Francis Lynde

“ The evening train was feeling its way down over the wireless line and was half-way to Brewster before the three men sitting in the otherwise unoccupied smoking-compartment of the sleeper broke the silence which the sudden tragedy had laid upon them. But at the lighting of his third cigar Maxwell could contain himself no longer.
"It's another of your miracles, Calvin," he said. "By this time I'm so well used to them that nothing you do feazes me any more. But I'm sure Billy will sleep better to-night if you tell him how you did it."
The big man grunted softly. ”

“ Bascom was stooping to pat a stray dog, but he rose to his feet when the three came down upon him.
"You're the man we're looking for, Bascom," said Maxwell shortly. "I want a light engine to go up to Tunnel Number Three. What have you got in?"
The big master mechanic twiddled the bunch of charms on his watch-fob, and the stray dog began to sniff warily at Benson's heels.
"The Nine-fifteen's got fire in her; will she do?"
"Yes. Get me a crew as quickly as you can. I want a man who isn't afraid to run." ”

“ Maxwell explained briefly.
"Two of our trains are trying to get together on a single track up at Tunnel Number Three in the Hophras. There is a break-down in the tunnel, and half a hundred men are sprinting over the mountain to try to head off the other train."
"What? half a hundred? There ought to be at least one or two good sprinters among that many—somebody who can make your touch-down for you. How does it come that you happened to have as big a crowd as that on the side-lines—at this time of night?" ”

“ Later in the day Maxwell brought his brother-in-law, "Billy" Starbuck, around to the new office, introducing him as a mine owner and a gentleman of easy leisure, and one who knew every square acre of soil, arable or otherwise, in the entire Timanyoni.
"Billy has nothing on earth to do, and, like me, he is a temporary widower," Maxwell explained. "We married sisters, and his wife has gone with mine and the Fairbairns to dabble in the salt sea waves at Norman Towers. Make use of him as you can, only don't take his word for the gentleness of the horse you're going to ride. ”

“ Sprague declared definitely. "They'll come back at you, and keep on coming back, until you get a fair grand-jury underhold on the men at the top. I counted confidently upon being able to give you that underhold to-day. I thought we had Stribling where he would be obliged to turn state's evidence. It was our misfortune that he happened to be too good a man; that he was only the tool of a villain and not a villain himself. They'll hit you again, Maxwell, and go on hitting you until you can strike back hard enough to put some of the men higher up in the prisoner's dock." ”

“ Maxwell hesitated for a single instant and looked across at Sprague. But the expert's back was turned and he was still staring fixedly at the distant tunnel mouth. The superintendent took the receiver and spoke crisply.
"This is Maxwell: if you're ready, turn on the power."
At the word, Sprague faced about quickly and fixed his gaze upon Stribling. The young man had turned aside in his chair and his face was ghastly. Benson and Maxwell were watching the indicator on the wall; but Starbuck was rising noiselessly from his seat on the cot, with one hand buried in the side-pocket of his coat. ”

“ It was the man from Washington who replied.
"Don't make it harder for yourself than you have to," he said gently. "We've got it all. We know that you had that train stopped last night so that you could unload those empty dynamite boxes—they are empty, you know—without discovery. We also know that this morning you placed a quantity of nitro-glycerine in that safety-switch, and that you have the wiring rigged to fire the stuff and destroy the tunnel." ”

“ 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." ”

“ Every long-term man answers to a number instead of to his name. At the moment I was numbering the bottles of chemicals which Tarbell had been buying for me, and I turned the talk upon my peculiar system of labelling—by numbers. Starbuck himself did the rest. He said, 'I reckon I wouldn't rent even a post-office box if it had to have a number on it.' That was all, but it was enough. "
Maxwell was toying with his dessert.
"As I have said several times before, Calvin, you are almost uncanny now and then. You know too much. Some fine day it will strike in on you—sour on you and make you sick." ”

“ A tunnel always seems to me like a man's neck. One little grip and a squeeze, and your man, though he may have a couple of hundred pounds of other organs in perfect working order, is dead." Maxwell laughed at the quaint conceit, though he was prompt to make the timely application. ”

“ There was a brief and brittle colloquy in which the emphatic word was made to do duty for entire sentences, a wait, and when the clicking began again the superintendent translated audibly, quite as if Connolly, listening with all of his five senses concentrated in the single one of hearing, were not taking the hopeful information as it came from the sounder.
"Stribling's there, and every sprinter in the camp is turning out to do a Marathon over the hill to the west end. Just the same, it will be touch and go if they make it in time to warn the Mail. ”

“ It is the real safety device, Stribling says; the others are merely mechanical cut-outs for the use of the wire repairers. He was explaining it to me this morning when he was connecting it in with the power wires. It's an ordinary oil-protected switch so adjusted that in case an accident happens to a train in the tunnel the circuit will be broken automatically and the live-wire current cut out. It's a good thing, you'd say. It would make your flesh creep to think what it would mean to have those high-power wires short-circuiting into a wreck. ”

“ The start was made briskly enough, but two miles beyond the yard-limits the caboose-car chucked noisily as Bascom slowed for the single-span bridge over the Gloria.
"Good Gad!" raged Maxwell, jumping up and jerking the air-whistle cord for full speed ahead. "If he's going to slow up for every trestle we come to, we'll never get anywhere!" ”

“ Stribling has always treated me fine, and he is a fellow you can hardly help cottoning to, right from the jump. But some way something inside of me keeps on telling me that he's too smooth—too damned smooth. Last night, for instance, in that derailment muddle—there wasn't anything he wouldn't do, didn't do, to help us out. He packed his men into the tunnel so thick that nobody could get near that derailed car; in fact, he had the car on the rails and the train backing out before I could get any action at all."
"What caused the derailment, Mr. Benson?" Sprague put in quietly. ”

“ Maxwell was leaning out and shouting to the volunteer in the cab.
"Easy, Bascom!" he yelled; "they're carrying green!"
Bascom looked back and nodded; and the red-headed fireman strolled on ahead to take his stand at the upper switch.
"Anything significant about the St. Patrick's Day color?" queried Sprague; and Maxwell said there was.
"It means another section following," he explained; and then: "Here it comes!" And as he said it, another freight came into view, plunging around the curves toward the siding. ”

“ To-morrow you'll chase out and help me find a couple of office rooms where I can set up a small laboratory; and after that I'll go out in the woods and dig dirt—which it is my official nature so to do. That's enough about me. How are you getting along with the railroad wreckers?"
Maxwell lighted his pipe and answered categorically.
"We have heard nothing more, directly, from the Wall Street people since that break they made a few weeks ago trying to hold up the proxies I was sending to President Ford in New York," was Maxwell's summing up of the current situation. ”

“ That was merely the outgrowth of a curious sort of letting down that comes once in a while on every railroad, no matter how well it may be manned or handled. Our let-down has been coming on gradually ever since we got over the 'Wire Devil' scare. Men, good men who have been with us for years, take chances that would make your hair stand on end. Like this to-night," and he went on to describe the causes which had led up to the near-tragedy at Tunnel Number Three.
"I see," said Sprague. And then: "You say you are electrifying? ”

“ Maxwell had his pocket time-card out, though he did not need to consult it. "Sixteen and Eighteen are somewhere between here and Nophi," he announced. "We've got to find and pass them as we can. Let her go, Bascom."
A half-minute later the up-valley race was begun. In the lower reaches the tangents were long, giving the volunteer engineer measurably safe sights ahead; and there was no occasion for Maxwell to jerk the whistle cord. Again the big man in the engine cab was hurling the train along with small regard for anything but speed. ”

“ The scientist of whose gifts he had heard so much seemed to have a brain in which pertinacity, the pertinacity which clings helplessly to trivial and perfectly obvious things, was the overshadowing faculty. ”

“ He'd like to have Maxwell go foot by foot over the installation and see that everything is all right and safe before the power is turned on and the first electric train is sent through."
Sprague put his face in his hands and for a few seconds the silence in the makeshift laboratory was unbroken. Then suddenly he came to life again.
"You were telling us about this internal safety device," he broke out abruptly. "It's an oil-switch, you say?"
"Yes; there is an iron tank to hold the oil, and——"
"Hold on; where do you find room in the tunnel for a tank?" ”

“ They are starting the turbines in Lopez Canyon to-day, for a try-out. The wires are all strung, and Stribling is installing some sort of a safety contrivance in the tunnel as a finishing touch; a switch of some kind that will shunt the current in case any accident should happen to a train in transit. It's all Greek to me—and to Benson, for that matter. Neither of us knows enough about electric installations to keep us from spoiling. ”

“ Benson laughed.
"Stribling will wait until the last minute for you, never fear. With two hours we could mighty near get out and walk it."
"I reckon we're going to get a chance to walk a piece of the way," said Starbuck in his slow drawl. "That maverick choo-choo wrangler up ahead will have us in the ditch before he hits the Nophi grades, if he keeps up his lick."
"I don't want to call him down," said Maxwell, dubiously. ”

“ The big expert with the fighting jaw and the sympathetic gray eyes had a way of leading even a reticent man to tell of his troubles; and Benson, knowing the part Sprague had taken in defeating the two previous attempts to wreck the Short Line, felt free to unburden himself.
"I can't make Maxwell, here, believe that Stribling is anything but the fine, open-handed young fellow that he seems to be ”

“ Stribling's messing in made it impossible for anybody to tell. There was nothing the matter with the track or with the car, so far as I could see after the thing was over. Bamberg, the engineer who was pulling the train, swears that somebody flagged him down with a red light when he was about half-way through the tunnel, and he stopped. Then the red changed to white and gave him the 'go-ahead.' When he tried to start his train, this box-car, somewhere along in the middle of things, jumped the track and blocked the tunnel. ”

“ Maxwell had seen everything for himself."
"That's business," said Sprague, encouragingly. "Old Davy Crockett's maxim, eh? 'Be sure you're right, and then go ahead.' But let me tell you, Mr. Stribling: Mr. Maxwell will look wise and say, 'Yes, yes,' but he'll have to take your word for it, after all. What we average people don't know about modern electrical installations would fill a—" he looked around as if in search of a measure of capacity—"would fill a tank as big as that one across the track—the one you've dipped your wires into over there in that side cave."
"The oil-switch, you mean? ”

“ Connolly explained hastily.
"Seventeen tried to steal a siding on Six. Gallagher, the work-line operator at the electric gang's camp, has just called up to say that the freight's stuck in the tunnel—something off the track. A flagman has come back to the camp with the news, and he says the tunnel is blocked so they can't get through with a flag for Six."
"Good God, Dan—they've got to get through!" Maxwell exploded; and pushing the despatcher aside he cut in on the wire himself. ”

“ 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. ”