Part 6

“Aw right; gwan in. But there’ll be no scrappin’, mind ye. If there does be anny, I’ll be takin’ a hand, meself.”

Sprague took the lead in the silent march to the indicated door, his big bulk looming colossal in the narrow, low-studded hallway. Reaching the door, he turned the knob noiselessly. “Locked,” he muttered, and then he drew back and put his shoulder to it.

The lock gave way with a report like a muffled pistol shot and the door flew open. The room was lighted by a single incandescent bulb swinging on its cord from the ceiling. On a cot which had been dragged out from its place beside the wall lay the chief clerk, bare-footed, gagged, and securely bound with many wrappings of cotton clothes-line. Standing over him, one of them with the lighted match he had been holding to the bare foot-soles still blazing, were two others; a red-headed, yellow-faced man with one eye missing, and a thick-shouldered athlete aptly answering to Sprague’s description whispered to the superintendent in the room below.

Maxwell sprang forward with an oath when he recognized the man with the burning match. “_Murtrie!_” he exploded; and the torturer with the black eyes and puffy face dropped the match-end and grabbed for his weapon. He was a fraction of a second too slow. Tarbell had covered him with a movement which was too quick for the eye to follow and was reaching backward for the other gun--which Maxwell gave him--while Sprague closed the door and set his back against it.

“The jig is up--definitely up, Givens,” said the Government man pleasantly. And then to Tarbell: “Herd those two into a corner, Archer, while we take some of these impediments off of Mr. Calmaine.”

When the chief clerk was freed he tried to sit up; tried and would have fallen if Maxwell had not caught him. “They’ve burked me,” he mumbled; “but--they didn’t make me tell, and they didn’t get--the papers.”

“Take it easy,” said Maxwell soothingly; “You’ll be all right in a minute or so.” Then, in a fresh access of rage: “They’ll pay for this, Harvey, if it takes every dollar I’ve got in the world!”

Calmaine tried sitting up again, found that he could compass it, and reached feebly for his shoes and socks.

“The--the proxies are safe--if it doesn’t rain,” he quavered, his mind still running on the precious papers of which he had been the bearer. “Get--get me out of this and into an auto and I’ll find them for you. We might--might catch Number Six, if we hurry.”

Tarbell, with Sprague’s help, had deftly handcuffed the two men whom he had backed into a corner. It was the one-eyed man who first found speech in an outpouring of profanity venomous and horrible. “You ain’t got us out o’ here yet,” he spat, trailing the defiance out in more of the cursings.

“But we’re going to get you out if we have to throw you through the window,” said Sprague quietly. Then to Maxwell: “Help the boy with his shoes, Dick. We’re due to have a jail delivery here, any minute.”

It took some little time to get the maltreated chief clerk shod and afoot, and even then he was well-nigh crippled. But he was game to the last. “They took my gun away from me,” he complained. “If I only had something to fight with--Archer, give me that black devil’s pistol.”

Sprague’s warning had not been baseless. The stair-head guard had doubtless seen Sprague shoulder the locked door open, and had sprung a still alarm. There was a hurrying of many feet in the hall, marking the gathering of the gambling-house fighting force. While Calmaine was asking for a weapon, the crowd in the hall began to batter at the door, against which Sprague had once more put his huge bulk, and were calling to Murtrie to open to them.

Sprague gave his directions snappily, as if he were signalling his foot-ball squad. “Draw that cot a little this way--that’s right. Now then, Archer, stand here against the wall with your two jail-birds, and when I give the word, rush ’em for the yard by the stairway entrance. If they don’t obey, plug ’em, and plug ’em quick. Maxwell, you and the boy get over on this side. When you’re ready, turn off that light. Quick! They’re going to charge us!”

The simple programme was carried out precisely and to the letter. When the rush came the room was in darkness, and Sprague stepped lightly aside. Thereupon a dozen charging men, finding no resistance in the suddenly released door, piled themselves in cursing confusion over the barricading cot.

“Now!” shouted Sprague, and the dash for liberty was made, with the big man in the lead clearing the hall of its stragglers, brushing them aside with his mighty weight or driving them before him like chaff in the fury of his onset. At the stair-head there were more coming up from below: Sprague caught the bullet-headed ring-fighter around the waist, and using him as a missile, cleared the stairway at a single throw. “Come on!” he yelled to those who were behind; and a moment later the unlocked door at the stair-foot gave them egress to the open air and to the yard where the automobiles were parked.

Quite naturally, the din of the battle had precipitated a panic in the unlicensed road-house, and the building was disgorging, through doors and windows, and even over the roofs of the shelter sheds. Tarbell drove his two prisoners into the tonneau of the hired car, while Maxwell promptly cranked the motor and Sprague lifted Calmaine bodily to the front seat. Ten seconds beyond this, while the panic was still at its height, the hired car, leading all others in the townward rush, was leaving a dense dust trail to befog its followers, and the capture and rescue were facts accomplished.

With Tarbell at the steering-wheel, the car sped silently through the western suburb and came into the deserted, echoing streets of the city. Without asking any questions, the ex-cowboy drove straight to the county jail and pulled up at the curb in front of the grim building, with its heavily grilled windows showing their steel barrings in the street light. Sprague passed the two prisoners out to him, jerking even the bigger of the two clear of the auto step as if he had been a feather-weight. But when Tarbell would have marched the pair across the sidewalk, Sprague called out.

“Just one question, Givens,” he said brusquely. “You know what you’re in for; you know that you are still wanted in Cleveland on that charge of counterfeiting. But if you’ll answer one question straight, we’ll forget the Ohio indictment for the present. What did you do with the swag that you lifted a few hours ago?”

For five full seconds the black-haired man kept silence. Then he spoke as the spirit moved him.

“It’s where you won’t get it--you n’r them make-believe crooks up at the Molly Baldwin!” he rasped.

“Oho!” Sprague laughed. “So you planned it to give your side partners in this little game the double-cross, did you? It’s like you. Take them away, Archer.”

“And--and hurry back!” whispered Calmaine hoarsely. “We’ve simply _got_ to catch Number Six, I tell you!”

Thus urged, Tarbell expedited matters with the night jailer and came running back to take his place behind the steering-wheel.

“Where now?” he asked, dropping the clutch in; and it was Calmaine who gave the direction.

“The Reservation Road east; it’s the one we came in over.”

Tarbell easily broke all the speed records, to say nothing of speed limits, in the race to the eastward over the dry mesa country. Twenty-odd miles from town they met the sheriff’s party, and there was a momentary halt for explanations. “Camp down right where you are, and we’ll go back pretty soon and send a bunch of autos out after you,” was Maxwell’s word of encouragement; and then the big car sped on its way toward Cromarty Gulch.

Calmaine seemed to have preserved his sense of locality marvellously. A few hundred yards short of the spot at the gulch head where Follansbee’s dogs had begun their aimless circlings, he told Tarbell to pull up.

“They are right along here, somewhere,” he said, getting out to hobble painfully ahead of the others when Tarbell took off a side-lamp to serve for a lantern. “They had me blindfolded, at first, and I didn’t know what they were trying to do with me. When they chucked me into the auto, I tried to make a get-away. While they were knocking me silly again, I managed to get the papers out of my pocket and fire them into the sagebrush. It was right along here, somewhere.”

It was Sprague who discovered the thick packet upon which so much depended. It was lying cleverly chance-hidden under a clump of the greasewood bushes. “Found!” he announced. And then he gave the young chief clerk his due meed of commendation. “You’re a young man to bet on, Mr. Calmaine. What we’ve been able to do, thus far, wouldn’t amount to much if you hadn’t kept your head.” Then he turned quickly to the superintendent. “How do we stand for time, now, Maxwell?”

Maxwell held his watch to the light and shook his head dejectedly.

“Number Six, the Fast Mail, is due at Corona in five minutes. We can never make it in this world!”

“You bet we can!” shouted Tarbell. “Help Mr. Calmaine, and pile into the car--quick!”

The short race to the near-by mining-camp was a sheer breakneck dash, but Tarbell made good. When the four of them leaped from the car and stormed into Allen’s office, the Fast Mail had already whistled for the “clear” signal, and the operator was reaching for the cord of his semaphore to give the “go-by” wigwag. They yelled at him as one man; and a few seconds later the fast train slid to a shrieking stop at the station.

Maxwell would have sent Tarbell on to New York with the precious proxies, but Calmaine pleaded pathetically for his chance to finish that which he had begun.

“I’ll be all right as soon as I can get into the sleeper and get these infernal shoes off,” he protested. “It’s my job, Mr. Maxwell; for pity’s sake don’t make me a quitter!”

“Let him go,” said Sprague; “he’s earned his chance to stay in the game--and this time he’ll make a touch-down.” And so it was decided.

When the Fast Mail, with its lately added passenger, had slid away among the hills to the eastward, the three who remained at Corona climbed into the hired auto and Tarbell drove another record race to town, pausing only once, when they reached the sheriff’s roadside camp, to take on Harding and as many of his deputies as the car would hold.

By Maxwell’s direction, Tarbell drove first to the railroad head-quarters, where the superintendent and his guest got out. At the office entrance another dusty car was drawn up; and in the upper corridor they found the two young men from the Molly Baldwin mine, still seeking for information. Sprague disposed of them, and he did it with business-like brevity.

“Your dead man has been found,” he told them crisply. “He is at present in the county jail, with one of his accomplices; and when he is given the third degree, he will probably tell all he knows. It’s a weakness he has--not to be able to hold out against a bit of rough handling. If you two fellows will make a clean breast of your part in the swindle to the prosecuting attorney, and promise to play fair with your lessors in future, it is likely that you’ll be let off with a fine, and you’ll probably be able to bag the remainder of the gang and to recover your lost gold.”

The two young men heard, gasped, and backed away. When they were gone, Maxwell unlocked the door of his business office, snapped on the lights, opened his desk, and pressed the electric button which summoned Connolly, the night despatcher.

“I thought you’d like to know that we’ve caught up with the dead man, Dan,” he said, when the fat despatcher came in; and then he briefed the story of the chase, winding up with a peremptory order to be sent to the division despatcher at the Copah end of the line not to let the eastbound connection get away from the Fast Mail at the main line junction.

When Connolly had gone back to his key, Maxwell wheeled upon his guest.

“It’s late, Calvin, and by all the laws of hospitality I ought to take you home and put you to bed. But I’ll be hanged if you shall close an eye until you’ve told me how you did all this!”

The expert chemist ex-foot-ball coach planted himself in the easiest of the office chairs and chuckled joyously.

“Gets you, does it?” he said; and then: “I’m not sure that I can explain it so that you will understand, but I’ll try. In the first place, it is necessary to go at these little problems with a perfectly open mind--the laboratory mind, which is neither prejudiced nor prepossessed nor in any way concerned with anything but the bare facts. Reason, and the proper emphasis to be placed upon each fact as it comes to bat, are the two needful qualities in any problem-solving--and about the only two.”

“You are soaring around about a mile over my head; but go on,” said Maxwell.

“All right; I’ll set out the facts in the order in which they came to me. First, I see a dozen men loading a coffin into an express-car. I note the extreme weight, and wonder how a dead man, any dead man who doesn’t have to have his coffin built to order, can be so infernally heavy. Next, you tell me about your proxy fact--which doesn’t have any bearing at the moment--and then you tell me about the dead man, and how his friends were shipping him to Kentucky. Then comes the news of the bizarre hold-up in Cromarty Gulch. Instantly the reasoning mind, the laboratory mind, if you prefer, goes to work, with the two foreknown facts--the heavy-dead-man fact, and the fact that your chief clerk is on that train with his valuable papers--clamoring each for its hearing. Don’t let me bore you.”

“Heavens--you’re not boring me! What next?”

“Reason, the laboratory brand of it, tells me immediately that your proxy fact has the emphasis. You had told me that your Wall Street opponents had been throwing stumbling-blocks in your way in the obtaining of the proxies. Here, said I, is the last desperate resort. Nevertheless, there were complications. I was pretty sure that the hold-ups had taken Calmaine and his papers; that this was what the hold-up was for. But in order to get track of them--and of Calmaine--other facts must be added. We added them on the trip with the special train; all we needed, and a few more thrown in for good measure.”

“I don’t see it,” Maxwell objected.

“Don’t you? When we reached the scene of the hold-up, I was already doubting the heavy-dead-man theory; doubting it extremely. Also, my reason told me that the robbers, carrying some weight which was heavier than any dead person, would not trust to a team which could be overtaken, if need be, by pursuers on foot. Hence the automobile track that we found. Then we came to the coffin, and half of the mystery vanished at once. If you hadn’t been excited and--well, let us say, prepossessed, you would have noticed that there was no smell of disinfectants, that the coffin pillow wasn’t dented with the print of a head, that the broken glass was lying on the pillow, as it wouldn’t have been if the man’s head had been there when the plate was smashed, that----”

“Great Scott,” Maxwell broke in, in honest self-depreciation, “what blind bats we are--most of us!”

“Oh, no; I was bringing the specially trained mind to bear, you must remember; the scientifically trained mind. You couldn’t afford to cultivate it; it wouldn’t leave room for your business of railroad managing. But I’ll cut it short. I saw that there had been no corpse in the coffin, and that there had been something else in it--something heavy enough to leave its marks on the silk lining, which was torn and soiled. Also, I saw, away down in the foot end of the thing, an ingot-shaped chunk of something that looked like a bar of gold bullion; one piece of the heavy coffin load that had been overlooked in the hurried emptying. That’s why I advised you to bring the coffin back on your train. There’s a ten-thousand-dollar gold brick in it, right now!”

“Heavens and earth!” gasped the listener; but Sprague went on rapidly.

“Just here is where your machine-made detective would have missed the emphasis. But the scientist, having once for good and sufficient reasons placed his emphasis, never has occasion to change it. The main thing yet was the stopping of your messenger to Ford. I was convinced that the gold robbery, in which, of course, not only the two young lessees, but the man Murtrie as well, must be implicated, was only a side-issue, intended either to divert attention from the main thing, or as a double-cross theft on the part of Murtrie. When you and Tarbell described Murtrie for me on the way back to town, I had it all, simply because I happened to know the man. He is a counterfeiter, whom I have twice run down for the Department of Justice; but who, both times, contrived to break jail and get away.”

“But how were you able to strike so sure and hard at Holladay’s?”

“Just a bit more reasoning; as you’ll see presently. After we had established the fact that Calmaine wasn’t on the train--but argue it out for yourself. They’d take him somewhere where he could be kept safe and out of the way until the criminals concerned were all securely out of the country. And where would they take him if not to the unlawful den out yonder on the pike where Murtrie was best known, and from which, no doubt, he secured his helpers for the hold-up job?”

“But hold on,” Maxwell interrupted. “I haven’t got it entirely clear yet. If Murtrie put up this job with Calthrop and Higgins----”

Sprague shook his head.

“You have no imagination, Dick. Murtrie came here to do you up in the proxy business--as the Wall Street crowd’s last resort. He got in with Calthrop and Higgins and showed them how to beat their game, meaning to put the double-cross on them--as he did--when the time came. He was merely killing two birds with one stone; but your bird was the big one. I don’t know what sort of a dodge he put up with Calthrop and Higgins, but I can suppose that there is a trusty confederate at the Kentucky end of the string who is doubtless waiting now for a corpse that will never come.”

“Of course!” said the unimaginative one disgustedly. “Just the same, it’s all mighty miraculous to me, Calvin--how you can reason out these things hot off the bat, as you do. Why, Great Jonah! I had all the opportunities you had, and then some; and I didn’t see an inch ahead of my nose at any stage of the game!”

The big man rose and yawned good-naturedly.

“It’s my hobby--not yours,” he laughed; and then, as the telephone buzzer went off with a purring noise under Maxwell’s desk: “That will be Mrs. Maxwell, calling up to ask why in the world you don’t come home. Tell her all right, and let’s go. It will be the biggest miracle of all if you succeed in getting me up in time for breakfast to-morrow--or rather, I should say, to-day, since it’s three o’clock, and worse, right now.”

Maxwell put the receiver to his ear and exchanged a few words with some one at the other end of the wire. When he closed his desk and made ready to go, a little frown of reflective puzzlement was gathering between his eyes.

“You know too much--too thundering much, Calvin. As I said a while back, it’s uncanny. It was Alice; and she said the very words you said she would: ‘Why in the world don’t you come home, Dick?’ If you weren’t so blooming big and beefy and good-natured--but, pshaw! who ever heard of a fat wizard? Come on; let’s go and hunt a taxi. It’s too far to walk.”

III

The Electrocution of Tunnel Number Three

AT ten o’clock on the second Tuesday after the return of the lately promoted chief night despatcher, Dan Connolly, from his wedding trip, the business of the Brewster wire office had settled down, momentarily at least, into the comfortable rut of routine. Everything was moving smoothly on the double division, and between the leisurely inscribing of the figured entries on the train-sheet, the fat, jolly-looking night chief had a chance to fill his corn-cob pipe and to swap a word of gossip now and then with Johnson, the car-record operator who, as “Wire-Devil” Bolton’s successor, was clattering at his type-writer in the far corner of the bare room.

It was after he had finished typing the long “record” report from Red Butte that Johnson twisted himself in his chair to say: “Who is that fellow ‘Scientific Sprague’ that I’ve been hearing so much about since I came on the job, Dan?”

The fat despatcher chuckled reminiscently and sat back in his tilting chair.

“Mr. Sprague? He’s a whole team, and an extra horse hitched on behind, Shorty; that’s about what he is. Don’t you ever go around advertising your freshness in the Timanyoni by giving it out that you don’t know Mr. Calvin Sprague.”

“I reckon I’ve already done done it, haven’t I?” laughed the car-record man. “What if you fix me so I won’t have to do it again?”

Connolly held a lighted match to the blackened bowl of the corn-cob, and then put both match and pipe aside to take the “train-passing” report of the incoming westbound “Quick-step” as it was clicked through the sounder from the first telegraph station east of Brewster.

“Mr. Sprague is about the biggest man that ever walked into this office, Shorty,” he averred, after he had made the proper train-sheet entry for the approaching train. “Big up and down, big through the middle, big sideways, and biggest of all in his think-tank. He can look you over twice and tell you the exact size of the yellow spot on your liver; and if that won’t do, he’ll look you over again and tell you how all-fired near you came to breaking your bond record one night up at that little shack station you’ve been running in the mining country.”

The newly appointed car-record man bounded out of his chair as if he had been shot.

“I--I didn’t, Dan!” he protested, dry-lipped; “so help me God, I didn’t!” And then, curiosity getting the better of the sudden shock: “How in Sam Hill did you know?”

Connolly grinned good-naturedly and made a motion with the flat of his hand as if he would reach across the room and push Johnson back into his chair.

“Take it plumb easy, kid,” he laughed. “I was only talking through my hat--just hitting out in the dark to show you how Mr. Sprague could size you up if he wanted to. But you asked who he is: he’s a friend of Mr. Maxwell’s, and he lives in Washington when he’s at home--does chemical stunts in one of the Government offices. He’s happened to soak in here a couple of times when we were needing a bushel or two more brains than we could make out to rustle up among ourselves, and----”

The break came in an importunate chattering of the west-line sounder on Connolly’s table, and the despatcher righted his tilted chair with a thump and fell upon his key. The car-record man sat back with his hands locked at the nape of his neck and looked on absently. Out of the din and clatter of the several sounders he could easily have picked the story that was coming from the west over Connolly’s wire, but the trained operator’s habit of ignoring the irrelevant wire chatter was upon him, and his first intimation of the nature of the story came in the fading of the ruddy flush in Connolly’s full-moon cheeks and the uncontrollable trembling of the despatcher’s left and unbusied hand.

Instantly the short-legged car-record operator left his chair and crossed the room to hang over Connolly’s shoulder.

“What’s the trouble, Dan?” he asked.