Bourke and the priest arrived in Albany at two minutes past eight in the morning. A hack carried them to the governor’s house in less than ten minutes.

Bourke’s ring was answered immediately. He had his card ready, also that of the priest.

“Take these to the governor,” he said to the butler. “We must see him at once.”

“The governor took the 8.13 express for New York.”

Bourke uttered an oath which the priest did not rebuke.

“Did he leave an answer to a telegram he received between two and five this morning?”

“No, sir; no telegrams are ever sent here—by special orders, sir. They are all sent to the State House.”

Bourke’s skin turned grey; his eyes dulled like those of a dying man. But only for a moment. His brain worked with its customary rapidity.

“Come,” he said to the priest. “There is only one thing to do.”

To the hackman he said: “Twenty dollars if you get to the station in five minutes.”

He and the priest jumped into the hack. The driver lashed the horses. They dashed down the steep hills of Albany. Two policemen rushed after them, shouting angrily; but the horses galloped the faster, the driver bounding on his seat. People darted shrieking out of their way. Other teams pulled hastily aside, oaths flying.

They reached the station in exactly four minutes and a half. Bourke had little money with him, but he was well known, and known to be wealthy. In less than five minutes the superintendent, in regard for a check for two hundred and fifty dollars, had ordered out the fastest engine in the shop. In ten minutes more it was ready, and the message had flashed along the line to make way for “45.”

By this time every man in the yard was surging about the engine in excited sympathy. As the engineer gave the word and Bourke and the priest climbed in, the men cheered lustily. Bourke raised his hat. Father Connor waved them his blessing. The engine sprang down the road in pursuit of the New York express.

Despite the flying moments, the horror that seemed to sit grimacing upon the hour of eleven every time that he looked at his watch, Bourke felt the exhilaration of that ride, the enchantment of uncertainty. The morning air was cool; the river flashed with gold; the earth was very green. They seemed to cut the air as they raced through fields and towns, dashed and whizzed round curve after curve. People ran after them, some shouting with terror, thinking it was a runaway engine.

Father Connor had bought some sandwiches at the station, and Bourke ate mechanically. He wondered if he should ever recognise the fine flavour of food again.

The priest put his lips to Bourke’s ear and spoke for the first time.

“Where do you expect to catch the train?”

“At Poughkeepsie. It waits there ten minutes.”

“And what shall you do if you don’t catch it?”

“Go on to Sing Sing, and do the best I can. I have made one fatal mistake: I should have telegraphed to Sing Sing. But I was mad, I think, until I reached Albany, and there it is no wonder I forgot it. The regular time for—that business is round eleven o’clock, about a quarter past; but if the warden happens to be drunk there’s no telling what he will take it into his head to do. But I dare not stop.”

Suddenly they shot about a curve. The engineer shouted “There! There!” A dark speck was just making another curve, far to the south.

“The express!” cried the engineer. “We’ve side-tracked everything else. We’ll catch her now.”

An hour later they dashed into Poughkeepsie, the express only two minutes ahead of them. Amidst a crowd of staring people, Bourke and the priest, begrimed, dishevelled, leaped from the engine and boarded a parlour car of the express. Alone, Bourke would probably have been arrested as a madman, controlled as was his demeanour; but the priest’s frock forbade interference.

The governor was not in the parlour car, nor in the next, nor in the next.

Yes, he had been there, a porter replied, and would be there again; but he had left the train as soon as it had stopped. No, he did not know in what direction he had gone; nor did any one else.

There was nothing to do but to wait. Bourke sent a telegram to Sing Sing, but it relieved his anxiety little: he knew the languid methods of the company’s officials in country towns.

There were five of those remaining seven minutes when he thought he was going mad. An immense crowd had gathered by this time about the station. Nobody knew exactly what was the matter, and nobody dared ask the man walking rapidly up and down the platform, watch in hand, gripping the arm of a priest; but hints were flying, and no one doubted that this sudden furious incursion of a flying engine and the extraordinary appearance of Bourke had to do with the famous prisoner at Sing Sing.

At exactly three minutes to starting time the governor came sauntering down the street, a tooth-pick in his mouth, his features overspread with the calm and good-will which bespeak a recently warmed interior. Bourke reached him almost at a bound. He was a master of words, and in less than a minute he had presented the governor with the facts in the case and handed him the affidavit.

“Good,” said the governor. “I’m glad enough to do this. It’s you that will understand, Mr. Bourke, that I would have been violating a sacred duty if I’d slapped public opinion in the face before.”

He wrote rapidly on the back of the affidavit.

“This will do for the present,” he said. “I’ll fix it up in style when I go back. You’re a great man, Mr. Bourke.”

But Bourke had gone. Whistles were sounding, train men were yelling. He and the priest barely had time to jump on their engine when they were ordered to clear the track.

Bourke glanced at his watch as they sprang out of the station. The time was twenty minutes past ten. It was barely possible to reach Sing Sing in three quarters of an hour. Lead was in his veins. His head felt light. The chances for his last and paramount success were very slim.

But the great engine dashed along like an inspired thing, and seemed to throb in sympathy. There was a note of triumphant encouragement in its sudden piercing shrieks. It tossed a cow off the track as lightly as the poor brute had lately whisked a fly from its hind-quarters. It whistled merrily to the roaring air. It snorted disdainfully when Bourke, refusing to heed its mighty lullaby, curved his hands about his mouth and shouted to the engineer:—

“For God’s sake, go faster!”