CHAPTER XXIII.

THE NIGHT EXPRESS.

The lights are burning dimly in the Union station—they never burn brightly in a station, somehow—and it is an hour before the night express starts on its noisy triumphant journey west. Down the vista of the long platform a couple of noisy young women are sauntering. Their peals of laughterless laughter—if I may coin an expression—ring through the resonant place. The baggageman, who knows me, beckons me to a seat beside him on a big iron-bound truck, and remarks that the girls are here again.

“Do they often come here?”

“Almost every night, and others, too. They are respectable girls for all I know, but the Union station has a fascination for them somehow. They flirt with the brakemen and the Pullman car conductors, and sometimes make a mash on a young swell from the country as he comes off the train. They are mighty sharp and shrewd, I tell you.”

“Hullo,” said I, looking behind me, “is that a coffin?”

“Yes,” said the baggageman carelessly,

“THAT’S A COFFIN

with a stiff in it. Come down from Winnipeg this afternoon and no one has come around to claim it yet. There’s lots of ’em nowadays. They’re coming an’ going all the time. We shipped one chap to San Francisco last night. They are a horrible bother. Wonder what they want to do it for. This stiff is bound for Milwaukee. If they had buried him here he would have heard Gabriel blow his trumpet as plain in Toronto as he would in the Western States. They’re a most mighty bother.”

“I should say so,” said a train hand standing near. “I’ll never forget the experience I had with one.”

Seeing the look of interest on my face, he blew the ashes off his cigar and continued:

“I was runnin’ on No. 4, from Hamilton through to Detroit and one dark night they put a stiff aboard at Harrisburg. That was all right, but when they put another aboard at Paris I felt they were givin’ it to me too much. I was alone in the car, and tho’ I ain’t scared of ghosts and that, yet I didn’t feel just to home. There’s no fun in ridin’ along in the dark with a couple of stiffs, now I tell you. There I sot, and for the life of me I couldn’t keep my eyes off them coffins. There lay two dead men with their wooden overcoats on, and there I sot smokin’ my pipe and feelin’ ornery. Something got loose under the car, and the knockin’ underneath sounded to me as if one of them had come to life and was tappin’ on the lid of his coffin fur me to let him out. You needn’t laugh, it was no joke. It was a ride I’m not going to forgit in a hurry, either. Well, I pulled through all right, an’ run into Detroit in the mornin’. A hearse was drawed up, but when we got the coffins out we found that the label cards had been knocked off, and we didn’t know which was which. We couldn’t ask the stiffs themselves, you know. One old man came up, and with tears in his eyes said he wouldn’t like to plant anybody in his lot but his own blood relations. Well, we opened the coffin, and I hope I may die if it wasn’t plugged plum full of smuggled silks and laces.”

“No stiff in it at all?”

“Stiff! naw; but the other stiff was the genuine article, and the old man driv off after it in great shape, as happy as a clam, yes, sir.”

“Did they ever find out who smuggled the goods?”

“No; but they never tried that trick on again, that I know of.”

Here I noticed a detective sauntering up and down the platform.

“Well, John,” said I, “what’s on to-night, anything up?”

“Just wait a while and you’ll see,” with that wise and knowing air which only a detective can assume. At that moment the headlight of the locomotive drawing the train from Hamilton appeared at the west end of the station, and the detective suddenly became very alert. He stood midway on the platform, and as the train came to a standstill and the passengers came pouring out he scanned the features of every one who stepped upon the platform. Suddenly he made a swift little movement, dived through the crowd, dodged round a kissing and hand-shaking group and

LAID HIS HAND ON THE SHOULDER

of a middle-aged man, accompanied by a young woman. I was quite close by, and couldn’t hear what was whispered in his ear, but the change that came over that man’s face was something terrible to see. He turned white, then red, and finally a greenish yellow shade settled on his wild and drawn face. Like a boy caught stealing apples he whined, “let me go, let me go; oh, for God’s sake let me go.” He shook like a man with ague, and he would have fallen only the detective’s firm hand sustained him. The girl by his side was, as far as outward appearance was concerned the most self-possessed of the two, but her startled eyes and pale face told that she, too, was suffering. A curious crowd had gathered round, from which the detective skilfully extricated them, and then the trio made their way to the Central station. They were searched, and a large quantity of money found on both of them, but the girl was allowed to go to an hotel, while the man, weeping like a baby, was taken down into the cells. He went down like a drunken man, stunned, helpless, miserable. The story may be interesting. He was a country storekeeper, influential, respected, trusted. He was a Sunday school teacher, he led at prayer-meeting, he was a delegate to conference, he was grand patriarch of a temperance lodge, he conducted family prayer in his house morning and evening, in fact he was looked up to as a model man. He had a wife and six children. The former was sickly. He engaged a girl young and inexperienced in the world to assist his wife in household work. She attended his bible class and looked up to him as

A SUPERIOR BEING.

He wasn’t a bad man as the world goes, but he was not a strong man morally. He and the girl made a mistake, he, because he was morally weak—she because she believed that he could do nothing wrong. From that hour he began his downward career. He borrowed, embezzled and even stole money, and one afternoon by a preconcerted plan the pair took the train for Toronto. Deluded wretch, swift as went the train bearing him away, he thought forever, from the scene of his misdeeds, a tiny wire string along the track bore a message swift as thought past him. So swift indeed, that a detective had time to go home, eat a quiet supper, and walk leisurely down to the Union station and smoke a good cigar on the platform while waiting for the victims that were sure to come. And all this time the pair were sitting in the railway carriage planning schemes for the future, and never dreaming of what was before them. The man was sent back to his own county for trial, and the girl’s father came down a few days afterwards and took her home.

The express going west had made up by this time, and the crowd on the platform was thickening. Cabs and omnibusses rattled down York and Simcoe streets and drew up on the Esplanade front. A large group of well dressed people, flowery with buttonhole and hand bouquets, smiles, and laughter came sweeping in. In the center of the group is a handsome girl, with flushed face and unnaturally bright eyes, whose every motion is nervous and constrained. She is neatly dressed in a brown traveling suit and holds a superb bouquet in her trembling hand. By her side, with a self-satisfied look of proprietorship and triumph, stands a gentleman who glances with no little impatience in his eyes, first at the train and then at the group around him. But with the first clang of the gong

THE PARTY GROWS QUIETER.

A constraint falls upon them. With the clang of the discordant note the bride turns pale, and a wild look comes into her startled eyes. She trembles visibly, for in this train her new-made husband is to bear her off to a strange land among strangers. All old associations are broken to-night, all her old loves and delights are cut from her, the faces and scenes so dear to her she may never see again, she will never be to those about her what she once was, and all to go with this man for better, for worse. They put their arms around her neck and kiss her till all at once she bursts into an uncontrollable fit of weeping. She clings to them desperately till, led into the car, she folds her arms about her husband, now her only hope and stay, her father, mother, brother, counsellor, companion and friend from this time onward and forever. A man with hat over his eyes darts into the station, buys his ticket, and has his foot on the steps when my friend John, the detective, taps him on the shoulder and smilingly says, “Not to-night, Dickey, my boy, you must come up to the station and explain some things first.” Who is this leaning on that old man’s arm. A young man

GOING HOME TO DIE.

His face is white as death and almost transparent, his eyes are fearfully bright, his fevered lips have shrunk from his dry, white teeth, his body is emaciated, and his step is feeble and slow. Going home to die! Not two years ago he came to the city, robust and strong, full of life and hope; to-night he is going home with his poor old father to die in the arms of his mother, who is waiting, waiting, waiting for him in the old farm-house far away.

“See that old chap there with the glum look?” whispers John, the detective.

“Yes.”

“Well, go and interview him; he’s been cleaned out by confidence men.”

I went up to the old gentleman, and after some trouble got him to talk. He was spitting tobacco juice right and left in a vicious manner, and his lower jaw was chewing away as if it went by clock-work. His tuft of iron-grey beard fairly wagged with righteous indignation.

“I was a standin’ on the platform here this aft’noon, a-waitin’ fur the train to go home, when two right-smart young fellows kem up, an’ sez they, ‘Hillo! old John Hess, what on airth air you a-doin’?’ Got the advantage uv me,’ says I, ‘don’t know yah!’ ‘What,’ sez they, ‘don’t know old man Turkman’s nevies?’ Sez I, ‘Be you Levi Turkman’s sister Maria’s boys eh?’ Says they, ‘why of course,’ an’ we got a-talking about Toronto and politics, an’ religion, an’ the crops, when who shud come up to one of ’um but a man who wanted pay for freight, er somethin’ er another. Well one uv these chaps pulls out a hundred-dollar bill, but the man sed he couldn’t change it no how. They then asked me to lend them the money, $69.47, and I

COULD KEEP THE $100 BILL

till we went up town and changed it. I forks it out convenient like, and tuk the $100 bill, and the three of um went off to see about the freight, an’ I haven’t seen a sight on ’em since.”

“And the $100 bill?”

“Ain’t worth shucks! and they ain’t old man Turkman’s nevies no more nor you be. Ef I had the consarned cheats here now I cud lick a ten-acre field full on ’em. Bin a huntin’ all over town fur ’em, but ’taint no use. Dang the town ennyway.”

Here comes a lady with her dear little boy—one of those dear little boys who makes the ordinary traveler just ache to spank him.

“Maw!” he says, “where you goin’ to?”

“I want to see the conductor, dear.”

“Maw! wot’s a conductor?”

“He has charge of the train, dear.”

“Maw! wot does he do that for?”

“For a salary, dear.”

“Maw! wot’s a salary?”

“Oh, dear, don’t bother me.”

“Maw, w’y won’t you let your little boy bother you?”

“Hush, I want to speak to the conductor.”

“Maw, wot you goin’ to speak to the conductor for?”

“I want to know if the train stops at Guelph.”

“Maw, is that where my gran’paw lives?”

“No, he lives in Goderich.”

“Maw, wot does he live there for?” and so on endlessly.

The crowd thickens, the gong strikes, the cheering “all-aboard” of the conductor is heard, and in a few minutes the night express is darting like a meteor through the darkened land.