"Try-out?" asked one of the men, while Nick was climbing into the box of the machine.
Handsome nodded curtly—and that was all that was said at the moment.
It was significant, however, to Nick, for it meant a lot. It meant that these other men entirely comprehended the situation, and that all three of them were prepared to shoot him in the back at any moment when his conduct of the business in hand did not entirely satisfy them.
But Nick was resolved not to be shot in the back that night. Whatever the business might prove to be upon which they were engaged, he was resolved to see it through to a finish, even to the extent of helping them burglarize a bank, if that was the lay.
"To do a great right, do a little wrong," he muttered to himself. Whatever might be stolen or whatever damage might be done that night, he would charge up in his expenses, and see to it that the railroad people made it good later on, when his work should be done.
In the meantime the railroad automobile had been gathering speed, and now it seemed to Nick to be little less than wonderful that it remained on the tracks at all, for if he was any judge of speed, he knew that they must be flying along at much more than a mile a minute—and he wondered what would happen if the headlight of a locomotive should loom suddenly before them—and then, just as the thought occurred to him, they rounded a short curve, and came to a sudden stop.
CHAPTER VI.
NICK CARTER ROBS A BANK.
The instant the strange machine was brought to a stop—and it was done wonderfully soon, considering the speed at which they had been traveling—the three men leaped to the ground beside the track, and Nick was ordered to follow them.