“Ye–ye–yes—yes!”
“All right, sir, you shall have it at the next station,” said the acute-faced man, stepping on the platform and allowing the train to pass. As the guard’s van came up he leaped after the magnificent guard into his private apartment and shut the door.
“Hallo! Davy Blunt, somethin’ up?” asked the guard.
“Yes, Joe Turner, there is somethin’ up,” replied the acute man, leaning against the brake-wheel. “You saw that tall good-lookin’ feller wi’ the eyeglass and light whiskers?”
“I did. Seemed to me as if his wits had gone on wi’ the last train, an’ he didn’t know how to overtake ’em.”
“I don’t know about his wits,” said Blunt, “but it seems to me that he’s gone on in this train with somebody else’s luggage.”
The guard whistled—not professionally, but orally.
“You don’t say so?”
The acute man nodded, and, leaning his elbows on the window-sill, gazed at the prospect contemplatively.
In a few minutes the 6:30 p.m. train was flying across country at the rate of thirty-five or forty miles an hour.