The Trey o' Hearts/Chapter 32
CHAPTER XXXII
Pullman
COME inside," Law suggested, "and introduce me to the brakeman. I presume I've got to fix things up with him"
"If there's really any doubt in your mind as to that," Barcus said, rising, "I don't mind telling you you're right."
"He's approachable?"
"Is he?" Barcus laughed. "Would I be here if he wasn't? He's so approachable he meets you at your own front door. Never in all his life has anything happened to him like this, he's already figuring on buying a house in Flatbush with the coin he's grafted off of me since we came to an understanding. Ever so often his conscience begins to reproach him, and that's my high-sign to dig and come through."
He paused as Alan entered the car before him and was greeted by a storm of vituperation that fairly blistered the panels of the Pullman. Mr. Seneca Trine, helpless in his invalid chair, was celebrating this introduction to the young man whom he had never before seen but whose life he had schemed to take these many years. His heavy voice boomed and echoed through the car like the sounding of a tocsin. …
Alan made no effort to respond, but listened with his head critically to one side and an exasperating expression of deep interest informing his countenance until Mr. Trine was out of breath and vitriol; when the younger man bowed with the slightest shade of mockery in his manner and waved a tolerant hand to Barcus.
"He has, no doubt," Alan inquired, "his own private cell aboard this car?"
"Yas, suh," Barcus agreed, aping well the manners of his apparent caste and colour. "Ain't dat de troof?" he chuckled.
"Take him away, then," Alan requested wearily— "if you please."
"Yas, suh," Barcus replied, with nimble alacrity, seizing the back of the wheeled chair and swinging it around for a spin up the length of the car.
Before Trine had recovered enough to curse him properly, the door to his drawing-room was closed and Barcus was ambling back down the aisle.
His grin of relish at this turning of the tables on the monomaniac proved, however, short-lived. It erased itself in a twinkling when Judith shouldered roughly past him, wearing a sullen and forbidding countenance, and flung herself into the drawing-room with her father.
"Storm signals," mused Mr. Barcus. "What possessed our dear friend to bring that tigress along, I'd like to know. He might as well have loaded himself down with a five-gallon can of nitro-glycerine."
The cause of her temper was not far to seek: at the far end of the car Alan was bending solicitously over the chair in which Rose was resting. One of his arms was around her shoulder. Her face was lifted confidently to his.
Mr. Barcus saw no more. He turned delicately away, and set himself to round out two of the compartments formerly dedicated to the uses of Trine's creatures, preparing them for the accommodation of Rose and Alan. Judith, he decided, might shift for herself; he owed that young woman nothing—or, if anything, a dozen or so narrow squeaks for her life, such as those to which she had gratuitously treated him.
He mused morosely on his apprehension of trouble a-brew, simmering over the waxing fire of that strange woman's jealousy. He didn't like the prospect at all. If only Alan and Rose had not been so desperately in love that they couldn't keep away from one another! If only Alan had been sensible enough to outwit the woman and leave her behind when he started in pursuit of the special! If only there had not been that light engine in pursuit—as Barcus firmly believed it must be—loaded to the guards with Trine's unscrupulous hirelings!
No telling when they might not catch up!
The fear of this last catastrophe worked, together with his fears of Judith, to make that night almost a sleepless one for Barcus. He spent it in a chair whence he could watch both the door to the compartment Judith had chosen for her own (formerly Marrophat's room), and the endless ribbons of steel that swept beneath the trucks, and, shining fugitively in the light from the observation platform, streamed away into the darkness astern.
But nothing happened. He napped uneasily from time to time, waking with a start of fright, but only to find nothing amiss. Ever Judith stopped behind that closed door, and ever the track behind was innocent of the glare of a pursuing headlight.
Later he had cause to believe that Judith, during one of his cat-naps, had stolen out of that door and had managed to get into most effective communication with the engine-crew and brakeman. Unquestionably these three had been quite content with Alan's liberal-handed contributions to their bank-accounts up to that hour. Furthermore, they had his promise of a munificent reward if they finished the run to California, to say nothing of the word of Law, son of the railroad builder, that they would be protected in event of losing their jobs through any contingency of this mad adventure.
Certainly, Barcus thought afterward, nothing but a greater bid from Trine, through Judith, substantiated by a heavy advance on account, could have won their allegiance from Alan. …
Whether Judith was responsible or not, this is what happened in the course of the next morning: the special was forced to take a siding to make way for the California Limited Eastbound; and when this had passed, the engine of the special coughed apologetically and pulled swiftly out, leaving the Pullman stalled on the siding.
From the rear of the tender the brakeman and fireman waved affecting farewells to the indignant faces of Alan and Barcus when they showed in the front doorway.