CAPE MAY COUNTY TIMES. SEA ISLE CITY, N.

THE WRECKERS

ry FRANCIS LYNDE

Coprrlftit by Charlra 8cr1bner*a Sona

LOST—ONE PERFECTLY GOOD ENGINE.

Byi.opsia,—Graham Norcroaa, rallroini munnRer. and hl« srrrrtary. Jlmmlc Dodd*, nrr mar<H>n«d in S.ind Cr**k aldinR wllh a ynunR lady. Shell* Macrae, and her anmll coualn. Malale Ann. fnaeen, they wllnra* a peculiar train holdup. In which a rperta] car I* carried oft. Korrroa* recosnlzcs the car an that of John Chadw'ck. dnanclnl maenatv. whom he waa to meet at Portal City. He and Dodd* rescue Chadwick. The latter oIters Korcross the inanaiseinent of the Pioneer Short Une, which Is In the hand* of eastern speculators headed b ' BreckenrldRe Dunton. president of the line. Norcross. IsarnlnR that Sheila Macrae I* stopping; at Portal City, accepts nodds overhears conversation between Itufus Hatch and Gustave Henckel. Portal city financiers In which .h.w c. dwlrk s kldn.iplnic. their object bein'* to keep

" f ,,lr<, '' ! "r" <0 reorcanlze the Pioneer ' Interests To curb the monopoly con-

corporatlon. Norcross forms the He heitlns to manifest a de-p t Sheila Is married, hut IIvIiik now this. The Boss disappears.

they admit complicity 1 Chadwick from attendlnir »

Short Line, which would Jeopardise It (rolled by Hatch and Henckel. the lied To* ClUtxena' Storase and Warehouse com. any Interest In Sheila Macrae. Dodds learns t apart from her husband. Norcross does no report has It that he has reslgnid and Ron

CHAPTER VI—Continued.

r linil ii

t least sucreedotl in clearing

up whatever mystery there was about Mr. Van Britt saw and talked with | that. The wall switch for the electric everybody, and when he could wedge . light in the lower hall at the hemloff n minute or two of privacy, he'd quarters was right beside the outer go Into the third ro»tn of the suite door Jamb—as I knew. H had burned and thresh It out with Juneman, or out In some way. and Hint was why Blllo'ighhy. or Mr. Ripley. From these f there was no light on when I went private talks I found out that there j down-stairs. And In hunting oal It .... ? doubt In the minds of | had short-circuited Hself with the brass lock of the door; Fred didn't

all four of them about the boss' drop

It was voluntary what had been r days. We had

t Hint time.

out—ns to whethi Also. I found 01 sione during ihe fi «o "company detee

find Mr. Hornack had borrowed a man nnnied Grimmer from his old company. the Overland Central wiring for *ilm and getting him on the ground ■within tw“nty-four hours of Ihe time •of Mr. Norcross' disappearance. Grimmer had gone to work at once, but everything he had turned up. fo far. favored the voluntary runaway theory. Mr. Norcross' trunks were still in his rooms at the Bullard; but Ms two grips were gone. And the night clerk at the hotel, when he was pushed lo It. remembered that the boss had paid his bill up lo date that night, before going up to his rooms. Past that, the trace was completely lost. The condueinr on the Fast Mail, «asUiound. on the night In question, swore by all that was good and great that Mr. Norcross hadn’t (teen a passenger on his irain. And he would certainly have known It If he had been carrying his general manager. Over In the other Held there was absolutely nothing to incriminate the Hatch people. So fin from It. Hatch toad turned up at the railroad office, bright and curly the morning after Mr. Norcross had gone. He had asked for the I mss, and fading to llnd him.

lie had hunted up Mr. Van Britt What ;

toe wan I isl. It seemed, was a chance to reopen the proposition that bad been made to him the day before— 'the offer of the new Citizens' Storage ■& Warehouse company to purchase the

Various Red Tow-

plants.

Mr. Van Britt had referred him to Mr. Ripley, and to our lawyer Hatch toad made what purported to he an -open confession, admitting that he had gone to Mr. Norcross the night before. determined to tight Ihe new company to a llnlsh, and that there had been a good many things said that would better be forgotten. Now. however. he was willing to talk straight business and a compromise. He had called Ids board •• directors together. «:nd they had voted to sell tin lr trackbordering plants to Citizens' Storage di Warehouse If a price •■ould tie amicably agreed upon. With Mr. Norcross gone and a new general manager coming. Mr. Ripley was afraid to make n move, and Hatch was pressing him to get busy on the bargain and sale f riq isillon parently as anxious now to withdraw as he had at fight everything In sight By the morning I came the man Grimmer hart. Just about done his do. i sort of Journeyman den

know Just how, hut Grimmer plained It. 1 asked him If Grimmer had explained how a 1X0 volt light curlent could . ook me like a fried potato, mid ho said he hadn't. The afternoon at the office was a sort of cut-and-coiuc-.'ignin repeat of the morning, with lots of iieople milling around and things going crooked and cross-ways, us they were bound to with the boss gone and a new boss coming. Nobody had any heart for anything, and along late In the afternoon when word came of a freight wreck at Cross Creek Gulch, Mi. Van Britt threw up both bunds and ylpped and swore like a pirate. It Just showed what a raw edge the headquarters’ nerves were taking on. Though it wasn’t his business. Mr. V'cn Britt went out with the wrecking train, and Fred May ami I had it all in ourselves for the remaining hour or so up to closing time. Just before live. Mr. Cantrell, the editor of the Mountaineer, dropped In. He looked a bit disappointed when he found only us two. Fred turned him over lo trie, and he came on In to the private office when I asked him to. and smoked one of the boss' good cigars out of a box that I found in the big

desk.

I liked Cantrell. He was Just the

sort of man you expect an editor to be; tail and ;hln and kind of mildeyed. with an absent way with him that made you feel as If he were thinking alo-g about a mile ahead of you when you were striking the best

think-gait you ever knew of. "No word yet from Mr. Norcross. 1

qulpmenta and | »upposer he said.

* told him there

in’t.

"It's very singular

all of us. as it Is to you,” I threw in. The editor smoked on for a full minute without saying anything more, and he seemed to he staring absently at a steamship picture on the wall. When he got good and ready, he be“Ynu don't need any common plainclothes man on this Job. Jimmie; you

l tlier

in-the-w

cal. .

, If there

Sherlock Holrai

ever were such a mlraiV.” "Ton think It l» ca-w for a de-

tect ive?”

“I do." he replied, looking straight at me with his mild blue eyes. "If | I were one of Mr. Norcross' close! friends I should get the best help that | could he found and not lose a single j there was nobody around

stenographer on some errand or other, and made me sit down and tell him nil I knew. When 1 got through he was pulling at his long mustache and wrinkling his nose os I’ve seen a bulldog do when he was getting ready to bile something. "You haven't got all the drop-out business cornered over yonder in the general office, Jimmie." he said slowly. tilting back in his swing-chair and glowering at me with those sultry eyes of his. "On that same night that you’re mikin’ about, I stand to lose one perfectly good Atlantic-type locomotive. At ten o’clock she was set in on the spur below the coal chutes. At twelve o'clock, when the round-house watchman went down there to see If her tire was hanked all righl, she was

CHAPTER VII The Lost 1016 When Kirgnn told me he was shy a whole locomotive. I began to see nil ••oris of fire-works. Of course, there was nothing on earth to connect mo boss’ disappearance with that of ihe engine which had been left standing below the coal chutes, hut the two things .snapped themselves together for me like ihe halves of an automalic coupling. . id I couldn't wedge I hem apart. "An engine—even a little old Allan-tic-type—Is a pretty big thing to lose. Isn’t it. Kirgnn?" I asked. Klrgan righted his chair with a crash. "Jimmie. I’ve sifted this blamed outlit through an eighty-mesh screen!" he growled. "With all the devil-to-pay that’s goln’ on over at the headquarters. I didn't want to bother Mr. Van Britt, and I haven’t been advertisin' In the newspapers. But It's a holy fact. Jimmie. The ’Slxteen's I was trying to pry myself loose from the notion that the loss of the engine and the boss' disappearance at about the same time were in ome way connected with each other It was no use; the Idea refused to let go. "Look here, Klrgan," I shoved In; "can you think of any possible reason why Mr. Norcross should write Mr. Van Britt a letter saying that he had quit and was going east on the midnight train and ih.-n should change his mind and come down here and go somewhere on that engine?" After I hail said it. It sounded so foolish that 1 wanted to take it back. But Kirgnn didn’t seem to look at It that way. “Well. I’ll be shot!" he exclaimed. "I never once thought of that! But where the devil would he go? And how would he get there without somebody finding out? Anil why in Sam Hill would he do a thing like that, anyway? Why, sufferin’ Moses! if he wanted to go anywhere, all lie had to do was to order out his car and tell the dispatcher, and go. "I can't figure it out any better than you can." 1 confessed. "Mr, Norcross Is gone, mid the Ten-Sixteen Is gone, and they both dropped out between ten and twelve o'clock on the same night. Mart. I don't believe Mr. Nor- * went east at all! I believe, i we find that engine, we’ll find him!" Klrgan got out of his chair and bein to walk up and down In the little space between his desk and the draw-

Ini-t that the Hutch people had taken the back track and were now offering m sell out and stop chocking the wheels of reform. "I know." he put In. "But I’ve been rcirtin' the papers, Jimmie, and It ain't all Bed Tower, not by a jugful. The big graft In this neck-u woods Is IHjlitieiil, and the Red Tower gang Is only set-a cogs in Hie hull-wheel. Mr. Norcross was g.-mn’ himself mighty pointedly disliked; you know thut. Tiie way he was aimin’ to run things. It was heginnln’ to look as If maybe the pie of ihis slate might wake up some day and turn in and help him.” "I know all nhtut thut." ! threw in. “Ru' where me you trying to land. Mart?" • Right here. Mr. Norm. was the whole show. Take him out of ii and the whole shoniin-inalch would fall to pieces—ns It's doin’, right now. They didn't need to slug him or shoot him up or anything like that; If it could he made to look as If he’d Jumped Hie Job. quit, chucked it all up. why. there you arc. A new boss would be sent out here, and you' could bet your sweet life he wouldn’t be anybody like Mr. Norcross. Not so you could notice it. The N.\v York people would take Illumed good care-n Hint." "You think Hip Dunton people tire standing In with the graft?" "Nobody couid've grabbed off the motive-power Job on this railroad, us I did. Jimmie, and not think It—and he d—n‘ sure of It. Why. Lord Heavens, the Red Tower hunch was usin' us Just the same as If wo longed to 'em!—ordering our me do their machinery repairs, he themselves to any railroad material Unit they happened to need, usin' cars and engines on their loggiti* roads and mine branches." “You stopped all this?" "You bet I did—between two days! They've' been milkin' seventeen different kinds of a roar ever since, but I've had Mr. Van Britt and the big bos behind me, so I Just Shoved ahead.' What Klrgan said about the Red Tower iieople using our rolling stock on 'heir private brunch roads set a bee to buzzing in ray brain. What If they had stolen the 1010 to use in that ■ You have a blue-print of the Portal division here, haven't you?" I asked. "Dig it up and let's have a look at It." At first the facts threatened to bluff us. The blue-print engineers' map was »n old one. but it showed the spurs und side-tracks, the stations and water tanks. Since the lost engine had been standing at Ihe western end of the Portal City yards, we didn't try to trace It eastward. To get out in that direction It would ha\ d to pass •he round-house, the shops, the passenger station and the headquarters building, und. even at that time of night, somebody would have been sure Tracing the other way—westward— we had a clear track for ten miles to Arroyo. Arroyo had no night operator. so we agreed that the stolen engine might easily have slipped past there without being marked down. Fight miles beyond Arroyo we came to Bantu, the first night station west ef Portal City. Here, as we figured :t. the wiid engine roust have been seen by the operator. If by no one else. Bantu was an apple town, and The town Itself might have been asleep, hut the wire man at the station shouldn't have been. “Let's hold Banta in suspense a bit. and allow thut by some means or other the thieves managed to get hv.” I suggested. "The next thing to be considered Is the fact that the TenSixteen must now have been running—without orders, we must remember—against the Fast Mail coming east. The Mai! didn't pass her any-

%iad

In and talked Mr. Ripley. I ■ believed In Hi. the law

When he «

• Mr. Van Britt and ild see that he fully drop-out theory, and and Mr. Van Britt had to admit that the facts were with him. The boss had written a letter Maying definitely that he was quitting ; he had paid his hotel bill, und Id* grips were gone; and two days later I’resident Dunton had appointed a new general manager, which was proof positive, you'd say. that the boss had resigned and had so notified tne New

York office.

When the noon hour came along. Fred May took me out to and we went to the Bullard cafe. It was pretty rich for our blond at two dollars per. hut I guess Fred thought his Job was gone, anyway, and felt reckless. Over the good things at our corner table we did a little threshing wi our own account—and got a lot more chaff tiud no grain. Fred didn’t want to agree with Rprinimer and the .acts, but there fthln't seem to be any help for It. And as for me, I had other things In mind al! the time—the hig scary f. nr that somebody had got to the boa after tie had left Ripley on the nichi of ahocklngs. and had Just hashed tiini in the face with the story of Mrs. Sheila's ahum widowhood.

By •

I by

toonjed hand, and Fred

showed up on the map. The ten-mile siding might have served for the passing point, but In that case the crew of the Fast Mull would surely have seen the 1010 walling on the siding as they came by. And they hadn't seen it; Klrgan sold they had been questioned promptly the following morning. Though I had been over the road with Mr. Norcross in his private car any number of times since we had taken hold, I didn’t recall the detail topographies very clearly, and I couldn’t seem to remember anything about this siding ten miles west of Banta. So I asked Kirgnn. "That siding isn't in any such shape that the l-’nst Mall could get by without seeing a ’meet’ train on the sidetrack. is it?” Tiie Idg master mechanic shook bis "Hardly, you'd Think. I reckon we are up a stump, Jimmie. That siding Is part of an old ‘Y’ at the mouth of a

irtm-

nothiug east of .Sana Creek. twenty-one miles farther ■U3i. there was uoUitug that

We Hunted for a Possible Passing gulch that runs back Into the mountains for maybe a dozen miles or so. They tell tiie the ’Y' was put in for the Timber Mountain Lumber outfit when they used the gulch month for their shipping poinr. They had one of their saw-mills up In the gulch somewhere, hut the business died out when they got the timber all cut off.” "Tell me this. Mart." 1 put in quickly. “The Timber Mountain company

of the Red Tower tnonopolh

did It have a railroad gulch connecting with o "Why. yes; 1 reckon right sure that there alt you But if there is. ii connected from the - Y.' that, because I went in

. up that

*Y'?"

I'm not one there been distn sure of n that 'Y'

the

You'd think this would have settled it. But I hung on like a dog to a "Say, Mart." I insisted, “this ‘Y - Riding we’re talking about Is Just around where the Ten-Sixteen ought to have met the Mail; so far ns we ran tell by this map It’s the only place where II could have met It. And the old gulch track would have been a mighty good hiding-place for the stolen

•nglne!"

se. If tl

e Is. H hasn't a

r rail c

•Hon with our aiding, ju-o as I'm tellln' you. We'll have to look fnrSomchow. I couldn't got It out of ay head hut that I was right. Our piesses all went as straight as a trlng to that ‘Y" siding ten miles west •f Banta, and I was sure that if I had •ecu talking to Mr. Van Britt I could ave ci ivlnced him. But Klrgan was

vvfully hard-headed,

“It's supper time." lie said, after re had mulled a while longer over the map. ‘Tomorrow. If you like,

■nglne and run down

there. But we ain't goin' to find anything. I can tell you that, right now." nd tomorrow we may have general mamiger. and then I ami all the others will he hunting for some other railroad to

work on." I retorted.

; pretty nearly had him over the' je. but I couldn't push him the it of the way to save tny life. If there was the least little scrap-a ison even lo Imagine that Mr. Nor■rs had gone off on that stolen Ill-wheeler, it would lie different, Jimmie." he protested. “But then* and you know d iggoned well

hunt up something to e: get a good square men!

ing to go around the lower end of things. Tills detour took ns past Hie roundhouse. and when we reached the turn table lead. Hie engine of the Jurtarrlved freight came harking down the skip-track. Seeing Klrgan. the engineer swung down from the step at the lead switch, leaving the hostler to "spot" the engine on the table. I knew the engineer by sight. His name was Gorcber. and he was a reformed emv-punch'—with n record for getting ont of more tight places with a h.*avy train than any other man on the division. "Here’s looking’ at you. Mr. Klrgnn." lie said, with a sort of Happy Hooligan grin on his smutty face. “You been passin’ the word, quiet, among the hoys to keep an eye out f'r that Atlantic-type that c..t lost In the shuffle, ain’t you? Well. I found "What's that—when 1 ?" snapped Klrgan. in a tone that made a noise like the pop of a whip-lush. "You know that old gravel pit that digs Into the hill a mile west of the old ’Y’ on the Timber Mountain grade? Well, she's there; plumb at the far end o’ Hint gravel track, cold nud dead." "Crippled?" Klrgan rapped out. “Not as we could see; just dead. She's got her none shoved a piece Into the gravel bank, but she ain't off the rail." Klrgan nodded. "Who else saw

"Nobody I

“All right. Don't spread It. Want to make a little overtime?" "I ain't kickin’ none." “That's business. After you've had ye supper, call up your fireman and report to me here at the round-house. We’ll take a light engine and go down along and get that runaway." This seemed lo settle Kirgan’s half of the puzzle. We hadn't taken the gravel (rack into our calculations simply because It wasn't marked on Hie map we had been studying; hut that merely meant that the pit had been opened some lime after the map had

been made.

When Gorchor had gone Into the round-house to wash up and tell his fireman to report hack. Klrgan and I crossed the yard and headed for town. I left the master-mechanic at the door of a Greek eat-shop that he patronized and went on up to the Bullard. I was just getting around to my piece of canned pumpkin pie when the kid from the dispatcher’s office came into the grill-room, stretching his neck as If he were looking for somebody. When he got his eye on me he came across to my corner and handed me a telegram It was from Mr. Chadwick, under a Chicago date line, and It was' addressed ’To the General Manager’s Office." Just like thut. There were only nine words In It. but they were all strictly to the point: "What’s gone wrong? Where Is Mr. Norcross? Answer quick." I saw In half a second at least a part of what had happened. Mr. Chadwick was back from his Canadian trip, and somebody—the New York people, perhaps—had wired him that a new general manager had been appoinied for Pioneer Short Line. The old wheat king's quick shot at onr office snowed thut he wasn't In the plot, and that, whatever else had become of him. Mr. Norcross hadn't as yet turned up In Chicago! Gee! but that brought on more talk—n whaling lot of It. I meant to find out. right away. If Mr. Van had come back from the scene

of t

He

n the t:

swer Mr. Chadwick's Interruption hutted In suddenly. Just ns I was signing the dinner check. The head waiter, who knew me from having seen me so often with the tiosa. eame over to say thut I was wanted quick at the telephone. It was Mrs. Sheila on the wire, and 1 could tell by the way her "oleo sounded that she was mightily ex“I've been calling you on every phone I could think of," was the way she began; and then : "U here la Mr.

Van Britt?"

•i iNTINUfc

I f.M

Tottering for 600 Years. 'life famous 1 .cutting tower of Pisa s of pure white I’.irrara marble in the JoHiie style. It., departure from the terpendicnlar has been variously Inerpreted. hut there is little doubt that i rises from Hie softness of the soil m which It stands and which nan riven way Notwithstanding itn hreaiening appearance. It has now mod f..r more than six hundred yeura

shifting on the "iher side of ■mlng train, and rath t tha r the double obstruction to clea e walked down the shop track.