The Treasure-Train Part 3

I looked around at Maude Euston. She was the calmest of us all as she whispered:

"They are in the car. Can't we DO something?"

"Lane," whispered Kennedy, "crawl through under the trucks with me.

Walter, and you, Dugan," he added, to the guard, "go down the other side. We must rush them--in the car."

As Kennedy crawled under the train again I saw Maude Euston follow Lane closely.

How it happened I cannot describe, for the simple reason that I don't remember. I know that it was a short, sharp dash, that the fight was a fight of fists in which guns were discharged wildly in the air against the will of the gunner. But from the moment when Kennedy's voice rang out in the door, "Hands up!" to the time that I saw that we had the robbers lined up with their backs against the heavy cases of the precious metal for which they had planned and risked so much, it is a blank of grim death-struggle.

I remember my surprise at seeing one of them a woman, and I thought I must be mistaken. I looked about. No; there was Maude Euston standing just beside Lane.

I think it must have been that which recalled me and made me realize that it was a reality and not a dream. The two women stood glaring at each other.

"The woman in the tea-room!" exclaimed Miss Euston. "It was about this--robbery--then, that I heard you talking the other afternoon."

I looked at the face before me. It was, had been, a handsome face. But now it was cold and hard, with that heartless expression of the adventuress. The men seemed to take their plight hard. But, as she looked into the clear, gray eyes of the other woman, the adventuress seemed to gain rather than lose in defiance.

"Robbery?" she repeated, bitterly. "This is only a beginning."

"A beginning. What do you mean?"

It was Lane who spoke. Slowly she turned toward him.

"You know well enough what I mean."

The implication that she intended was clear. She had addressed the remark to him, but it was a stab at Maude Euston.

"I know only what you wanted me to do--and I refused. Is there more still?"

I wondered whether Lane could really have been involved.

"Quick--what DO you mean?" demanded Kennedy, authoritatively.

The woman turned to him:

"Suppose this news of the robbery is out? What will happen? Do you want me to tell you, young lady?" she added, turning again to Maude Euston.

"I'll tell you. The stock of the Continental Express Company will fall like a house of cards. And then? Those who have sold it at the top price will buy it back again at the bottom. The company is sound. The depression will not last--perhaps will be over in a day, a week, a month. Then the operators can send it up again. Don't you see? It is the old method of manipulation in a new form. It is a war-stock gamble.

Other stocks will be affected the same way. This is our reward--what we can get out of it by playing this game for which the materials are furnished free. We have played it--and lost. The manipulators will get their reward on the stock-market this morning. But they must still reckon with us--even if we have lost." She said it with a sort of grim humor.

"And you have put Granville Barnes out of the way, first?" I asked, remembering the chlorin. She laughed shrilly.

"That was an accident--his own carelessness. He was carrying a tank of it for us. Only his chauffeur's presence of mind in throwing it into the shrubbery by the road saved his life and reputation. No, young man; he was one of the manipulators, too. But the chief of them was--" She paused as if to enjoy one brief moment of triumph at least. "The president of the company," she added.

"No, no, no!" cried Maude Euston.

"Yes, yes, yes! He does not dare deny it. They were all in it."

"Mrs. Labret--you lie!" towered Lane, in a surging pa.s.sion, as he stepped forward and shook his finger at her. "You lie and you know it.

There is an old saying about the fury of a woman scorned." She paid no attention to him whatever.

"Maude Euston," she hissed, as though Lane had been as inarticulate as the boxes of gold about, "you have saved your lover's reputation--perhaps. At least the s.h.i.+pment is safe. But you have ruined your father. The deal will go through. Already that has been arranged.

You may as well tell Kennedy to let us go and let the thing go through.

It involves more than us."

Kennedy had been standing back a bit, carefully keeping them all covered. He glanced a moment out of the corner of his eye at Maude Euston, but said nothing.

It was a terrible situation. Had Lane really been in it? That question was overshadowed by the mention of her father. Impulsively she turned to Craig.

"Oh, save him!" she cried. "Can't anything be done to save my father in spite of himself?"

"It is too late," mocked Mrs. Labret. "People will read the account of the robbery in the papers, even if it didn't take place. They will see it before they see a denial. Orders will flood in to sell the stock.

No; it can't be stopped."

Kennedy glanced momentarily at me.

"Is there still time to catch the last morning edition of the Star, Walter?" he asked, quietly. I glanced at my watch.

"We may try. It's possible."

"Write a despatch--an accident to the engine--train delayed--now proceeding--anything. Here, Dugan, you keep them covered. Shoot to kill if there's a move."

Kennedy had begun feverishly setting up the part of the apparatus which he had brought after Whiting had set up his.

"What can you do?" hissed Mrs. Labret. "You can't get word through.

Orders have been issued that the telegraph operators are under no circ.u.mstances to give out news about this train. The wireless is out of commission, too--the operator overcome. The robbery story has been prepared and given out by this time. Already reporters are being a.s.signed to follow it up."

I looked over at Kennedy. If orders had been given for such secrecy by Barry Euston, how could my despatch do any good? It would be held back by the operators.

Craig quickly slung a wire over those by the side of the track and seized what I had written, sending furiously.

"What are you doing?" I asked. "You heard what she said."

"One thing you can be certain of," he answered, "that despatch can never be stolen or tapped by spies."

"Why--what is this?" I asked, pointing to the instrument.

"The invention of Major Squier, of the army," he replied, "by which any number of messages may be sent at the same time over the same wire without the slightest conflict. Really it consists in making wireless electric waves travel along, instead of inside, the wire. In other words, he had discovered the means of concentrating the energy of a wireless wave on a given point instead of letting it riot all over the face of the earth.

"It is the principle of wireless. But in ordinary wireless less than one-millionth part of the original sending force reaches the point for which it is intended. The rest is scattered through s.p.a.ce in all directions. If the vibrations of a current are of a certain number per second, the current will follow a wire to which it is, as it were, attached, instead of pa.s.sing off into s.p.a.ce.

"All the energy in wireless formerly wasted in radiation in every direction now devotes itself solely to driving the current through the ether about the wire. Thus it goes until it reaches the point where Whiting is--where the vibrations correspond to its own and are in tune.

There it reproduces the sending impulse. It is wired wireless."

Craig had long since finished sending his wired wireless message. We waited impatiently. The seconds seemed to drag like hours.

Far off, now, we could hear a whistle as a train finally approached slowly into our block, creeping up to see what was wrong. But that made no difference now. It was not any help they could give us that we wanted. A greater problem, the saving of one man's name and the re-establishment of another, confronted us.