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

CHAPTER VIII – THE OLD SWITCH SHANTY

Ralph came out of the house with a thoughtful look on his face. His arm was in a sling and he quite looked the invalid. His mother followed him to the door.

“You see, I was the wisest,” spoke Mrs. Fairbanks.

“Yes, mother, you predicted that I wouldn’t feel quite so spry this morning as last night. All the same, if it wasn’t for the word just sent me by the general superintendent, you would see me on the regular Overland trip.”

“It wouldn’t be right,” dissented Mrs. Fairbanks. “Suppose your arm gave out at a critical moment of your run?”

“I shouldn’t let it,” declared Ralph. “It puzzles me, though-the word from headquarters.”

“It was rather strange,” assented his mother.

“The superintendent simply ’phoned me that I was to remain on the invalid list for a day or two. He said he was going to Rockton, and would be back tomorrow morning, and would expect me then at a conference at ten o’clock. In the meantime all I need to do, he said, was to hang around town, show myself about the yards and the general offices, but to be sure to wear my arm in a sling.”

“He has some purpose in view in that last direction, believe me, Ralph,” said Mrs. Fairbanks.

“Yes,” replied the son thoughtfully, “I’m beginning to guess out a certain system in his methods. I shouldn’t wonder if something lively were on the programme. Well, I’ll try and put on the enforced vacation as the superintendent suggests. Hello, there’s a fine hullaballoo!”

Ralph walked down the steps and to the street to trace the cause of a great outcry beyond the cottage grounds. As he passed through the gate he made out a haggard looking urchin standing on the planking of the crossing crying as if his heart would break.

“Why, it’s Ted Rollins, our little neighbor who lives over near the flats,” said Ralph, recognizing the ragged and begrimed lad.

The latter was half bent over as if squinting through the cracks in the sidewalk. Then he would let out a yell of distress, dig his fingers into his eyes, resume his looking, and wind up with a kind of frenzied dance, bewailing some direful disaster at the top of his voice. Ralph approached him unobserved.

“Hello, there,” he hailed, “what’s the trouble here?”

“I’ve lost it!” wailed the little fellow, without looking up. “It slipped out of my ha-a-and.”

“What did?”

“A nickel.”

“A nickel?”

“Yes, I earned it, and it rolled down one of those cracks in the sidewalk.”

“Which one?” inquired Ralph.

“Don’t know which one-boo-hoo! and say-it was for you.”

For the first time the weeping lad, glancing up through his tears, recognized Ralph. He instantly dug his hand down into a pocket and began groping there.

“What was for me?” asked Ralph, “the nickel?”

“No, not the nickel, that was for me. The note was for you, though, that I got the nickel to fetch-that I don’t get the nickel for fetching, though I fetched it,” added Ted Rollins dolefully. “That’s it.”

The lad brought out a folded creased slip of paper wet with his tears and grimed with contact with his fingers. He extended this to Ralph.

“For me, eh?” he inquired wonderingly.

“Yes, ‘Ralph Fairbanks,’ he said. He asked me if I knew Ralph Fairbanks, and I said you bet I did. ‘Why,’ says I, ‘he’s a regular friend of mine.’”

“That’s right, Ted,” said Ralph.

“Then he gave me the nickel and the note.”

“Who did?”

“The boy.”

“What boy?”

“The one I’m telling you about. I never saw him before. He was down near the elevator tracks where the old switch tower shanty is, you know.”

“Why, yes, I know,” assented Ralph, “but I can’t imagine who the note can be from. Oh, I understand now,” added Ralph, his eye brightening as he opened the note and caught a glimpse of the signature. “Here, Ted, there’s a dime for your faithfulness, and maybe you can find a chum with a big axe who will pry up a few of those sidewalk spikes, and if you find the lost nickel you can have that, too.”

“You’re a capital fellow, Ralph Fairbanks,” cried the delighted little urchin. “If you ever run for president of the Great Northern, my sister says the whole town will vote for you.”

“Thank you, Ted,” laughed the young railroader, “but they don’t elect railroad presidents that way.”

“Dad says you’ll get there, anyway.”

“Thank you again,” said Ralph, and as Ted darted away he gave his full attention to the note. It ran:

“Ralph Fairbanks:

“Will you please come to the place where the bearer of this note will direct you, and oblige. I have some money for you.

-Glen Palmer.”

“Well, well,” said Ralph in a pleased way, “this is pretty quick action on the part of our young chicken raiser. Of course I’ll go. Glen Palmer is straight, as I thought he would be. I’m curious to know how he came out with his investment, and doubly curious to learn something about that mysterious old grandfather of his.”

Ralph did not need any guide to reach the elevated tracks and the old switch tower shanty alluded to by Ted Rollins. The spot had been a busy one before they straightened out a lot of useless curves and changed the main line a half mile farther south. The old main tracks, however, were still used for switching and standing freights, and there were several grain elevators in the vicinity. It was now a remote and isolated spot so far as general traffic was concerned.

Ralph crossed over a stretch of bleak prairie, leaped a drainage ditch, and started down a siding that was used as a repair track. Just as he reached the end of a freight car he hastened his steps.

Not fifty yards distant two animated figures suddenly filled his range of vision. They were boys. One was Glen Palmer. The other Ralph was amazed to recognize as Ike Slump.

Glen had a broken-off broom in one hand and a bag pretty well filled over his shoulder. He was warding off the approach of Slump, who seemed bent on pestering him from malice or robbing him for profit. Ralph ran forward to the rescue of his young protege, who was no match in strength or size for the bully.

He was not in time to prevent a sharp climax to the scene. Glen swung the heavy bag he carried around to deal his tormenter a blow. Slump either drew a knife or had one concealed up his sleeve all along. At any rate he caught the circling bag on the fly. The knife blade met its bulging surface and slit it woefully, so that a stream of golden grain poured out.

“You ought to be ashamed of yourself!” burst out Glen Palmer, indignantly.

“Strangers pay toll around here, or I know the reason,” derided bad Ike Slump.

“Just drop that, Slump,” spoke Ralph, stepping forward.

“Humph!” growled Ike, retreating a step or two and looking rather embarrassed. “I didn’t expect you.”

“I see you didn’t,” observed Ralph. “This petty business doesn’t seem to accord very well with your high pretentions of last evening.”

“He has wasted all my grain!” cried Glen, tears starting to his eyes. “He said I’d have to pay toll to the gang, whatever that is, if I came around here gathering up chicken feed, and the flagman yonder has given me permission to sweep out all the cars after they have emptied at the elevators.”

“Don’t worry,” said Ralph, reassuringly. “I will see to it that you are not interfered with, that your rights are respected after this.”

“Huh!” scoffed Ike, and then with a great start and in a sharp change of voice he shouted out, “Hello, I say, hello!”

Ike stood staring fixedly at Glen at the moment. The latter in rearranging his disordered attire for the first time had removed the broad peaked cap he wore. The instant he caught Ike’s piercing glance fixed upon him, Glen flushed and in great haste replaced the cap, quite screening his face and turned away.

“Aha!” resumed Ike, continuing to stare at Glen. “Why, when, where-drat me!” and he struck his head with his hand, as if trying to drive out some puzzling idea. “Say, I’ve seen you before. Where? I never forget faces. Wallop me! but I know you, and-”

Just then Slump was walloped. The flagman at the shanty one hundred feet away had evidently witnessed the tussle between the two boys. That he was a friend to Glen was indisputable, for coming upon the scene from between two lines of freight he pounced on Slump, whacking him smartly about his legs with his flag stick.

“You pestering loafer, out of here,” he shouted, “or I’ll break every bone in your body,” and Slump ran down the track precipitately.

He paused only once, at a safe distance from pursuit. It was to shake his fist at the watchman, then to wave it in a kind of threatening triumph at Ralph, and then to make a speaking trumpet of his hand and to yell through it.

“I know that boy, don’t you forget it, and I’ll see you later.”

Ralph wondered a good deal at this demonstration. Then he turned to Glen.

“Why,” he exclaimed, noticing that the face of the latter was as white as chalk and that he was trembling all over. “What’s the matter, Glen?”

“I-that-is that fellow upset me,” stammered Glen, failing to meet Ralph’s scrutinizing glance.

“Something more than that, Glen,” insisted Ralph. “You act half scared to death. Do you know Ike Slump?”

“No.”

“Did you ever meet him before?”

“Never,” declared Glen strenuously.

Ralph had to be satisfied with this. Glen turned from him as if to hide some emotion or embarrassment. He began tying up his bag so as to cover the slit made in it by Slump’s knife and scooped up the scattered grain.

“Wait till I get this gathered up and I want to talk with you,” he said.

A new figure came lounging leisurely down the track as the watchman proceeded to his shanty. Ralph recognized Dan Lacey, a ne’er-do-well who had tried about every department of railroad service inside of two years and had failed signally in every attempt.

He was a good-natured, indolent fellow, perfectly harmless and generally popular. He halted in front of Ralph with a speculative glance at Glen Palmer.

“Howdy, Fairbanks,” he hailed. “Say, pet of yours yonder, I understand.”

“Who-Glen Palmer?”

“Yes, that’s his name.”

“He seems to be a fine young fellow I helped out a little.”

“Always doing that. Know him pretty well?”

“Hardly at all.”

“Well,” drawled Lacey taking in Glen with a continuous analyzing glance, “he’s a cracker jack.”

“What do you mean, Lacey?”

“Telegraphy. I’ve seen some pretty swell operators in my time, but that kid-say, believe me, Fairbanks, he’s got the last one of them backed clear off the board.”

CHAPTER IX – A SUSPICIOUS DISCOVERY

“Explain yourself, Lacey,” directed the young railroader.

“Nothing to explain-it’s exactly as I say. That lad’s a wonder.”

“At telegraphing, you said.”

“At telegraphing, I mean.”

“How do you know?”

“Heard him, saw him.”

“When, where?”

“Just a little bit ago up at the old switch tower. You know they left one or two broken instruments there when they moved the general outfit. Wires down, but one or two good sharp keys still in place. I was snoozing on the bench outside. Suddenly-click! click! Then the regular call. Then the emergency-say, I thought I was back at Dover with old Joslyn Drake, the crack operator of the Midland Central. You know I put in a year at the key. Not much at it myself, but you bet your life I can tell fine work. Why, that lad ran the roll like a veteran. Then he began on speed. I crept closer. There he was, thinking no one saw him, rattling the key till it pounded like a piston on a sixty mile an hour run.”

Ralph was a good deal astonished. Glen was a pretty young fellow to line up in the way that Dan Lacey described. Then a kind of vague disagreeable idea came into the mind of the young railroader. He recalled the old grandfather and his two villainous associates, for such they had proved themselves to be the evening previous.

“Things are dovetailing in a queer sort of way,” reflected Ralph. “Perhaps a little investigation will give me a clew as to those fellows who slipped me in the tunnel.”

When he had gathered up the scattered grain Glen Palmer glanced uneasily all about him as if looking for Ike Slump. Then he became his natural self.

“I’m awfully glad to see you,” he said to Ralph, “although it seems as if there’s a fight or a smashup, or some outlandish thing on the books every time I meet you.”

“Well that doesn’t matter so long as you come out of it all right, eh, Glen?” propounded Ralph brightly.

“You’re a good champion in the nick of time,” declared Glen. “I wanted to see you, so I took the liberty of sending for you.”

“Why didn’t you come up to the house?”

“Oh, no! no! – ” began Glen with a start. “That is-I don’t go to town much. I’ve got some money for you. There are ten dollars. I’ll have the balance Saturday.”

Ralph accepted the bank bills which Glen extended.

“I’ll hand this to Mr. Fry,” he said. “You don’t need to pay it now, though, Glen.”

“Oh, yes, I want to get out of debt as fast as I can.”

“You’re starting out the right way to do it. Pretty quick action you got on your chicken deal, it seems to me.”

“Oh, that was luck,” explained Glen, brightening up. “There was one special lot among the chickens, about twenty-four of them. They were in a tier of the car that wasn’t battered in the smash up. We got them all out safe and sound. They are of a rare breed-they call them Blue Cochins.”

“Valuable?”

“I didn’t know till after we got them down to the farm. A man driving by noticed them. They have black eyes instead of the usual red ones, and he said they were very scarce. The next day he came down and offered me five dollars each for two settings of their eggs. Think of it-nearly a half a dollar an egg. I delivered them yesterday, and the man said there are any number of people who would buy the eggs if they knew I had them, and about the choice breed.”

“Why, this is interesting,” said Ralph.

“Say, can’t you come down and see my layout?” inquired Glen eagerly. “I’d be dreadfully glad.”

“Why, I might,” replied Ralph thoughtfully, consulting his watch.

“There’s our chance, if you will,” said Glen, grabbing the arm of his companion and indicating a short freight train just pulling off from a side switch. “It’s three miles and a half to the farm, and that train goes within a short distance of it.”

They ran for the train. It was composed of empties with a caboose attached. Aboard of this the boys clambered and sat down on the rear platform.

“I come down here for the sweepings every morning,” said Glen. “To-day and one other day in the week there isn’t much to get. One day I got over two bushels and a half, though.”

“That’s pretty fine,” commented Ralph.

“It’s a big item in my feed bill, I can tell you,” declared Glen. “I’ve got a new arrangement in view, too-the grain inspector at Stanley Junction.”

“Yes, I know him,” nodded Ralph.

“Well, my good friend the flagman here introduced him day before yesterday, and he told me that all those little bags containing samples are thrown into a big bin and dumped into the dust heap when they’re past inspection. After this he’s going to have them left in the bin, and I’m going to arrange to have a cartman call once a week and haul the stuff out to the farm.”

“Friends everywhere, eh, Glen,” said Ralph encouragingly.

“I’m so glad!” murmured his companion in a low grateful tone.

The young railroader calculated that he could visit the farm and get back to Stanley Junction by noon time. At the end of a three miles’ jerky run the train slowed down at a crossing and Ralph and Glen left it.

“There’s the place,” said the latter, as they reached the end of a grove, and he pointed to an old, low-built ruin of a house just ahead of them.

“They call it Desolation Patch around here. It’s in litigation somehow, and no one has lived in it until we came for several years, they tell me.”

“It does look rather ragged, for a fact,” said Ralph. “How did you come to pick it out, Glen?”

“Oh, it was just the place I was looking for. You see,” explained the boy in a slightly embarrassed way, “my grandfather is sort of-queer,” and Glen pointed soberly to his head.

“Yes, I understand,” nodded Ralph.

“I didn’t want to take him to a town where he might be noticed and mightn’t feel at home. Then there were reasons which-yes, some reasons.”

Ralph did not ask what they were. The farm embraced some twenty acres. Its improvements were mostly rickety, broken down barns and sheds. These seemed to be utilized in the chicken industry to the last foot of available space, the interested visitor noticed. An enclosure formed of sections of old wire netting held over a hundred of the feathery brood, and some of the boxes obtained from the wreck had been made into brooding pens.

Then Ralph laughed outright as he noticed two, four, half a dozen chickens limping about cheerfully with a stick taking the place of one broken or missing foot, and at others with a wing in splints.

“What do you think of it?” inquired Glen eagerly.

“I think you’re a rare genius,” declared Ralph, slapping his companion heartily on the shoulder.

“There are some neighbors beyond here who have been awfully kind to us,” proceeded Glen. “They gave us an old cooking stove and other kitchen things, and now that we have the chickens and eggs we can trade in the neighborhood for most everything we want. We have plenty to eat-oh, you did a big thing the day you went bail for me on this chicken deal.”

Glen went into details about his business when they reached the house. He showed Ralph a book in which he had enumerated his various belongings. Then he made an estimate of what sixty days’ chicken farming would result in. The exhibit made Ralph dizzy. It was fowls and eggs and multiples of fowls and eggs in exact but bewildering profusion.

“You’re heading right, that’s sure,” applauded Ralph. “What’s that room for?”

Ralph was glancing into an adjoining apartment with a great deal of curiosity and interest. He had never seen such a room before. It held two rudely-constructed tables, and attached to these were some old telegraph instruments, just like the abandoned ones down at the old division tower shanty. Pieces of wire ran to the ceiling of the room, but no farther. On the wall above one of the tables was a great sheet of paper covered with a skeleton outline system.

Somewhere Ralph had seen a picture of a rude frontier train dispatcher’s office. This was almost a perfect counterpart of it. He fixed his eyes in questioning wonderment on his companion. Glen looked somewhat embarrassed and flushed up. Then with an affected laugh he said:

“This is my grandfather’s den.”

“But-the telegraph instruments, the wires?”

“Why, grandfather was once a telegrapher, a famous-” He checked himself. “This is his hobby, and I fixed up things to please him.”

“How about yourself?” asked Ralph, with a keen glance at his companion, recalling what Dan Lacey had told him back at the switch shanty.

Glen eyed him steadily for a moment. Then his eyes faltered.

“My grandfather has taught me a lot about telegraphy,” he admitted.

Ralph walked over to the chart on the wall. The young engineer had learned his Morse alphabet early in his railroad career, and knew something of the system in vogue along the line.

As his eye studied the rude scrawl made with a red pencil, Ralph at once discerned that its dotted lines denoted three divisions of a railway system. From separate dots he traced a line of towns. Above each was a designation, an initial, a double initial, sometimes an additional numeral.

“The mischief!” muttered the young railroad engineer under his breath, “this doesn’t look much like a plaything outfit. Why, that is a perfect transcript of the routing chart in the train dispatcher’s office at Stanley Junction.”

CHAPTER X – THE TRAIN DISPATCHER

A great flood of dark suspicion crossed Ralph’s mind at the discovery of the road chart. A dozen quick questions arose to his lips. Before he could speak, however, there was a hail from the outside.

“Hey, there, young fellow!”

Glen ran out to the road where a farm hand on horseback had halted. Ralph followed him.

“About your old man,” spoke the visitor.

“My grandfather, yes,” said Glen breathlessly.

“You told us to sort of keep an eye on him. He came down to our place about an hour ago to get some butter. Scruggins, who lives just beyond here was going to Centerville. Your old man said he wanted to go there, too, to see the new swinging signal bridge over the railroad.”

“Oh, but you stopped him.”

“I was away when it happened, and he would not listen to ma. Scruggins said he would bring him back all right.”

“Oh, I must stop him! I must overtake him!” cried Glen in such poignant distress that Ralph was surprised. “Grandfather was away nearly two days before, and pretty near got lost, and I was worried to death. I must go after him, indeed I must! Excuse me, won’t you,” he pleaded of Ralph.

“I will see you again soon,” answered Ralph.

“Do-sure,” said Glen. “I have lots to tell you.”

The farm hand rode on his way and Glen ran down the road on foot at great speed. Ralph went back slowly to the open house. Once more he inspected the telegraph room. Then with a good deal of thoughtfulness he started homeward.

“There’s something queer about all this business,” ruminated the young railroader. “That boy’s grandfather was certainly in with the two men who escaped from me in the tunnel. He is an expert telegrapher. So is Glen. Ike Slump had something up his sleeve about Glen. That chart of the road has the regular telegraph signal on it. What does this all mean?”

Ralph could not believe that Glen was a schemer or anything of that sort. For all that, there was a decided mystery about him. He seemed to be afraid of Slump, appeared to shun the town and its people. Why was he wandering all about the country with a helpless old man? Why had he flushed up and acted embarrassed when Ralph had asked him several pointed questions?

“Glen must certainly be questioned about the two men who had his grandfather in tow,” decided Ralph, “for those fellows must be located and watched. I wish Bob Adair was here. He would soon let light in on the whole affair. I’d rather he would do it, for I feel very friendly towards Glen and I don’t like hurting his feelings by seeming to pry into his private business.”

Ralph rested a few minutes on the porch when he reached home and then started down town. He was in a certain state of suspense, for the orders of the general superintendent were vague and unsatisfactory. Something was working, Ralph felt, in which he was to take an active part. The paymaster had indicated that affairs were being stirred up. Idleness and suspense worried the young railroader, however, and he anxiously awaited the coming interview with his superior officer.

Ralph went down to the roundhouse and met many of his friends. Old Forgan, the fireman, described the disgust and dejection of Fogg at having a new running mate. Everybody had heard that Ralph had a layoff on account of a fall disabling him, and his arm in the sling won him a good deal of friendly sympathy. He made a tour of the general offices to learn that Mr. Little was laid up at home with a lame foot, and that the general superintendent was out of town.

Ralph had the free run of the general offices, as the saying went. He was ambitious, energetic and popular, and the busiest man in the service had a pleasant nod and a kindly word for him as he went around the different departments. When he arrived at the train dispatcher’s office, the young railroader went in and sat down.

Ralph was in one of the most inviting places a man can get into, especially if he is interested in the workings of a big railway system.

The thought came to him, as he sat watching the men who held in their keeping the lives of thousands of passengers, that not all the credit for a good swift run was due to the engineer and train crew. He smiled as he recalled how the newspapers told every day of the President or some big functionary out on a trip, and how at the end of the run he stopped beside the panting engine, and reaching up to shake the hand of the faithful, grimy engineer, would say:

“Thank you so much for giving us a good run. I don’t know when I have ridden so fast before,” or words to that effect.

The reader of such items never thinks the engineer and crew are mere mechanical agents, small cogs in a huge machine. They do their part well, but the little office of the train dispatcher is a red-hot place where they have a red-hot time, where one tap of the sounder may cover the fate of numberless extras, specials and delayed trains.

The young engineer took particular notice of the dispatcher’s office on the present occasion. This was because so much of pending trouble seemed to involve the wire system of the Great Northern. The wire tapping episode, the prototype routing chart at the chicken farm, had aroused suspicion in his mind. Then, too, Ralph had often had a fondness and an admiration for this branch of the service. At one time, in fact, he had studied telegraphy with the purpose in view of following it up, and old John Glidden, a fast friend of his, had invited him to the dispatcher’s office and had taught him a great many useful things in his line.

Glidden was the first trick dispatcher and was not on duty just now. Ralph nodded to two subordinates at their tables, and snuggled back into his comfortable seat with the time and interest to look over things.

The interior of the dispatcher’s office was not very sumptuous. There was a big counter at one side of the room. This contained the train register, car record books, message blanks and forms for various reports. Against the wall on one of the other sides was a big blackboard known as the call board. Ralph read here the record of the probable arrival and departure of trains and the names of their crews. Also the time certain crews were to be called.

About the middle of the room in the recess of a bay window was the dispatcher’s table. Ralph only casually knew the man in charge. His name was Thorpe, a newcomer, and an expert in his line, but gruff and uncivil in the extreme, and he had few friends. In front of him was the train sheet containing information exact and absolute in its nature of each train on the division. On the sheet was also a space set apart for the expected arrival of trains from the other end and one for delays. Glidden had once gone over one of these sheets with Ralph with its loads, empties and miscellaneous details, and Ralph knew that the grim, silent man at the table must know the precise location of every train at a given moment, how her engine was working, how she had done along the road, and all about her engineer and conductor.

Ralph spent nearly a half an hour in the dispatcher’s room. Then he went down to the depot. An extra was just leaving for the west. He paused to have a cheery word with the engineer and fireman, whom he knew quite well. They were getting ready for the orders to pull out, when the three of them stared hard at a flying form coming down the track.

“Hello,” observed the engineer, “it’s Bates.”

“Yes, the second trick man in the dispatcher’s office,” nodded the fireman. “Wonder what’s up with him?”

“Something is,” declared Ralph, “according to his looks and actions.”

Bates came puffing up white and breathless. Evidently he had just got out of bed, half dressed himself, put on a pair of slippers, no coat, no hat, and he seemed to ignore the cold and snow amid some frantic urgency of reaching the departing train.

“Say!” he panted, approaching the fireman who was giving No. 341 the last touch of oil before they pulled out, “thank heaven you haven’t gone!”

“Hey?” stared the engineer.

“Don’t pull out for a minute.”

“Why not?”

“I think there’s a mistake in your orders.”

“What’s the matter with you?” snapped back the fireman with affected gruffness. “I hain’t got no orders. Come here, till I oil the wheels in your head.”

“You must come up to the dispatcher’s office,” insisted Bates urgently, and the engineer followed him wonderingly. Ralph, tracing something unusual in the episode of the moment, kept them company.

The chief dispatcher was standing by the counter. He glanced sharply at Bates with the words:

“What’s up, kid? Seen a ghost? You look almost pale enough yourself to be one.”

“No,” quavered Bates in a shaky tone. “I haven’t seen any ghosts, but I am afraid I forgot to notify that track gang just west of here about this extra.”

The chief went to the order book and glanced at the train sheet.

“Oh, bosh!” he said. “Of course you notified them. Here it is as big as life. Look out for extra west engine 341 leaving Stanley Junction at 1:21 P. M. What do you want to get a case of rattles and scare us all that way for. Say, I’d ought to run down your spinal column with a rake. Don’t you know there are other dispatchers in this office besides yourself-men who know more in a minute about the business than you do in a month? Don’t you suppose that order book would be verified and the train sheet consulted before sending out the extra. Say, don’t you ever show up with such a case of rattles again.”

Bates expressed an enormous sigh of relief. As he came down to the platform, however, Ralph noticed that he was shaking from head to foot.

“Did you ever work up there?” inquired Bates in a solemn tone.

“No,” answered Ralph.

“Then don’t. Just wake up once after you’ve left the key, and get thinking you’ve forgotten something, and-nightmare? Fairbanks, it’s worse than the horrors!”