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. It came to his feet. He buttoned it up, drew a jaunty crush cap from one of its pockets, and grinned pleasantly into the face of the petrified Peter Pope. "See here!" blurted out the Cardysville express agent, "this isn't--isn't regular. It isn't schedule, you know." "I hope not--sincerely," airily retorted the stranger. "Fifty miles on a slow train, three hours waiting in a close trunk. Ah, no. But I've arrived. Ha, ha, that's so!" He glanced into the trunk. Its bottom seemed covered with some coarse burlap. Professor Rigoletto threw shut the cover. "Aha!" he said suddenly, bending his ear as a strain of distant circus music floated on the air. "Show on, I'll be late. I'll call later--" "No, you don't!" interrupted Pope, recovering from his fright, and placing his bulky form in the doorway. "Don't what, my friend?" mildly asked the Professor. "Deadhead--beat the express company. You're one trunk--and excess weight." "I don't dispute it. What, then?" "Pay," promptly and definitely announced the agent. "Can't. Haven't a cent. That's why I had to get a friend to ship me this way. But he said he'd wire ahead to my partner with the circus, who would call for me here. I'll go and find him, and settle the bill." "You don't leave here until those charges are paid. You want to be rapid, too," declared Pope, "or I'll see if the railroad company don't want to collect fare, as well."