"Hadn"t we better git them people out o" the train first?" asked the engineer. "You know, if anything happens, people just love to sue a railroad company for damages, and----"
"Pull that lever!" Hawkins cried angrily.
The man took a good grip, murmured something which sounded like a prayer, and pulled.
Nothing happened.
"Well, that"s queer!" muttered Hawkins. "Doesn"t it seem to have any effect?"
"Nope."
"Well, then, try that small one at your left. Pull it back half way."
The man obeyed.
For a second or two the Alcomotive emitted a string of consumptive coughs. One or two parts moved spasmodically and seemed to be reaching for the engineer. The man dodged.
Then the Alcomotive began to back!
"Here! Here! Something"s wrong!" cried Hawkins, as the accursed thing gathered speed. "Push that back where it was."
"Nit!" yelled the engineer, picking up his coat and running to the side of the car. "I ain"t going to make my wife a widow for no darned invention or no darned job! See?"
"You"re not going to jump?" squealed the inventor.
"You bet I am!" replied the mechanic, making a flying leap.
He was gone.
The Alcomotive was now without any semblance of a controlling hand.
There was no way for Hawkins to reach the contrivance, for the car was four or five feet distant from the train proper, and to attempt a leap or a climb to the Alcomotive, with the whole affair rocking and swaying as it was, would simply have been to pave the way for a neat "Herbert Hawkins" on the marble block of their plot in Greenwood Cemetery.
"Well, what under the sun----" began Hawkins.
"Good heavens! This train! The people!" I gasped.
"Well--well--well--let us find the conductor. He"ll know what to do!"
"Yes, but he can"t stop the machine--and we"re backing along at certainly fifty miles an hour; and any minute we may run into the next train behind."
"Come! Come! Find the conductor!"
We found him very easily.
The conductor was running through the train toward us as we reached the second car, and his face was the face of a fear-racked maniac.
"What"s happened?" he shrieked. "Why on earth are we backing?"
"Why, you see----" Hawkins began.
"For G.o.d"s sake, stop your machine! You"re the man who owns it, aren"t you?"
"Certainly, certainly. But you see, the mechanism has--er--slipped somewhere--nothing serious, of course--and----"
"Serious!" roared the railroad man. "You call it nothing serious for us to be flying along backwards and the Washington express coming up behind at a mile a minute!"
"Oh! oh! Is it?" Hawkins faltered.
"Yes! Can"t you stop her--anyway?"
"Well, not that I know--why, see here!" A smile of relief illumined Hawkins" face.
"Well? Quick, man!"
"We can have a brakeman detach the Alcomotive!"
"And what good"ll that do, when she"s pushing the train?"
"True, true!" groaned the inventor. "I didn"t think of that!"
"I"m going to bring every one into these forward cars," announced the conductor. "It"s the only chance of saving a few lives when the crash comes."
"Lives," moaned Hawkins dazedly. "Is there really any danger of----"
The conductor was gone. Hawkins sank upon a seat and gasped and gasped.
"Oh, Griggs, Griggs!" he sobbed. "If I had only known! If I could have foreseen this!"
"If you ever could foresee anything!" I said bitterly.
"But it"s partly--yes, it"s all that cursed engineer"s fault!"
People began to troop into the car. They came crushing along in droves, frightened to death, some weeping, some half-mad with terror.
Hawkins surveyed them with much the expression of Napoleon arriving in Hades. The conductor approached once more.
"They"re all in here," he said resignedly. "Thank Heaven, there are two freight cars on the rear of the train! That may do a little good! But that express! Man, man! What have you done!"
"Did he do it? Is it his fault?" cried a dozen voices.
"No, no, no, no!" shrieked the inventor. "He"s lying!"
"You"d better tell the truth now, man," said the conductor sadly. "You may not have much longer to tell it."
"Lynch him!" yelled some one.
There was a move toward Hawkins. I don"t know where it might have ended. Very likely they would have suspended Hawkins from one of the ventilators and pelted him with hand satchels--and very small blame to them had there been time.