Kidnap on the California Comet

This journey takes too long between stations and has a protagonist who is kept from processing the essentials of the mystery of which he knowingly observed signs because his nose hasn't been rubbed in the details of the mechanics. Did the author intend that the reader figure it out before the boy sleuth? Not adeptly, for sure. A niggling detail is that a secondary character who is introduced with a really annoying habit, never exhibits that habit after that first scene.