“Let her go!” he cried to the conductor. “Let her go! It’s all right! Go on!” “Don’t that other fellow want to get on?” asked the latter curiously. “No, no, no!” Binns exclaimed irritably and yet pleading. “Don’t let him on! He hasn’t any right on here. I arranged to stop this train. I’m from the _Star_. I’ll pay you if you don’t let him on. It’s the train robber I want. Go ahead,” but even as he spoke Mr. Collins came up, panting and wet, but with a leer of triumph and joy over his rival’s discomfiture written all over his face as he pulled himself up the steps. “You thought you’d leave me behind, didn’t you?” he sneered as he pushed his way upward. “Well, I fooled you this time, didn’t I?” Now was the crucial moment of Mr. Binns’s career had his courage been equal to it, but it was not. He had the opportunity to do the one thing which might have wrested victory from defeat--that is, push Mr. Collins off and keep him off. The train was beginning to move. But instead of employing this raw force which Mr. Collins would assuredly have employed, he hesitated and debated, unable in his super-refinement to make up his mind, while Mr. Collins, not to be daunted or parleyed with, dashed into the car in search of the robber. In the sudden immensity of his discomfiture, Binns now followed him with scarcely a thought for the moment, only to see Collins bustling up to the bandit in the third car ahead who, handcuffed to a country sheriff and surrounded by several detectives, was staring idly at the passengers. “Gee, sport,” the latter was saying as Mr. Binns sat down, patting the burglar familiarly on the knee and fixing him with that basilisk gaze of his which was intended to soothe and flatter the victim, “that was a great trick you pulled off. The paper’ll be crazy to find out how you did it. My paper, the _News_, wants a whole page of it. It wants your picture, too. Say, you didn’t really do it all alone, did you? Well, that’s what I call swell work, eh, Cap?” and now he turned his ingratiating leer on the country sheriff and the detectives. In a moment or two more he was telling them all what an intimate friend he was of “Billy” Desmond, the chief of detectives of O---- and Mr. So-and-So, the chief of police, as well as various other dignitaries of that world. Plainly, admitted Binns to himself, he was beaten now, as much so as this burglar, he thought. His great opportunity was gone. What a victory this might have been, and now look at it! Disgruntled, he sat down beside his enemy, beginning to think what to ask, the while the latter, preening himself in his raw way on his success, began congratulating the prisoner on his great feat. “The dull stuff!” thought Mr. Binns. “To think that I should have to contend with a creature like this! And these are the people he considers something! And he wants a whole page for the _News_! My word! He’d do well if he wrote a half-column alone.”