A cold chill shot up Jack’s back. The cause was a low, long-drawn moan, apparently from just the other side of the wooden partition, in the freight room. Again it came, then suddenly ceased to give place to a low, tense whispering immediately behind him. Jack sprang about, and leaped to his feet. Within touch of him was a large knot-hole.
And was there not an eye at it? Peering at him?
He sprang toward it.
No! Nothing! The whispering, too, had ceased.
Thoroughly shaken, Jack again turned for his hat—and again faltered between the chair and the door.
“You there, Jack?” clicked Alex. “Hang on, old boy. Keep your nerve.”
Clenching his teeth and gripping his hands Jack regained control of himself, and returned to the instruments. “Thanks, Al,” he sent. “I was about all in, sure enough. But I am OK again now, and going to stick it out unless ‘they,’ or ‘it,’ or whatever it is, lugs me off bodily.”
“That’s the talk,” said Alex encouragingly. “I knew you’d make good. Just keep on telling yourself there must be some natural explanation somehow, and you’ll win out OK.”
“Yes, that’s my cue—‘a natural explanation somehow,’” Jack repeated to himself the following afternoon as he left the big railroad boarding-house, a half mile from the station, and set out for a walk, to think things over.