The woman suddenly gestured.
“Oh, I wish I could get to the boy.”
“You can’t. Sit still.” Steele’s voice was harsh. The mention of his son had driven him almost beyond endurance. Then he said more quietly, “They’ll get the locomotive——”
But that which he would have said remained unspoken. There was a terrible crash ahead. There was a fierce rending. The train lurched, and Helen was flung from her seat and sprawled across the car. The floor rose up. A wild shriek rang out above the din. And in a moment pandemonium reigned.
The forward end of the car rose sheer. Then it flung over sideways and every window shattered. Then came hideous descent. The car was falling, falling.
It was all over in seconds. The restaurant car had fulfilled its last service. It was lying deep buried in fathoms of the ice-cold bosom of the Sisselu River.
Inspector Landan of the Mounted Police was standing on the rear platform of the caboose of the waiting “breakdown” train. He was weary with many hours of hopeless, depressing labor. The pipe in his mouth had burned itself out, and he had not troubled to refill it. Truth to tell, as he gazed out on the flare-lit scene of wreckage which was piled about the track where it approached the river, he was without inclination even to smoke. He was yearning to get away. For twenty-four hours he and his detachment had prosecuted their indefatigable search of succor, and he knew that the work remaining to be done was the ordinary routine for the breakdown gang.
For all his weariness, however, his mind and feelings were very active. He was contemplating the report he would have to send in to his headquarters. He had studied the disaster in its every aspect and had bitterly realized its cause. Then, too, he had obtained much information from the man at the flag station on the river bank.
From all he could discover the railroad company was criminally responsible. It was no case of “washout” or natural disaster. It was, according to the flag-station operator, a sheer case of old rolling stock and defective brakes. The operator, in horrified accents, had told him all he needed to know in a few poignant words.