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

CHAPTER XXVIII – THE “TEST” SPECIAL

“Mr. Fairbanks?”

“Yes, sir.”

“This is the office of the general superintendent. He wishes to see you immediately.”

“I will report at once.”

Ralph put down the telephone receiver, exchanged his office coat for street wear, and within five minutes was admitted into the private office of his superior official.

The superintendent looked bothered and his eyes were fixed on a great array of documents on the desk before him. Ralph’s brisk step and bright face seemed to rouse him, and with a word of welcome he said:

“Sit down, Fairbanks.” Ralph wondered why he had been sent for. He hoped it was concerning the pay car mystery. There was not an hour in the day that in some shape or other this perplexing puzzle did not come up before him. More than one of his friends was vitally interested in the outcome of that baffling case. For the sake of Bob Adair and Zeph Dallas, he sincerely wished that the mists of secrecy and vagueness might be cleared away.

“Unfinished business,” spoke the superintendent after a pause, almost irritably brushing aside a heap of papers directly before him. “Will it ever be finished?” he added with a sigh. “Fairbanks,” and the official singled out a letter from among the heap of documents, “I am afraid I must ask you to go on special duty.”

“Very well, sir,” said Ralph at once.

“Always ready, always willing,” commended the superintendent with an approving glance at the young railroader. “I wish there were more like you, Fairbanks. You know the bother and stress we are in. This pay car business has upset the whole official force, and we are still in the dark.”

“But Mr. Adair is on the case,” submitted Ralph.

“It has been of no use. He has made an investigation along every inch of the road where the car might have disappeared. He has given up, discouraged. Here is his last report. He mentions you.”

“Mentions me?” repeated Ralph.

“Yes. That is one reason why I have sent for you. He reports from Fairview, and asks us to send you to him on Wednesday.”

“That is day after tomorrow,” said Ralph.

“Exactly. What his plans are I cannot tell you, but he refers to some efficient work you have done in his line in the past, and requests us to detail you specially in his service. What do you say, Fairbanks?”

“I am at your orders, sir.”

“Very good. That settles one part of the business. The other may not come so welcome to you, but you must be our man. Glance over that, will you?”

The official handed Ralph a card covered with calculations. There were bewildering figures, so many cars, so many used per day, so much profit. The totals were enormous.

“The Overland Fruit Dispatch,” explained the superintendent, “is out for bids on the transfer of their cars east from Rockton.”

“I heard something of that.”

“We are out for the contract. It means a big thing for us. So is the Midland Central. That means war, or, rather, more war. Their schedule beats ours by ten minutes. We must beat them by two hours. The test run began at ten o’clock this morning. Porter and Winston, both good men, run as far as Portland. I am not afraid in broad daylight. Nearly all the trouble has been east of that point-you understand?”

“Perfectly,” assented Ralph-“you are afraid of some trickery on the part of our rivals?”

“Yes. I want you to reach Portland and catch the special at four p. m. If the new locomotive crew look good to you, just superintend. But rush that train into the yards by the stroke of eleven p. m., or we lose the contract.”

“I think I can do it,” said Ralph.

“Very well, we give you free rein. Dismiss the crew and find a new one, as you like. You have orders for clear tracks over everything else. Lay out your schedule, give Glidden charge of the wires at headquarters, and get us that contract.”

“I will catch the first west through and report at eleven o’clock to-night,” promised Ralph confidently.

“Good for you, Fairbanks,” commended the superintendent, slapping Ralph encouragingly on the shoulder.

The next was a busy hour for Ralph. He studied the schedules, posted Glidden, took a hurry run for home and caught the train just as it was pulling out of the depot. Ralph reached Portland at half-past three in the afternoon.

The special was on time and due in thirty minutes. She was to take water and coal at the yards, and Ralph, making himself known to the operator there, loitered outside. He saw the relief engineer appear. He was a man he did not know, and something about his face and manner impressed the young railroader rather unfavorably.

The man set his dinner pail near the steps of the switch tower and walked about with the air of a person looking for some one. Then at a low whistle he started for a pile of ties some distance away. A man lurking there had beckoned to him. Ralph watched closely but drew back out of view. His keenest wits were on the alert in a second. He had recognized the lurker as a former unreliable employe of the Great Northern, discharged at the time of the great strike.

Ralph feared this fellow might recognize him and dared not approach him any nearer. The twain conversed for only a moment. Then the lurker handed the engineer a bag. It held apparently about a bushel of some kind of stuff. The engineer took it and returned to the tower, his companion disappearing.

Just then the special came down the tracks. The locomotive was disconnected and the tired and grimed crew drove for the dog house.

In a minute or two the relief engine came down the tracks in charge of the fireman of the run. Ralph looked over the man. He had all the appearances of an honest, plodding fellow. After he had hitched to the train he got down to oil some cylinders. The engineer piled aboard with his bag, chucked it under the seat, and alighted again and went back to meet the conductor from the caboose.

Of that bag Ralph had been suspicious from the start. He now deftly took the engine step, hauled out the bag, thrust it under the fireman’s seat, swung shut its swinging board, and sat down at the engineer’s post.

“Hello!” exclaimed the fireman, stepping up into the cab-“who are you?”

“Your engineer this trip.”

“Eh? Where does Bartley come in?”

“He don’t come in,” replied Ralph definitely.

“Your name Bartley?” inquired Ralph, as the engineer and the conductor came up to the locomotive.

“That’s me,” smartly responded the man with a wondering look at Ralph.

“Well, you are relieved from duty on this special trip,” advised Ralph.

“Hey-who says so?”

“The general superintendent. Is that right, operator?”

The towerman nodded, beckoned Bartley aside and made some explanations to him. His auditor looked sullen and ugly. Ralph did not leave the post of duty he had assumed, meantime giving the conductor an idea of how affairs stood.

“Hold on, there,” spoke Bartley in a gruff tone, as the train got ready to start out. “I’ve got some personal property in that cab.”

“All right,” nodded Ralph in quite a friendly way-“get it out.”

“Bag of apples for a mate down the line,” mumbled the engineer, reaching under the seat. “Bag of-thunder! they’ve gone.”

The conductor had run to the caboose. The engineer drew back from the empty void under the seat in a puzzled, baffled way. Ralph beckoned to the operator.

“Watch that man,” he ordered in a quick whisper. “If he tries to send any messages ahead advise the operator to report instantly to headquarters.”

Then Ralph opened the throttle and sent the test special on her dubious way, leaving the discomfited Bartley glaring after him in baffled suspicion and distrust.

CHAPTER XXIX – “CRACK THE WHIP!”

“What’s up-something?” declared the fireman of the special as the train cleared the yards at Portland.

“Yes,” replied Ralph, watching out for signals and testing gauges and airbrakes. “This is up: What kind of a man is your engineer, Bartley?”

“He’s not my engineer at all,” retorted the fireman rather testily, “and I was sorry when I was listed with him. He’s a bossing, quarrelsome sort of a fellow. He don’t train with my crowd, and I’m glad you’re on in his place. You’re Fairbanks, eh? Well, I’ve heard of you.”

“Nothing bad, I hope,” challenged Ralph with a smile.

“Almost too good to last.”

“Oh, by the way, I want to say to you that this trip is going to give you a great chance.”

“For what?” inquired the fireman, big eyed and interested.

“To make a record.”

“It isn’t much of a run.”

“Yes, it is, and a great deal depends on it. The general superintendent is watching this run. It means a record and money for the Great Northern. We may strike trouble. Everything depends on landing these cars in the yards at Stanley Junction by eleven p. m. to-night.”

“I’m with you, Mr. Fairbanks,” said the fireman earnestly. “I don’t know all you do, but I’ll follow orders to a T.”

“That’s the ticket. Look here.”

They were running easily over an air line, and Ralph had an opportunity to reach under the fireman’s seat and pull into view the bag he had stored there.

“I say, who put that there?” demanded the fireman with a stare.

“I did. It belonged to Bartley. It’s the ‘personal property’ he was so anxiously searching for.”

Both looked into the bag. Ralph reached in and drew out a white object about the size of an egg. There were a good many others of these in the bag. It crisped in his fingers, as he turned it over inspecting it. He smelled of it, tasted of it, and a queer looking smile hovered over his lips.

“Do you know what it is?” he inquired.

The fireman fumbled it gingerly and then shook his head in the negative.

“It’s soda-caustic soda,” said Ralph. “There’s enough more in there to start a laundry. This black stuff,” and he drew out one of a hundred dark colored cubes-“it tastes like salt. Ah, I think I guess it out. Witness this,” he continued to the fireman, “Bartley sneaked that bag aboard. I wish to keep it for evidence.”

“Evidence of what?”

“Trickery, conspiracy. To my way of thinking he intended using that soda to churn the water in the boiler, and half a dozen of those salt bricks would smother the best fire you ever built.”

“Thunder!” ejaculated the fireman excitedly, “there is something up, indeed.”

“So much so, that we want to keep our eyes wide open every foot of the way,” said Ralph emphatically. “In my opinion Bartley was bribed to cripple this locomotive so she couldn’t pull through on time.”

“The villain!” commented the fireman.

“Now all we’ve got to do is to beat that game,” resumed Ralph, “and I’ll guarantee you honorable mention and a raise if you help me.”

“Anybody would help you,” declared the fireman enthusiastically, gratified at the confidence reposed on him-“they don’t raise such engineers as you every day.”

“I am a dispatcher at present,” said Ralph, “and a trifle rusty at the old trade, I find.”

Rusty or not, Ralph now entered heartily into the zest of pushing the special through. Twenty miles on the main, to shorten the route a run was started over the Itica branch, forty miles in length. The special had full swing for the east, as headquarters was keeping tab of the train every minute.

There was a stop at Laketon, thirty miles farther on. It came on signal, and Ralph expected something had happened. He read twice the flimsy handed to him by the operator.

It was from the dispatcher at Portland, but via Glidden at headquarters. It advised Ralph that the treacherous engineer, Bartley, had sent a cypher dispatch to some one at Itica.

Itica was ten miles ahead. Here the Great Northern branch tracks crossed those of the rival road on the signal interlocking system.

“I will be glad when we get past Itica,” decided Ralph mentally, after a sharp twenty minutes’ run, as he came in sight of the crossing tower and got the stop signal; a glance ahead told him that it was doubtful if he got past Itica at all.

There was a single track at this point, and it crossed here the double track of the rival line. Blocking the Great Northern completely, a double-header stood slantwise, sagging where it had torn up the ground ripping out a cross-section of the interlocking rails.

The switchman came up to the special as Ralph slowed down.

“It’s stalled, you are,” he observed.

“I see that,” said Ralph.

“A thrick.”

“You think that, do you?”

“I know it. ’Twas done a-purpose. We’ve had no kind of throuble here before. They just pulled those two old wrecks to the crossing and derailed them a-purpose.”

Ralph left his fireman in charge of the engine and ran up into the signal tower. He came down in a few minutes and consulted with the conductor. The fireman studied his set grave face intently as he resumed his place at the throttle. Ralph pulled the whistle as a back up signal. Then the train, composed of ten refrigerator fruit cars and the caboose, began retracing the course the special had just come.

Ten miles backing, and the special arrived at the station where Ralph had received the message from headquarters. He had a brisk brief talk with the operator there, calling the conductor into the consultation. There was some switching, and the locomotive, headed right, started from the main in a southerly direction.

“I say, Mr. Fairbanks,” the fireman expressed himself in some wonderment, “of course you know where you are going.”

“I hope I do.”

“Well, I don’t,” blankly confessed the fireman. “This is the old Eagle Pass cut off, isn’t it?”

“It was, once. I hope it is now.”

“Why, it hasn’t been used for years.”

“We’re going to use it.”

The fireman looked blank. Except for some old fashioned targets, there was nothing to show that they were traversing the rails, for the snow lay on a dead level.

“I can’t go back the main forty miles, make up forty more, and get to the Junction anywhere near schedule,” explained Ralph. “We have already lost time from that blockade at Itica our rivals fixed up for us. If we can get through to the Mountain Division tracks over this stretch, We save over two hours’ time.”

“Aha, I see your idea,” exclaimed the fireman, aroused. “I’m with you.”

Ralph was trying a dangerous experiment, and he knew it. Time was the essential, however, and the risk must be taken. They felt their way cautiously. It was nearly dusk now, and he did not fancy getting caught after dark among those lonely mountain gullies.

The pilot had to clear the way of snow. There was a tremendous rattling of the coaches as they sunk with the track and struck uneven reaches. At a trestle structure the train shook visibly. The fireman uttered a great sigh of relief as the last car passed safely over it.

They were on a down slant on a sharp curve when a shock that was something terrific ran through the train. Ralph threw on the air lightning quick and closed the throttle with a jerk.

The young railroader was fairly lifted from his seat and the fireman went spinning to the bottom of the cab.

“Thunder!” he shouted, “what have we struck?”

Ralph got down to find out. The conductor came running up while he was making his inspection. They discovered a queer situation.

Chained to the track were three ties. They did not look as if they had been placed there for a bumper. But Ralph did not waste time theorizing. With what tools the locomotive afforded they set to work and soon removed the obstruction.

Just an hour later they cleared the old rickety cut off. It was dark now. They ran down the main line ten miles, and at The Barrens took coal and water, while Ralph was busy with the station operator in communication with headquarters.

He calculated closely as they started on the long home run. It would take some steam and the best of luck to reach the yards at Stanley Junction by eleven p. m.

At nine o’clock they passed Revere without stopping. At ten they switched at Wayne, forty-five miles from terminus.

It lacked just ten minutes of eleven o’clock when the special came in sight of the lights of the Junction. To follow the main and risk a stoppage at the limits would never allow of an arrival on the time set.

“I have got an idea,” said Ralph, slowing up as they neared the first siding of the yards in-tracks.

“Go to it, then-anything to pull through on time,” responded the fireman with vigor.

Ralph jumped down from the cab, unset a switch, glanced ahead down the open track, and then glanced at his watch.

“Eight minutes,” he said, quite excited now. “Crowd on every pound of steam you can. We may make it by a bare scratch.”

Ahead was the outline of the fence of the yards. The gate to its west special track outlet was shut after working hours, Ralph knew well, but it was a flimsy affair used less for protection than to exclude intruders.

“Four minutes,” he spoke, and the flying locomotive was rushing ahead with a grinding roar.

“Three.”

They took the gate, sending its frail boards flying up into the air in a cascade of riven splinters.

“Arrived!” shouted the fireman triumphantly.

Ralph started to let down speed. Just then something happened. The brake beam of the truck under the tender dropped, causing the wheels to leave the rails.

The locomotive played a veritable “crack the whip” with the cars behind, became separated from the train, and traveled fully four hundred feet before she stopped.

The train broke in three sections. The wheels seemed to be smashing through logs, rails and stones. The noise was deafening. A yardman said later that as the train burst through the switches each car seemed to carry beneath it a huge ball of fire, caused by the wheels being dead-locked by the automatic brakes.

Not a car was smashed, and no two cars were left on the same tracks or pointing the same way. The caboose had its rear wheels on one track and its front wheels on the track south. The cars were standing in every direction, but not a person was hurt, not a car was invalided.

Ralph ran up to the yardmaster and held out his watch to him.

“Verify the arrival,” he ordered hastily.

“Yes, 10:58, two minutes ahead of time,” said the man with a stare of wonderment. “We were expecting you, Fairbanks, but-not in that way!”

CHAPTER XXX – THE PAY CAR ROBBER

Ralph Fairbanks sat at work on the task apportioned him by the general superintendent six hours after he had delivered the California fruit special “on time.”

The young railroader went at the missing pay car case just as he started at anything he undertook-with ardor and intelligence. He lined up all the facts in order, he met Adair down the line at Maddox, and Zeph Dallas was with him.

By three o’clock in the afternoon Ralph knew all there was to gather up as to the details of the missing pay car. It was not much to know. No trace of it had been found. There were a dozen theories as to what had become of it. Two of Adair’s helpers favored one looking to the bold running off of the car after being detached by a “borrowed” engine of the Midland Central, and were working along that line.

Adair told Ralph that he was anxious to get after the five men with whom Zeph Dallas had been making friends for a week or more. Their leader was Rivers, and there was no doubt that this crowd had worked on the pay car robbery.

As Zeph had tearfully narrated to Ralph when he had implored his aid, the crowd had fooled him completely. From the start they must have had an inkling as to his identity. Working on that knowledge, as Zeph expressed it, they had simply “had fun with him.”

The deceptive Rivers had left false telegrams purposely in Zeph’s way. He had got up fictitious interviews with his confederates to which Zeph had listened, believing himself a shrewd eavesdropper.

They put up a plausible plan which diverted his investigations entirely from their real intentions, and this was how he never dreamed for a moment that they had the slightest hint as to the starting of the substitute pay car out of Rockton.

The day of that event they had sent Zeph on a fool errand to pretended accomplices at a desolate spot thirty miles from any railroad. Returning to the old camp of the conspirators the next morning foot sore and wearied, Zeph had found it utterly abandoned. The crowd had deserted him for good, and he was left “to hold the bag,” as he ruefully expressed it.

There was “one great big thing” that Zeph had done, however, and Ralph encouragingly told him so. He had managed to get possession of papers and lists that gave the names and plans of the conspirators who were acting for the rival road, and also the cypher telegraphic code they used.

So valuable did Adair consider this information, that he declared it would not only result in proving where the real responsibility rested for the various loss and damage of late to the Great Northern, but he believed that when confronted with the proofs the Midland Central officials, rather than court legal proceedings would foot every dollar of the expensive bill run up by their spies, even to the pay car loss.

So, after telling Ralph that he should spend a day in consultation with the superintendent and others at Stanley Junction, and to advise him at once of any new discoveries of importance, the road officer left Ralph and Zeph hopefully to their own devices.

At exactly ten o’clock the next morning as the general superintendent and Adair sat in earnest consultation at headquarters. Glidden arrived in great haste with a telegram.

“A pink, sir,” he reported to the head officer. “Was in cypher. From Fairbanks.”

“Hello!” commented Adair, rising from his chair interested. “That’s good. He never wastes electricity unless he has something to tell.”

“Why,” almost shouted the superintendent, roused up to tremendous excitement, “he has found the missing pay car!”

“He beats me, and that’s fine, quick work!” declared Adair. “I told you he was a genius, and I knew what I was about when I sent for him.”

“Listen to this,” continued the superintendent hastily: “Pay car found-north Eagle Pass. Smashed. Empty. Adair must come at once.’”

“I guess so,” nodded the road detective with animation. “What a record: Roundhouse wiper, towerman, fireman, engineer, train dispatcher, and now beating the special road service right on its own grounds! Chief, where are you going to put Fairbanks next?”

“Something better and something soon,” said the gratified superintendent. “He deserves the best.”

“There’s nothing better than chief dispatcher,” declared old John Glidden, loyal to the core to the proud traditions of his calling. “You just keep Fairbanks right at my side-we’re both happy and useful right here.”

Adair waited for no regular train. A special locomotive took him down to Maddox, to find Ralph and Zeph awaiting him in a private room off the operator’s office.

“Found the pay car, eh, Fairbanks?” challenged the road detective briskly.

“Yes, Mr. Adair-what was left of it.”

“Knew you would, if anyone did. So I bungled? Well, I’m glad to learn what I don’t know. Give us the details.”

Ralph was brief and explicit. The first investigating party under Adair’s direction had traversed all the southern cut offs. They had forgotten or neglected the one over which Ralph had made his sensational run with the California fruit special. It was no wonder that the division superintendent had considered it impossible, for at places the fruit special had ploughed up dirt and dead leaves matted down over the rails two feet thick.

At all events, recalling the obstruction of the chained ties, Ralph and Zeph had gone to the spot.

“That obstruction,” explained Ralph, “had certainly been placed before the theft of the pay car, anticipatory of what was planned to happen.”

“Yes, it looks that way,” nodded Adair thoughtfully.

“The car must have run on strong gravity to the bumper, and went over the edge of the roadway at that point. She struck down over one hundred feet, breaking through the tops of trees. The snow later covered all traces of the descent. You will find the car lying near an old abandoned quarry house, a mere heap of kindling.”

“And the safes and the money parrels?”

“Not a trace. However, Mr. Adair, it is no easy way to get out of the ravine with those stout heavy bank safes, and I advise that a guard be left in the vicinity.”

“You have solved the mystery of the pay car, Fairbanks,” said the road officer in a gratified tone-“now to find out what has become of the plunder.”

“You will remain here, Mr. Adair?” inquired Ralph.

“Until I have made a thorough investigation and placed my men, certainly,” responded the detective.

“I wish to put in a few hours at a side line investigation, if you please, and may not see you again until tomorrow, and I wish to take Dallas with me.”

“All right,” said Adair. He looked as if he would like to know more of Ralph’s plans, but he had too much confidence in his young helper to question him.

As to Ralph, he had a decided reason for not explaining to the road officer. Glen Palmer was on his mind strongly, and a good many strange things that Glen had told him had impressed him with the conviction that the grandfather of the unfortunate Glen had been a pretty important element in the plots of the conspirators all along the line.

Zeph, while at the camp of the plotters, had heard considerable they did not intend him to hear. They had spoken of the Palmers-grandfather and grandson, many times.

“From what they said,” declared Zeph, “I could easily decide that they discovered old Palmer, knowing him to be just the man they could use. Without Glen knowing it, they got him away from home several times. They played on his simple vanity, making him believe they would later get him a great job with a big railroad. Glen was heart-broken when he discovered this. The crowd finally got his grandfather in captivity. Glen tried to rescue him, and they caged him up, too.”

“I begin to understand the circumstances under which the poor fellow sent those two warning messages,” murmured Ralph. “Thief or no thief, he was loyal to me.”

“I think it, too, and I think he could tell you lots,” said Zeph. “I know his grandfather could. Both escaped finally, but where they went I don’t know.”

Ralph knew at least where Glen was. He remembered the town at which his arrest had been reported. It was less than twenty miles distant, and they caught a fast freight. Ralph went at once to the workhouse of the thriving little town. He inquired for Glen Palmer, but was informed that the following day was visitor’s day, and that the rules were never broken except on special orders from the superintendent, who was absent at present.

“I will call tomorrow, then,” said Ralph. “I wish, though, you would see Glen Palmer and tell him so. He may have some important message for me.”

“You guessed it, sure enough,” reported the prison guard, returning with a folded fragment of a note. “Young Palmer was frantic to know you was here, and says please don’t forget and come tomorrow.”

“I will certainly be here, or some one representing me,” promised Ralph, and then he read the note, which ran:

“I am terribly anxious to know if my grandfather arrived safely at the home of my friend, Gregory Drum, at Ironton, where I sent him a few days ago.”

Ralph and his companion went on to Ironton at once. They located the Drum residence, but did not find its proprietor at home. His wife, a thin, nervous lady, told how a few days before an old man named Palmer had come there, saying that his son was well known to her husband, which the lady believed to be true.

“He acted so strange I was nearly frightened to death,” narrated the lady. “The second day here I found him astride of the roof ordering some imaginary men to string it with wires. The next day a neighbor came running in to tell me that he was up on a telegraph pole with a little pocket clicker. My husband was away, I was frightened for the man’s good as well as my own, and I had him taken in charge by the town marshal. He’ll treat him kindly till my husband returns, and Mr. Palmer will be in safe hands.”

Ralph followed up this explanation by going at once to the marshal’s headquarters. There was a low, one-story building with an office, and a barred room comfortably furnished beyond. The marshal listened to Ralph’s story with interest.

“I’ll be glad if you can make head or tail out of the old fellow,” he said, and led the way into the barred room.

“Hello!” exclaimed Ralph, with a violent start as he entered the apartment.

“Thunder! I say, where did you get him?” ejaculated Zeph Dallas, with an amazed stare.

Across a cot lay a man asleep. He wore a stained bandage across his head and was haggard and wretched looking.

“Oh, that?” replied the marshal. “That’s mystery No. 2. That’s a bigger puzzle than the old telegrapher. He’s the man we picked up mad as a March hare, with twenty thousand dollars in banknotes in his pockets.”

“Zeph,” spoke Ralph in a quick whisper, “you know who it is?”

“Sure, I know who it is,” responded Zeph with alacrity. “It’s Rivers, the king bee of the pay car robbers.”