The Treasure-Train Part 2

"What is it you suspect?" I asked, when we returned. "A wreck--some spectacular stroke at the nations that are s.h.i.+pping the gold?"

"Perhaps," he replied, absently, as he and Whiting hurriedly a.s.sembled some parts of instruments that were on a table in an adjoining room.

"Perhaps?" I repeated. "What else might there be?"

"Robbery."

"Robbery!" I exclaimed. "Of twenty million dollars? Why, man, just consider the mere weight of the metal!"

"That's all very well," he replied, warming up a bit as he saw that Whiting was getting things together quickly. "But it needs only a bit of twenty millions to make a snug fortune--" He paused and straightened up as the gathering of the peculiar electrical apparatus, whatever it was, was completed. "And," he went on quickly, "consider the effect on the stock-market of the news. That's the big thing."

I could only gasp.

"A modern train-robbery, planned in the heart of dense traffic!"

"Why not?" he queried. "Nothing is impossible if you can only take the other fellow unawares. Our job is not to be taken unawares. Are you ready, Whiting?"

"Yes, sir," replied the student, shouldering the apparatus, for which I was very thankful, for my arms had frequently ached carrying about some of Kennedy's weird but often weighty apparatus.

We piled into a taxicab and made a quick journey to the office of the Continental Express. Maude Euston had already preceded us, and we found her standing by Lane's desk as he paced the floor.

"Please, Miss Euston, don't go," he was saying as we entered.

"But I want to go," she persisted, more than ever determined, apparently.

"I have engaged Professor Kennedy just for the purpose of foreseeing what new attack can be made on us," he said.

"You have engaged Professor Kennedy?" she asked. "I think I have a prior claim there, haven't I?" she appealed.

Kennedy stood for a moment looking from one to the other. What was there in the motives that actuated them? Was it fear, hate, love, jealousy?

"I can serve my two clients only if they yield to me," Craig remarked, quietly. "Don't set that down, Whiting. Which is it--yes or no?"

Neither Lane nor Miss Euston looked at each other for a moment.

"Is it in my hands?" repeated Craig.

"Yes," bit off Lane, sourly.

"And you, Miss Euston?"

"Of course," she answered.

"Then we all go," decided Craig. "Lane, may I install this thing in your telegraph-room outside?"

"Anything you say," Lane returned, unmollified.

Whiting set to work immediately, while Kennedy gave him the final instructions.

Neither Lane nor Miss Euston spoke a word, even when I left the room for a moment, fearing that three was a crowd. I could not help wondering whether she might not have heard something more from the woman in the tea-room conversation than she had told us. If she had, she had been more frank with Lane than with us. She must have told him.

Certainly she had not told us. It was the only way I could account for the armed truce that seemed to exist as, hour after hour, our train carried us nearer the point where we were to meet the treasure-train.

At Worcester we had still a long wait for the argosy that was causing so much anxiety and danger. It was long after the time scheduled that we left finally, on our return journey, late at night.

Ahead of us went a dummy pilot-train to be sacrificed if any bridges or trestles were blown up or if any new attempts were made at producing artificially broken rails. We four established ourselves as best we could in a car in the center of the treasure-train, with one of the armed guards as company. Mile after mile we reeled off, ever southward and westward.

We must have crossed the State of Connecticut and have been approaching Long Island Sound, when suddenly the train stopped with a jerk.

Ordinarily there is nothing to grow alarmed about at the mere stopping of a train. But this was an unusual train under unusual circ.u.mstances.

No one said a word as we peered out. Down the track the signals seemed to show a clear road. What was the matter?

"Look!" exclaimed Kennedy, suddenly.

Off a distance ahead I could see what looked like a long row of white fuses sticking up in the faint starlight. From them the fresh west wind seemed to blow a thick curtain of greenish-yellow smoke which swept across the track, enveloping the engine and the forward cars and now advancing toward us like the "yellow wind" of northern China. It seemed to spread thickly on the ground, rising scarcely more than sixteen or eighteen feet.

A moment and the cloud began to fill the air about us. There was a paralyzing odor. I looked about at the others, gasping and coughing. As the cloud rolled on, inexorably increasing in density, it seemed literally to grip the lungs.

It flashed over me that already the engineer and fireman had been overcome, though not before the engineer had been able to stop the train.

As the cloud advanced, the armed guards ran from it, shouting, one now and then falling, overcome. For the moment none of us knew what to do.

Should we run and desert the train for which we had dared so much? To stay was death.

Quickly Kennedy pulled from his pocket the gauze arrangements he had had in his hand that morning just as Miss Euston's knock had interrupted his conversation with me. Hurriedly he shoved one into Miss Euston's hands, then to Lane, then to me, and to the guard who was with us.

"Wet them!" he cried, as he fitted his own over his nose and staggered to a water-cooler.

"What is it?" I gasped, hoa.r.s.ely, as we all imitated his every action.

"Chlorin gas," he rasped back, "the same gas that overcame Granville Barnes. These masks are impregnated with a glycerin solution of sodium phosphate. It was chlorin that destroyed the red coloring matter in Barnes's blood. No wonder, when this action of just a whiff of it on us is so rapid. Even a short time longer and death would follow. It destroys without the possibility of reconst.i.tution, and it leaves a dangerous deposit of alb.u.min. How do you feel?"

"All right," I lied.

We looked out again. The things that looked like fuses were not bombs, as I had expected, but big reinforced bottles of gas compressed at high pressure, with the taps open. The supply was not inexhaustible. In fact, it was decidedly limited. But it seemed to have been calculated to a nicety to do the work. Only the panting of the locomotive now broke the stillness as Kennedy and I moved forward along the track.

Crack! rang out a shot.

"Get on the other side of the train--quick!" ordered Craig.

In the shadow, aside from the direction in which the wind was wafting the gas, we could now just barely discern a heavy but powerful motor-truck and figures moving about it. As I peered out from the shelter of the train, I realized what it all meant. The truck, which had probably conveyed the gas-tanks from the rendezvous where they had been collected, was there now to convey to some dark wharf what of the treasure could be seized. There the stolen yacht was waiting to carry it off.

"Don't move--don't fire," cautioned Kennedy. "Perhaps they will think it was only a shadow they saw. Let them act first. They must. They haven't any too much time. Let them get impatient."

For some minutes we waited.

Sure enough, separated widely, but converging toward the treasure-train at last, we could see several dark figures making their way from the road across a strip of field and over the rails. I made a move with my gun.

"Don't," whispered Kennedy. "Let them get together."

His ruse was clever. Evidently they thought that it had been indeed a wraith at which they had fired. Swiftly now they hurried to the nearest of the gold-laden cars. We could hear them, breaking in where the guards had either been rendered unconscious or had fled.