The incoming passenger train slid down the grade to the station with brake shoes smoking, and Conductor Harker swung off and caught himself with a quick little run.
“I’ve got him!—alive and kicking. He’s in the forward end of the smoker,” he cried; and in a flash the marshal darted into one end of the car while his deputies cut off the retreat at the other.
Something to the surprise of all three, they met in the middle of the car without their quarry. There were not more than a dozen passengers in the seats, and no one of them remotely answered the requirements of the Gasset description. The marshal threw up a window and yelled to the conductor:
“Come in here and show us your man!”
Harker was with them at the word, but there was blank astoundment in his face. “Suffering Moses! you’ve let him get away!” he gasped. “He was right there in that second seat not more than a minute ago when we pulled down over the switch!”
“Well, you can see for yourself he isn’t here now,” quoth the marshal. “You hold the train a minute while we look through the other cars.”
The detention was not called for. Voltamo is a locomotive division station, and before the engines were changed the marshal and his aids had searched every possible hiding place in the train. Antrim knew that they had done their duty faithfully, but he was exasperated at the conductor’s apparent neglect.
“It is all your fault, Harker!” he said hotly. “You ought to have had sense enough to keep your eyes or your hands on him!”
“I ain’t saying a word,” said Harker. “But what can I do now?”
“Do? Why, take your train and go on. There isn’t anything to stop for now that he’s gone.”