But he wasn’t there. I couldn’t see nothing of him no where. I bet you I was just about the sickest fellow in East New York then.
Had he slipped into one of the freight cars?
I thought so, and I was just going to look when all of a sudden the train came thundering in.
It was a sort of a switch train. It ran down from Jamaica and then went right back again, passengers changing cars at Jamaica for the regular trains on the Long Island road.
The conductor was yelling all aboard, and there wasn’t a minute to lose.
The train, as it stood, was right close alongside these empty freight cars, and it would have been an easy matter for a man to step from one to the other.
“That’s what he means to do,” thinks I, and I jumped into the forward car, which was nearest to where I stood, and began to hurry through the train.
Just as I crossed the platform to the car the train started, and I began to think he’d given me the slip altogether, for he wasn’t in the last car either, as far as I could see.
I ran through the car as fast as I could with my mind made up to jump off the platform. When I got to the rear door and was just about to open it, I suddenly saw my man jump from one of the empty freight cars as we passed and land on the platform right before my eyes.
I was out on the platform in a second. He gave one look at me and seemed to know just what I wanted, too, for he out with a gun and rammed it right in my face.
“Blast you! I’ll never be taken alive!” he hissed.
But I gave the shooter one clip and sent it flying off the train.
“Help! Murder!” he yelled as we went sweeping past the platform of the Howard House.
I grabbed him by the throat and had him down in a minute. Two men jumped into the car and grabbed me.
“He’s a thief! He’s trying to rob me!” he hollered.
“I’m a detective--he’s a defaulter! Help me, gents!” I said, as cool as I could.
Well, we got him--that’s all there is to it.
More than that we got the boodle--a hundred thousand clear. It was all in the bag.
They stopped the train and we took him off. One of the fellers what had jumped on was a policeman, and he helped me take him to the East New York station. We found a ticket for Greenport on him and a time-table of the Northern New London Railroad. I never had the least doubt but what he’d a-got through safe to Montreal if it hadn’t been for Mr. Brady sending me out to East New York that night.