"I ought to know that! They all had their knife into me, from the engine-driver up."
"But it's the three-forty - the Induna - surely you've heard of the Great Buchonian's Induna!"
"How the deuce am I to know one train from another? They come along about every two minutes."
"Quite so. But this happens to be the Induna - the one train of the whole line. She's timed for fifty-seven miles an hour. She was put on early in the Sixties, and she has never been stopped - "
"I know! Since William the Conqueror came over, or King Charles hid in her smoke-stack. You're as bad as the rest of these Britishers. If she's been run all that while, it's time she was flagged once or twice."
The American was beginning to ooze out all over Wilton, and his small-boned hands were moving restlessly.
"Suppose you flagged the Empire State Express, or the Western Cyclone?"
"Suppose I did. I know Otis Harvey - or used to. I'd send him a wire, and he'd understand it was a ground-hog case with me. That's exactly what I told this British fossil company here."
"Have you been answering their letters without legal advice, then?"
