What he saw drew forth a whispered exclamation:
"It"s the real gang!"
For some time all was silent. Johnny"s heart was doing time and a half.
What if they were forced to stand and fight or jump? He shivered as he tried to make out the embankment through the darkness. They were racing down grade.
"We"ve got "em! It"s the gang!" Pant whispered again. "Look!"
He rose and stepped aside. With muscles set for action, Johnny dropped on his knees, and, shutting one eye, peered through the narrow opening.
What he saw astonished him. In a brilliantly lighted room, the width of the car, and some ten feet deep, four men were working rapidly, and apparently with great skill. What surprised him most of all was that all four men wore heavily smoked gla.s.ses, such as Pant himself wore. He saw at a glance that neither the steam kettle cook nor the midget clown was with them. He was glad the cook was not there. His feeling regarding the midget, after the events of the previous day, was not unmixed.
The things the men were doing interested him immensely. Two of them appeared to be putting little squares of paper through a wash, such as a photographer uses. A third was drying them before a motor-driven, superheated electric fan. The fourth was stamping them in a small press.
Each time he stamped one, he appeared to change the type.
Presently, the two who were handling the baths appeared to come to the end of their tasks. Hardly had they spoken a word to their companions than each man stepped to a corner, and, turning his back from the center of the room, stood there motionless.
"Wha--" Johnny"s lips formed the word. There was not time to finish. The next instant he dropped limply back upon the platform, as if he had been shot.
"What is it, Johnny?" Pant whispered in alarm. Johnny"s hands covered his face.
"The flash! My eyes! They"re blind!"
Pant pushed him roughly to one side.
"Let"s see."
Johnny slid back to the other car platform. Still dazed by the sudden flood of light that had struck his eye, but fast recovering, he watched Pant with interest, not unmingled with awe. By the sudden spurts of light that shot through the crack, he knew that the flashes were being continued, yet Pant did not remove his eye. He still crouched there before the crack. Gazing intently within, he uttered now and then a stifled "Ah!" and "Oh!" at the marvels which he was viewing.
Finally he dropped back to a seat beside Johnny.
"Eyes all right now?" he asked.
"Sure. What was it?" queried Johnny, forgetting his aching eyes.
"Color photography."
"Color photography?"
"Sure. One of the great inventions of the age, and they are using it for making counterfeit bonds!"
Johnny was silent.
"You see," whispered Pant, "great inventors have been experimenting with color photography for years. They got so they could do color work on negatives--that is, the photographic plate--very well. They have used these for the purpose of photographing the stages of certain diseases, and a few things like that; but when it came to getting the color on the positive--the picture itself--that could not be done. These fellows _can do it_, and are doing it. The bonds are printed in brown and black. They catch these colors perfectly, only in a little paler hue. Their paper is nearly perfect, but whatever defects it has are counteracted by this color photography which reproduces the very tints of the paper."
For some time they sat there in silence.
"Now that we know their game," whispered Pant at last, "how are we going to get them? One of the fellows is a ticket seller. He sold s...o...b..ll some bonds when we were in Chicago. I might have known he was in it. Another is a guard at the entrance of the big top."
"Sold me some bonds once."
"That"s right. The other two I don"t know. Let"s have another look."
Pant had just put his eyes to the crack; Johnny was standing behind him, when there ran through the train a sickening shiver. The next instant there followed a deafening crash, as car jammed upon car, and, leaping high upon one another, left the track.
It was a wreck--such a wreck as is seldom witnessed--the wreck of a circus train; a head-end collision with a bob-tailed freight running like mad.
At the moment previous to the first shock of the wreck, Gwen might have been seen sitting in her own compartment talking earnestly with the millionaire twins. None of the three had yet undressed for retiring. The things the twins were telling Gwen had much to do with Johnny Thompson, and appeared to interest her very much, for now and then there came an amused, and again a surprised, twinkle in her eye. At one time, a close observer might have seen her slip a ring from her finger, a ring that had been covered by the folds of her dress. The ring she crowded deep into the pocket of her blouse beneath her handkerchief.
When the wreck occurred, the car they were in, a staunch steel affair, leaped high in air, then wholly uninjured, left the track to topple over on one side and lay there quite still.
Gwen had been shaken from her seat and jammed beneath the one before her.
The twins, gripping the sides, held on as if riding a fractious broncho, and were not shaken loose.
"Oh!" cried Marjory, as the car settled to rest, "Johnny Thompson and our ponies! We must find them. They may be killed."
The pair of them, sliding from their seats, had crawled through a window, and were away before Gwen could sufficiently recover her breath to call them back. She wrung her hands in real distress.
"They"ll be killed!" she cried frantically. "Half the lions and tigers in the circus must be loose!"
Then she scrambled out of the car to find Johnny Thompson. He would know what to do!
CHAPTER XVII "GET THAT BLACK CAT"
At the first shock of the wreck, Johnny Thompson and Pant were thrown with such violence against the express car door that the lock was sprung, and they were pitched head foremost among the surprised and panic-stricken counterfeiters.
Pant was the first to regain his wits. The car, like many others, had careened to one side and lay there motionless. The instruments in the room had been tossed about. Everyone was splashed with a stinging fluid which came from the vats. The peculiar instrument which had occupied the center of the room, and was undoubtedly the color-photo camera, an instrument of priceless value, had apparently sustained little injury.
Pant seized upon this and was about to dash through the door with it, when the large man with the black moustache wrenched it from his grasp, and, poising it for an instant in his right hand, hurled it at Pant"s head. Leaping to one side, Pant barely escaped the blow. There was a crash, followed by the tinkle of gla.s.s and metal instruments.
The next moment the big man shot suddenly upward and fell back with a groan. Johnny"s good right hand had got him under the chin. Two of the men leaped from the door and fled. The one remaining sprang at Pant, but was at once borne down by Johnny.
"Tear some of those wires from the wall," panted Johnny. "We"ll tie them and drag them out."
The fat man, who was completely within their power, was soon tied, then carried out of the car to the embankment.
"Now for the other," puffed Johnny.
They dodged back into the car. To their astonishment, they found that the other man had escaped.
"Gone!" muttered Pant.
"Faked unconsciousness."
"And he was the prize bird of them all."