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kept slowing the car down, at the repeated warning of Alicia, until they did nothing more than creep along the rails. No lights were to be seen now, and the heavy foliage on either side of the track left them in what was almost an unbroken tunnel of darkness.

So McKinnon leaned out over the side of the slowly moving car, waiting for the telltale chug of the wheels against the metal of the switch-points. They groped their way on for a quarter of a mile at this snail's pace before this telltale jolt told them the wheel-flanges had struck and swerved against the "points." The switch was set for the left-hand track, so they had to reverse and back away again, coming to a standstill some ten or twelve paces east of the switch-stand target. Then McKinnon went forward to reconnoitre, leaving the girl, with the revolver, to guard the car.

He made two discoveries as he crept