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Page 64
"Oh, pshaw!" said Bart reassuringly, "you are only nervous, Mr. Pope.
It's some live freight, likely. Can I take a look?"
"Sure--wish you would. I've been posting up on express business, you
see, maybe that's the matter. Read about fellows hiding in boxes, and
jumping out and murdering the messenger. Read about enemies sending a
man exploding bombs, and blowing him to pieces."
"Nonsense, Mr. Pope!" said Bart, "you don't look as if you had an enemy
in the world."
"I haven't," declared Peter Pope, "but every business man has his
rivals, of course. I've heard that those city chaps have an eye on any
fellow that makes a record like I'm making here. They don't want to see
him get ahead. They must guess that I'm in line for a big promotion, and
that might worry them into playing some tragical trick on me."
Bart wanted to laugh outright. He kept a straight face, and solemnly
started to investigate the trouble. He stepped into the express room and
took a keen look around, Pope timorously following him.
"There!" panted Pope suddenly, "what did I tell you?"
"That's so," said Bart. "It is sort of mysterious. Someone groaned,
sure. What have you here, anyway?"
Bart went over to a heap of express matter, come in just that morning.
There were several small crates, a box or two, and a very large trunk.
Bart centered his attention on this latter. He stooped down as his quick
eye observed a row of holes at one end, just under the hauling strap.
"Quiet, for a minute," he whispered warningly to Pope, who, big-eyed and
trembling, resembled a man on the threshold of some most appalling
discovery.
Bart's strained hearing shortly caught a rustling sound. It was followed
by a kind of choking moan. Unmistakably, he decided, both came from the
trunk.
"Is it locked? No," he said, examining the front of the trunk. Then Bart
snapped back its two catches. He seized the cover and threw it back.
"Gracious!" gasped Peter Pope.
Bart himself was a trifle startled.
As the trunk cover lifted, a man stepped out.
CHAPTER XXVI
ON THE MIDNIGHT EXPRESS
"Air--and water!" panted the mysterious occupant of the trunk.
Bart looked him over in some wonder. He was a short, wiry man, and
arrayed in a close-fitting costume resembling that of the circus athlete
on duty.
The man was drenched with perspiration and so nearly exhausted with his
suffocating imprisonment, that his voice was rasping and hollow.
He was weak, too. As he stepped over the side of the trunk he staggered
feebly. Then, making out an open window and a pail of drinking water on
a bench near it, he made a swift dive in that direction.
First the man stuck his head out of the window and drew in great
draughts of pure, fresh air.
Then he seized the tin cup near the pail. He dipped up the water and
drank cupful after cupful until Bart eyed him in some alarm.
"Ah--h!" breathed the man in a long aspiration of relief and enjoyment,
"that's better. Say, ten minutes more and there would have been no
Professor Rigoletto."
As he spoke he went back to the trunk. He took out a long gossamer rain
coat that had been used as a pillow. This he proceeded to put on.
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