Not a car was smashed, and no two cars were left on the same tracks or pointing the same way. The caboose had its rear wheels on one track and its front wheels on the track south. The cars were standing in every direction, but not a person was hurt, not a car was invalided.
Ralph ran up to the yardmaster and held out his watch to him.
“Verify the arrival,” he ordered hastily.
“Yes, 10:58, two minutes ahead of time,” said the man with a stare of wonderment. “We were expecting you, Fairbanks, but--not in that way!”
[CHAPTER XXX—THE PAY CAR ROBBER]
Ralph Fairbanks sat at work on the task apportioned him by the general superintendent six hours after he had delivered the California fruit special “on time.”
The young railroader went at the missing pay car case just as he started at anything he undertook--with ardor and intelligence. He lined up all the facts in order, he met Adair down the line at Maddox, and Zeph Dallas was with him.
By three o’clock in the afternoon Ralph knew all there was to gather up as to the details of the missing pay car. It was not much to know. No trace of it had been found. There were a dozen theories as to what had become of it. Two of Adair’s helpers favored one looking to the bold running off of the car after being detached by a “borrowed” engine of the Midland Central, and were working along that line.
Adair told Ralph that he was anxious to get after the five men with whom Zeph Dallas had been making friends for a week or more. Their leader was Rivers, and there was no doubt that this crowd had worked on the pay car robbery.
As Zeph had tearfully narrated to Ralph when he had implored his aid, the crowd had fooled him completely. From the start they must have had an inkling as to his identity. Working on that knowledge, as Zeph expressed it, they had simply “had fun with him.”