At the far end of the big depot Tim could see another engine waiting to be hooked onto their train to continue the mail’s dash for the coast.
Henshaw cracked his throttle just enough to bring them in with a flourish and stopped his scorched string of mail cars at the station on time to the second.
When Tim dropped out of the cab he was astounded to see Colonel Robert Searle, head of the state police, striding toward him.
“Hello, Murphy,” said the officer, “what’s this I hear about you fellows running through a piece of burning timber?”
“That’s right, Colonel,” said Tim. “We struck a patch about forty miles down the line and it looked for a time like we weren’t going to get through. Then Mr. Henshaw, the engineer, decided to run for it.”
“You didn’t waste much time when you first stopped for the fire did you?”
“Not any more than we had to,” said the engineer. “The string of varnished cars was stepping on a fast schedule.”
“Then that explains why there wasn’t a million dollar robbery on this line tonight,” said the head of the state police.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
“Million dollar robbery!” exclaimed Tim and the engineer. “What do you mean?”