Joe folded the message and put it in his pocket. Undoubtedly Mr. Chase
was right about it. Young would not announce his real destination and
if he had said Cleveland it was safe to say that he meant to journey in
another direction. Joe settled back again, tipped his cap over his eyes
to keep the light out and tried to plan what he should do and say if
he was lucky enough to discover Young at Fremont. In the end, though,
he reached no very clear conclusion, and while he was still trying to
formulate a speech with which to greet the absconding clerk the train
rattled over the switches, green and purple and red and white lights
flashed past the window and the trainman was bawling:
“Fremont! Fremont! Change for Norwalk, Elyria, Cleveland, Toledo, and
points east and west! This train for Sandusky and Port Clinton!”
Joe followed a dozen other passengers through the car door and down
to the platform. A glance at his watch had shown him that Forty-nine,
in spite of her unhurried progress, had arrived exactly on time.
Consequently he had sixteen minutes in which to search the station and
platform before the west-bound express drew out. He still kept his
cap pulled down in front, trusting that if Mr. Chester Young saw him
he would not recognise him. The platform was fairly crowded and Joe
made his way along to the door of the waiting-room, keeping as much as
possible out of sight. It took but a moment to satisfy himself that
his quarry was not inside. Then he went on to the end of the platform
without result, retraced his steps, reached the other end and paused
there in the shadow of a piled-up truck. Mr. Chester Young was not
to be seen. Five minutes had already gone by. Joe’s hope began to
dwindle. After all, he reflected, it had been too much to expect;
given a start of two hours and a half, Young would have been an idiot
if he had not eluded pursuit. And yet, on the other hand, what reason
had Young to suppose that either of the boys whose money he had taken
would go to the length of chasing him down? Joe didn’t believe that
Young would give either him or Jack credit for having enough enterprise
to do that. And if he didn’t really expect pursuit he wouldn’t try very
hard to elude it.
Joe gathered courage again and sought the ticket-window in the
waiting-room. By this time the platform had almost emptied, but at the
ticket-window several persons were in line and now and then the door
opened to admit other passengers for the west-bound train. Joe gave up
the idea of inquiring of the ticket-seller and inspected a time-table
instead. The west-bound arrived in Fremont at nine-fifty-nine and
remained there five minutes. It would come in, then, in just five
minutes if it was on time. That put another idea in his head and he
went back to the platform, keeping his eyes peeled, and sought the
bulletin board there. “No. 16,” he read, “due 9:59, 15 mins. late.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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