“I’ll not cut much ice here,” he said to himself, at length. “I think I’ll take a look at the occupants of the smoker. That will bring me nearer the express car.” He was about to do so when his attention was drawn to a couple three seats in front of him and on the opposite side of the aisle. One was a respectable-looking, well-dressed man of forty, with grave, dark eyes and a Vandyke beard. His companion was an attractive woman of about thirty years old, with a fair complexion and an abundance of light-brown hair. Her fine figure was clad in a tailor-made traveling costume of bottle green. They were about the last couple in the car to have invited suspicion. The train had begun to labor on a steep up grade. The man with a Vandyke beard drew out a cigar and bit the end from it, then said a few words to the woman. She bowed and smiled, revealing a double row of white teeth, and the man arose with a backward glance and smiled at her, then went into the smoker. Chick watched him thoughtfully, but not suspiciously, when he strode through the aisle and out of the car. Plainly enough, it appeared, the man had excused himself politely to his companion in order to go for a smoke. It appeared like the act of a gentleman. Chick felt no immediate impulse to follow him, and his attention was again drawn toward the woman. She was moving to a position nearer the lamps, and was spreading a newspaper to read it. Chick saw that it was a Philadelphia newspaper. “By Jove, they evidently came from Philadelphia,” he said to himself. “Can it be that they—no, no, that seems quite improbable. No man engaged in a train robbery, or with any interest in one, would be traveling with a woman. Besides, neither looks like a crook, but quite the contrary. She may have bought the paper on the train, or——” Chick’s train of thought took a sudden, startling turn. A brakeman went rushing through the aisle in the direction of the smoking car. Chick noticed now that the train was rapidly slowing down. He heard shouts from the smoker when the brakeman opened the door. “Great guns!” he muttered, starting up and following him. “Has the trick been turned? Has the job been done, in spite of us?” Chick hurried through the car and entered the smoker. A dozen excited men were gathered near the forward door and upon the platform and steps. In another moment Chick was among them, and he saw at a glance what had occurred. The train had been divided. The rear cars of it had come to a stop on the steep up grade. The forward section, consisting of the locomotive, the baggage car, and the express car, was vanishing around a curve in the tracks more than half a mile away. A solitary man then was on the rear platform of the express car, though invisible in the darkness—the man with a Vandyke beard. Scarce two minutes had elapsed since he passed through the smoker. He had not sat down, nor lighted his cigar, but walked deliberately out upon the front platform.