Johnny was silent.

“You see,” whispered Pant, “great inventors have been experimenting with color photography for years. They got so they could do color work on negatives—that is, the photographic plate—very well. They have used these for the purpose of photographing the stages of certain diseases, and a few things like that; but when it came to getting the color on the positive—the picture itself—that could not be done. These fellows can do it, and are doing it. The bonds are printed in brown and black. They catch these colors perfectly, only in a little paler hue. Their paper is nearly perfect, but whatever defects it has are counteracted by this color photography which reproduces the very tints of the paper.”

For some time they sat there in silence.

“Now that we know their game,” whispered Pant at last, “how are we going to get them? One of the fellows is a ticket seller. He sold Snowball some bonds when we were in Chicago. I might have known he was in it. Another is a guard at the entrance of the big top.”

“Sold me some bonds once.”

“That’s right. The other two I don’t know. Let’s have another look.”

Pant had just put his eyes to the crack; Johnny was standing behind him, when there ran through the train a sickening shiver. The next instant there followed a deafening crash, as car jammed upon car, and, leaping high upon one another, left the track.

It was a wreck—such a wreck as is seldom witnessed—the wreck of a circus train; a head-end collision with a bob-tailed freight running like mad.

At the moment previous to the first shock of the wreck, Gwen might have been seen sitting in her own compartment talking earnestly with the millionaire twins. None of the three had yet undressed for retiring. The things the twins were telling Gwen had much to do with Johnny Thompson, and appeared to interest her very much, for now and then there came an amused, and again a surprised, twinkle in her eye. At one time, a close observer might have seen her slip a ring from her finger, a ring that had been covered by the folds of her dress. The ring she crowded deep into the pocket of her blouse beneath her handkerchief.

When the wreck occurred, the car they were in, a staunch steel affair, leaped high in air, then wholly uninjured, left the track to topple over on one side and lay there quite still.

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