"Just this: he's a friend of yours, a sort of pet. I understand you started him in the chicken farming business, so you must have some interest in him. All right, I can snip him out of his position of glory double quick," a.s.serted Ike, in a malevolent and threatening way.

"Go ahead, what are you driving at?" asked Ralph as calmly as he could.

"Five dollars--that's what it will cost you to keep your friend from being exposed. Five dollars, and I bury the secret fathoms deep."

"In other words," said Ralph, trying hard to suppress his feelings, "you want to blackmail me?"

"Oh, no," a.s.sented Slump, "I simply want to sell this photograph," and he drew a card from his pocket. "I went to heaps of trouble to get it.

It shows that I did see Glen Palmer before. It was where we were both locked up in jail," shamelessly confessed Slump.

Ralph was a good deal taken aback. The words of Slump and the photograph he extended rather took the young railroader's breath away. The portrait was that of a boy dressed in a convict suit, a number on his cap, and the background showed the surroundings of a prison room.

"It's too bad," spoke Ralph involuntarily. He was thinking of his misplaced trust in the Palmer boy. All his dark suspicions concerning the old grandfather and the conspirators were instantly revived in the mind of Ralph.

"Ain't it, though?" smirked Slump. "Is it worth the price?"

"No!" suddenly shouted Ralph, in a tone so stern and ringing that the discomfited Slump fell back several feet. "You miserable jail bird and swindler, I wouldn't help you on your wretched career of crime for five cents let alone five dollars. Furthermore, Glen Palmer may have been in jail, but I won't believe he belonged there till I have the proofs."

"Oh, won't you?" sneered Ike. "All right. Don't want to reform him, eh?

Won't give the downtrodden and oppressed a chance. You're a heavy philanthropist, you are, Mr. Ralph--let go!"

Slump took a sudden whirl. From behind a fence there suddenly pounced down upon him a towering form. Ralph was as much surprised as Slump to recognize Bob Adair, the road detective.

The diligent officer gave Slump one or two more whirls, holding on to his coat collar, that made him shriek with affright. Then he threw him reeling ten feet away.

"I gave you two hours to get out of town this morning," he observed.

"Now then it's two minutes to head straight for the limits, or I'll lock you up as a vagrant."

Ike picked up his fallen cap on the run. He darted down the alley in a flash.

"I don't know but what I would have liked to find out something more from him," remarked Ralph.

"Oh, I overheard the subject of your conversation," said Adair--"about that missing boy, Glen Palmer, I suppose you mean?"

"Missing--is he missing, Mr. Adair?"

"Since the day after you told me about him, and his grandfather and the queer company he kept," replied Adair. "I went down to the chicken farm to find that young Palmer had sold it out to a neighbor for a song and had vanished."

"Why, that is queer," commented Ralph. "I fancied he had got a new lease of life when I started him in business."

"Decidedly mysterious, the whole affair," added the road detective.

"That will all come out when we see the superintendent. We're both due at his office."

"I was just going there," said Ralph.

"And I was on my way to meet you," explained Adair.

They walked on together for a short distance. Suddenly Adair drew out a bulky pocket book well stuffed with papers. He selected a folded yellow sheet.

"Here's something that belongs to you," he said. "There's a good deal to go over, so get that off our minds. Glidden handed it to me this noon."

"What is it?" asked Ralph.

"A telegram."

"So it is. Why--"

Ralph paused there. If he had been astonished at the discovery of the board message back at the little station, the present sc.r.a.p of paper doubly mystified him.

It was the mere fragment of a telegram, no heading, no date, and it read:

"Advise Ralph Fairbanks, Stanley Junction. Look out for the pacer."

CHAPTER XIX

ON THE LOOKOUT

Ten minutes later Ralph and Bob Adair entered the office of the superintendent of the Great Northern. As they did so, a tall, well-dressed man left by another door. Adair nudged Ralph.

"The President of the road," he spoke in a low quick tone.

"Yes, I see," nodded Ralph.

"Eyes and ears wide open. We're going to see some lively doings, if I don't mistake my cue."

Ralph felt the dignity and force of the occasion. It was a good deal for a mere youth to realize that he was being called into an important conference on a footing with old and experienced railroaders. The serious yet pleasant greeting of the superintendent told that the situation was a distinct compliment to the fine record and ability of the young railroader.

Ralph modestly took a chair to one side of the big table at which the superintendent and his a.s.sistant were seated. Adair produced that formidable memorandum book of his, stuffed with all kinds of secrets of the rail.

"We had better get down to business without any preamble," spoke the head official briskly. "Before we begin, however, I wish to commend you, Fairbanks, for your diligence in our behalf."

"Thank you, sir," said Ralph with a flush of pleasure.

"Yourself and Glidden handled the situation at the relay just as we would have wished it done. What is your report, Adair?"

The road detective consulted his notes in a matter-of-fact way, and began detailing his information as if he was reading off a freight schedule, but Ralph was immensely interested and so were his other auditors.

Part of what Adair told was news to Ralph. The most of Adair's disclosures, however, linked to what he already suspected or knew.

Briefly narrated, the two queerly-acting men who had been noticed by Ralph in the company of Glen Palmer's grandfather and during the trouble in the tunnel had been the starting clews in the case.

"There is a man named Rivers and half a dozen fellow conspirators who are making most of the trouble," said the road officer. "Two of the men Fairbanks spotted over two weeks ago. They were after the secrets of our paymaster, as we well know. From word I have received from an a.s.sistant, Dallas, they and a group of helpers are hanging around the vicinity of scene of the smash up last night."

"There's a mystery to explain, Adair," here broke in the superintendent.

"What was the motive for the collision?"