CHAPTER IX
CALCUTTA TOM
Ralph walked in the direction of the switch tower.
He noticed that all the tracks seemed unusually inactive, even for the noon hour. The main rails were perfectly clear, and a good many locomotives were on the sidings.
Glancing up at the switch tower, Ralph was a good deal surprised to notice that it was entirely unoccupied.
This was startling. Ralph had never known that post of the service to be untenanted at any hour of the day or night.
Then he noticed on the out main rails near the tower a handcar. A trackman stood with his hands on the pumping bar. One foot on the car, his watch in his hand, old Jack Knight was looking impatient and excited.
"Hustle, Fairbanks!" he shouted, and Ralph came up on a sharp run. "Here," spoke Knight, extending a slip of paper to Ralph. "Get down to the depot master, double-quick. Then hustle back to the tower. I'm bound for the limits tower, to keep things straight there."
"Why, what's up, Mr. Knight?" inquired Ralph.
"Mile-a-minute special from the north, due at 1.15. You've got fifteen minutes. The out tracks are set for the 1.05 express all right. Soon as she passes, set the out main after her so the special will take the in tracks to the limits. No. 6 will wait at the limits while we shoot the special to the out again."
"A special?" repeated Ralph, in some bewilderment, "and from the north"
"Obey orders," interrupted Knight crisply. "Nothing to move except the express till the special passes. Understand? Don't lose any time. Get that slip to the depot master, and hurry back to the tower."
"All right," spoke Ralph promptly.
He started on a run for the depot, as Knight sprang to the handcar and it was whirled down the rails.
Ralph had a right to be mystified. There was no special in place on the depot tracks. The Great Northern had its terminus at Stanley Junction.
There was a single track running north from the depot, but it was not in use. It had been built by the Great Northern to connect with a belt line fifteen miles distant, all equipped as to rails, switches, and roadbed. Then the holding companies had some squabble. Suits and counter-suits had tied up the line, and it was temporarily out of service on an injunction.
Ralph therefore comprehended that it was only over this stretch of road that any special could be expected from the north. Further, he decided that it must be a very important special that could gain the right of way under existing legal complications and interrupt the regular system of the Great Northern.
However, the order was out and Ralph had definite instructions. He made the depot in three minutes, and darted into the private office of the depot master without ceremony.
That official looked nervous and engrossed. He clicked at a telegraph instrument with one hand, while he hastily unfolded and scanned the slip of paper Ralph had brought.
"Very good," he nodded. "Clear tracks to Springfield. If they boost the special along on the other sections as well as we have done on this, and our president can score a mile-a-minute run, he can reach his dying wife in time."
Ralph hurried back towards the switch tower. He fancied he now understood the situation. The brief words of the depot master had been enlightening.
He guessed that the president of the road at a distance had been apprised of serious illness in his family. Perhaps the attendant physician had wired a time limit. If the anxious husband hoped to see his stricken wife before she died, he must exert every privilege he controlled as the head of a great railroad system.
Ralph reflected that he might have been a thousand miles away when he received the anxious summons. Influence and the wires had possibly called half a dozen interlocking lines into service. Even the law had stepped aside, it seemed, to speed the distressed official on his way, via the north spur of the Great Northern.
The 1.05 express steamed out of the depot just as Ralph reached the switch tower.
"That clears the situation," he reflected. "Set the out main for the in switch after she passes. Hark!"
Ralph bent his ear at an unusual sound. This was the echo of a sharp locomotive whistle—to the north.
"The special is coming," he observed, and naturally with some excitement—a mile-a-minute dash through the depot and town was a novelty for Stanley Junction.
There was no one visible in the immediate vicinity of the switch tower. The unusual quietude of the yards made Ralph think of Sunday. At a little distance were many engines and freight trains standing on sidings. They were held inactive on order. Engineers and firemen lounged on their cab seats, looking down the yards north expectantly.
Ralph rounded the tower structure briskly. He pulled out his watch.
"Four minutes," he spoke, and turned into the lower doorway.
In a jiffy he would be up the ladder. A turn of the lever, and he, too, could sit down, and from his lofty point of observation leisurely watch the mile-a-minute special flash by.
Half-way across the lower tower space, Ralph checked himself.
A chill, startled sensation crept over his nerves. He halted with a shock, gave a vivid stare, and uttered a sharp gasp.
A growl had warned him. Ralph saw a bristling, sinuous form arise from the floor directly at the bottom of the ladder.
Two fire-balls seemed to glow at him with yenom and menace. In a flash the young leverman realized the situation.
Ralph Fairbanks faced the escaped tiger.