is mouth
was twitching and jerking, but for a moment he could not speak--and
then the words came like an explosion, and he shook his fist under
Sammy Durgan's nose.

"You--you damned fathead!" he roared. "What in the double-blanked,
blankety-blanked son of blazes are you doing!"

"Fathead, yourself!" retorted Sammy Durgan promptly--and there was
spice in the way Sammy Durgan said it. "I'm doing what you hadn't the
nerve or the head to do, Macy--unless mabbe you're in the gang
yourself! I'm saving that safe back there in the express car, that's
what I'm doing."

"Saving nothing!" bellowed Macy crazily, as he slammed the throttle
shut. "There! Look there!" He reached for Sammy Durgan's head, and
with both hands twisted it around, and fairly flattened Sammy Durgan's
nose against the cab glass.

"What--what is it?" faltered Sammy Durgan, a little less assertively.

Macy was excitable. He danced upon the cab floor as though it were a
hornets' nest.

"What is it!" he echoed in a scream. "What is it! It's moving
pictures, you tangle-brained, rusty-headed idiot! That's what it is!"

A sort of dull gray film seemed to spread itself over Sammy Durgan's
face. Sammy Durgan stared through the cab glass. The track ahead was
just disappearing from view as the engine backed around a curve, but
what Sammy Durgan saw was enough--two dripping figures were salvaging a
wrecked and bedragged photographic outfit on the river bank, close to
the entrance of the cut where he had been in collision with them; an
excited group of train bandits, without any masks now, were
gesticulating around the marooned engineer and fireman; and in the
middle distance, squatting on a rail, a man, coatless, his shirt sleeve
rolled up, was making horrible grimaces as a companion bandaged his
wrist.

Macy's laugh rang hollow--it wasn't exactly a laugh.

"I don't know how much it costs," stuttered the conductor demoniacally,
"but there's about four million dollars' worth of film they're fishing
out of the river there, and they paid a thousand dollars for the train
and thirty-five minutes between stations to clear Number Forty, and
there's about eight thousand car windows gone, and one vestibule and
two platforms in splinters, and a man shot through the wrist, and if
that crowd up there ever get their hands on you they'll----"

"I think," said Sammy Durgan hurriedly, "that I'll get off."

He edged back to the gangway and peered out. The frien