It was a sort of a switch train. It ran down from Jamaica and then went right back again, passengers changing cars at Jamaica for the regular trains on the Long Island road.
Now I hardly knew what to do.
The conductor was yelling all aboard, and there wasn’t a minute to lose.
The train, as it stood, was right close alongside these empty freight cars, and it would have been an easy matter for a man to step from one to the other.
“That’s what he means to do,” thinks I, and I jumped into the forward car, which was nearest to where I stood, and began to hurry through the train.
He wasn’t in that car, nor in the next.
Just as I crossed the platform to the car the train started, and I began to think he’d given me the slip altogether, for he wasn’t in the last car either, as far as I could see.
I ran through the car as fast as I could with my mind made up to jump off the platform. When I got to the rear door and was just about to open it, I suddenly saw my man jump from one of the empty freight cars as we passed and land on the platform right before my eyes.
You oughter see me open that door!