"No, Koku," said Tom. "I"m not coming in. Are you all right?"
"Yes. Koku all right. Him come out?"
"No, no!" laughed Tom. "You are not at your journey"s end yet, Koku.
Keep on the job a while longer."
"Sure. Koku stay here forever, if Master say so."
"Forever is a long word, Koku," said Tom, more seriously. "I"ll tell you when to open the door. I"ll be at the end of the journey to meet you."
"It all right if Master say so. But Koku no like to travel in box,"
grumbled the giant.
Tom turned from the electric locomotive to see Ned staring across the tracks at a man who was talking to several of the train crew of the side-swiped accommodation train. That train was about to be moved on under its own power. None of the wreckage of the freight interfered with the progress of the accommodation.
Tom stepped to Ned"s side and touched his arm. "Who is he?" the inventor asked.
The man who had attracted Ned"s attention and now held Tom"s interest as well was a solid looking man with gray hair and a dyed mustache. He was chewing on a long and black cigar, and he spoke to the train hands with authority.
"Well, why can"t you find him?" he wanted to know in a hoa.r.s.e and arrogant voice.
"Who is he?" asked Tom again in Ned"s ear.
"I"ve seen him somewhere. Or else I"ve seen somebody that looks like him. Maybe I"ve seen his picture. He"s somebody of importance."
"He thinks he is," rejoined the young inventor, with some disdain.
In answer to something one of the railroad men said the important looking individual uttered an oath and added:
"There"s n.o.body been killed then? He"s just missing? He was sitting in the coach ahead of me. I saw him just before the wreck. You know O"Malley yourself. Do you mean to say you haven"t seen him, Conductor?"
"I a.s.sure you he disappeared like smoke, sir," said the pa.s.senger conductor. "I haven"t an idea what became of him."
"Humph! If you see him, send him to me," and the solid man stepped heavily aboard the nearest coach and disappeared inside.
Tom and Ned stared at each other with wondering gaze. O"Malley! The spy who had represented Montagne Lewis and the Hendrickton & Western Railroad in the East.
"What do you know about that?" demanded Ned, wonderingly.
"Hold on!" exclaimed Tom. He sprang across the rails after the conductor of the accommodation train that was just starting on. "Let me ask you a question."
"Yes, sir?" replied the conductor
"Who was that man who just spoke to you?" "That man? Why, I thought everybody out this way knew Montagne Lewis. That is his name, sir--and a big man he is. Yes, sir," and the conductor, giving the watching engineer of his train the "highball," caught the hand-rail of the car and swung himself aboard as the train started.
Chapter XVIII
On the Hendrickton & Pas Alos
The transcontinental was delayed three hours by the strewn wreckage of the rear of Number Forty-eight. When she went on the two young fellows from Shopton gazed anxiously at the Hercules 0001, which stood between two gondolas in the forward end of the freight train.
"Just by luck nothing happened to it," muttered Ned.
"Just luck," agreed Tom Swift. "It was a shock to me to learn that Andy O"Malley was right there on the spot when the accident happened."
"And his employer, too," added Ned. "For we must admit that Mr.
Montagne Lewis is the man who sicked O"Malley on to you." "True."
"And they were both in the accommodation that was sideswiped by the derailed cars of Number Forty-eight."
"That, likewise is a fact," said Tom, nodding quickly.
"But what puzzles me, as it seemed to puzzle Lewis, more than anything else, is what became of O"Malley?"
"I guess I can see through that knot-hole," Tom rejoined.
"Yes?"
"I bet O"Malley got a squint at me--or perhaps at you--as we walked up the track from this coach, and he lit out in a hurry. There stood the Three-Oughts-One, and there were we. He knew we would raise a hue and cry if we saw him in the vicinity of my locomotive."
"I bet that"s the truth, Tom."
"I know it. He didn"t even have time to warn his employer. By the way, Ned, what a brute that Montagne Lewis looks to be."
"I believe you! I remember having seen his photograph in a magazine.
Oh, he"s some punkins, Tom."
"And just as wicked as they make "em, I bet! Face just as pleasant as a bulldog"s!"
"You said it. I"m afraid of that man. I shall not have a moment"s peace until you have handed the Hercules Three-Oughts-One over to Mr.
Bartholomew and got his acceptance."
"If I do," murmured Tom.
"Of course you will, if that Lewis or his henchmen don"t smash things up. You are not afraid of the speed matter now, are you?" demanded Ned confidently.
"I can be sure of nothing until after the tests," said Tom, shaking his head. "Remember, Ned, that I have set out to accomplish what was never done before--to drive a locomotive over the rails at two miles a minute. It"s a mighty big undertaking."
"Of course it will come out all right. If Koku is faithful----"
"That is the smallest "if" in the category," Tom interposed, with a laugh. "If I was as sure of all else as I am of Koku, we"d have plain sailing before us."
Two days later Tom Swift and Ned Newton were ushered into the private office of the president of the H. & P. A. at the Hendrickton terminal.
The two young fellows from the East had got in the night before, had become established at the best hotel in the rapidly growing Western munic.i.p.ality, and had seen something of the town itself during the hours before midnight.