"LORD LIONEL MONTAGUE"
"You can't get on here!"
"But I've got a paus, don't you know."
"Paws? Yes, I see," said Lemuel Fogg. "Take 'em off the tender, son,
or you'll get a jerk that will land you, for we're going to start up
pretty soon."
"Hawdly--I have a right here, my man--I've got a paus, don't you
know."
"See here, my friend, if you are bound for Hadley, this isn't the
train."
"I didn't say Hadley, sir, I said 'hawdly.'"
"He means hardly, Mr. Fogg," put in Ralph, "and he is trying to tell
you he has a pass."
"Why don't he talk English, then?" demanded the fireman of No. 999
contemptuously, while the person who had aroused his dislike looked
indignant and affronted, and now, extending a card to Ralph, climbed
up into the tender.
He was a stranger to the engineer--a man Ralph could not remember
having seen before. His attire was that of a conventional tourist,
and his face, words and bearing suggested the conventional foreigner.
He wore a short, stubby black mustache and side whiskers, a monocle in
one eye, and he had a vacuous expression on his face as of a person of
immense profundity and "class."
Ralph, glancing over the card, saw that it was a pass from the master
mechanic of the road, briefly explaining that the bearer was Lord
Lionel Montague, studying up American railroad systems.
"We can't offer you a seat, Lord Montague," spoke Ralph politely.
"It's rough work in cramped quarters aboard a locomotive."
"I have noticed it," replied "his ludship." "Not so abroad, by no
means, my man. In fact, on the home lines in Lunnon, it is quite the
thing, you know, for the quality to make a fad of locomotive parties,
and the accommodations for their comfort are quite superior to this,
don't you know."
"That so?" growled Fogg, with an unpleasant glance at the stranger.
"Why, I've had Senators in my cab in my time, glad to chum with the
crew and set back on the coal, jolly and homelike as could be--as
you'll have to do, if you stay on this engine."
"Remawkably detestable person!" observed the stranger confidentially
to Ralph. "I shall ride only a short distance--to the first stop, in
fact."
"You are welcome," replied Ralph, "and if I can explain anything to
you, I am at your service."
"Thawnks, thawnks," uttered the pretentious passenger, and fixed his
monocled eye on space in a vapid way.
No. 999 was on schedule for the old accommodation run to Riverton. It
was nearly a week after the interview between the young engineer and
Fred Porter recited in the last chapter. Affairs had quited down with
Ralph, and railroad life had settled down to ordinary routine of the
usual commonplace character.
There had at first been considerable interest for Ralph in the
remarkable statement of Zeph Dallas that the original of the
photograph of Marvin Clark, the son of the railroad president, was his
mysterious employer. Further than that involuntary admission of his
erratic friend, however, Ralph could not persuade Zeph to go. Zeph
declared that he was bound by a compact of the greatest secrecy. He
insisted that there could be no possibility of a mistake in his
recognition of the picture.
Ralph told him that a friend was very anxious to find his employer,
and told Zeph who his friend was. The latter became serious, and acted
quite disturbed when he learned that it was Fred Porter, whom he had
met several times.
"I'd like to tell you a whole lot, Ralph, but I can't do it!" Zeph had
burst out. "Say, one thing, though; I'm going to tell my employer
about Fred Porter being so anxious to see him, and you can write to
Porter and tell him that his friend is all right and safe, if you want
to. What's that address--I may get around to Porter myself."
Ralph told Zeph. That same evening the latter left Stanley Junction,
and Ralph had not heard from him since, nor did he receive word from
Fred. Temporarily, at least, Zeph, Fred and the railroad president's
son, Marvin Clark, the "Canaries" and all the peculiar mystery
surrounding them, seemed to have drifted out of the life of the young
engineer.
No. 999 was about ready to start on her daily trip when the stranger
designated as Lord Montague had appeared. As he stood against the
tender bar and seemed to commune with himself on the crudity of
American locomotive cabs, Ralph leaned from the window and hailed a
friend.
"I say, Graham," he observed, "you seem particularly active and
restless this morning."
Ralph had reason for the remark. The young inventor had been very
little care to his sponsor and friend during the past week. Given
free access to the roundhouse, Archie had just about lived there.
Quiet and inoffensive, he at first had been a butt for the jokes of
the wipers and the extras, but his good-natured patience disarmed
those who harmlessly made fun of him, and those who maliciously
persecuted him had one warning from his sledge-hammer fists, and left
him alone afterwards.
On this especial morning Archie was stirred with an unusual animation.
Ralph noticed this when he first came down to the roundhouse. The
young inventor hung around the locomotive suspiciously. He even rode
on the pilot of No. 999 to the depot, and for the past five minutes he
had paced restlessly up and down the platform as though the locomotive
held some peculiar fascination for him. As he now came up to the cab
at Ralph's hail, his eye ran over the locomotive in the most
interested way in the world, and Ralph wondered why.
"Call me, Fairbanks?" mumbled Archie, and Ralph could not catch his
eye.
"I did, Graham," responded Ralph. "What's stirring you?"
"Why?"
"Chasing up 999."
"Am I?"
"It looks that way; it looks to me as if you were watching the
locomotive."
"She's worth watching, isn't she?"
"Yes, but you act as if you expect her to do something."
"Ha! ha!--that's it, h'm--you see--say, wish I could run down the line
with you this morning."
"We're crowded in the cab, as you see," explained Ralph, "but if you
want the discomfort of balancing on the tank cover back there----"
"I'd dote on it--thanks, thanks," said Archie with a fervor that
increased Ralph's curiosity as to his strange actions this particular
morning.
"Got some new bee in his head?" suggested Fogg, as Archie scrambled up
over the coal. "He'll have a new kind of locomotive built by the time
we clear the limits--that is, in his mind."
Lord Lionel Montague warmed up to Ralph the next few minutes before
starting time. He asked a few casual questions about the mechanisms of
No. 999, and then seemed tremendously interested in the young engineer
himself.
"I've taken a fawncy to you, Mr. Fairbanks, don't you know," he
drawled out. "I'd like to cultivate you, quite. I must call on you at
Stanley Junction. There's a great deal you might tell me of interest,
don't you see."
"I shall be happy to be of service to you, Lord Montague," responded
Ralph courteously.
He did not like the man. There was something untrue about his shifty
eye. There was a lot of "put on" that did not strike Ralph as natural.
"His ludship" harped on the youth of Ralph. Only veterans were
intrusted with important railroad positions in England--"didn't he
know." He was asking many questions about Ralph's juvenile friends, as
if with some secret purpose, when the train started up.
"Hi, up there!" Fogg challenged Archie, seated on the tank tender top,
"don't get moving up there and tumble off."
The young inventor certainly looked as if he was moving. His eyes were
glued to the smokestack of the locomotive, as though it possessed a
fascinating influence over him.
"Say, there's some draft this morning," observed the fireman, half-way
to the crossing, as he threw some coal into the furnace.
"I should say so," replied Ralph; "some sparks, too, I notice."
"Humph! that new patent spark arrester don't arrest particularly,"
commented Fogg. "Queer," he added, with a speculative eye on the
smokestack.
That appendage of No. 999 was shooting out showers of sparks like a
roman candle. As she slid the splits at the crossing and got down to
real business, the display was very noticeable.
"I'd say that some of our old time enemies were doctoring the fuel, if
it wasn't that the crowd is off the job after that last drubbing I
gave Hall and Wilson," remarked the fireman. "I can't understand it.
That draft is pulling the coal up through the flues fast as I can
shovel it in. Thunder!"
With a yell the fireman of No. 999, as he opened the furnace door to
throw in more coal, leaped to one side.
A cyclonic stream, like the sudden blast of a volcano, poured out into
the cab.