“Where do you expect to catch the train?”
“At Poughkeepsie. It waits there ten minutes.”
“And what shall you do if you don’t catch it?”
“Go on to Sing Sing, and do the best I can. I have made one fatal mistake: I should have telegraphed to Sing Sing. But I was mad, I think, until I reached Albany, and there it is no wonder I forgot it. The regular time for—that business is round eleven o’clock, about a quarter past; but if the warden happens to be drunk there’s no telling what he will take it into his head to do. But I dare not stop.”
Suddenly they shot about a curve. The engineer shouted “There! There!” A dark speck was just making another curve, far to the south.
“The express!” cried the engineer. “We’ve side-tracked everything else. We’ll catch her now.”
An hour later they dashed into Poughkeepsie, the express only two minutes ahead of them. Amidst a crowd of staring people, Bourke and the priest, begrimed, dishevelled, leaped from the engine and boarded a parlour car of the express. Alone, Bourke would probably have been arrested as a madman, controlled as was his demeanour; but the priest’s frock forbade interference.
The governor was not in the parlour car, nor in the next, nor in the next.
Yes, he had been there, a porter replied, and would be there again; but he had left the train as soon as it had stopped. No, he did not know in what direction he had gone; nor did any one else.
There was nothing to do but to wait. Bourke sent a telegram to Sing Sing, but it relieved his anxiety little: he knew the languid methods of the company’s officials in country towns.