The cold, old eyes were very steady on Josh’s face.
“So?” Ringset said.
“So fo’ a little money — say a hun’ded dolluhs — dem papuhs could be turned ovah to you-all, cuhnel. And from de papuhs, mebbe you-all could figure out what dese pow’ful, big inventions was. An’ dat would be wuhth more’n a hund’ed dolluhs, wouldn’t it?”
The colonel’s gaze was still intent on Josh’s sleepy, innocent-looking face. And in the old man’s eyes Josh could read — nothing at all. Mention of the Gant inventions hadn’t caused the old man to turn a hair. Mention of papers which someone else might buy if he didn’t, seemed to mean nothing to Ringset.
“Josh, you’re a black rascal,” the colonel said after a moment, lips thin.
“If a hund’ed dolluhs is too much,” faltered Josh, “mebbe fifty dolluhs — I”
“You can leave, Josh. I don’t want any inventions that way.”
“But f’um de way de brothers talked dem inventions might be wuhth millions—”
“Not interested,” said Colonel Ringset coldly. “You can go, now. I’m very busy.”
Josh left, a picture of disappointed docility.
He really was as disappointed as he looked. He had hoped to learn something for Mr. Benson. But there had been nothing to learn from the colonel’s reception of an offer that you’d think any man, if he were the least bit crooked, would jump at.
So it began to look as if the mine owner, no matter how he stood to profit from the steel failures, was as honest as his actions made him seem.
Mechanically, Josh started to press the button beside the one remaining elevator shaft that was in working order. Then he grimaced, went to the stairs, and descended on foot.
“A man who takes useless chances is a man who likes flowers — in hands folded across his chest,” was one of the axioms in his book of philosophy.
And yet, in spite of his precaution about the elevator, Josh took a chance when he stepped from the office building door without looking carefully around first.
Next to the building was a small warehouse, not in use, with a dust-smeared show-window and a setback doorway.
In the inclosure of that setback a man was standing. He was about twelve feet from the office building doorway.
His pose, leaning against the jamb with his hands in his coat pockets, was such that the few people on the sidewalk not far away paid no attention to him.
Josh started to walk in the other direction from the office-building exit.
“Come here, you!” came a low voice from behind him.
He turned, saw the man in the doorway, and froze.
The muzzle of a gun was plainly to be seen poking out the fabric of the man’s coat pocket.
Josh’s big feet itched for flight. And he trembled on the verge of it. But the distance between him and that gun was too short. The gunman couldn’t miss.
“I said — come here!”
Josh obeyed orders. He drew near the setback doorway of the unused warehouse on reluctant feet.
The man with the gun concealed in his pocket backed through the doorway.
“Come on! In here — unless you want a slug in the heart!”
Josh followed the man inside. It was as dark as a cave in there.
“Turn around!”
Josh turned.
The ceiling seemed to bang down on his skull, and he fell into blackness.
CHAPTER XIV
Murder Rides The Rails!
Looking demure and lovely and helpless, Nellie Gray sat on the train going north along the lake to Ludlow, a town about ninety miles from Chicago on the east shore. Nellie did not have to pretend to be a wealthy girl. She was extremely wealthy. With all the gold of the Aztecs hidden in Mexico in a cache known only to Benson and his aides, Nellie, as well as each of the others, was fantastically rich. But no one of the little group had any desire to just sit back and have a good time on that wealth. Each wanted to fight crime; since each had suffered greatly from criminals.
Sitting beside Nellie, the perfect picture of a lady’s maid, was Rosabel. Actually, the two girls were co-workers and friends. But you wouldn’t guess it to look at them. The picture was of a spoiled rich girl and a patient servant.
“What time is it, Rosabel?” Nellie said, making her voice petulant.
“Quarter of four, Miss Gray,” Rosabel said.
“And this smelly old train won’t get to Ludlow till half-past four?”
“Tha’s right, Miss Gray.”
“I’ve never been on such a train!” Nellie fumed, for the benefit of listeners. “It stops at every farmer’s back door. I’m quite sure they deliver newspapers and laundry from the engine.”
Her words weren’t much exaggerated. There was no such thing as express service on the Catawbi line. It existed only to serve the dwellers in towns along its tracks; so it stopped at each and every one of those towns.
In the middle of the afternoon, there were few on the train. Some tired-looking women, commuters’ wives who had gone into the city to shop. A few men coming home from the office early.
At each stop, some of these got off. The train kept getting emptier and emptier.
Nellie and Rosabel both heard the beginning of the talk. It was between two men in the seat behind them, and the conductor.
“Bill,” one of the men said to the conductor, “what happened to that old car ferry that was stranded on the beach a couple miles back from here?”
The two girls held their breaths to listen, meanwhile staring out the window as if not hearing at all.
“I don’t know,” the conductor replied. “I noticed this morning it wasn’t there. That’s all I can say.”
“Must have floated away during the night,” said the second man.
“But why?” objected the first. “There wasn’t any storm. A little wind, maybe, but not enough to float the ferry free. It’s been there for years.”
“You can’t tell how much wind it would take, from the length of time it’s been there,” the conductor argued. “Maybe the sand’s been washed away from under it all these years till finally, last night, it just naturally floated off again. But it don’t make much difference. A thing as big at that is bound to be located about as soon as it’s beached again.”
The conductor went on down the aisle. And Nellie and Rosabel turned their gaze from the window — to see a man just sitting down in the seat opposite them. They’d been so interested in the talk about the ferry that they hadn’t noticed him walking up the aisle from another car.
The man had his head down a little so that they could not see his face because of the down-turned brim of his hat. There was a newspaper in his hands. He spread that out, as if to read, but instead raised his head and stared squarely at the girls.
With a sort of electric shock running through her, Nellie saw that it was the smooth, blond-haired young fellow she had met once before under the name of Carlisle.
Her hand — and Rosabel’s, too — was reaching stealthily for a gun. Hers in her purse, Rosabel’s somewhere under her discreet black servant’s dress.
“Don’t,” advised Carlisle, sunny eyes crinkling as if to a good joke.
Both girls saw his right hand, under the extended newspaper. There was a revolver in that hand! The revolver had a silencer on it. No one else could see the silenced gun because of the clever way Carlisle held the paper. But the girls could see it, all right!
Nellie stared out the window. At this point, a road went parallel with the track for a few miles. On the road, pacing the train, was a gray-blue sedan.
Carlisle could kill them both with the silenced gun, get off the train, and escape in that car which was keeping pace with the train before other passengers, unwarned by the sound of the muffled shots which would be drowned by the noise of the train, could figure out what had happened.