I have made another muddle of it, I admit!  My lord Faruskiar, of whom I had made a hero—­by telegraph—­for the readers of the Twentieth.  Century.  Decidedly my good intentions ought certainly to qualify me as one of the best paviers of a road to a certain place you have doubtless heard of.

We are, as I have said, two hundred yards from the valley of the Tjon, so deep and wide as to require a viaduct from three hundred and fifty to four hundred feet long.  The floor of the valley is scattered over with rocks, and a hundred feet down.  If the train had been hurled to the bottom of that chasm, not one of us would have escaped alive.  This memorable catastrophe—­most interesting from a reporter’s point of view—­would have claimed a hundred victims.  But thanks to the coolness, energy and devotion of the young Roumanian, we have escaped this terrible disaster.

All?  No!  Kinko has paid with his life for the safety of his fellow passengers.

Amid the confusion my first care was to visit the luggage van, which had remained uninjured.  Evidently if Kinko had survived the explosion he would have got back into his box and waited till I put myself in communication with him.

Alas!  The coffer is empty—­empty as that of a company which has suspended payment.  Kinko has been the victim of his sacrifice.

And so there has been a hero among our traveling companions, and he was not this Faruskiar, this abominable bandit hidden beneath the skin of a manager, whose name I have so stupidly published over the four corners of the globe!  It was this Roumanian, this humble, this little, this poor fellow, whose sweetheart will wait for him in vain, and whom she will never again see!  Well, I will do him justice!  I will tell what he has done.  As to his secret, I shall be sorry if I keep it.  If he defrauded the Grand Transasiatic, it is thanks to that fraud that a whole train has been saved.  We were lost, we should have perished in the most horrible of deaths if Kinko had not been there!

I went back on to the line, my heart heavy, my eyes full of tears.

Assuredly Faruskiar’s scheme—­in the execution of which he had executed his rival Ki-Tsang—­had been cleverly contrived in utilizing this branch line leading to the unfinished viaduct.  Nothing was easier than to switch off the train if an accomplice was at the points.  And as soon as the signal was given that we were on the branch, all he had to do was to gain the foot-plate, kill the driver and stoker, slow the train and get off, leaving the steam on full to work up to full speed.

And now there could be no doubt that the scoundrels worthy of the most refined tortures that Chinese practice could devise were hastening down into the Tjon valley.  There, amid the wreck of the train, they expected to find the fifteen millions of gold and precious stones, and this treasure they could carry off without fear of surprise when the night enabled them to consummate this fearful crime.  Well!  They have been robbed, these robbers, and I hope that they will pay for their crime with their lives, at the least.  I alone know what has passed, but I will tell the story, for poor Kinko is no more.