Chapter XXVI: An Amazing Announcement

The press operator rapidly wrote out the message coming over the wire, took the finished sheet, folded it, and sent it down a chute. This led to the room below where messengers were waiting for the service. The duplicate sheet he slipped over a spindle. Ralph hurriedly reached his side.

"Let me look at that last flimsy, will you?"

"Cert," bobbed the accommodating operator, handing it to Ralph.

The latter read the hurriedly traced lines with a falling face.

"That's my 30," announced the operator, shutting off his key and arising to drop work for the night.

Ralph paid no attention to him. The young railroader was conscious of a decidedly painful impression. He had heard nothing of Glen Palmer or his grandfather since the night the jumbled up "Look out for the pay car" telegram had arrived. Ralph, however, had frequently thought of the lad whom he had started in at the chicken farm.

Young Palmer had been disappointing. All along the line Ralph had to admit this. Once in a while, however, when he realized the lonely bedouin-like existence of Glen, certain pity and indulgence were evoked. Now, however, a grave, hurt look came into Ralph's eyes.

"Too bad," he said, softly and sorrowfully. "I fancy Bob Adair was right."

The road detective had forcibly expressed the opinion that Glen Palmer had been a jail bird. More than that, Adair believed him to be in league with the conspirators. Ralph thought not. Glen had sent him two warning messages under extraordinary circumstances. The press telegram just over the wires, however, certainly coincided with the charges of Ike Slump that Glen was a criminal.

It was one of a batch of items that had come over the commercial line that evening. The message was dated at a small interior city, Fordham, and it read:

"The system adopted by the Bon Ton department store here to discourage theft, bore practical results today, and their publicly offered reward of ten dollars was claimed by an amateur detective. The latter discovered a boy in the act of removing a valuable ring from a display tray, and informed on him. The thief was searched and the stolen article found secreted on his person. He unblushingly admitted his guilt. The thief gave the name of Sam Jones, but some papers found on him disclosed his correct name, which is Glen Palmer. He was brought before Justice Davis, who sentenced him promptly to sixty days in the county workhouse."

"What's hitting you so glum, Fairbanks?" inquired Glidden, as Ralph kept poring over the telegram in a depressed way.

"A friend of mine gone wrong," replied Ralph simply.

He was glad that he was not called on for any further explanation. Just then Tipton broke in with a crisp short wire--No. 83 had just passed, only fifteen minutes late.

"She's getting in among the bad mountain cuts," observed Glidden, as Ralph crossed off the station on his check card. "If the pull isn't too hard, I reckon she'll make her first switch nearly on time."

There was now in the dispatcher's room a dead calm of some duration. Glidden sat figuring up some details from the business of the night. Ralph rested back in his chair, thinking seriously of Glen Palmer, and wondering what mystery surrounded him and his grandfather.

The silence was broken finally with a sharp tanging challenge, always stimulating and startling to the operator. It was the manager's call:

"25--25--25."

Ralph swept his key in prompt response.

"Hello!" said the aroused Glidden, listening keenly, "thought Tipton was off for the night after 83 had passed. What's--that!"

Ralph, deeply intent, took in the rapid tickings eagerly. The message was from the station which had reported No. 83 passed in good shape three-quarters of an hour before.

Here was the hurry message that came over the wire:

"83 something wrong. Just found brakeman of train lying in snow at side of track. Hurt or drugged. Mumbled about foul play. Catch Maddox and advise conductor of 83."

"I say!" exclaimed Glidden, jumping to his feet. "Get Maddox, Fairbanks. 83 is due or passed."

"M-x M-x--stop 83," tapped Ralph quickly.

"Too late," muttered Glidden in a sort of groan. "Thunder! she can't be reached till she gets to Fairview, forty miles ahead."

Maddox had wired back to headquarters the following message:

"83 just passed after coaling. Fairview reports four feet of snow in the cuts. No stop this side."

Then Ralph did the only thing he could. He wired to the operator at Fairview:

"Hold 83 on arrival for special orders."

The sleepy look left Glidden's eyes and Ralph was all nerved up. There had come a break in the progress of the substitute pay car, and both felt anxiously serious as to its significance.

"There's something mighty wrong in this business," declared Glidden.

"It looks that way," assented Ralph.

"Get Tipton."

Ralph called over the wire and repeated.

"Something has shut out Tipton," he reported.

"Wires down or cut," observed Glidden. "Try Maddox."

Ralph did so.

"Maddox not open," he said. His mind ran over the situation. He recalled a night like this when he and Fireman Fogg had run alone a battered locomotive over the same stretch of road on a Special for President Grant of the Great Northern. It had been a hairbreadth experience, and he wondered if No. 83 would get through.

One o'clock--two o'clock. The young dispatcher and his first trick man found it hard to endure the irksome monotony of those two anxious hours. It was like a tensioned cord breaking when at last the welcome call from Fairview came over the wires.

"83," the message ticked out, "crippled; six feet of snow ahead, and will have to lay over. Send orders."

"She's got through safe, that's a consolation," said Glidden, with a vast sigh of satisfaction.

Ralph simply clicked an "O. K." It had been arranged that at Fairview the conductor would wire for instructions. These had been purposely withheld for secrecy's sake. A transfer of two pay safes was due at the next station and Ralph waited, knowing that as soon as he could leave his train the conductor would send a personal message.

Suddenly the instrument began to click again.

"From conductor 83: metaphor, resolve, adirondacks, typists."

"What!" shouted Glidden, jumping to his feet in a frenzy.

Ralph's hand shook and the color left his face.

Translated, the message from the conductor of train No. 83 meant:

"The substitute pay car has disappeared."