine was now coming down the canyon. Donohue grabbed his key.
"Throw signal against engine 416," he clicked; and a few seconds later we got the reply:
"No good. Engine 416 overran signal."
"Never mind," said the boss to Donohue; "keep it up at the other stations. That engine has got to be stopped. It's carrying a madman." This is what he said, but I knew well enough what he was thinking. He was remembering that the special now had a lead of only fifteen minutes, and that it would be obliged to stop at Bauxite for its orders over the main line.
He did what he could to cut out the Bauxite stop for the special, ordering Donohue to tell the junction man to set his signals at "clear" for the train, and at "stop" for the 416. It was only a make-shift. In the natural order of things the engineer of the special would make the Bauxite stop anyway, signal or no signal, since it is a nation-wide railroad rule that no train shall pass a junction without stopping.
Past that the boss grabbed up an official time-card and began to study it hurriedly and to jot down figures. I wondered if he wasn't tempted – just the least little bit in the world, you know.
Here was a thing shaping itself up – a thing for which he wasn't in the least responsible – and if it should work out to the catastrophe that nobody seemed to be able to prevent, the chief of the grafters, and probably a number of his nearest backers, would be wiped off the books; and Collingwood's death, which, in all human probability, was equally certain, would set Mrs. Sheila free.
He must be thinking of it, I argued; he couldn't be a human man and not be thinking of it. But he never stopped his hasty figuring for a single instant until he broke off to bark out at Kirgan, who was standing by:
"Quick, Mart! I want a light engine, and somebody to run it! Jump for it, man!"
Kirgan, big and slow-motioned at most times, was off like a shot. Then the boss hurried back down the hall to his own offices, and again I tagged him. The old major was standing at a window with his hands behind him, and Mrs. Sheila was sitting just as we had left her, with the big terror still in her eyes and her face as white as a sheet.
"We can't stop him without throwing a switch in front of him, and that would mean death to him and his two enginemen," said the boss, talking straight at the major, and as if he were trying to ignore Mrs. Sheila. "I'm going to take a long chance and run down the line to meet them. There's a bare possibility that I can contrive to get between the train and the engine, and if I can – "
Mrs. Sheila was on her feet and she had her hands clasped as if she were going to make a prayer to the boss. And it was pretty nearly that.
"Take me!" she begged; "oh, please take me. It's my right to go!"
Kirgan had found an engine somewhere in the yard and was backing it up to the station platform. We could hear it. I saw that the chief was going to turn Mrs. Sheila down – which was, of course, exactly the right thing to do. But just then the major shoved in.
"Sheila knows what she's talking about, Graham," he said quietly. "When you-all find Howie, you'll have a madman on your hands – and she's the only one who can control him at such times – God pity her! Take us both, suh."
I suppose Mr. Norcross thought there wasn't any time to stand there arguing about it.
"As you will," he snapped at the major; and then to me: "Break for it, Jimmie, and tell Kirgan to get a car – any car – the first one he can find!"
I broke, and came pretty near breaking my blessed neck tumbling down the stairs. Kirgan had found his engine and had picked up a yard man to fire it. I told him what was wanted, and in less than no time he had pulled out an empty day-coach from the washing track. While he was backing in with it, Mr. Norcross came down the platform with the major and Mrs. Sheila. He let the major help Mrs. Sheila up the steps of the coach and ran forward to call out to Kirgan:
"Donohue is clearing for you, and there'll be nothing in the way. Run regardless to Timber Mountain 'Y.' You have six minutes on the special's time to that point, if you run like the devil!" And then, as he was climbing to the cab, he ripped out at me: "Jimmie, you go back and stay with them in the car. Hurry or you'll be left!"
XXX
Under the Wide and Starry Sky
I sure had to be quick about obeying that "get-aboard" order of Mr. Norcross's. Kirgan had jerked the throttle open the minute the word was given. I missed the forward end of the car, and when the other end came along my grab at the hand-rod slammed me head over heels up the steps. Kirgan was holding his whistle valve open, and the guarding strikers in the yard gave us room and a clear track. By the time we had passed the "limit" switches we were going like a blue streak, and I could hardly keep my balance on the back platform of the day-coach.
You can guess that I didn't stay out there very long. The night was clear as a bell and pretty coolish, with the stars burning like white diamonds in the black inverted bowl of the sky. It was mighty pretty scenery, but just the same, after Kirgan had fairly struck his gait on the long western tangent, I clawed my way inside. It was a lot too blustery and unsafe on that back platform.
The major and Mrs. Sheila were sitting together, near the middle of the car. I staggered up and took the seat just ahead of them, and the major asked me if Mr. Norcross was on the engine. I told him he was, and that ended it. What with the rattle and bang of the coach, the howling of the speed-made wind in the ventilators, and the shrill scream of the spinning wheels, there wasn't any room for talk during the whole of that breath-taking race to the old "Y" in the hills beyond Banta.
Knowing, from what Mr. Norcross had said, the point at which we were going to side-track and wait for the special and the wild engine, I grew sort of nervous and worked-up after we had crashed through the Banta yard and the day-coach began to sway and lurch around the hill curves. What if the special had been making better time than the boss had counted upon? In that case, we'd probably hit her in a head-ender somewhere on one of those very curves. And with the time we were making, and the time she'd be making, there wouldn't be enough left of either train to be worth picking up.
A mile or so short of the "Y" siding I went up ahead and handed myself out to the forward platform to see if I couldn't get a squint past the storming engine. I got it now and then, on the swing of the curves, but there was nothing in sight. Just the same, it was mighty scary, and I took a relief breath so deep that it nearly made me sick at my stomach when I finally realized that Kirgan had shut off and was slowing for the stop at the farther switch of the old "Y."
What was done at the switch was done swiftly, as men work when they have the fear of death gripping at them. If the special should come up while we were making the back-in, the result would be just about the same as it would have been if we had met it on the curves.
The jerking tug of the self-preservation instinct is pretty strong, sometimes, and I tumbled off the steps of the car as it was backing in around the western curve of the "Y." Our picked-up fireman was at the switch, setting it again for the main line. With our own engine silent, I could hear a faint sound like the far-away fluttering of a safety-valve. We were not ten seconds too soon. The special was coming.
Mr. Norcross, who was still in the engine cab, shot an order at Kirgan.
"Fling your coat over the headlight, and then be ready to snatch it and get off!" he shouted. "If they see it as they come up, it may stop them!" Then, catching a glimpse of me on the ground: "Break the coupling on the coach, Jimmie – quick!"
As I jumped to obey I understood what was to be done. The fireman at the switch was to let the special go by, and then the boss – just the boss alone on the engine – was to be let out on the main track to put himself between the chaser and the chased. It was a hair-raising proposition, but perhaps – just perhaps – not quite so suicidal as it looked. With skilful handling the interposed engine might possibly be kept out of the way by backing, and its warning headlight shining full into the eyes of the men in the 416's cab would surely be enough to stop them – if anything would.
I got the coupling broken on the car to set our engine free before the distant flutter noise had grown to anything more than a humming like that of an overhead swarm of angry bees. Kirgan was standing on the front end, with his coat thrown over the headlight, ready to jerk it off and jump when he got the word. Out at the switch, our fireman was keeping out of sight so that the engineer of the special shouldn't see him, and maybe get rattled and stop. As usual, the boss had covered every little detail in his instructions, and had remembered that the sight of a man standing at a switch in a lonesome place like this might give an engineer a fit of "nerves" and make him shut off steam.
I had just finished uncoupling the day-coach and the boss was easing our engine ahead a bit to make sure that she was loose, when the car-door opened behind me and the major and Mrs. Sheila came out in the front vestibule. It was Mrs. Sheila who spoke to me, and her voice had borrowed some of the big terror that I had seen in her eyes while she was sitting in the office at Portal City.
"Where – whereabouts are we, Jimmie?" she asked.
I didn't get a chance to tell her. Before I could open my mouth the black shadows of the crooked valley beyond the switch were shot through with the white, shimmering glow of a headlight beam, and a second later the special flicked into view on the curve of approach.
When we first saw it, the engine was working steam, and she was running like a streak of lightning. But as we looked, there was a short, sharp whistle yelp, the brakes gripped the wheels, the one-car train, with fire grinding from every brake-shoe, came to a jerking stop a short car-length on our side of the switch, and a man dropped from the engine step to go sprinting to the rear. And it was plain that neither the engineer nor the man who was running back saw our outfit waiting on the leg of the old "Y."
Kirgan was the first one to understand. With a shout of warning, he jumped and ran toward the stopped train, yelling at the engineer for God's sake to pull out and go on. Back in the hills beyond the curve of approach another hoarse murmur was jarring upon the air, and the special's fireman, who was the man we had seen jump off and go running back, and who, of course, didn't know that we had our man there, was apparently trying to reach the switch behind his train to throw it against the following engine to shoot it off on the "Y."
By this time the boss was off of our engine and racing across the angle of the "Y" only a little way behind Kirgan. He realized that his plan was smashed by the stopping of the special, and that the very catastrophe we had come out to try to prevent was due to happen right there and then. Whatever our man waiting at the switch might do, there was bound to be a collision. If he left the points set for the main line, the wild engine would crash into the rear end of the stopped special; and if he did the other thing, our engine and coach standing on the "Y" would get it.
"Get the people out of that car!" I heard the boss bellow, but even as he said it the pop-valve of the stopped engine went off with a roar, filling the shut-in valley with clamorings that nothing could drown.
Two minutes, two little minutes more, and the sleep-sodden bunch of men in the special's car might have been roused and turned out and saved. But the minutes were not given us. While the racing fireman was still a few feet short of the switch the throwing of which would have saved the one-car train only to let the madman's engine in on our engine and coach, and our man – already at the switch – was too scared to know which horn of the dilemma to choose, the end came. There was the flash of another headlight on the curve, another whistle shriek, and I turned to help the Major take Mrs. Sheila off our car and run with her, against the horrible chance that we might get it instead of the special.
But we didn't get it. Ten seconds later the chasing engine had crashed headlong into the standing train, burying itself clear up to the tender in the heart of the old wooden sleeper, rolling the whole business over on its side in the ditch, and setting the wreckage afire as suddenly as if the old Pullman had been a fagot of pitch-pine kindlings and only waiting for the match.
If I could write down any real description of the way things stacked up there in that lonesome valley for the little bunch of us who stood aghast at the awful horror, I guess I wouldn't need to be hammering the keys of a typewriter in a railroad office. But never mind; no soldier sees any more of a battle than the part he is in. There were seven of us men, including the engineer and fireman of the special, who were able to jump in and try to do something, and, looking back at it now, it seems as if we all did what we could.
That wasn't much. About half of the people in the sleeping-car – six by actual count, as we learned afterward – were killed outright in the crash or so badly hurt that they died pretty soon afterward; and the fire was so quick and so hot that after we had got the wounded ones out we couldn't get all of the bodies of the others.
As you'd imagine, the boss was the head and front of that fierce rescue fight. He had stripped off his coat, and he kept on diving into the burning wreck after another and yet another of the victims until it seemed as if he couldn't possibly do it one more time and come out alive. He didn't seem to remember that these very men were the ones who had been trying to ruin him – that at least once they had set a trap for him and tried to kill him. He was too big for that.
After we had got out all the victims we could reach, there was still one more left who wasn't dead; we could hear him above the hissing of the steam and the crackling of the flames, screaming and begging us to break in the side of the car and kill him before the fire got to him. Kirgan had found an axe in the emergency box of our day-coach, and was chopping away like a madman.
The minute he got a hole big enough, the big master-mechanic dropped his axe and climbed down into the choking hell where the screams were coming from. Our fireman picked up the axe and ran around to the other side of the wreck where Jones, the engineer of the special, and his fireman were trying to break into the crushed cab of the 416.
The old major, the boss, and I stood by to help Kirgan, and the minute his head came up through the chopped hole we saw that he needed help. He had pried the screaming man loose, somehow, and was trying to drag him up out of the smoking furnace. It was done, amongst us, some way or other. Kirgan had wrapped the man up in a Pullman blanket to keep the fire from getting at him any worse than it already had, and as we were taking him out the blanket slipped aside from his face and I saw who it was that the master-mechanic had risked his life for. It was Hatch, himself, and he died in our arms, the major's and mine, while we were carrying him out to where Mrs. Sheila was tearing one of the Pullman sheets that I had got hold of into strips to make bandages for the wounded.
With the chance of saving maybe another one or two, we couldn't stay to help the brave little woman who was trying to be doctor and nurse to half a dozen poor wretches at once. But she took time to ask me one single breathless question:
"Have they found him yet? – you know the one I mean, Jimmie?"
"No," I said. "They're digging away at that side now," and then I ran back to jump in again.
Though the fire was now licking at everything in sight, Kirgan, who had taken the axe from our fireman, had managed to cut some of the car timbers out of the way so that we could see down into the tangle of things where the cab of the 416 ought to have been. There wasn't much left of the cab. The water-gauge was broken, along with everything else, but in spite of the reek of smoke and steam we could see that Hogan and his fireman were not there. But down under the coal that had shifted forward at the impact of the collision we could make out the other man – the murder-maniac – lying on his back, black in the face and gasping.
