"Wires down or cut," observed Glidden. "Try Maddox."

Ralph did so.

"Maddox not open," he said. His mind ran over the situation. He recalled a night like this when he and Fireman Fogg had run alone a battered locomotive over the same stretch of road on a Special for President Grant of the Great Northern. It had been a hairbreadth experience, and he wondered if No. 83 would get through.

One o'clock--two o'clock. The young dispatcher and his first trick man found it hard to endure the irksome monotony of those two anxious hours.

It was like a tensioned cord breaking when at last the welcome call from Fairview came over the wires.

"83," the message ticked out, "crippled; six feet of snow ahead, and will have to lay over. Send orders."

"She's got through safe, that's a consolation," said Glidden, with a vast sigh of satisfaction.

Ralph simply clicked an "O. K." It had been arranged that at Fairview the conductor would wire for instructions. These had been purposely withheld for secrecy's sake. A transfer of two pay safes was due at the next station and Ralph waited, knowing that as soon as he could leave his train the conductor would send a personal message.

Suddenly the instrument began to click again.

"From conductor 83: metaphor, resolve, adirondacks, typists."

"What!" shouted Glidden, jumping to his feet in a frenzy.

Ralph's hand shook and the color left his face.

Translated, the message from the conductor of train No. 83 meant:

"The subst.i.tute pay car has disappeared."

CHAPTER XXVII

THE STOLEN PAY CAR

Long before the whistles blew for seven o'clock at Stanley Junction the news had spread like wildfire--train No. 83, carrying the subst.i.tute pay car, containing two hundred thousand dollars in cash and a king's ransom in bullion for the banks, had disappeared.

Somewhere between Fairview and Maddox, the time, and means unknown, the car containing all this treasure had been boldly stolen, disconnected from the train, had vanished.

One minute after receiving the startling cypher message, Ralph had telephoned to the superintendent of the road at his home in Stanley Junction. Within an hour that official and two a.s.sistants in hastily donned garb and with perturbed faces were at headquarters trying to solve a situation enshrouded in the densest mystery.

The wires were kept hot with messages to and from Fairview. The conductor of No. 83 could simply repeat his amazing story. When the train arrived at Maddox they found the precious treasure car missing.

Their crippled engine could not be brought into service. The snow-clogged rails offered no chance for a hand car.

Had the car broken loose? was the question put. No, was the answer. The b.u.mper of the last milk car showed no evidences of unusual strain or break. The coupling pin had simply been removed, how far back the line it was impossible to surmise, certainly between Fairview and Maddox.

And then, linking in the discovery of the brakeman lying drugged or hurt at the side of the track by the station agent at Tipton, the irresistible conclusion was arrived at by the anxious railroad officials that their careful plans to delude the conspirators and safely get the subst.i.tute pay car through had failed utterly.

There was only one thing to do. This was to make an immediate search for the missing car. Belleville, ten miles distant from Fairview, was wired an urgency call. The snowplow service with one caboose was ordered out.

The division superintendent at Belleville was instructed concerning the situation, and at four a. m. the train started for Fairview, to plow its way back over the route of No. 83 to seek a trace of the missing car.

It was before daylight when a report came in. Nowhere along the sharp curves or deep gullies of the route was a single trace of the car discovered. It had disappeared as absolutely and completely as if the earth had opened and swallowed it up.

The falling snow had obliterated all recent marks on its surface. By the merest chance, ten miles out of Maddox, the division superintendent had noticed a small mound that was unfamiliar. Stopping the train, an investigation disclosed the two guards who had been locked in the pay car when it left Rockton.

It had been hard work to arouse the men, but finally one of them was restored to consciousness sufficiently to relate a clear story.

Their instructions had been simple--to use their rifles if any stranger attempted to enter the car on its journey. Between stations the brakeman on duty on the rear platform of the car was allowed to enter to get warm. He had always, however, given an agreed-on signal at the door of the car.

It was just after leaving Tipton that his familiar knock had called one of them to the door to let him in. Taken completely off their guard, as four men one after the other jumped in among them, the guards had no opportunity to seize their firearms. They had been knocked down on the floor of the car, cloths drugged with some subtle acid had been held over their faces. They knew no more until they had been discovered by the division superintendent.

"It's easy to guess it out," whispered Glidden to Ralph while the officials in the room were piecing all these bits of information together.

"Yes," responded Ralph, "the conspirators in some way received advance information of every step we intended to make."

"They must have got aboard secretly beyond Tipton, or have been hidden in the last milk car," suggested Glidden. "They jumped on and doped the brakeman, disposed of him, later of the two guards, and were in possession. The division superintendent reports that the wires were found cut just out of Tipton. The crowd had planned out everything to a second, with conspirators posted all along the line."

"But the missing car," said Ralph thoughtfully; "what has become of it?"

Neither he nor Glidden could figure out a solution of this difficult problem. Even the experienced official after a long confab gave it up.

The only thing they could do was to order a hasty search for Bob Adair, the road detective, to rush to the spot with all the force he needed.

The superintendent spoke pleasantly to Ralph and Glidden as the day force relieved them. He even forgot his anxieties long enough to commend them for the hard work they had done and the close tab they had kept on all the occurrences of the night.

"It's a bad mess for the Great Northern," he said with a worried face, "and it proves that our enemies are not as dull as we thought they were."

Ralph went home tired out. He found it hard, however, to get to sleep.

The strain and excitement of the preceding twelve hours told severely on his nerves. All through the morning his vivid dreams were of snow blockades, cut wires, and stolen treasure cars.

On account of their special service on behalf of the pay car affair, Glidden and himself were relieved from duty for twenty-four hours. The old dispatcher dropped in at the Fairbanks home shortly after noon.

"Have they found any trace of the missing pay car?" at once inquired Ralph.

"Stolen, you mean," corrected Glidden. "No. Theories? Lots of them. She was simply cut off from the train. She couldn't have derailed, for there's no trace of that unless she went up in the air. Of course, whoever manipulated her sent her off on a siding among the mountains on a down grade."

"And that is the last known of it. Well, what later?"

"Adair will be over to find out soon, or else he won't," retorted Glidden crisply. "You know that web of old abandoned sidings and spurs branching out the other side of Maddox?"

"Near Eagle Pa.s.s, you mean?"

"Yes. The superintendent thinks the car will be found somewhere on the branches, looted, of course, for the robbers have had hours to handle the booty."

Nothing but theory, however, resulted from official investigations during the ensuing two days. The following Monday morning the a.s.sistant superintendent met Ralph on his way to work. The missing car problem was still unsolved, he told the young railroader.

Adair and his men had explored every spur and siding the entire length of Eagle Pa.s.s. Not a trace of the stolen car had been discovered, and the road officer was working on a theory that it might have been run off on connecting private switches onto the Midland Central, and the collusion of important influences exercised.

When Ralph got home that evening he found an old time friend awaiting him. It was Zeph Dallas, just arrived.