pin.
Then the way freight was jarring forward. Chet saw the refrigerator car go
past. On the tail of the reefer (note: Reefer is another term for refrigerator
car, while the hind shack is the caboose - Ed.) was the hind shack with the
lantern, and the red eye soon dwindled off into the thick darkness. Standing
silent on a siding were the cars that bore the load of Pyrolac, but before
stealing toward them, Chet took a final look ahead to make a summary of other
things.
The way freight was taking a right swing along a Y to reach the main line.
There were lights along the high bridge and by them Chet could distinguish a
through freight waiting to proceed in the opposite direction. Obviously, the
locomotive of the fast freight would back down from the high iron as soon as the
branch was clear, to pick up the cars that the way freight had left.
So Chet moved toward the sidetracked cars, intending to perch between them
later. For the present, he preferred the bushes in the gully, for he was quite
sure that Feds would be riding the scoop of the engine when it arrived. Their
job would be to inspect the cars from the Pyrolac plant while the hitch was
being made.
Future precaution proved its present value. Hardly had Chet stowed himself
beside the tracks, before a light appeared, at the very rear of the siding. With
it came a rumble, muffled and vague, that couldn't be the sound of a locomotive.
Staring, Chet Conroy witnessed the incredible.
SMOOTHLY, steadily, the hillside was moving up into itself. Literally,
overhanging rocks were swallowing those that sloped below, though the effect was
quite the opposite. Rather it seemed that the hillside had begun to yawn,
turning itself into a gulping mouth.
Into that cavern, which was dimly lighted, ran the two tracks that
ostensibly ended against the rocky wall that no longer existed!
If Chet had known about the old main line and its forgotten tunnel, he'd
have understood the whole thing in a flash. As it was, he grasped the set-up
conclusively enough. That hole in the hill was certainly a tunnel that had long
ago been blocked.
Since that date, alterations had been made, though normally there was
nothing to show it. Clever craftsmen had rigged a false front for the blocked
tunnel, a mass of canvas coated with paint and stucco to exactly duplicate the
fallen mass of rock and earth. It was the simplest sort of camouflage, that job,
a thing that Chet, a jack at many trades, could easily appreciate.
The rest was equally plain. Behind that screen of imitation debris, workers
had removed the rubbish that it represented. Outwardly, no change was visible,
until they raised the camouflaging curtain which hoisted through a cleft within
the overhanging rocks. Then, like a ghost from the past, the old tunnel shook
off the years and came to life!
And now, a thing even more ghostly was manifesting itself. Out from the
tunnel came a gray shape on wheels, a pint-sized Diesel shifter that nosed to
the line of box cars. Chet saw shady men making a quick coupling. Smoothly,
rhythmically, the cars containing the lacquer shipment started on a new trip,
rearward. That trick shifter was hauling them into the tunnel!
On impulse, Chet popped from the brush and caught a passing grab iron.
