"My dear boy, Flannigan is certain now. I am quite of your opinion that he has known every mortal thing we have done, and even our secret thoughts. Great man, Flannigan! I told you in the beginning I was going to fight Flannigan in the open. I regard his visit to Ponderby as being the throwing down of the gauntlet. It is defiance, and I expect to see him in person at the sheriff's sale, Thursday afternoon."
A distinguished crowd assembled at the western terminus of the Long Island railway. Stranleigh had provided his guests with a sumptuous train of Pullman cars, in which materials for refreshment had not been overlooked. When he got the crowd together, he briefly explained the nature of the invention, told them that on the bit of track at his disposal, something like a hundred miles away, there had been placed a locomotive fitted with this apparatus, and attached to a train of flat cars loaded with railway iron.
"You will realise," he said genially, "that if our train of Pullmans comes against such an object as that, and the apparatus doesn't work, you will witness a smash that may be worth seeing."
"Oh, yes," said one cynical journalist, "that's all very well, Mr. Trevelyan; but how can we be assured that you haven't bribed the engine-driver and fireman to slow down the train when it approaches the obstacle?"
Trevelyan smiled.
