the expected westbound
flyer.

"Hammon? Get me? This is Half Way. That derned electric hog has sprung
something and is coming down, lickity-split!

"Yes! Clear your yard! Where's Number Twenty-eight? Good! Side her, or
she'll be ditched. Get me?"

The voice at the other end of the wire exploded into indignant
vituperation. Then silence. The Half Way operator had done his
best--his all. He ran out upon the platform. The electric locomotive
had disappeared behind the woods, but the roar of its wheels and the
shrill voice of its siren echoed back along the line.

The sound faded into insignificance. The operator went back into his
hut and stayed close by the telephone instrument for the next ten
minutes to learn the worst.

If the operator's nerves were tense, what about those of Tom Swift and
his chum? Ned staggered to the door and clung to Tom's arm. He shrilled
into the latter's ear:

"Shall we jump?"

"I don't see any soft spots," returned Tom, grimly. "There aren't any
life nets along this line."

Ned Newton was frightened, and with good reason. But if his chum was
equally terrified he did not show it. He continued to lean from the
open door to peer down the grade as the Hercules 0001 drove on.

Around curve after curve they flew. It entered Ned's tortured mind that
if his chum had wanted speed, he was getting it now! He realized that
two miles a minute was a mere bagatelle to the pace now accomplished by
the runaway locomotive.

Chapter XX

The Result

As Ned Newton, fumbling at the controls when he saw the fallen tree
across the tracks, had jammed the brakes, the station master at Hammon,
at the bottom of this long grade on the Hendrickton & Pas Alos, had
stepped out to the blackboard in the barnlike waiting room and scrawled
with a bit of chalk:

"No. 28--Westbound--due 3:38 is 15 m. late."

The fact, thus given to the general public or to such of it as might be
interested, averted what would have been a terrible catastrophe.

The fast express was late. When the babbling voice of the Half Way
operator over the telephone warned Hammon of the coming of the runaway
electric locomotive, there was time to shift switches at the head of
the yard so that, when Number Twenty-eight came roaring in, she was
shunted on to a far track and flagged for a stop before she hit the
bumper.

Thirty seconds later, from the west, the Hercules 0001 roared down the
grade and shot into the cleared west trac