Produced by Al Haines.
[Illustration: RALPH QUICKLY AND DEFTLY ATTENDED TO THE CALL FOR SEVERAL
SWITCHES.]
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RALPH IN THE SWITCH TOWER
OR
CLEARING THE TRACK
BY
ALLEN CHAPMAN
NEW YORK
GROSSET & DUNLAP
PUBLISHERS
Made in the United States of America
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COPYRIGHT, 1907
BY
THE MERSHON COMPANY
_Ralph in the Switch Tower_
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CONTENTS
CHAPTER I--DOWN AND OUT
CHAPTER II--UP THE LADDER
CHAPTER III--A CLOSE GRAZE
CHAPTER IV--A MYSTERY
CHAPTER V--THE STOWAWAY
CHAPTER VI--MRS. FAIRBANKS' VISITOR
CHAPTER VII--"YOUNG SLAVIN"
CHAPTER VIII--A BAD LOT
CHAPTER IX--CALCUTTA TOM
CHAPTER X--A MILE A MINUTE
CHAPTER XI--SPOILING FOR A FIGHT
CHAPTER XII--THE SUPERINTENDENT'S OPINION
CHAPTER XIII--SQUARING THINGS
CHAPTER XIV--A BUSY EVENING
CHAPTER XV--A HERO DESPITE HIMSELF
CHAPTER XVI--KIDNAPPED
CHAPTER XVII--A MIDNIGHT VISITOR
CHAPTER XVIII--A DESPERATE CHANCE
CHAPTER XIX--THE DOUBLE WRECK
CHAPTER XX--THE CRAZY ORDERS
CHAPTER XXI--IKE SLUMPS "NUTCRACKER"
CHAPTER XXII--A HEADSTRONG FRIEND
CHAPTER XXIII--IKE SLUMP & CO.
CHAPTER XXIV--FIRE!
CHAPTER XXV--THE LITTLE TIN BOX
CHAPTER XXVI--A CLEW!
CHAPTER XXVII--SLAVIN GETS A JOB
CHAPTER XXVIII--WHAT THE "EXTRA" TOLD
CHAPTER XXIX--GUESSING
CHAPTER XXX--PRECIOUS FREIGHT
CHAPTER XXXI--HALF A MILLION DOLLARS
CHAPTER XXXII--CONCLUSION
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RALPH IN THE SWITCH TOWER
CHAPTER I--DOWN AND OUT
"Get out of here!" said Jack Knight, head towerman of the Great Northern
Railroad, at Stanley Junction.
"Why, I ain't doing no harm," retorted Mort Bemis, ex-leverman of the
depot switch tower.
"And stay out. Hear me?" demanded Knight, big as a bear, and quite as
gruff.
"What's the call for sitting down on a fellow this way, I'd like to
know!" muttered Bemis sullenly.
"You're a bad lot, that's what," growled the veteran railroader. "You
always were and you always will be. I'm through with you. So is the
railroad company. What's the call, you meddlesome, malicious reprobate?
That's the call!" fairly shouted the towerman, red of face and choleric
of voice.
He moved one arm as he spoke. It hung in a sling, and the hand was
swathed in bandages.
"There's some of your fine, Smart-Aleck work," he went on angrily. "Come
now, take yourself out of here! This is a place for workers, not
loafers."
Mort Bemis gave Jack Knight a revengeful look. Then he moved towards
the trap in the floor.
The scene was the depot switch tower at Stanley Junction, in sight of
the local passenger depot. It loomed up thirty feet in the air,
glass-windowed on every side. It was neat, light, and airy. In its
center, running nearly its length, was the row of long heavy levers that
controlled the depot and siding switches of the terminus of the Great
Northern Railroad.
The big-framed, business-faced man who bustled among these, keeping an
angry eye meantime on an unwelcome visitor, was a veteran and a marvel
in local railroad circles.
When the Great Northern had come to Stanley Junction, ten years back, it
brought old Jack Knight with it,
He had an eye like an eagle and the muscles of a giant. The inside of
his head was popularly believed to be a vast railroad map. He
controlled the main rails, switches, and sidings, like a woman would the
threads of an intricate knitting piece. He directed the locomotives and
trains up and down that puzzling network of rails, like puppets moved by
strings. In ten years' service he had never been responsible for an
accident or a wreck.
Old Jack, therefore, having never made a mistake in railroading, had
little patience with the careless, lazy specimen whom he had just
ordered out of the place.
Mort Bemis had been his assistant in the tower. The fellow's record had
always been full of flaws. He was slow and indifferent at the levers.
He associated with a shiftless crowd outside. He borrowed money and did
not pay it back. He was unreliable, disagreeable, and unpopular.
Three days previous, old Jack was adjusting a heavy weight bar on the
lower story of the switch tower.
Mort, upstairs, was supposed to safely hold back a spring-bar apparatus
while his superior was fixing the delicate mechanism below.
His mind everywhere except on his task, Mort for an instant took his
hand off the bar to wave a recognition to a chosen chum, "flipping" a
passing freight train.
There was a frightful yell below. Mort, terrified, pulled back the bar.
Then he stuck his head through the trap. There stood old Jack, pale as
death, one hand crushed and mutilated through his helper's outrageous
lapse of duty.
The old railroader's rage was terrible, as he forgot his pain and hurt
in the realization that for the first time in ten years he was crippled
from active service.
The frightened Mort made a dive for a window. He slid down the
water-spout outside, got to the nearest switch shanty, telephoned the
depot master about the accident,--and made himself scarce.
Mort joined some chosen chums in one of the haunts of Railroad Street.
He reported by 'phone "on the sick list" next morning. He did not show
up until two days later, "after a good and easy rest," as he put it, and
then fancying old Jack's "grouch" had cooled down.
Mort's reception has been related. He was informed that the railroad
company had peremptorily discharged him. As to old Jack himself, Mort
readily discerned that the veteran railroader was aching to give him a
good hiding.
Mort did not wait to furnish an excuse for this. He now started down
the trap-door ladder, grumbling and growling.
"Be careful!" rapidly but pleasantly warned someone whom Mort jostled a
few feet from the bottom.
Mort edged over and dropped to the floor. He gave the speaker a keen
look.
"Hello! Oh; it's you?" he muttered with a scowl; "Ralph Fairbanks."
The person addressed responded with a short nod. Then he continued to
mount the ladder in an easy, agile way.
"Hold on," challenged Bemis.
He had planted his feet apart, and had fixed a fierce and malignant
glance upon the newcomer.
Suspicion, disappointment, and rage showed plainly in his coarse, sullen
face.
There was something in the striking contrast between himself and the
other that galled Mort.
He was "down and out," he realized, while the neat, cheery, ambitious
lad whom he had hailed, three years his junior, was "going up the
ladder" in more ways than one.
The latter wore a new, clean working suit, and carried a dinner pail. He
suggested the wholesome, energetic worker from top to toe.
"I am holding on," he observed to Mort, stopping half-way up the ladder.
"Thought you was working at the roundhouse?" said Mort.
"I was," answered Ralph Fairbanks. "I have been promoted."
"Where to?"
"Here."
"What!" flared out Mort. "What do you know about switch-tower duty?"
"Not much, only what Mr. Knight has shown me for the past two days. But
I'll catch on, I guess."
Mort Bemis struck a tragic pose and his voice quavered.
"Oho! that's the game, eh? All cut and dried! My bread and butter
taken away from me, to give to one of the master mechanic's pets. Augh!"
Mort retreated with a grimace of disgust. He was standing under a floor
grating. Purposely or by accident, Knight, overhead, had dropped a
dipperful of water through the grating.
Mort jumped outside the lower tower room, growling like a mad catamount.
He shook his fist menacingly at Ralph.
"Fairbanks," he cried, "I'll fix you for this!"
Ralph did not even look at his enemy again. He completed his ascent of
the ladder, and came up through the trap with a bright, cheery hail to
old Jack, whom he liked and who liked him.
"I report for active duty, Mr. Knight," he announced briskly.
"Oh, do you?" retorted the old railroader, disguising his good nature
under his usual mask of grimness. "Well, you're ahead of time fifteen
minutes, so just sit down and behave yourself till I get those freights
over yonder untangled. Anxious for work, are you?" he pursued
quizzically. "You'll have enough of it. I'm ordered up to the
crossings tower, and you'll have to take the first half-night shift here
alone. Think you can manage it?"
"I can try, Mr. Knight," was the modest but resolute reply.