Ralph, the Train Dispatcher: or, The Mystery of the Pay Car

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.