Once on the cement highway, the driver opened his throttle, and Jimmy watched the indicator on the dashboard creep up. From forty-five miles an hour it climbed to fifty, to fifty-five, to sixty, to seventy, to eighty miles an hour. And there the speedometer finger stood as though glued to the spot. They neared Tyrone. Jimmy watched the lights draw near. The driver began to slacken his speed. They reached the fringes of the town. Close at hand Jimmy heard a long, shrill blast of a locomotive whistle. He knew it was a train blowing for Tyrone. It was going to stop. He glanced at his watch. It lacked two minutes of being 11:45. “Step on it,” begged Jimmy. “That’s the train I must catch.” The driver turned a corner and straightened out for a dash. He shoved his speed up and up while Jimmy sat with his heart in his mouth. They could never stop if anything came out of a side street. But nothing did. They roared on to the station. The train was standing at the platform. The locomotive was panting restlessly, as though eager to be off. “All aboard,” came a deep voice through the night. Jimmy leaped from the still moving car, and raced down the platform toward the train. The train began to move. Jimmy put everything he had into a last desperate sprint. He reached the car vestibule just as the conductor was closing the door. Jimmy grabbed the hand rail and swung up on the step. The conductor slammed the door open and grabbed him. “Is the—assistant secretary—of war—on this train?” panted Jimmy. “He is,” said the conductor. CHAPTER XVI The Bootlegger Repays Jimmy’s Kindness Jimmy delivered his papers to the under secretary and got a receipt for them. He left the train at Altoona, wired the managing editor a brief statement of his experiences, then registered at a hotel and went to bed. Utterly worn out by his trying efforts, he slept like a stone and did not awaken until almost noon the following day. Then he ate some breakfast, hired a taxi-cab, and drove back to Mingoville. He sought out the mountaineer who had driven him to Tyrone on the preceding night, and the two climbed the notch and found the fallen _Travelair_. It was a complete “washout,” but Jimmy found that his camera was not much harmed, and he secured his maps, a compass that was still intact, his parachute, and a few other articles. Then he had the mountaineer drive him back to Bellefonte, whence he made his way by train to New York, where he reported at once to the managing editor.