The Treasure-Train | Page 6

the argosy that was causing so
much anxiety and danger. It was long after the time scheduled that we
left finally, on our return journey, late at night.
Ahead of us went a dummy pilot-train to be sacrificed if any bridges or
trestles were blown up or if any new attempts were made at producing
artificially broken rails. We four established ourselves as best we could
in a car in the center of the treasure- train, with one of the armed guards
as company. Mile after mile we reeled off, ever southward and
westward.
We must have crossed the State of Connecticut and have been
approaching Long Island Sound, when suddenly the train stopped with

a jerk. Ordinarily there is nothing to grow alarmed about at the mere
stopping of a train. But this was an unusual train under unusual
circumstances.
No one said a word as we peered out. Down the track the signals
seemed to show a clear road. What was the matter?
"Look!" exclaimed Kennedy, suddenly.
Off a distance ahead I could see what looked like a long row of white
fuses sticking up in the faint starlight. From them the fresh west wind
seemed to blow a thick curtain of greenish-yellow smoke which swept
across the track, enveloping the engine and the forward cars and now
advancing toward us like the "yellow wind" of northern China. It
seemed to spread thickly on the ground, rising scarcely more than
sixteen or eighteen feet.
A moment and the cloud began to fill the air about us. There was a
paralyzing odor. I looked about at the others, gasping and coughing. As
the cloud rolled on, inexorably increasing in density, it seemed literally
to grip the lungs.
It flashed over me that already the engineer and fireman had been
overcome, though not before the engineer had been able to stop the
train.
As the cloud advanced, the armed guards ran from it, shouting, one
now and then falling, overcome. For the moment none of us knew what
to do. Should we run and desert the train for which we had dared so
much? To stay was death.
Quickly Kennedy pulled from his pocket the gauze arrangements he
had had in his hand that morning just as Miss Euston's knock had
interrupted his conversation with me. Hurriedly he shoved one into
Miss Euston's hands, then to Lane, then to me, and to the guard who
was with us.
"Wet them!" he cried, as he fitted his own over his nose and staggered

to a water-cooler.
"What is it?" I gasped, hoarsely, as we all imitated his every action.
"Chlorin gas," he rasped back, "the same gas that overcame Granville
Barnes. These masks are impregnated with a glycerin solution of
sodium phosphate. It was chlorin that destroyed the red coloring matter
in Barnes's blood. No wonder, when this action of just a whiff of it on
us is so rapid. Even a short time longer and death would follow. It
destroys without the possibility of reconstitution, and it leaves a
dangerous deposit of albumin. How do you feel?"
"All right," I lied.
We looked out again. The things that looked like fuses were not bombs,
as I had expected, but big reinforced bottles of gas compressed at high
pressure, with the taps open. The supply was not inexhaustible. In fact,
it was decidedly limited. But it seemed to have been calculated to a
nicety to do the work. Only the panting of the locomotive now broke
the stillness as Kennedy and I moved forward along the track.
Crack! rang out a shot.
"Get on the other side of the train--quick!" ordered Craig.
In the shadow, aside from the direction in which the wind was wafting
the gas, we could now just barely discern a heavy but powerful
motor-truck and figures moving about it. As I peered out from the
shelter of the train, I realized what it all meant. The truck, which had
probably conveyed the gas-tanks from the rendezvous where they had
been collected, was there now to convey to some dark wharf what of
the treasure could be seized. There the stolen yacht was waiting to carry
it off.
"Don't move--don't fire," cautioned Kennedy. "Perhaps they will think
it was only a shadow they saw. Let them act first. They must. They
haven't any too much time. Let them get impatient."

For some minutes we waited.
Sure enough, separated widely, but converging toward the treasure-
train at last, we could see several dark figures making their way from
the road across a strip of field and over the rails. I made a move with
my gun.
"Don't," whispered Kennedy. "Let them get together."
His ruse was clever. Evidently they thought that it had been indeed a
wraith at which they had fired.