CHAPTER V.

NIGHT WORK.

Chick Carter, in accord with the plans laid out by Nick, was in Amherst that evening in the disguise of a traveling salesman. He was waiting on the station platform when the Southern Limited arrived.

Chick sized up the train as it rolled into the station. He did not definitely know, of course, whether the crook who had sent the telegram from Philadelphia was among the passengers, but he strongly suspected that he was, and he also knew that Nick would board the express car at North Dayton.

“If the crook is on the train and intends to take any active part in the robbery, it’s ten to one that he is in the ordinary passenger car,” Chick reasoned. “He certainly would not be in a sleeper. He would reason, too, that he would be less liable to suspicion than if he rode in the smoker.”

Chick acted upon these theories. He entered the next car back of the smoker, the latter being back of the express and baggage cars, and he took one of the rear seats, from which he could see most of the other occupants of the car. It was about two-thirds filled with men and women, traveling singly or in couples.

Chick pretended to have no interest in any of them. None, nevertheless, escaped his furtive scrutiny during the run of fourteen miles to North Dayton. He could discover none, however, whose looks or actions seemed to warrant suspicion.

Twenty minutes took the train to North Dayton.

Gazing furtively from the window, Chick saw the lights in the signal tower, saw Nick and Denny hasten down the stairs, saw Denny return alone just as the train was starting, which convinced him that Nick then was in the express car, as planned.

Two men who had briefly left the train returned to the car in which Chick was seated. He was a keen reader of faces. He saw plainly enough that neither of the men was a crook, or at least no such crook as he was seeking.

The train rushed on through the starry night.

Chick knew that the time was rapidly approaching when, if Nick’s deductions were correct, the robbery would be attempted.

“I’ll not cut much ice here,” he said to himself, at length. “I think I’ll take a look at the occupants of the smoker. That will bring me nearer the express car.”

He was about to do so when his attention was drawn to a couple three seats in front of him and on the opposite side of the aisle.

One was a respectable-looking, well-dressed man of forty, with grave, dark eyes and a Vandyke beard.

His companion was an attractive woman of about thirty years old, with a fair complexion and an abundance of light-brown hair. Her fine figure was clad in a tailor-made traveling costume of bottle green. They were about the last couple in the car to have invited suspicion.

The train had begun to labor on a steep up grade.

The man with a Vandyke beard drew out a cigar and bit the end from it, then said a few words to the woman. She bowed and smiled, revealing a double row of white teeth, and the man arose with a backward glance and smiled at her, then went into the smoker.

Chick watched him thoughtfully, but not suspiciously, when he strode through the aisle and out of the car. Plainly enough, it appeared, the man had excused himself politely to his companion in order to go for a smoke. It appeared like the act of a gentleman.

Chick felt no immediate impulse to follow him, and his attention was again drawn toward the woman. She was moving to a position nearer the lamps, and was spreading a newspaper to read it.

Chick saw that it was a Philadelphia newspaper.

“By Jove, they evidently came from Philadelphia,” he said to himself. “Can it be that they—no, no, that seems quite improbable. No man engaged in a train robbery, or with any interest in one, would be traveling with a woman. Besides, neither looks like a crook, but quite the contrary. She may have bought the paper on the train, or——”

Chick’s train of thought took a sudden, startling turn.

A brakeman went rushing through the aisle in the direction of the smoking car.

Chick noticed now that the train was rapidly slowing down. He heard shouts from the smoker when the brakeman opened the door.

“Great guns!” he muttered, starting up and following him. “Has the trick been turned? Has the job been done, in spite of us?”

Chick hurried through the car and entered the smoker. A dozen excited men were gathered near the forward door and upon the platform and steps. In another moment Chick was among them, and he saw at a glance what had occurred.

The train had been divided. The rear cars of it had come to a stop on the steep up grade.

The forward section, consisting of the locomotive, the baggage car, and the express car, was vanishing around a curve in the tracks more than half a mile away.

A solitary man then was on the rear platform of the express car, though invisible in the darkness—the man with a Vandyke beard.

Scarce two minutes had elapsed since he passed through the smoker. He had not sat down, nor lighted his cigar, but walked deliberately out upon the front platform.

Then, with the speed and dexterity of one familiar with such work, he disconnected the signal cord and the air-brake couplings, set the front brake of the smoker, and then unlocked and threw the lever that uncoupled the two cars. Then he leaped to the back platform of the express car just as it forged ahead, leaving the rear section of the broken train falling swiftly behind.

Leaning out from the platform steps to make absolutely sure of his location, the man then waited until the forward section struck the curve mentioned. He then seized the bell cord and signaled the engineer to stop.

The response was immediate. Almost on the instant the grinding of the brakes was mingled with the roar and rumble of the wheels and the rush of the night wind around him.

Gazing toward the desolate wooded country on the right, he saw that he had timed the desperate work to a nicety.

Three quick flashes of light met his gaze, coming from a point in the woods scarce twenty feet from the railway. He turned and banged twice on the car door with the butt of his revolver.

The three men within were awaiting the signal. The sliding door of the car then was opened. So was the door of the safe. A large leather bag, nearly as large as a letter pouch, was lying on the floor.

Near by, gagged and securely bound, lay Nick Carter, still insensible. One of his assailants of only a few minutes before, now hearing the expected signal, yelled excitedly:

“Out with him, Mauler! The roadbed is sandy. Out with him.”

“Sandy be hanged!” shouted Mauler, the miscreant who had impersonated Cady. “It may be lucky for us if his neck is broken.”

He rolled the detective’s inanimate form from the car while speaking, and it vanished into the gloom outside.

The large leather pouch quickly followed.

The car was steadily slowing down.

There was a bang on the front door—but the door was locked and barricaded.

One after another of three men leaped from the car. The man on the rear platform sprang down and joined them.

They ran back over the roadbed, while the deserted car surged onward for nearly fifty yards before stopping, before the engineer and baggage hands began a more active and energetic investigation.

The four men then were a hundred yards down the track, invisible in the faint starlight at that distance. Other figures appeared from amid the gloomy woods. The burdens lying on the roadbed, one more than the scoundrels had figured upon, were quickly seized and removed—into the depths of the forest that flanked the railway for miles in that locality.

Much can be quickly accomplished by determined men under such desperate circumstances.

Only eight minutes had passed since the Southern Limited had left North Dayton.

Something like three minutes later, Chick Carter, followed by half a score of men anxious to learn what had occurred, came running up the track and joined the engineer and other train hands then gathered in and around the looted express car.

Chick saw at a glance that the trick had, indeed, been turned; also that Nick Carter was missing.

“Great guns!” he exclaimed to himself. “This is strange, mighty strange, and where in thunder is Cady?”

Chick decided to listen briefly before revealing his identity and what he knew about the case, a self-restraint which few would have had under such circumstances, and he very soon determined to say nothing.

For the engineer and train hands, familiar with the desolate section of the country, quickly came to two conclusions; one, that Cady had been overcome by the robbers who had been concealed in the empty packing cases; the other, that he had been carried away with the plunder from the open safe by a gang of desperadoes whom it would be useless to pursue at that time.

Chick knew that they were mistaken, and he also felt sure that he could accomplish nothing then and there. The evidence in the car showed him plain enough that Nick had been overcome by the bandits, and he realized that any attempt at immediate pursuit would be worse than futile.

He sprang into the express car, when the conductor insisted that he must run on to Shelby, and the cars were first run back to couple on the rear section of the broken train.

Chick returned to his seat in the car which he had occupied from Amherst.

The blond woman, apparently wearied by the delay, and with no interest in the occasion for it, seemed to have fallen asleep over her newspaper.

Chick Carter noticed her again soon after resuming his seat, and he was suddenly hit with an idea.

“By thunder!” he mentally exclaimed. “What has become of her companion? Can he have been in the smoker all the while? No, not by a long chalk! He would not have left her here asleep, if she really is asleep. He would have returned to tell her about the robbery.”

“Humph! there’s nothing to this,” he abruptly decided. “I have had that Philadelphia crook under my very eye, this woman’s companion, the fellow with a Vandyke beard. He must have bolted with the gang, too, or I should have seen him on the railway, or in the smoker. All this will be a cinch, by Jove, unless he shows up before we reach Shelby. I’m glad I kept my trap closed. My identity is not suspected, and I will have a clew worth following—the woman!”

Presently, moving from side to side, selecting such persons as hit his fancy, the conductor came through the car and took the names and addresses of several people, explaining that witnesses might be wanted in a later investigation, who were not in the employ of the railway company.

The woman was among those whom he questioned. She yawned and looked up at him with a frown.

“Pardon me,” she declined, a bit curtly. “I do not wish to be brought into an investigation.”

“It may not be necessary, after all,” said the conductor suavely.

“But I know nothing about the affair, except that the train stopped and that a robbery is said to have been committed,” the woman objected. “Besides, my home is in Philadelphia, and it would not be convenient for me to be summoned to an investigation.”

“You would be excused, no doubt, in that case,” persisted the conductor. “Surely, madam, you have no other reason for refusing to give me your name and address.”

“No other reason!” she exclaimed impatiently. “Certainly not, sir!”

“Kindly do so, then.”

The woman hesitated for another moment.

“By Jove, she is deciding whether to give him a fictitious name,” thought Chick, intently watching her frowning face. “She’ll not be fool enough to do so.”

Chick was right.

The woman decided nearly as quickly as he that deception at that time might later make her liable to serious suspicion. She drew herself up a bit haughtily and said:

“Very well, then, since you insist upon it. My name is Janet Payson.”

“Thank you,” smiled the conductor. “And your address?”

“No. 20 Martin Street, Philadelphia.”

The conductor bowed and moved on.

“Martin Street,” thought Chick, instantly recalling the signature on the Dalton telegram. “Martin fits in here, all right. She told the truth, and I’ve picked up a very proper lead. It’s not such a long, long way to Tipperary, after all. We shall see.”

The woman left the train at Shelby, carrying only a suit case, and she accosted a cabman outside of the station.

“Shelby House,” she directed curtly.

Chick was at her elbow and heard her.

Ten minutes later he read her name inscribed on the hotel register: “Miss Janet Payson, Philadelphia.”