Part 3

“Yes. I’ve got a letter that I hooked out of his coat pocket not ten minutes ago; a letter from some gang boss o’ his’n in New York, givin’ him goss for not showin’ up results, and allowin’ to pull some sort of a gun on him if the papers don’t begin to print scare heads about a certain railroad management, _pronto_.”

The chemistry expert smiled shrewdly.

“You are not the young man I took you for, Tarbell, if you are not wringing your brain like a wet towel to make it tell you why anybody in New York should wish to see Nevada Short Line wreck bulletins in the newspapers.”

“That ain’t no joke, neither,” Tarbell admitted gravely, adding, “I been hopin’ maybe it would come out in the round-up.”

“Yes,” said Sprague, half-absently. “It will come out in the round-up.” And then, after a thoughtful pause, “Perhaps we’d better go over and relieve Mr. Maxwell’s mind. But first it wouldn’t be a bad idea to telephone the editor of _The Tribune_ and ask him to send his railroad reporter down to Mr. Maxwell’s office. If you say that Mr. Maxwell will probably have a bit of first-page stuff for him, it won’t be necessary to go into details.”

Tarbell went into the hotel lobby to telephone, and afterward they crossed the plaza to the working head-quarters of the double division. Finding the superintendent’s office open and lighted but unoccupied, they went on to the despatcher’s room. In the public space outside of the counter railing three or four trainmen were grouped in front of the bulletin-board looking for their assignments on the night trains and thumbing the file of posted “General Orders.”

Behind the railing Connolly was sitting at his glass-topped wire-table with the train-sheet under his hand and the superintendent at his elbow. Over in the corner under his green-shaded electric bulb, Bolton, the sallow-faced car-record man, was fingering the keys of his type-writer.

Tarbell opened the gate in the railing to admit Sprague and himself. Maxwell looked up and nodded a welcome to his guest.

“Got tired of sitting it out alone, did you?” he said; and then, “I’ll be with you in a minute and we’ll go over to my office. I’m waiting to get Timanyoni’s report of the Limited.”

“Mrs. Maxwell is on the train?”

Maxwell nodded, and a moment later Connolly’s sounder clicked out Timanyoni’s report of the passing train. The fat despatcher was nervous. It showed in his rattling of the key as he O K’d the canyon station’s report, and again in a small disaster when, in reaching for his pen to make the train-sheet entry, he overset his ink-well.

“Well, I’m damned!” he grunted, snatching at the train-sheet and pushing the ink flood back with his free hand. Maxwell came to the rescue, and so did Tarbell; and a liberal application of blotters stopped the flood. But at the close of the incident Connolly’s hands were well blackened.

It was at this conjuncture that Davis, the chief despatcher, came in on the way up to his room in the attic half-story above. Connolly appealed to him at once.

“If you’ll sit in here, just for a minute, Davis, while I go wash my hands?” he said, adding: “I’d ought to be kicked all the way downstairs!”

When Davis had taken the chair and Connolly had gone out, Tarbell whispered to the superintendent. Maxwell nodded, and made a sign to Sprague. When he had closed the door of the despatcher’s room behind himself and his guest, he explained:

“Tarbell says he is ready, and we may as well have it over with. Do you want to be present?”

“As a spectator, yes,” said the expert.

“All right; we’ll go to my office and wait for Archer.”

The waiting interval proved to be short. Maxwell had just thrown his roll-top desk open, and the Government man had planted his big bulk solidly in the half-shadowed window-seat, when the door opened and Connolly came in, his full-moon face a frightened blank and his hands still ink-blackened. Tarbell was only a step behind the despatcher, and the reporter from _The Tribune_ office was at Tarbell’s heels. When the three were inside, Tarbell shut the door and put his back against it.

“Here’s your man, Mr. Maxwell,” he said briefly; and Sprague, who had started to his feet at the door opening, sat down again in the shadow and said nothing.

Maxwell pointed brusquely to a chair at the desk end. “Sit down, Dan,” he snapped. And then: “I suppose you know what you’re here for?”

Connolly fell into the chair as if the sharp command had been a blow.

“Know what I’m here for?” he stammered.

“Yes. Nothing will be gained by dodging. You may as well make a clean breast of it. You’ve been faking these scare wreck reports--don’t lie about it; we’ve got the evidence. I want to know who is behind you. Who bribed you to do this thing?”

“Before God, Mr. Maxwell!” the culprit began, with the sweat rolling down his face; but Maxwell stopped him with a quick gesture.

“I’ve told you it was no use to try to lie out of it. I have here on my desk a letter which was taken from your coat pocket to-night, since you came on duty; a letter from which you were careful enough to tear the signature, but on which you were not careful enough to destroy the date line. In that letter the writer threatens to give you away to the New York police if you don’t get busy and give the newspapers a string of Nevada Short Line wrecks to write about. That is enough to send you over the road, but there’s more. The working wires east and west have been cut under the roof of this building, and leads taken off. The leads disappear in the wall back of your bunk-room. I don’t ask you what you have to say for yourself; I want you to tell us, right here and now, who planned the thing, and what it was intended to accomplish.”

Connolly had been slowly collapsing in his chair under the merciless fire of accusation, and a pasty pallor was driving the pink out of his round face.

“My God!” he gasped thickly; and then he repeated, “My God!” A silence crammed with threatenings settled down upon the small office-room. Suddenly it was broken by the sound of hurried footfalls in the corridor, and Tarbell was hurled half-way across the room when the door was flung open from without.

It was young Cargill, the engineer, who burst into the private office, and his lips were white.

“The Limited!” he broke out. “She’s overrun her orders at Corona and she’s due to meet Second Eighteen on the single track!”

It was the Government man who led the rush to the despatcher’s room, a rush in which even the fat culprit joined. In the wire office Davis had the key; his jaw was set and the perspiration was standing thickly on his forehead, but he had not lost his nerve. Calmaine, the chief clerk, was hanging over his shoulder, and outside of the railing the group of trainmen had grown to a breathless crowd, pressing to hear the latest word.

When Maxwell’s party pushed through the gate, Sprague was still in the lead, and his quick glance took in every detail of the scene. Like a flash he turned upon Tarbell, who was fumbling a pair of handcuffs in his pocket, and pinioned him in a grip that was like the nip of a vice.

“Not yet!” he whispered in Tarbell’s ear; and then Davis snapped his switch and spoke.

“It’s no use,” he said, and his harsh tone was only a thin mask for the break in his voice. “It’s the real thing this time. First Eighteen was ready to pull out of Corona when the Limited went by. Corringer left his wire and chased the freight, hoping to get its engine to cut loose and run after the passenger. He couldn’t catch it.”

A low murmur ran through the crowd packed against the counter railing and somebody whispered, “It’s got the boss; his wife and babies are on that train. Look at him!”

Maxwell had gripped the back of a chair and he was staring hot-eyed at the despatcher.

“Do something, Davis,” he pleaded. “Don’t sit there and let those trains come together! For Christ’s sake, think of something!”

The chief despatcher ducked his head as if he were dodging a blow and swallowed hard.

“There isn’t anything to do, Mr. Maxwell--you know there isn’t anything,” he began in low tones. “If there was----”

It was Connolly who made the break. Twisting away from Tarbell’s grip on his arm he flung himself upon Davis.

“Get out o’ that chair and let me have the key,” he wheezed; and when Davis did not move quickly enough he pounced upon the key standing. Davis got up and quietly slid the chair under the night man who sank heavily into it without missing a letter in the call he was insistently clicking out, over and over again in endless repetition.

“What is it?” whispered the newspaper man, who was standing aside with Tarbell and Sprague; and Tarbell answered:

“It’s the Corcoran coal mine--about half-way between Corona and the first station this side, and a half-mile up the gulch. They’ve got a private wire, but they ain’t got any night operator.”

Davis overheard the whisper and shook his head.

“Dan’s got his wits with him,” he said, in open admiration. “There’s a young time-keeper that sleeps in the coal company’s office shack, and he’s learning to plug in on the wire a little. If Dan can only wake him----” And then, in sudden sharp self-accusation: “God forgive me! why didn’t I think of it and save all the time that’s been wasted?” Then, as Connolly closed the circuit and a halting reply clicked through the receiving instrument: “He’s got him! Thank the Lord, he’s got him! If he can only make him understand what’s wanted, there’s a chance--just one chance in a thousand!”

With the very seconds now freighted with disaster, and with only the crudest of amateur telegraphers at the other end of the wire, nine men out of ten would have blown up and lost the thousandth part of a chance remaining. But Connolly was the tenth man. With his left hand shaking until it was beating a tattoo on the glass table top he hitched his chair closer and began to spell out, letter by letter, the brief call for help upon which so much depended. Tarbell translated for Sprague, word by word. “Hurry--down--to--main-line--and--throw--your--switch--to--red. Then--run--west--and--flag--passenger.”

The key-switch clicked on the final word, and for five long, dragging seconds the silence was a keen agony. Then the sounder began hesitantly: dot--pause--dot; dash--dot--dash, it spelled; and Tarbell translated under his breath, “He says ‘O K’. Now, if he can only chase his feet fast enough----”

How Maxwell managed to live and not die through the interminable twenty minutes that followed; how Davis and Tarbell and Connolly hung breathless over the wire-table, while the throng outside of the railing, augmented now to a jammed crowd of sympathetic watchers, rustled and moved and whispered in awed undertones--are themes upon which the rank and file of the Nevada Short Line still enlarge in the roundhouse tool-rooms and in the switch shanties when the crews are waiting for a delayed train.

The dreadful interval seemed as if it would never be outworn, but the end came at last when the hesitant clicking of the sounder was resumed.

“Call it out, Dan,” shouted somebody among the waiting trainmen, and Connolly pronounced the words slowly as the amateur at the end of the private wire ticked them off.

“Both--trains--safe--freight--backing--to--blind--siding--at-- Quentin--switch--passenger--following--under--flag.”

A shout went up that drowned the feeble patter of the telegraph instruments and made the windows rattle. “Bully for the kid at the coal mine!” “Bully for Danny Connolly!” “Come out here, Danny, till we get a chanst at you!”

Maxwell fought his way stubbornly through the crowd, with the newspaper man, Sprague, Tarbell, and Connolly following in his wake. When the five were once more behind the closed door of the private office across the hall, the superintendent turned morosely upon the night despatcher, and he was so full of the thing he was about to do that he did not notice that his guest had taken Tarbell aside for a whispered conference.

“You’ve drawn the teeth of the law, this time, Connolly,” he said sharply. “After what you’ve just done I’m not going to send you to jail. But the least you can do is to tell me who hired you and sent you out here to make trouble for us. If you’ll do that----”

It was Sprague’s hand on his shoulder that stopped him, and then he noticed that Tarbell had disappeared. “Just a minute--until Tarbell gets back,” said the guest, in low tones; and while he was saying it, the door opened suddenly and the ex-cowboy returned, thrusting a sallow-faced young fellow, shirt-sleeved and livid with fear, into the office ahead of him. Then the Government man went on in the same low tone, “You can say to this young man all the things you were going to say to Mr. Connolly. There was a little miscue on Tarbell’s part, and I was just going to tell you about it when the train trouble butted in.” Then to the fat despatcher, “Mr. Connolly, sit down. You’ve jolly well earned the right to look on and listen.”

Connolly sat down heavily, and so did the superintendent. Thereupon the man from Washington slipped easily into the breach, turning briskly upon the yellow-faced car-record operator.

“Step up here, Bolton, and make a clean sweep of it to Mr. Maxwell. Tell him how a certain firm of New York brokers--you needn’t give the names now--sent you, a convicted bucket-shop wire-tapper, out here to disarrange things on this railroad for stock-jobbing purposes. Then tell him how you tapped the despatcher’s wires and put a set of concealed keys under your car-record table in the other room. Tell him how, after you’d faked that wreck message last night, you ran a bluff for sympathy, and how, when it had worked, your nerve flickered and you dropped from the wrecking-train in the yard and sent a stop-order from the yard office. Come to the front and loosen up!”

Bolton was shuffling forward and was beginning a tremulous confession when Maxwell stopped him harshly.

“You can keep all that to tell in court!” he snapped. And then to Tarbell: “Take him away, Archer. And you go back to your job, Dan, and let Davis go to bed. What I’ve got to say to you will keep.” Then to the young man from the _Tribune_, who had his note-book out and was scribbling down his story at breakneck speed: “Write out what you please, Scanlan, but tell Mr. Kendall that I’ll be up to the office presently, and that I’d like to see the story before it goes to the linotypes.”

When the room was cleared, the snappy little superintendent spun his chair around to face his guest.

“Calvin,” he said solemnly, “you’ll never know how near you came to making me break my heart to-night. If I’d had to send Dan Connolly to jail after what he did in the other room a little while ago----”

The chemistry expert was grinning joyously.

“It was a curious little slip,” he commented. “I thought Tarbell was on; never suspected for a moment that he wasn’t until he butted Connolly in here and shot him at you.”

“But you knew Connolly wasn’t the man? How on top of earth did you run it down, in a single day? I can’t surround it, even yet.”

“It wasn’t much of a nut to crack,” laughed the expert easily. “I hope you’ll have a harder one for me the next time I happen along. I got my pointer last night--before I knew anything at all about the nature of your trouble. You see, Bolton was the only man in the outfit who wasn’t sincerely jarred and horrified by that fake message. I saw it the minute I’d had a look into his eyes. From that on it was easy enough.”

“I don’t see it,” objected Maxwell.

“Don’t you? I merely argued backward from the results your wire-devil was trying to obtain and sent a cipher message to a friend of mine in New York. He put me next to a nice little plot in the Street to hamper Ford and break down your company credit. Then I loafed around your shack here until I found Bolton’s wire machinery. Bolton didn’t catch on, but he was suspicious enough of a stranger like me to take a little measure of precaution by slipping that incriminating letter into Connolly’s coat pocket. I supposed Tarbell knew that, or I’d have told him.”

Maxwell had been listening in appreciative admiration, but gratitude came quickly to the fore when Sprague paused.

“Calvin, there’s no telling how many lives you’ve saved by this little stop-over of yours here in Timanyoni Park!” he broke out. “You’ve done it. When that story, properly trimmed down, comes out in the _Tribune_ to-morrow morning, the bare-nerves strain will go off like that”--snapping his fingers. “I wish I could show you.... By George! there’s the Limited pulling in. I’ve got to go down and meet the wife and kiddies!”

The big-bodied man who called himself a chemistry sharp and confessed to the riding of many hobbies rose up with a laugh.

“You want to show me? All right: take me downstairs with you and show me Mrs. Maxwell and the babies. As for the other, you know as well as I do that it’s all in the day’s work. Pitch out or we’ll miss the folks--and that would be worse than getting another message from the wire-devil.”

II

High Finance in Cromarty Gulch

IT was a warm night for altitude five thousand feet, and the last few lingerers in the dining-car on the eastbound “Flying Plainsman” had their windows open. Midway of the car a quartette of light-hearted young people were exchanging guesses as to the proper classification of a big man with laughing eyes and a fighting jaw who was dining alone at one of the end tables.

“He looks like money--nice, large, ready money--to me,” commented the prettiest of the three young women; but her seat-mate, a handsome young fellow with the badge of his college athletic association worn conspicuously in his button-hole, thought differently. “You’ve fumbled the ball this time, Kitty,” he dissented. “If he isn’t the champion of all the amateur heavy-weights, you can put him down as a ’varsity coach out scouting for talent. Jehu! what a ‘back’ he’d make under the new rules!”

“Vaudeville is my guess,” chimed in the next-to-the-prettiest girl mockingly; “the strong man who puts up the dumb-bells, and all that, you know. If you could break into his luggage, I’d wager a box of chocolates that you’d find a perfectly beautiful suit of pink tights with spangled trunks and resined slippers.”

A little later the big man in the far corner took his change from the waiter and left the car. As he passed the joyous party at the double table there was a good-natured twinkle in his gray eyes and he dropped a neatly engraved card at the collegian’s plate.

“Heavens and earth!--he heard us!” gasped the prettiest girl. And then, feminine curiosity overcoming shame, “What does it say, Tommy?”

The young man held the card so that all could see, and admitted himself a loser in the classification game.

CALVIN W. SPRAGUE, Washington, D. C. _Chemist, Dept. of Agriculture_

was what they read; and the fourth member of the group, a young woman with fine eyes and an adorable chin, who was neither pretty nor prettier, but something far more transcendent, took the card and studied it thoughtfully.

“You’ve all missed the most astonishing thing--how he contrived to overhear us at this distance,” she commented musingly. And then, addressing the vanished card-owner through his bit of pasteboard: “So you’re a chemist, are you, Mr. Sprague? You don’t look it, not the least little bit, and I’m sure you’ll forgive me if I say that I doubt it; doubt it very much indeed.”

While the young people were debating among themselves as to whether or no there might not be an apology due, the big man who had dined alone passed quite through the string of vestibuled Pullmans and went to light his cigar on the rear platform of the combination buffet and observation car.

Shortly after he had seated himself in one of the platform camp-chairs, the train, which had been rocketing down a wide valley with an isolated ridge on one hand and a huge mountain range on the other, came to a stand at one of the few-and-far-between stations. The pause, one would say, should have been only momentary; but after it had lasted for a full minute or more the solitary smoker on the rear platform left his chair and went to lean over the platform railing for a forward glance.

Looking down the length of the long train, he saw the lights of the small station, with other lights beyond it which seemed to mark a railroad crossing or junction. On the station platform there were a number of lanterns held high to light a group of men who were struggling to lift a long, ominous-looking box into the express-car.

A little later the wheels of the train began to trundle again, and as his car-end passed the station the smoker on the observation platform had a fleeting glimpse of the funeral party, and of the heavy four-mule mountain-wagon which had apparently served as its single equipage. Also, he remarked what a less observant person might have missed: that the lantern-bearers were roughly clothed, and that they were armed.

A hundred yards beyond the station the train stopped again; and when it presently began to back slowly the platform watcher understood that it was preparing to take on a lighted coach standing on a siding belonging to the junction railroad. When the coupling was made and the “Flying Plainsman,” with the picked-up car in tow, was once more gathering headway in its eastward flight up the valley of a torrenting mountain river, the big man read the number “04” over the door of the newly added coach. After he had made out the number he coolly put a leg over the barrier railing, brushed the guarding porter aside, and pushed his way through the narrow side corridor of the trailer.

In the rear half of the car the corridor opened into a comfortable working-room fitted with easy-chairs, lounges, and a desk; otherwise, the office in transit of the Nevada Short Line’s general superintendent, Mr. Richard Maxwell. Maxwell was at his desk when the big-bodied intruder shouldered himself into the open compartment, but he sprang up joyfully when he recognized his unannounced visitor.

“Why, Calvin, old man! Where in thunder did you drop from?” he demanded, wringing the hand of greeting in a vain endeavor to match the big man’s crushing grip. “Sit down and tell it out. I thought you’d gone back east over the Transcontinental a full month ago.”

The man whose card named him as a Government chemist picked out the easiest of the lounging-chairs and planted himself comfortably in it.

“Jarred you, did I? That’s nothing; I’ve jarred worse men than you are in my time. Your thinking machinery is all right; I was due to go back a month ago, but I got interested in a little laboratory experiment on the coast and couldn’t tear myself away. How are Mrs. Maxwell and the kiddies?”

“Fine! And I’m hurrying to get home to them. I’ve been out for a week and had begun to think I was never going to get back to the Brewster office again. I’ve been having the busiest little ghost dance you ever heard of during the past few days.”

The big man settled himself still more comfortably in his chair and relighted the cigar, which, being of the dining-car brand, had sulked for a time and then gone dejectedly out.

“Will the busy story bear telling?” he asked.

“Yes--to you,” was the half-guarded reply. “You’ll be interested when I tell you that I’m inclined to believe that it’s ‘a little more of the same’--a continuation of our round-up with the ‘wire-devil’ that you straightened out for us a few weeks ago.”

The listener nodded. “Begin back a bit,” he suggested; and Maxwell did it.