Page:Boys' Life Mar 1, 1911.djvu/7

Rh to Coleman, the train despatcher, to tell him what I've done."

"Let her go now, Sullivan," he said on his return, "and remember, and you, too, Winter, if there are any inquiries from passengers you must say there is a wreck ahead of us so we must take the branch road."

He ran back, and jumping aboard the already backing train, entered the smoking-car with a calm and smiling face.

"What's the trouble?" asked Colonel Carson, as Jack approached him.

"They tell me there's a wreck ahead," answered Jack, easily.



"Why, we've stopped again," exclaimed Aylward, peering out of the window anxiously, "Ah!" he exclaimed in sudden anger, jumping to his feet, "they're switching us on to the Arundel branch. What's the meaning of this, Mr. Fletcher?"

"Sit down, Mr. Aylward," said Jack, "you're too late. And you needn't worry about expecting any reply to your telegram, because I thought it had better not be sent."

"What do you mean—"

The lawyer's blustering voice was abruptly checked, and his words died in a gasp of dismay.

Something glittering had flashed in Jack's suddenly outstretched hand.

"Sit down, Mr. Aylward," he said in a quiet, compelling voice. "I don't want to shoot you, but I'll not allow you to interfere with my plans."

The little lawyer sank back in his seat speechless.

In the train despatcher's office, at the headquarters of the Sunset line in Chicago, the result of Jack Fletcher's commands to Sullivan, the engineer of the express, caused something like panic. Never in that or any other railway office had such an inscrutable mystery presented itself.

The train despatcher's office was a long room in which there were many telegraph operators, who, from morning to night, clicked off or received messages. Coleman, the chief train despatcher, a strict disciplinist, was the governing spirit of this room, and the fate of every train on the Sunset system was in his hands.

On a high desk in the centre of the room was spread a chart of the road, and of every station and telegraph office connected with the system. Along the red lines that represented the rails on this chart were numbers which told exactly where every train on the system had been last reported.

When the express, the crack train of the Sunset