Page:The Black Cat v01no05 (1896-02).pdf/48



T was not according to the schedule that the special train, consisting of a locomotive, an empty baggage car, and the regally equipped private car, Priscilla, should stop for three quarters of an hour at Mayville Junction. Indeed, in his instructions, the Great Man who was the car's sole occupant had provided for a wait of only five minutes. It is a matter of record, however, that for forty-five minutes the official train waited at the lonesome little station on the Indiana prairie. What happened in those forty-five minutes is now for the first time given to the public.

After the Great Man—who was no other than the president of the A. M. & P. Trunk Line, which joins the Atlantic Ocean with the Great Lakes—after the Great Man had taken a per-functory turn about the little station and had asked a few stereo-typed questions of the station agent, he went back to his seat in the Priscilla's white-and-gold drawing-room, and sat down to a game of solitaire. Being a very young president—not over forty—the Great Man was not specially fond of solitaire. But he was still less fond of the thoughts engendered by a two weeks' solitary tour of inspection through the flat, drab, malarial country of the middle West. After prolonging his luncheon to the latest possible hour, and extracting all the comfort to be obtained from a single mild cigar, he found himself longing to exchange his gold-and-white grandeur for even the plebeian red velvet of a day coach, where he could observe the vagaries of country bridal couples, and invite the confidence of smudgy small boys with prize packages of magenta lozenges.

It was while the Great Man was indulging in these vain visions, much to the detriment of his success at solitaire, that he