Sick and dizzy he lowered himself to the ground and staggered across some tracks. He snatched a lantern from the hand of a bewildered switchman and stumbled again toward the overturned car.
Others swarmed upon it. He heard the blows of axes and the smashing of glass. Already an army of men were engaged in the work of rescue.
Inert forms were passed through windows into waiting arms to be deposited in long, ghastly rows upon the cinders of the road-bed, under the flaring torches. A cold, drizzling rain was falling and the smell of smoke was in the air.
A group of firemen hurried past carrying hand-extinguishers. The lantern-light gleamed wetly upon their black rubber coats and metal helmets, from under the brims of which their set faces showed grimly white. Far up the track an ambulance gong clanged frantically.
The young man reëntered the coach through a window and made his way slowly toward the smoking compartment, pushing his lantern before him. Reaching the door, he peered over the edge.
Some one was kneeling beside the elderly man, working swiftly by the narrow light of an electric pocket lamp. As his eyes became accustomed to the dim light of the interior, he realized that the elderly man seemed to be resisting the efforts of the other who knelt upon his unpinioned arm. From between the lips, which were forced wide apart, protruded the ends of a handkerchief—he was gagged!
The hands of the kneeling man worked rapidly, but not in the prying loose of the timber which lay across the other's arm. From the side pocket of his coat, where it evidently had been hurriedly thrust, dangled a watch chain which the young man recognized as belonging to the dead reporter.
Suddenly the atrocity of the situation dawned upon him. He had heard of such things, of the ghouls who haunt the scenes of great disaster, preying upon the bodies of the dead—robbing the helpless.
With a curse he seized the wirebound railway lantern. At the sound the man looked up—it was the cigar salesman. The young man swung the weapon with all his might. It cut the air in a descending arc, but the other avoided the blow and the heavy lantern crashed against the wall and went out.
Without an instant's hesitation he dived through the opening and met the fiend as he was rising to his feet. Together they rolled among the wreckage. While no match for his antagonist in size, the pickpocket was tough and wiry and apparently uninjured. He fought viciously, with the violence of desperation.