He was turning back to make another attempt on the lever, when, looking past the guard, he saw a sight which brought his heart into his mouth. Pounding along behind him, and emitting feathers of steam from her whistle, was an enormous locomotive. Bones guessed there was a train behind it, but the line was too straight for him to see.
"Gracious heavens!" he gasped. "We're being chased!"
He jerked at the lever--though it was a moment when he should have left it severely alone--and to his ill-founded joy it moved.
The two trains came to a standstill together ten miles from Bayham Junction, and Bones climbed down into the six-foot way and walked back.
Almost the first person he met was a gesticulating gentleman in a frock coat and with a red face, who, mistaking him for an engine-driver, dismissed him on the spot, threatened him with imprisonment--with or without hard labour he did not specify--and demanded what the dickens he meant by holding up a Cabinet Minister?
"Why," chortled Bones, "isn't it my dear friend, Mr. Chenney?"
"Who are you," snarled Mr. Chenney, "and what do you mean by calling me your dear friend? By Heavens, I'll have you kicked out of this service!"
"Don't you know old Tibbetts?" cooed Bones. "Well, well, fancy meeting you!"
He held out a grimy hand, which was not taken.
"Tibbetts!" growled the gentleman. "Oh, you are the foo--the gentleman who bought the Lynhaven line, didn't you?"
"But what is your train doing here?" asked Mr. Chenney violently. "Don't you realise you are holding up a special? Great Heavens, man, this is very serious! You are holding up the business of the country!"
The engine-driver of the special came to the rescue.
"There's a switch-over about half a mile further on," he said. "There's not a down train due for an hour. I'll unlock the switch and put you on to the other line, and, after we have passed, you can come on."
"But I don't want to come on, dear old thing," said Bones. "I want to go back."
He it was who piloted the Lynhaven express for another half-mile up the road. He it was who found the switches, unlocked them, telegraphed to the next station to hold up traffic, and he it was--Bones insisted upon this--who brought the "Mary Louisa" along the switch to the down line.