The trainmen became furious as one after another of these mute witnesses told of the outrages so recently perpetrated, and swore vengeance on the robber when they should catch him. They ransacked every corner of the car, but search as they might they could discover no trace of his presence nor of the method of his flight. The man had left the car as he had entered it taking the precaution of removing his rope ladder as he went.
The baffled searchers had just reached the conclusion that he must have leaped from the train in spite of its speed and of Conductor Tobin’s watchfulness, when Rod, who from his position in the doorway could look over the heads of the crowd surrounding the car called out:
“Stop that man! The one with a leather bag slung over his shoulder! Stop him! Stop thief! He is the robber!”
In the glare of an electric light that happened to shine full upon him for a moment, Rod had seen the man walk away from the forward end of the car next ahead of the one they were searching as though he had just left it. He was not noticed by the bystanders as all eyes were directed toward the door of the money car. To the young brakeman his figure and the stout leather bag that he carried seemed familiar. As he looked, the man raised a kid-gloved hand to shift the position of his satchel, and from it shot the momentary flash of a diamond. With Rod this was enough to at once establish the man’s identity. Although he no longer wore smoked glasses Rod knew him to be the man who, pretending partial blindness, had first boarded the Express Special, then taken passage on the “Limited,” and whom he had seen on the platform of the last station at which they had stopped. How could he have reached Millbank? He must have come by the Express Special, and so must be connected with its robbery.
All these thoughts darted through Rod’s head like a flash of lightning, and as he uttered his shouts of warning he sprang to the ground with a vague idea of preventing the stranger’s escape. At the same moment the crowd surged back upon him, and when he finally cleared himself from it he saw the man backing down the platform, holding his would-be pursuers in check with a levelled pistol, and just disappearing from the circle of electric light.
A minute later two frightened men were driven at the point of a revolver from the cab of a freight locomotive that, under a full head of steam, was standing on the outer one of the two west-bound tracks. They had hardly left it in sole charge of the robber, by whom it had already been uncoupled from its train, before it sprang forward and began to move away through the darkness.
Rod, who was now well in advance of all other pursuers, instantly comprehended the situation. His own train stood on the inner west-bound track and he was near its forward end. The robber with his blood-stained plunder was disappearing before his very eyes, and if lost to view might easily run on for a few miles and then make good his escape. He must not be allowed to do so! He must be kept in sight!
This was Rod’s all-absorbing thought at the moment. Moved by it, he jerked out the coupling-pin, by which the locomotive of the Express Special was attached to its train, leaped into the cab, threw over the lever, pulled open the throttle, and had started on one of the most thrilling races recorded in the annals of railroading, before the astonished fireman, who had been left in charge, found time to remonstrate.
“Look here, young fellow! what are you about?” he shouted, stepping threateningly toward Rod.
“We are about chasing the train robber, who has just gone off with that engine on number four track, and you want to keep up the best head of steam you know how,” was the answer.