"Have important need of you here. Take first train. Wire time of your arrival. I will meet you at station.
"(Signed) WANG CHIH TUNG, Secretary, etc."
"Is there any answer, sir?" asked the boy who had delivered this despatch and who stood waiting while Jo read it. "Here are blanks if you want them."
"Yes," replied our lad, speaking slowly, but thinking at top speed. "I want to send two of these same things. Can you take them and see that they go light away quick?"
"Yes, sir," replied the boy. "That is my business."
"Can you tell me how soon I can get a train for New York?"
"In ten minutes, if you hurry," answered the boy promptly.
"Sure, sir, as if I was a railroad time-table."
Relieved at so easily having obtained the information he wanted, and excited at thus being summoned by so high a dignitary as Mr. Wang, Jo wrote two despatches on blanks provided by the waiting boy, and gave them to him for delivery at the nearest telegraph-office. One was to Mr. Wang, announcing the proposed hour of his reaching New York, and the other, telling of his intended trip to that city, was addressed to Mr. Hinckley. For each of these he paid the boy twenty-five cents, and then, having no time to lose, he hurried to the railway-station. There he had barely secured a ticket for New York when an express-train thundered up to the platform. Two minutes later it was rolling swiftly away, carrying as passengers Chinese Jo and the man who had followed his movements so closely all that day.
When, late at night, Chinese Jo reached New York and alighted from his train in the Grand Central Station he was bewildered and almost frightened by his surroundings. He found himself in a vast edifice occupied by many long trains of cars, some standing still, either receiving or discharging passengers, and others in motion, drawn or pushed by hoarsely puffing locomotives. Between every two trains was a narrow platform extending the whole length of the great station, and most of these were crowded with outgoing or incoming passengers, all in a hurry, and each too intent upon his own affairs to pay attention to those of his neighbors. Among them moved red-capped porters and blue-clad railway officials, too mindful of their own importance to condescend to answer the low-voiced questions of an insignificant "Chinaman."