“I’ll have to go,” he said quickly. Then, without waiting to say goodbye, he dashed out of the compartment, slamming the door behind him in his haste.
The Hardy boys settled back in the comfortable seats as the train began to move. They looked out the window as they emerged from the great train-shed and then they were occupied gazing at the city streets as the locomotive picked up speed and roared on its way.
In due time the train passed through the outskirts of Chicago, then it rushed on through open stretches of country, past little towns and villages. It was an express that evidently stopped only at the larger cities.
“At this rate it won’t take us long to reach Montana,” Frank remarked.
“We’re sure making good time.”
“What do you say to going out and sitting in the observation car for a while?” Frank suggested. “It’s roomier than this compartment.”
“Suits me.”
Frank went to the door. To his surprise he found that it would not open. He tried again, but the door refused to budge.
“That’s funny,” he remarked. “We’re locked in.”
Both the boys tried the door, but it was of no avail.
“The catch must have been on when Mr. Hopkins went out,” Frank said. Even yet the real truth of the situation had not dawned on them.
They hammered on the door for a while, but no one heard them. At last Frank caught sight of the bell button.
“That’s stupid of me,” he said, with a smile. “I should have known there’d be a bell to call the porter.”
He pressed the button and waited. No one came. There was no sound but the roar of the train as it rushed on its way. He pressed the button again and again.
“That porter must be either dead or asleep,” he muttered, settling down to a prolonged ringing of the bell.
After what seemed an interminable length of time they heard a shuffling of feet in the corridor. The sound of the steps ceased, and someone rapped at the door.
“Something foh you, gemmen?”
“Yes—let us out of here!”
The porter tried the handle of the door.
“By golly,” he observed, “you done lock yo’selves in.”
“We didn’t lock ourselves in. Somebody locked us in. Haven’t you got a key?”
“Jes’ a minute.”
They heard the porter shuffling away. After a while he returned with the sleeping car conductor, a key clicked in the lock, and then the door swung open.
“How on earth did that happen?” asked the conductor, mystified. He looked at the porter accusingly. “Did you lock these boys in there?”
“No, sah! No, sah!” protested the porter. “Ah didn’t have nuffin to do with it, sah! Dey come on at Chicago wif an older man and I done showed ’em to de compa’tment and dat’s all Ah knows about it.”
“I don’t think the porter had anything to do with our being locked in,” explained Frank. “It was an accident. Our friend Mr. Hopkins slammed the door on his way out and the catch must have been on without our knowing it. It’s perfectly all right.”
“I got their tickets all right,” said the conductor.
“Yes, sah. Ah collected dem tickets mahself. De old gen’man wif dese boys give ’em to me. Two tickets to Indianapolis, sah.”
“To where?” asked Frank, in amazement.
“Indianapolis.”
“But we’re not going to Indianapolis.”
“Dat’s where yoh tickets reads to.”
The Hardy boys looked at one another in consternation.
“But we’re going to Montana. Didn’t Mr. Hopkins give you tickets to Lucky Bottom, Montana?”
The conductor produced some tickets from his pocket and glanced through them. “Even if he did,” he remarked, “they wouldn’t be any use on this train. We’re bound south, not west. No,” he concluded, “your tickets are here, Compartment B, and they read Indianapolis.”
“We’ve been tricked!” declared Frank hotly. “Mr. Hopkins said he had been sent to look after us and that this train would take us right through to Montana.”
“And then he locked the door on you so you wouldn’t go around making inquiries until it was too late,” added the conductor. “Your friend certainly put one over on you. But I’m afraid we can’t do much for you now. We’re quite a distance out of Chicago, and this train doesn’t stop for another hour yet.”
“Another hour!”
“That’s the best we can do.”
“Well,” said Frank, disgusted, “I guess we’ll just have to wait and get off at the first stop, and then take the next train back to Chicago. This will hold us up another day on our trip.”
“Sorry,” said the conductor sympathetically. “Of course it isn’t our fault. We couldn’t know you were supposed to be going West.”
“No, of course not. It was Hopkins. He planned the whole thing from the start. Oh, well!” Frank shrugged. “We might as well wait.”
He and Joe went back into the compartment and sat down again. This unexpected development left them silent and discouraged. Too late now, they saw that the astute Hopkins had deliberately sought to prevent them from joining their father in Montana. He had worked the trick very neatly, and it might easily have happened that the boys would not have discovered the deception until they reached Indianapolis had it not been for the chance remark of the porter. For that, at least, they were thankful.
“Dad’s enemies mustn’t be very anxious to have us reach Montana, if they’ll go to these lengths to sidetrack us,” said Joe, at last.
“We’ll get there if we have to walk,” Frank replied grimly.
They had no further enjoyment of the scenery. Each flitting telegraph pole meant that they were drawing farther away from Chicago and losing so much more time in resuming their journey to the West. At length the train began to slow down and, looking out, they saw that they were approaching a small railway town with an immense water tank.
The porter came to the door of the compartment.
“Heah’s de fust stop,” he told them. “You kin git a train back to Chicago fum heah!”
He took their luggage and, when the train came
