Fogg had watched them for some few minutes with an ominous eye. He had snorted in his characteristic, suspicious way, as the trio lounged around the end of the little depot.
“Good day,” he now said with fine sarcasm in his tone, “hope I see you again--know I’ll see you again. They’re up to tricks, Fairbanks, and don’t you forget it.”
“Gone, have they?” piped in a new voice, and a brakeman craned his neck from his position on the reverse step of the locomotive. “Say, who are they, anyway?”
“Do you know?” inquired the fireman, facing the intruder sharply.
“I’d like to. They got on three stations back. The conductor spotted them as odd fish from the start. Two of them are disguised, that’s sure--the mustache of one of them went sideways. The old man, the mild-looking, placid old gentleman they had in tow, is a telegrapher.”
“How do you know that?” asked Ralph, becoming interested.
“That’s easy. I caught him strumming on the car window sill, and I have had an apprenticeship in the wire line long enough to guess what he was tapping out. On his mind, see--force of habit and all that. The two with him, though, looked like jail birds.”
“What struck me,” interposed Fogg, “was the way they snooked around the train at the two last stops. They looked us over as if they were planning a holdup.”
“Yes, and they pumped the train hands dry all about your schedule,” declared the brakeman. “Cottoned to me, but I cut them short. Seemed mightily interested in the pay car routine, by the way.”
“Did, eh,” bristled up Fogg. “Say, tell us about that.”