"That's so."

"There's the identical timber," continued the operator, touching with his foot a piece of wood as they came out to the stove again. "I used half of it to mend the fire."

Ralph picked up the piece of wood out of curiosity. As he did so he made a discovery.

Its smooth side, though blurred, bore some faint black marks like letters and words. It looked as if scratched with a blunt cinder on the ends of burned matches.

In breaking the wood to mend the fire the operator had split the piece transversely removing a part of a written line, but to his amazement Ralph could make out these words:

"Send word to Ralph Fairbanks, Stanley Junction, that Glen Palmer is--"

The remainder of this queer message was missing--ashes in the depot stove. What had been the writing complete, and what did it mean?

CHAPTER XVIII

THE SLUMP "SECRET"

"Wake up, Ralph."

The young dispatcher of Stanley Junction jumped out of bed in a bound.

He felt that he could have slept half a dozen hours longer, but to every railroad man the call "wake up" means duty waits, no delay, and Ralph responded to the urgent call without hesitation.

The echo of a series of light tappings on the door and of his mother's voice mingled with her departing footsteps. He called out:

"What is it, mother?"

"A telephone message from the superintendent."

"Good--something is stirring," reflected Ralph, and hurried his dressing. "Well, enough has happened since yesterday to interest the president of the road himself," he went on, musing. "They wanted some house cleaning done, and it has begun in a vigorous way."

It was early in the afternoon. Just after daybreak that morning Ralph had reached Stanley Junction on top of a freight car. He had found Glidden in charge of the situation at the relay station.

"You've hit the mark, Fairbanks," were his first commendatory words.

"The a.s.sistant superintendent was here for an hour with me after we got that rough and tumble message from you down the line."

"It was a cross tree experiment. Wasn't it a jumble?" inquired Ralph.

"We pieced it out, got our bearings, and they're spreading the net to catch some pretty big fish."

"What of Grizzly and that fellow with him?"

"Sloped. Adair is after them, though. See here, you get right home and into your cozy."

"But I have something of possible importance to tell the superintendent."

"He's gone down the line hot-footed. It will all keep till he calls you up. Left instructions to that effect--'30,' now, and be quick about it!"

"30" it was, perforce. Ralph had gone through a rough night of it. He was pretty well tired out and glad to get to bed. He went there, however, with some exciting thoughts in his mind.

There had been no solution to the enigma of the piece of broken box cover flung from the pa.s.sing freight train through the window of the little station. All Ralph could do about that incident was to conjecture blindly.

It was a queer happening, a suggestive one. Ralph had a fertile imagination. There was a coincidence about the discovery of the queer message, and things hinged together in a way. Contiguous to that section the chicken farm was located, and Glen Palmer, at least his grandfather, had seemingly linked up with the conspirators against the welfare of the Great Northern road once or twice before. Ralph could not conceive why that message had been written. It was a new mystery, but it had come so secretly upon the heels of a bigger and more important one, that there was neither time nor opportunity to explore it just at present.

Mrs. Fairbanks, like the true anxious mother that she was, greeted Ralph on his arrival at home. She had not gone to bed all night, and she now insisted on his eating an early breakfast and taking a needed rest.

Tired out as he was, however, once alone in his own room Ralph took this, the first quiet opportunity, to look over the memorandum book that had fallen from the coat pocket of the train wrecker.

Ralph's eyes expanded and he uttered one or two subdued whistles of astonishment as he delved among the contents of his find. Some penciled notes and a letter in the memorandum book told a great deal--in fact, so much and so clearly and unmistakably, that Ralph could hardly go to sleep thinking over the importance of his discoveries.

They had to wait, however, till he could again see the superintendent.

Now, as Ralph was roused up out of sleep by a telephone call from that very official, his active mind was again filled with the theme of the memorandum book and what it had revealed to him.

When he got down stairs Ralph found that word had come for him to report to the office of the road as promptly as possible. His mother had an appetizing lunch spread on the dining room table, and the lad did full justice to it.

He was thoughtful and busy formulating in his mind just what he would report at headquarters, and had proceeded less than half a dozen squares from home when pa.s.sing an alley his name was called. Looking beyond the street Ralph recognized Ike Slump. He wore a very mysterious face and he was urgently beckoning to Ralph. The latter was about to proceed on his way with a gesture of annoyance, when Slump shouted out:

"You'll be sorry if you don't see me for a minute or two."

"Well, what is it?" inquired Ralph, moving a few feet towards his challenger.

"I need five dollars."

"Oh, you do?"

"Yes, bad. I want you to give it to me."

"That's cool."

"I've got to get out of town. You'd better let me go."

"I don't see how I am preventing you," said Ralph.

"You will, when I explain."

"Then be quick about it. I have no time to waste."

"Neither have I," remarked Slump, with an uneasy glance towards the street. "To be short and sweet, I know Glen Palmer."

Ralph started a trifle at this. Slump spoke the name with a knowing look in his eyes and a sidelong leer that was sinister.

"Well, what of it?" demanded Ralph.

"I thought I'd seen him before the day I met him up at the yards. I racked my brain to recall him. This morning it all came to me."

"What do you suppose I care about your knowing him?" inquired Ralph.