Ralph on the Overland Express Part 23

CHAPTER XX

"LORD LIONEL MONTAGUE"

"You can't get on here!"

"But I've got a paus, don't you know."

"Paws? Yes, I see," said Lemuel Fogg. "Take 'em off the tender, son, or you'll get a jerk that will land you, for we're going to start up pretty soon."

"Hawdly--I have a right here, my man--I've got a paus, don't you know."

"See here, my friend, if you are bound for Hadley, this isn't the train."

"I didn't say Hadley, sir, I said 'hawdly.'"

"He means hardly, Mr. Fogg," put in Ralph, "and he is trying to tell you he has a pa.s.s."

"Why don't he talk English, then?" demanded the fireman of No. 999 contemptuously, while the person who had aroused his dislike looked indignant and affronted, and now, extending a card to Ralph, climbed up into the tender.

He was a stranger to the engineer--a man Ralph could not remember having seen before. His attire was that of a conventional tourist, and his face, words and bearing suggested the conventional foreigner.

He wore a short, stubby black mustache and side whiskers, a monocle in one eye, and he had a vacuous expression on his face as of a person of immense profundity and "cla.s.s."

Ralph, glancing over the card, saw that it was a pa.s.s from the master mechanic of the road, briefly explaining that the bearer was Lord Lionel Montague, studying up American railroad systems.

"We can't offer you a seat, Lord Montague," spoke Ralph politely.

"It's rough work in cramped quarters aboard a locomotive."

"I have noticed it," replied "his ludship." "Not so abroad, by no means, my man. In fact, on the home lines in Lunnon, it is quite the thing, you know, for the quality to make a fad of locomotive parties, and the accommodations for their comfort are quite superior to this, don't you know."

"That so?" growled Fogg, with an unpleasant glance at the stranger.

"Why, I've had Senators in my cab in my time, glad to chum with the crew and set back on the coal, jolly and homelike as could be--as you'll have to do, if you stay on this engine."

"Remawkably detestable person!" observed the stranger confidentially to Ralph. "I shall ride only a short distance--to the first stop, in fact."

"You are welcome," replied Ralph, "and if I can explain anything to you, I am at your service."

"Thawnks, thawnks," uttered the pretentious pa.s.senger, and fixed his monocled eye on s.p.a.ce in a vapid way.

No. 999 was on schedule for the old accommodation run to Riverton. It was nearly a week after the interview between the young engineer and Fred Porter recited in the last chapter. Affairs had quited down with Ralph, and railroad life had settled down to ordinary routine of the usual commonplace character.

There had at first been considerable interest for Ralph in the remarkable statement of Zeph Dallas that the original of the photograph of Marvin Clark, the son of the railroad president, was his mysterious employer. Further than that involuntary admission of his erratic friend, however, Ralph could not persuade Zeph to go. Zeph declared that he was bound by a compact of the greatest secrecy. He insisted that there could be no possibility of a mistake in his recognition of the picture.

Ralph told him that a friend was very anxious to find his employer, and told Zeph who his friend was. The latter became serious, and acted quite disturbed when he learned that it was Fred Porter, whom he had met several times.

"I'd like to tell you a whole lot, Ralph, but I can't do it!" Zeph had burst out. "Say, one thing, though; I'm going to tell my employer about Fred Porter being so anxious to see him, and you can write to Porter and tell him that his friend is all right and safe, if you want to. What's that address--I may get around to Porter myself."

Ralph told Zeph. That same evening the latter left Stanley Junction, and Ralph had not heard from him since, nor did he receive word from Fred. Temporarily, at least, Zeph, Fred and the railroad president's son, Marvin Clark, the "Canaries" and all the peculiar mystery surrounding them, seemed to have drifted out of the life of the young engineer.

No. 999 was about ready to start on her daily trip when the stranger designated as Lord Montague had appeared. As he stood against the tender bar and seemed to commune with himself on the crudity of American locomotive cabs, Ralph leaned from the window and hailed a friend.

"I say, Graham," he observed, "you seem particularly active and restless this morning."

Ralph had reason for the remark. The young inventor had been very little care to his sponsor and friend during the past week. Given free access to the roundhouse, Archie had just about lived there.

Quiet and inoffensive, he at first had been a b.u.t.t for the jokes of the wipers and the extras, but his good-natured patience disarmed those who harmlessly made fun of him, and those who maliciously persecuted him had one warning from his sledge-hammer fists, and left him alone afterwards.

On this especial morning Archie was stirred with an unusual animation.

Ralph noticed this when he first came down to the roundhouse. The young inventor hung around the locomotive suspiciously. He even rode on the pilot of No. 999 to the depot, and for the past five minutes he had paced restlessly up and down the platform as though the locomotive held some peculiar fascination for him. As he now came up to the cab at Ralph's hail, his eye ran over the locomotive in the most interested way in the world, and Ralph wondered why.

"Call me, Fairbanks?" mumbled Archie, and Ralph could not catch his eye.

"I did, Graham," responded Ralph. "What's stirring you?"

"Why?"

"Chasing up 999."

"Am I?"

"It looks that way; it looks to me as if you were watching the locomotive."

"She's worth watching, isn't she?"

"Yes, but you act as if you expect her to do something."

"Ha! ha!--that's it, h'm--you see--say, wish I could run down the line with you this morning."

"We're crowded in the cab, as you see," explained Ralph, "but if you want the discomfort of balancing on the tank cover back there----"

"I'd dote on it--thanks, thanks," said Archie with a fervor that increased Ralph's curiosity as to his strange actions this particular morning.

"Got some new bee in his head?" suggested Fogg, as Archie scrambled up over the coal. "He'll have a new kind of locomotive built by the time we clear the limits--that is, in his mind."

Lord Lionel Montague warmed up to Ralph the next few minutes before starting time. He asked a few casual questions about the mechanisms of No. 999, and then seemed tremendously interested in the young engineer himself.

"I've taken a fawncy to you, Mr. Fairbanks, don't you know," he drawled out. "I'd like to cultivate you, quite. I must call on you at Stanley Junction. There's a great deal you might tell me of interest, don't you see."

"I shall be happy to be of service to you, Lord Montague," responded Ralph courteously.

He did not like the man. There was something untrue about his shifty eye. There was a lot of "put on" that did not strike Ralph as natural.

"His ludship" harped on the youth of Ralph. Only veterans were intrusted with important railroad positions in England--"didn't he know." He was asking many questions about Ralph's juvenile friends, as if with some secret purpose, when the train started up.

"Hi, up there!" Fogg challenged Archie, seated on the tank tender top, "don't get moving up there and tumble off."

The young inventor certainly looked as if he was moving. His eyes were glued to the smokestack of the locomotive, as though it possessed a fascinating influence over him.

"Say, there's some draft this morning," observed the fireman, half-way to the crossing, as he threw some coal into the furnace.

"I should say so," replied Ralph; "some sparks, too, I notice."