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Ebook has 152 lines and 15832 words, and 4 pages

Dull, lifeless, flat, came the dots and dashes from Hastings. "No use," clicked Donaldson. "This hide-and-seek is beyond me. Its face is half black and half white, and bullets don't worry it. I'm a gone duck. Never mind me. Anyhow, hell is warm and not as lonesome as this. I'm freezing, and that's no ghost story."

"For God's sake," Ben's reply flew forth, "can that stuff. Pull yourself together, old man. Forget the face or whatever it is; 77's on time. Hold hard."

"Sure," agreed Donaldson wearily, "I'll handle the Limited. How's the storm up there?"

"Quitting," lied Ben, and went to the window.

Then followed an hour of silence, with only the shriek of the wind and the thud of snol. I reckon the two of us smoked considerable tobacco during that hour, and we played a few games of checkers, too, but our minds wandered.

When at last we heard the shrill squeal of 77's whistle above the noise of the blizzard, we felt happy. Just to know there were other people near us--believe me, that was some relief!

Far off up the line we could make out the headlight of the Limited like a blinking, misty moon creeping toward us. Ben glanced at his semaphore levers. Down she bore on us, the din of her drivers muffled by snow.

There was the thunder of moving tons, a blast of cinders against the tower windows, and a snaky line of black as the Pullmans flashed past under their white-caps. We watched her red tail-lights around the curve.

"J-J, J-J, J-J," clicked Ben, back at the table. And directly Hastings answered in the same lifeless style.

"Limited just passed O. K.," went on my side partner. "How are you feeling?"

Donaldson's wire-talk was worse than ever. "Fine," he stuttered. "Maybe I can hold out. The damn thing's always near me. It's cold here. I've got my feet on the stove. Say, this stove is a joke. It's so empty it's going to cave in pretty soon. Wait a minute, let me try another shot."

Nothing more. Not another word, though we took turns at the key. And when Ben relighted his pipe I didn't like the look on his face. "Jim," he began, "there's things in this world none of us can understand. I reckon after all that maybe, I misjudged Donaldson; perhaps he's up against one of 'em."

"Quit!" I bellowed. "You watch yourself or you'll be splitting a switch, too. As you said a while back, Donaldson's nervous and cold. That's what's the matter with him; nothing else."

Ben, mumbling a reply, turned again to the window. If possible the storm was worse.

I don't exactly remember how it happened; I must have dozed off about then, being pretty tuckered out. Anyhow, the first thing I knew Ben was shaking the life out of me. I'll never forget the expression of his face as I opened my eyes.

His eyes were all red, his hands were working, his jaw set. "Wake up, Jim," he hissed. "I heard it, too.

"No," he went on as I instinctively looked toward the window. "Not there; over the wire. Listen!"

I listened, but for a long time nothing broke the vibrating stillness of the tower. And I got to thinking it was another case of nerves. Then, Father above us! may I never again hear such a sound!

Our instrument started to whisper. You laugh, do you? But if you'd been there you wouldn't have laughed. We went over to the table on tiptoe, hardly daring to breathe. The little steel bar trembled; moved down; snapped back, barely closing the contact.

It was like a dying man framing words he couldn't utter. I followed in my mind the course of the single, drumming wire over the trestles, through the ravines, under the mountains. What manner of thing was pressing the key at the other end?

Presently the instrument quivered again, but this time the impulse was stronger. Horribly flaccid, monotonously regular, like the labored effort of an amateur, came the message which shall forever sear my memory with unspeakable horror.

"God--in--heaven--help me. I--can't--stand--this. They--chained--cross-- ties--to--the--rails. They--will--ditch--the--Limited. I'm--done--for. Hell--is--nearer--now. Help. Dear--God--help--me--"

That was all. Ben tore at the key, sending out into the night, "J-J, J-J, J-J," until my head swam.

But no response came; not the least flutter. Only agonizing, storm shrieking silence.

Then he gave it up and staggered to his feet. His face was as gray as slate. "Jim," he gasped, "Donaldson is dead! I know it. It was a dying man who sent that message."

Slowly, as if his body was awakening from sleep, the muscles in his shoulders under my hand tightened. "Sure, I get you," he whispered. And before I knew what he was doing, he shook me off, rushing blindly for the stairs. "Come on, Jim. For God's sake, hurry!" he called. "Bring my gun and some torpedoes. It's only five miles by the road; thirty down the mountain by the track. Let's try the car--"

I stopped long enough to be sure the revolver we kept in a drawer was loaded, stuffed some torpedoes in my pocket, and followed him. Out into the gale he sped to where he kept his little second-hand, mud-spattered gas-wagon. I had always kidded him about it, laughed at it; but now I prayed.

Yes, funny when you think of it, me praying! But I did--prayed it would run; prayed there was gas and oil in it.

Once away from the lee of the building, the storm wrapped around us, flinging the snow in our faces, making us gasp for breath. We were taking desperate chances and breaking all rules--this leaving a tower vacant, but what could we do? What in God's name could we do?

When I caught up with Ben he was cranking the engine desperately. I propped the shanty door open, though the blast of wind threatened to fairly tear it from its hinges.

Fortunately the radiator of the car had antifreezing mixture in it. After an agonizing moment, the engine gave a couple of disgusted coughs and died. But Ben went right on. He spun that thing till I was dizzy as I sat with my hand on the throttle, feeding it raw gas.

When there seemed no chance left, and I could see the Limited a burning, blackened mass, and hear the cries of the injured, the engine started, missing like thunder, to be sure. Ben leaped in beside me and let in his clutch.

Once beyond the shanty our headlights ended in a whirling bank of snow, and the cold stabbed like a driven nail. But the engine was running better now.

How my side partner found the road, or how he kept that rickety piece of junk from chucking us down a ravine I'll never know. But he did. Yes, by the grace of the Lord, he did.

Pitching like a ship in a storm, sinking now and then up to our hubs, we jounced on down that mountain. What everlasting miles of emptiness! What biting pain as our ears and hands and noses turned red, then white.

Once we heard the shriek of the Limited below us on the grade; once we saw the flash of her furnace door. Seconds turned into minutes; minutes into hours. Would we be in time? I set my teeth and prayed some more.

Ah, we had hit the last stretch and through the smother we could see the semaphore lights of Hastings station. Also the light in the building itself. Our car snorted and groaned as Ben fed it the gas, skidding to the edge of a precipice or flinging us half out of our seats, but we never thought of that.

And now came the wail of the Limited's whistle, this time above us. Her headlight flickered across the cut, touching the station with uncertain fingers. The semaphore was set green.

I shivered, but not from cold. If only we had half a chance, but the everlasting snow--how it clung to our wheels! And under it our tire-chains spun gratingly in red clay which flecked the white of the road like blood.

Bearing down on Hastings station, gathering speed with each pound of her drivers, thundered the Limited. We were playing the passage of a minute against a pile of cross-ties--and the forfeit was death!

Now we reached the nearest point to the right-of-way, and as we jerked to a halt, a black figure appeared on the depot platform against the light. I saw the flash of a gun and heard a bullet sing past.

But Ben paid no heed. Throwing himself from the car, he floundered over to the track. I ran toward the station, firing as I went. Once I looked back. Ben was kneeling down, adjusting torpedoes under the very pilot of the plow.

Now there isn't any use of my explaining how the Limited roared by, her engineer satisfied with the green of the semaphore; nor how he gave her the air when the torpedoes warned him.

Nor, for that matter, of the futile pursuit of the bandits who had intended to ditch her. All that came out in the morning paper. If I remember, there was even a picture of the pile of cross-ties chained to the track.

The fact that will interest you is what we discovered in Hastings station. Without bothering to explain to 77's wondering crew, we dashed into the waiting-room and threw open the door of the ticket office.

At the table sat Donaldson. He was stiff and rigid, and from an ugly blotched hole in his neck there crept a frozen stream of blood. His right hand still rested on the telegraph-key.

"Good God!" I muttered. "Dead! He never moved after he was shot."

And then, somehow feeling Ben's eyes upon me, I looked at him. His smile was ghastly.

"Sure?" he said. "I told you so back in the tower. He never moved after he was shot? Then what about that message? How did he know about the cross-ties?"

"Shut up!" I shrieked. "Here, let's get him out of this. We'll go down on 77. I'm through!"

The west front which he rebuilt, though not altogether satisfactory, yet is greatly superior in design to his subsequent work at the south and north ends of the transept. These originally had corner turrets, octagonal in plan; these turrets were pulled down and square ones, finished by pyramidal caps, put in their place. The entire south front of the transept was pulled down and rebuilt, and a new window consisting of five lancets occupying its whole width inserted. The central light rises high into the gable and above the level of the inner ceiling. The lancets on either side are intermediate in height between the central and side ones when they are seen from without, but when seen from within the tops of all are of the same height, as they could not be raised above the level of the ceiling. The parts of the three middle lancets seen from without above this level are backed up with black felt across the ceiling, and their upper parts light the space between the ceiling and the high roof. This window is a feeble imitation of the "Five Sisters" of York, and is utterly out of place in the narrow transept at St. Albans; but bad as this south window is, the one at the north end of the transept is worse. Here Lord Grimthorpe inserted a circular window, the design being such as a child might make who was given a sheet of cardboard with a large circle drawn on it, which he was requested to cover symmetrically with a number of half-crowns, shillings, and sixpences. Another piece of unnecessary alteration was the destruction of the slype at the south end and the re-erection of its disjointed members as curiosities in the new work, its western doorway, with an added order, having been let into the centre of the south wall of the transept, and the arcading placed in two different positions.

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