two hours we could mighty near get out and walk it.”
“I reckon we’re going to get a chance to walk a piece of the way,”
said Starbuck in his slow drawl. “That maverick choo-choo wrangler up
ahead will have us in the ditch before he hits the Nophi grades, if he
keeps up his lick.”
“I don’t want to call him down,” said Maxwell, dubiously. “He’s
probably got a grouch because I pulled the string on him back yonder at
the Gloria bridge.”
“There comes the third section!” Benson called out; and a minute
afterward the third and last division of the overland freight went
hurtling past on the main track.
Bascom’s makeshift fireman was promptly on his job. While the tail-end
of the third section was clanking over the frogs he jerked the switch,
and at the same instant the master mechanic jerked the throttle of the
Nine-fifteen. The wild train shot out into position on the main line,
halted for the fraction of a minute needed to enable the fireman to run
up and scramble to the footboard, and the breakneck race was continued.
By this time none of the four thought of going back into the caboose.
They were crowded together upon the front platform, ready to make the
leap for life which seemed momentarily imminent as Bascom snatched
the short car recklessly around the curves and over the switches at
the various stations. Train Number Eighteen, also a through freight,
was scheduled one hour behind Sixteen; but in the absence of all wire
reports of its progress, nobody knew just where it would be found.
As a matter of fact, it was met between two sidings, ten miles on the
hither side of Nophi; and, happily for the safety of all concerned,
the meeting with the first section chanced upon a piece of straight
track--one of the exceedingly few tangents in the rough, gulch-like
valley known as Tumble-Tree Canyon. As before, Bascom held his whistle
open, and, thanks to the brakes and a liberal sanding of the rails, a
collision was averted.
When the two locomotives were nose to nose, and a flagman was racing
frantically back to flag the following section, Maxwell sprang off and
fell upon the conductor of the freight.
“How many sections of you?” he demanded explosively.
“Two,” said the man, putting up an arm as if he expected to be hit.
“How close are you?” was the next shot-like question.
“That’s them, comin’ now,” said the conductor, as a hoarse whistle
bellow answered the racing flagman’s stop signal.
Two miles back of the halted freights there was a disused saw-mill
spur, not over a hundred feet long, to be sure, but it would serve.
Maxwell’s decision was made instantly.
“Back up, both of you, until we can get in on Crawford’s spur,” he
ordered; and as the conductor started to run to the rear; “Don’t waste
time doing that! Whistle for ’em, you blockhead!” and he made impatient
motions as of an engineer pulling the whistle-lever.
The first-section engineer, leaning from his cab window, heard, saw,
and understood. Three shrieks of his whistle were answered by three of
the hoarse bellows from the rear, and the two long freights began to
pound heavily in the reverse motion up the grade.
“Push ’em, Bascom!” shouted Maxwell, as his own engine crept up after
the retreating first section. “We’ll go in at Crawford’s and let ’em
by.”
The two miles to the passing point, worried out slowly at the pace set
by the laboring freights, seemed to stretch themselves out into ten.
Sprague was looking at his watch.
“Sixteen miles yet, you say, and we have an hour and twenty minutes in
which to make them. That looks as if we were still margined well enough
to pull through.”
“I guess so,” said Maxwell. The laboring freights were at last backing
around the curve from which the saw-mill spur branched off, and again
the red-headed fireman was on hand with his switch-key. Luckily the
unused lock did not refuse to work, and presently the light rails
of the abandoned spur were buckling and bending ominously under the
Nine-fifteen, as Bascom trundled the wild train out upon them.
Almost immediately the whistles screamed again, and the two freights
slid away down the grade. “’Right!” yelled the red-headed one, shifting
the rusty switch again; and once more the race was resumed.
When the Nophi smelter stacks came in sight in the vista opened up by
the flying swing around the mountain of approach, four watches were out.
“We’re nearly an hour to the good yet,” cried Benson.
“Yes; and we ain’t there yet,” said Starbuck, who seemed to have
acquired a pessimistic slant.
Maxwell swung far out as they were rounding the great curve and got a
clear view of the small smelter-town yard. Straightening up, he pulled
the whistle cord to attract Bascom’s attention, and then leaned out and
made the necessary hand-signal to run through the small town without
stopping.
In some inexplicable way the signal, or rather the giving and receiving
of it, proved fatal. Bascom looked back to nod his understanding, and
when he faced about again he saw, too late, that a box-car, set out by
one of the lately passing freights on the smelter-loading track, had
“drifted” down the siding to a point at which it would not clear the
main line. There was a ripping crash, a roar of steam escaping through
a broken cylinder, and the race, so far as Engine Nine-fifteen was
concerned, was over.
When the four passengers had picked themselves up out of the heap into
which the sudden stop had piled them, they went forward to see what was
to be done. There was nothing to be done locomotive-wise; but there was
still plenty of time, even if the six remaining miles should have to be
covered by a picked-up team borrowed from the smelter folk.
But the team expedient proved unnecessary. At the Nophi station they
found a section gang at work, with a hand-car available; and on the
“pump special” they made their entry, some thirty minutes past five,
into the Grafton Brothers’ camp at the eastern tunnel approach.
Stribling, a handsome young fellow with a frank, open face and honest
eyes, was on hand to meet them.
“By Jove, Mr. Maxwell!” he said, with what was apparently a most
palpable relieving of anxious strain, “I was afraid you weren’t coming,
and I’d just about made up my mind to ’phone over to Lopez to tell
Canby and the rest of them that we’d postpone. I’ve got my record to
make yet, most of it, and I couldn’t afford to turn that power on and
start an engine through until after you and Benson have gone over the
completed installation with me.”
“Well,” Maxwell rejoined, “that’s what we’re here to do. You know
Starbuck, my brother-in-law? I thought so. Now shake hands with my
friend Sprague, of the Department of Agriculture, and we’ll go through
with you.”
Starbuck was watching Stribling’s face when the young electrical
engineer shook hands with the big man from Washington. There was a
query in the younger man’s eyes, and Starbuck saw it. Also, he marked
the half-second of hesitation which came between the introduction
and its acknowledgment. But a moment later they were all on their
way to the black-mouthed tunnel, Stribling walking ahead with the
superintendent and Sprague, and Starbuck following with Benson.
For convenience in his work Stribling had set up a small steam-driven
dynamo at his camp and had strung the tunnel with incandescents,
hence there was plenty of light in the long bore for the examination
of the power wiring. When they plunged underground the construction
man was still walking ahead with Maxwell and Sprague, explaining, for
the benefit of the superintendent’s guest, the design of the catenary
brackets and the double set of insulators.
“I’m betting on every detail in the mile and a quarter,” the young
engineer was saying, as the two laggards closed up. “It’s my first big
job, as Mr. Maxwell knows”--this also for the guest--“and I’ve simply
got to make good on it. I could have had that waiting motor-engine out
there pulling trains through the mountain this morning, but I made
up my mind that we wouldn’t turn a wheel until Mr. Maxwell had seen
everything for himself.”
“That’s business,” said Sprague, encouragingly. “Old Davy Crockett’s
maxim, eh? ‘Be sure you’re right, and then go ahead.’ But let me tell
you, Mr. Stribling: Mr. Maxwell will look wise and say, ‘Yes, yes,’ but
he’ll have to take your word for it, after all. What we average people
don’t know about modern electrical installations would fill a--” he
looked around as if in search of a measure of capacity--“would fill a
tank as big as that one across the track--the one you’ve dipped your
wires into over there in that side cave.”
“The oil-switch, you mean? Yes, that is a little safety wrinkle we’re
putting in wherever there’s a chance of an accident breaking down the
power wires. I’ll explain it as we come back.”
When the young engineer led the way onward again a glance to the rear
would have shown him that only three of the four were at his heels.
Starbuck had seen his chance, and in a quick withdrawal he dodged into
the side cavern housing the oil-switch. Two of the empty dynamite boxes
enabled him to breast the top of the tall iron tank. What he saw was a
little puzzling. Oil-switch tanks are usually left open to the air, but
this one was fitted with a galvanized-iron cover made in the form of a
shallow pan with double sides spaced about six inches apart. The inner
compartment of the pan was half-filled with a transparent oily liquid,
and the outer annular space around it was closely packed with chopped
ice. Hastily breaking the seals of the package he had been carrying
under his coat, he dumped the contents into the central receptacle
and fled without waiting to prove Sprague’s assertion that nothing
alarming would happen. When he rejoined the inspection party Sprague
was still holding Stribling in talk, and the young mine owner made sure
it was done to cover his own momentary absence.
The remainder of the trip through the tunnel was made without incident,
and on the way back Stribling halted the party at the safety switch
side cavern which, oddly enough, was charged with a curiously acrid
odor that made breathing in it chokingly difficult. Coughing and
gasping, Stribling explained the mechanism briefly. An electro-magnet,
energized by the power current itself, held the switch in contact. If
the current should be interrupted, as in the case of a breakage due to
a wreck, the switch would be thrown and all the tunnel wires rendered
instantly harmless.
“And these boxes are what your machinery came in?” said Sprague,
pointing to a litter of small dust-covered packing-cases scattered
about the tank.
“Oh, no; those are dynamite boxes,” was the hoarse reply. “They are
empty--at least, Mr. Benson says they are, and he ought to know, since
they are some of his leavings.” And then: “Suppose we move on. The
air is frightfully bad in here. The engineer must have stopped the
ventilating fans.”
Sprague had picked up a rusty bolt left by the timber-framers.
“You’ve got a good solid oil-tank here,” he said, hammering lustily on
the iron with the bolt.
Starbuck was watching Stribling, and he would have sworn that the young
engineer’s jump took him two feet clear into the air.
“Great Scott! Don’t do that, Mr. Sprague!” he cried. “You might break
some of the--some of the adjustments, you know!”
Sprague’s mellow laugh echoed hollowly in the timbered cavern.
“If they’re that delicate, perhaps we’d better take your suggestion and
move on,” he said. “I guess we’ve seen enough, anyway, eh, Maxwell?”
The superintendent acquiesced and the tunnel-threading was resumed to
the portal, and beyond to the little shack where Stribling had his
office. Here the young man became the hospitable host.
“Sit down, gentlemen, and I’ll call Canby at the power plant and ask
him if he is all ready to ‘cut in.’ If he says yes, you can take the
’phone and give the order, Mr. Maxwell. It’s your railroad.”
The four disposed themselves as they pleased in the cramped little
office fronting the tunnel. Sprague took his stand at the single
window to stare absently at the black hole in the mountain side--an
unrelieved spot of gloom now that the incandescents had been turned
off. Starbuck chose a corner, and did not take his eyes from Stribling,
who was sitting at his desk with Maxwell opposite.
With the receiver at his ear the young engineer exchanged a few words
with the company’s electrician at the power-house three miles away.
Then he pushed the ’phone across the desk to Maxwell.
“Canby says he’s ready,” he announced, in a voice that was strangely
sharp and tremulous. “Give him the word, and then watch this volt-meter
on the wall behind me. It will tell you when the current comes on.”
Maxwell hesitated for a single instant and looked across at Sprague.
But the expert’s back was turned and he was still staring fixedly at
the distant tunnel mouth. The superintendent took the receiver and
spoke crisply.
“This is Maxwell: if you’re ready, turn on the power.”
At the word, Sprague faced about quickly and fixed his gaze upon
Stribling. The young man had turned aside in his chair and his face was
ghastly. Benson and Maxwell were watching the indicator on the wall;
but Starbuck was rising noiselessly from his seat on the cot, with one
hand buried in the side-pocket of his coat. For ten dragging seconds
the index finger of the volt-meter remained motionless. Stribling was
twitching in his chair, and finally he burst out.
“Those dynamite boxes! We ought to have taken them out! What if they
shouldn’t happen to be empty--all of them?”
As he spoke, the index of the volt-meter began to jump like a thing
suddenly endowed with life, and Benson cried out, “There she comes!”
Stribling crouched in his chair as if shrinking from a blow and covered
his face with his hands. Ten seconds, twenty seconds, ticked themselves
off on the little desk clock at Maxwell’s elbow, and then Sprague’s
voice broke into the tense silence.
“It’s all over, Stribling. You can sit up now and take your medicine.
The end of the world is still safely in the future.”
The young man whirled in his chair and his right hand shot toward a
half-opened drawer of the desk. It was Starbuck who interposed.
“Nixie,” he said sharply; “it isn’t time for you to pass out yet. Keep
your hands out of that drawer, or I’ll put these on,” jingling a pair
of handcuffs before the culprit’s staring eyes.
Stribling leaped from his chair and took one long haggard look through
the open door at the tunnel mouth where nothing was happening. Then he
dropped back and became the trapped animal fighting for life.
“What have you got on me?--or what is it you think you’ve got?” he
rasped.
It was the man from Washington who replied.
“Don’t make it harder for yourself than you have to,” he said gently.
“We’ve got it all. We know that you had that train stopped last night
so that you could unload those empty dynamite boxes--they are empty,
you know--without discovery. We also know that this morning you placed
a quantity of nitro-glycerine in that safety switch, and that you have
the wiring rigged to fire the stuff and destroy the tunnel.”
The young man looked up and his smile showed his teeth.
“But the current is on and the tunnel isn’t destroyed,” he interrupted.
“No; you overdid it a little in asking Benson to help you handle the
nitro-glycerine and in letting him spill it on his clothes; also you
skipped a stitch when you thought that by smuggling those dynamite
boxes in and calling everybody’s attention to them, you’d put the
blame of the explosion upon Benson and the railroad people. You forgot
that all makers of dynamite nowadays stamp the date on the boxes.
The tunnel was completed two years ago; and the date on one of the
boxes, at least, is January of the present year. You are down and out,
Mr. Stribling, and there is only one way in which you can dodge the
stripes. That is by telling us who hired you to do this.”
A silence, tense like the silence of the court-room when the judge
pronounces the sentence, fell upon the group gathered in the little
shack-office, and it lasted for a full minute. At the end of it
Stribling jerked his head up and spoke.
“I’m a man again now, Mr. Sprague, if I haven’t been for the past
two months,” he said steadily. “I’ll tell you this: you can give me
the third degree, if you want to--there are enough of you here to do
it--and after that you can send me to the pen if you feel like it. But,
so help me God, you’ll never make me welsh on the man for whom I did
this: never, so long as I have the breath to say no!”
Again the tense silence supervened, and Starbuck held up the handcuffs
tentatively. Sprague shook his head, and spoke again.
“You’ve considered this resolution well, have you, Stribling?”
“I have. I owe that man everything I’ve got in this world: education,
the chance to hold my head up with others and, more than that, he once
saved my father from going where you mean to send me--over the road.
I’ll admit all you have charged. I did set the trap, and I don’t know
yet why it hasn’t gone off. All I ask is that you’ll remember that I
picked a time when there wouldn’t be any lives lost.”
“I discovered that last night,” said Sprague quietly; adding, with a
glance for the superintendent’s brother-in-law, “I guess we’ll have
to turn him over to you, Mr. Starbuck.” Then, turning once more upon
the culprit: “Why did you find it necessary to cross the power wires
with the telegraph lines early this afternoon, and so to destroy the
instruments on a hundred miles of railroad, Stribling?”
The young engineer looked up hardily. “It was necessary. I took care to
have Canby and the railroad electricians all over at the power plant,
and I couldn’t take the chance of leaving them in communication with
head-quarters at Brewster.”
Maxwell, who had sat as a silent listener, shook his head sadly and got
up and went out, followed by Benson. A little later Sprague, standing
at the window, saw them trying out the electric locomotive in short
runs up and down the tunnel approach. Starbuck came out of his corner
and snapped the manacles on Stribling’s wrists, and the young man made
no resistance. Sprague turned at the click of the handcuffs, standing
to frown down thoughtfully upon the self-confessed wrecker.
“I was in hopes we were going to get the men higher up this time; get
them so they would stay got,” he said, half to himself. “But it seems
that a bit of common human gratitude is going to blunder around and get
in the way. Stribling, I’m honestly sorry for you. I’m afraid we made a
mistake in not letting you get hold of that gun a few minutes ago.”
The young man with the honest eyes looked up quickly. “You did, indeed,
Mr. Sprague. It’s the simplest way out of it for me.”
“You are still determined not to do the larger justice by giving us the
information we need?”
The young man raised his manacled hands.
“Think of it a minute,” he pleaded. “You wouldn’t do it yourself; you
know you wouldn’t.”
“I don’t know--I don’t know; perhaps I shouldn’t,” admitted the big
man thoughtfully. Then he went on with visible reluctance: “I’m afraid
we shall have to pinch you, and pinch you hard, my boy. And it’s a
shame, when you were only a tool in the hands of the men who ought to
do time for this thing. I suppose we shall be taking the seven o’clock
passenger back to Brewster. Is there anything you’d like to do before
it comes along?”
“Yes; I’d like to write a letter or two.”
“You shall do it, and you shall have privacy.” And then to Starbuck:
“Fix him so that he can.”
Starbuck unlocked the manacle from Stribling’s right wrist and locked
it again around the arm of the office chair. “Will that give you room
enough?” he asked.
“More than enough,” was the quiet reply. And when Starbuck had taken
the pistol from the half-opened desk drawer the two who were free
went out and closed the door against any possible intrusion upon the
captive’s privacy.
“I’ll stay round,” Starbuck volunteered, when they were outside. “You
go over and ride the engine with Mr. Maxwell, if you want to.”
It was half an hour later when the three who had been trying out the
electric locomotive side-tracked the big machine at the sound of the
down passenger’s whistle signal at the western tunnel approach, and
crossed the tracks to where Starbuck was standing guard at the reopened
door of the office-shack.
“Still writing?” asked Sprague of the silent guard.
“No; for the last ten minutes he’s been sitting there with his head on
the table, just as you see him. He asked me to open the door a while
ago, so he could see better.”
Moved by a common impulse they entered the office-room, stepping
softly. But the young man at the desk was far beyond all earthly
disturbances. One letter, addressed to a girl in New York, lay on the
desk, stamped and sealed. Hanging beside the chair, and ingeniously
strung and weighted so that they could touch nothing, were the
two heavily insulated power wires which he had somehow managed to
disconnect from the volt-meter switch-board at his back; these and a
freshly burned shrivel on the hand of the arm that was crooked for a
pillow told how it had been done.
“Good God!” Maxwell exclaimed; “we might have thought of that! Poor
fellow! He couldn’t face it out, after all!”
Starbuck gently released the handcuffs and slipped them into his
pocket. Then he helped Benson put the body of the man who could not
face it out upon the cot in the corner. The train was coming, and
Benson pushed the others toward the door.
“Don’t stay here and miss your train,” he said. “I’ll do what there is
to be done. I was going to stay, anyway.”
* * * * *
The evening train was feeling its way down over the wireless line and
was half-way to Brewster before the three men sitting in the otherwise
unoccupied smoking-compartment of the sleeper broke the silence which
the sudden tragedy had laid upon them. But at the lighting of his third
cigar Maxwell could contain himself no longer.
“It’s another of your miracles, Calvin,” he said. “By this time I’m so
well used to them that nothing you do fazes me any more. But I’m sure
Billy will sleep better to-night if you tell him how you did it.”
The big man grunted softly.
“I think both of you have put the broken bits of the puzzle together
before this,” he returned. “The motive was the chief thing; what I
call the ‘nucleus thought,’ and we had that all ready-made. We knew
that this ‘Big Nine,’ as Ford names it, was out after your scalp; and
as soon as you told me about the tunnel and the Grafton Brothers’
contract the probable point of attack was no longer in doubt. You see,
I happen to know that the Graftons have always been hand-in-glove with
your principal competitor--had installed all the block signals for it,
cutting a fine melon for themselves in the process, too.”
“Still,” said Maxwell, “it’s a long way from that to this.”
“It was only taking one step after another, and Benson gave me three or
four of them. The details of Stribling’s exceedingly simple plot became
very plain after Benson had told us about the train-stopping, the empty
dynamite boxes, the safety switch--which could have been just as easily
and effectively placed at either end of the tunnel as in that hole in
the middle of it--and finally about the pouring of the sirupy stuff
into the oil-tank. There was a bit of fine work on Stribling’s part.
Benson doubtless knows nitro-glycerine when he sees it; but under the
circumstances he would be completely disarmed--as he was.”
“But how did you know that there would be a false cover on the tank?”
queried Starbuck.
“A bit of pure reasoning. The specific gravity of glycerine is greater
than that of the heaviest of the earth oils; hence the explosive would
sink to the bottom of the tank and mix with the oil to some extent. I
reasoned that Stribling would not take the risk of the mixture.”
“He didn’t,” said the mine owner; “the pan was there and it was packed
in ice.”
“But the laboratory experiment?” put in Maxwell.
“Was a simple test for nitro-glycerine, of course. You saw it blow
up the test-tube, but even then only one of you,--Mr. Starbuck
here,--suspected the truth. You did, didn’t you, Mr. Starbuck?”
“I had a guess comin’,” said the young mine owner quietly; adding:
“That was why I took the trouble to hunt me up a pair of handcuffs when
I went to get the train-orders.”