"Fate has played an ugly trick on you, Dutch, and through your own dreams too. However, you have made me decide to go by the Tube."
He took his pipe out of his mouth and stared at me.
"Sooner or later the Tube will be through, and I have never been across. Nothing risked—a dull life. Mine has been altogether too dull. I am now most certainly going by the Tube."
A bit of the old fire lit up his eyes.
"Same old Bob," he grunted as I rose, and then he grasped my hand with a grin.
"Good luck, my boy, on your journey, and may old Vulcan be out on a vacation when you pass his door."
Thus we said good-by. I did not know then that I would never see him again—that he also took the train that night in order to make one last plea to the International Committee, and so laid down his life with the passengers for whom he had pleaded.
It was with many conflicting thoughts, however, that I hurried to the great Terminus that fatal night, where after being ticketed, photographed and tabulated by an efficient army of clerks, I found myself in due time, being ushered to my car of the train.
For the benefit of those who have never ridden upon the famous "Flier," I could describe the cars no better than to say that coming upon them by night as I did, they looked like a gigantic, shiny worm, of strange shape, through whose tiny port-holes of heavy glass in the sides, glowed its luminous vitals.