Giraffe was rubbing his chin, while a shrewd expression stole gradually over his lean and suspicious face. Bumpus was puffing with the excitement, and as red as he could well be. He looked over the edge of the van at the hard ground, with the air of one who might be figuring on how it would feel to be tossed out, and flung on that unfriendly soil.
“Only another little incident in our career over here,” remarked Allan, as though by now they ought to be pretty well accustomed to having thrilling events turn up every little while.
“Well, now, are you quite sure it was just an accident?” asked Giraffe, at which remark all the others immediately turned their eyes on the speaker in surprise.
“What’s bothering you, Giraffe?” spluttered Bumpus, always the slowest to size up a situation when quickness of thought was an asset. “Course a coupling broke and let us slip backwards. It often happens around our part of the country, where the trains have to pull over hills. I’ve seen a coal train dumped in a hollow because of a defective iron coupling pin. And we’re the luckiest fellows going, in the bargain, to have escaped a smash.”
Still Giraffe only wagged that head of his, poised on the longest neck any boy in Cranford could boast, and looked mysterious. Even the way he turned his eyes to the right and to the left added to his solemn manner.
“Go on and tell us what ails you, Giraffe, that’s a decent fellow,” urged Allan Hollister, understanding that unless some one hurried the other along he would keep everlastingly at this business of looking so “knowing.”
“Well, then,” began the tall scout, in a low hoarse tone that he tried to make impressive, “I believe it wasn’t an accident at all, but a deliberate and dastardly attempt at wrecking the train!”
“Whee! who’d want to bother trying to smash such a collection of old traps as these carriages and goods vans are, tell me?” wheezed Bumpus. “You must be dreaming, Giraffe, that’s what.”
“Mebbe I am, Bumpus, mebbe I am,” muttered the other, as he watched the coming of the front part of the long train, “but all the same I’ve got a hunch that there’s something crooked about this thing. You ask who’d want to bother making kindling-wood of these lovely cars? Well, that German spy I warned you about, for one!”
He looked at them triumphantly as he said this. Allan and Thad exchanged glances, though it was hard to tell whether they had been duly impressed or not.