"What shall I do--oh, what can I do?" panted Ralph in a torment of agony.
He ran out a few steps and looked up at the tower room. This loomed twenty feet aloft, flanging out mushroom-fashion over the lower story, which presented a solid base.
The tower room was inaccessible, even if he could scale the lower building. Ralph ran a complete circuit of the structure. Then his eye flashed with sudden hope.
As nimbly as though his tiger foe was directly at his heels, Ralph sprang at and clasped a telegraph pole. Its surface was roughened and indented by the hooks of linemen, allowing him to get a lifting grip.
Ralph drew himself up slowly. The ascent to his overwrought mind seemed to consume an age. It was just forty-five seconds, however, when twenty-five feet from the ground, his slivered and bleeding hands grasped the first cross-bar of the telegraph pole and he lifted himself to it.
A foot or two down and six feet away was the glass-windowed side of the tower room. Ralph pulled himself erect till both feet rested on the narrow cross-bar.
He steadied himself on his dizzy perch. He seemed to have ceased to breathe, and his heart stood still, so intense was the strain on his nerves. The wreck and ruin of a great railroad system to his exaggerated senses seemed to impend on his success in a daring dive.
For a dive it was, and a desperate one. All the upper sashes fronting him were lowered, as was the usage in clear weather. Ralph caught the shrieking blast of the special. His expert ear told him that it was less than a mile distant. He poised, wavered, and then made a forward spring.
There was a great clatter of glass. Ralph half hung over the top of the lower and the lowered sashes, but his feet had kicked in the double panes. He fairly fell over the sashes into the tower room.
On his feet in a flash, the youth darted a swift glance at the tower clock. It was just 1.15.