Francis Lynde

“ The approach to the locomotive-repairing section of the railroad plant was made through a river-bank yard littered with slag dumps, piled flasks, and heaps of scrap iron. There was no moon, and when they got among the lumber sheds in the rear of the car-shops the darkness was almost tangible. But Tarbell knew the ground, and when he finally called a halt the twin cupola stacks of the foundry loomed before them in the darkness and the acrid smell of the warm, moist moulding sand was in the air. ”

“ Step by step the master mechanic had worked his big crane up the line, tossing the derelicts aside or righting them upon the rails, as their condition warranted; and farther along Fordyce, with his huge tackle and its pulling locomotive, had been equally enthusiastic.
It was Sprague's boast that his methods of investigation, in the field of his hobby, as in all others, were purely scientific; and he insisted that the true scientist and the most successful is the one who can best qualify as a shrewd and wholly impartial observer. ”

“ Then he whispered to Tarbell: "Cover him, Archer, and don't hesitate to shoot if you need to: ready!" At the word there was a blinding burst of illumination and the report of a flash-light cartridge, followed instantly by the crash of the breaking bottle, silence, and black darkness. Then Sprague's mellow voice boomed into the stillness.
"Come down, Mr. Bascom. We've got your picture, and a man who doesn't often miss what he shoots at is covering you with his gun." ”

“ Maxwell, glancing out of the window again, shook his head despondently. What could the keenest intelligence avail in the case of an entire railroad suffering from an acute attack of nervous disintegration and recklessness? Nothing, the superintendent decided; there was nothing for it but to settle down upon a grim determination to outlive and worry through the period of disaster; and he was still grinding away at his desk with that thought in the back part of his mind when Sprague came in and announced his willingness to be taken on to the wreck. ”

“ Almost at the same instant the watchers saw the figure of the man fading away into the inner and darker blackness of the foundry.
"We've got to follow him, Tarbell," said Sprague, hurriedly; "and we lose out if he discovers us. Can you pilot us?"
"I can," asserted Maxwell, and under the superintendent's lead the shadow race was begun.
Happily, there was a noisy diversion to make the secret pursuit feasible. The train-making clamor had come down from the western yards, and for the moment the yard crew was working on the freight-house tracks opposite the shops. ”

“ The superintendent drank his small coffee at a single gulp and flung his napkin aside.
"I'll get 'em!" he gritted savagely. "I'll get the last damned booze-fighter in the bunch!" And then: "Good God, Sprague; how could anything like this go on without my knowing it?"
"You would have found it out, sooner or later, of course. But you're a railroad man yourself, and you ought to know railroad men well enough to take into consideration that sort of loyalty among them which keeps them from 'peaching' on one another. Even Tarbell had to be jarred before he would admit that he knew about it. ”

“ When Bascom paused, Sprague began again.
"What was the plan, Bascom, as it was outlined to these others?"
The master mechanic's smile showed his fine even teeth.
"To make this jerk-water railroad a little easier to work for," he sneered. "When we found the right kind of a man we made him believe that the discipline was keyed up too damned tight and showed him how he could loosen up a little, if he felt like it. ”

“ Give me a little time; and when we get back to Brewster, detail that ex-cowboy 'relief operator' of yours, Tarbell, to run errands for me. If I can't show you good, tangible results within the next forty-eight hours or so, you may discharge me and hire a Pinkerton."
"You'll fail," said Maxwell gloomily. "I've been through a sickness of this kind before. There's no cure for it. It has simply got to run its course and wear itself out." ”

“ It is like the black blight that you have seen spread through a well-kept orchard."
"There is a cause," said the expert, settling himself solidly in his chair. "I tell you, Dick, there's a germ in the air, and that second mentality of mine that you are so fond of poking fun at tells me that in the case of your railroad orchard the germ has been deliberately planted. You say it's impossible: I've a good notion to let the soil-testing rest for a few minutes and show you." ”

“ How do you know there is a wreck?"
"That's too easy," laughed the expert, waving a Samsonic arm toward the five side-tracked trains held up in the Angels yard. "If you didn't have your track cluttered up somewhere, those trains wouldn't be hanging up here, I'm sure. Is it a bad one?—but you needn't answer that; I can see at least one dead man in your eyes."
"There are four of them," said the superintendent soberly, "and some others desperately hurt. We're in a bad way, Sprague. ”

“ Murtagh was barkeep' and handed out the bug-juice. That's all there was to it."
"Not quite all," said Sprague evenly. "You got Murtagh his job on The Times-Record in order to have him handy without being too much in the way or too much in evidence. How much do the Times-Record people know about the scheme for smashing the Nevada Short Line securities from the inside?"
Bascom laughed hardily.
"You'll never catch a newspaper man," he said. "But I'll tell you this: Parker Higginson is a pretty smooth politician, and he's got a mighty long arm when it comes to reaching for the thing he wants. ”

“ The trouble is purely local and internal—and as unaccountable as the breaking out of an epidemic when the strictest kind of quarantine has been maintained."
Sprague smiled incredulously.
"There never was a case of typhoid yet without its germ to account for it, Dick," he asserted dogmatically.
"I know; but that theory doesn't hold good in the psychological field. We've got a good set of men, Sprague. To a degree which you don't often find in modern railroad consolidations, we've had that precious thing called esprit de corps. ”

“ Maxwell smiled wearily.
"Still sticking to the theory that the blight is imported, are you? It's the only time I've ever known you to be 'yellow,' Calvin. I can imagine some wild-eyed newspaper reporter hatching such an idea, but not you. Think of the absurdity of a bunch of Wall Street stock-jobbers trying to get at us in any such indirect way as that—shipping whiskey in here to demoralize our working force! Pshaw! When these fellows get busy and go to work, they want action—quick action."
The expert put down his knife and fork and sat back in his chair. ”

“ If I fire a bunch of them, I have to hire a new bunch, and inside of a week the new men have caught the disease for themselves. One bad wreck will make a hundred trainmen uncertain and jumpy, and a second one will turn half of the hundred into irresponsible lunatics. ”

“ It was possibly an hour later when the young man who resembled William Starbuck sufficiently to pass for the mine owner's younger brother, got out of his chair in the quietest corner of the Hotel Topaz lobby and crossed to the elevators to meet the Government chemist.
"How are you, Archer?" was the renovated soil-gatherer's greeting. And then, as he led the way back to the quiet corner from which the young man had been keeping his watch upon the elevators: "We're up against it good and hard, this time, young man. Your boss has stumped us to prove a thing which he says can't be proved. ”

“ Benson looked up with a scowl.
"There's another gang of those newspaper ghouls!" he commented, as two of the three men in the tonneau got out and began to unlimber their cameras and tripods. "It's no picnic to drive a car from Brewster over the range, to say nothing of the danger; and this is the second squad since daylight. There have been enough pictures taken of this wreck to fill all the newspapers between New York and San Francisco for a week!"
Maxwell's smile was a mere teeth-baring.
"Yes; we're getting the advertising all right," he said. "We've been getting it for a month or more." ”

“ Some say it's Mr. Maxwell. When he gets good and mad and fires a bunch of 'em, they raise a rookus about it; and when he lets the next bunch down easy, they kick the other way."
Sprague sat back in the big leather-upholstered lobby chair and for a time seemed to be absorbed in a study of the rather over-massive, beam arrangement of the ceiling. Suddenly he turned to ask: "How much of a prohibition country is this, Archer?"
Tarbell laughed.
"I reckon you don't need to ask that, with three saloons in every block in Brewster. We haven't got the water-wagon bug much out here. ”

“ Benson remarked. "There will be plenty of 'come-ons' to buy the land when the dam is built."
Bascom's great crane was poising a crushed and mangled box-car in air, and when the crooking steel finger swung its burden aside and dropped it with a crash out of the way, Maxwell turned upon his heel.
"I have my car here, and I'm going back to Angels to do some wiring, " he said. "Come along, if you want to see those irrigation people. But I'll tell you right now, I won't approve any recommendation for more track-laying for them." ”

“ Though he walked in darkness there was no incertitude about the man's movements. Turning abruptly out of the material-road he went straight to the foundry shed. A moment later a beam of white light played steadily upon the acid carboys, a sheltered beam which seemed to come from a tiny electric search-light. Plainly they saw a pair of hands place a large bottle on the ground, remove the stopper, and fix a tin funnel in the neck. ”

“ Maxwell looked up quickly.
"You think they're in it, Calvin? Bascom wasn't lying about that part of it?"
"Yes; they are in it up to their necks. I suppose it's politics for Higginson. Haven't I heard somewhere that he is one of the State bosses?"
"You might have," drawled Starbuck. "He's It, all right."
Sprague stood up and yawned sleepily.
"Perhaps, a little later on, we can throw a scare into this Mr. Parker Higginson," he suggested. "Just now, I'm for the hotel and a few winks of much-needed sleep. Tarbell, you go up to my office and get Murtagh. ”

“ Neither of the two men riding the rear platform of the backing service-car spoke again until the car stopped with a jerk at the edge-of-the-desert station with the celestial name, which had once been the head-quarters of the original Red Butte Western Railroad. Then Benson summed up the situation in a couple of terse sentences.
"If we don't do something, and do it quick, there is a bunch of us so-called railroad bosses on this high-line who may as well pack our duffle-bags and fade away into the landscape. ”

“ Maxwell and his rules are your law and gospel. I'll tell you what I've seen, and then you can tell me what you've seen. I counted sixteen men in one place on this railroad to-day who, within the half-hour that I was looking on, stopped work either to hit or to pass a pocket-flask. Now go on."
"If you hold me up that-away, I reckon maybe there is a good many empty bottles layin' round on the right-o'-way—more'n what the passengers throw out o' the car windows," was the reluctant admission. ”

“ We've never had any labor troubles since Lidgerwood's time, and there are no grievances in the air to account for the present let-down. Yet the let-down is with us. Almost every day some man who has hitherto proved trustworthy falls down on his job, and there you are. ”

“ The water in this country, outside of the Park, is pretty badly alkali, as you probably know."
"But that defence will scarcely explain why you put acid in the oil which is used for lubricating the internal parts of the engines—cylinders and valves," Sprague cut in quietly.
The master mechanic's chair righted itself with a crash, and the crash punctuated another blast of bad language directed at the man who had been left crouching in the corner in Sprague's uptown laboratory.
"So Murtagh gave you that, too, did he?" Bascom finished. "It's your lead, Mr. Sprague; what do you want me to play?" ”

“ Sprague?"
"That is for you to find out, my boy. If you don't use your brain you'll never know whether or no you've got any. That's all—until half-past seven. You'll find me here at the hotel."
It was an even hour before the time appointed for Tarbell's return when Maxwell joined the chemistry expert at the table in the Topaz café where they usually sat when they could dine together.
At the unfolding of the napkins Sprague said: "I've found your germ, Dick, and things are beginning to develop. ”

“ Maxwell gave the necessary order, and in due time the one-car special had repassed the few miles intervening between Angels and Lobo Cut, to come to a stand on the curve of hazard. Sprague was lighting a fresh cigar preparatory to a plunge into the track-clearing activities, and Maxwell looked up from his work.
"Want me to get off with you?" he asked.
"No; it's the very thing I don't want," declared the expert briefly; and therewith he went out to drop from the car-step and to take the plunge alone. ”

“ Starbuck smiled grimly and took the abandoned horse in charge. "I'll take care of the bronc'," he agreed; and the big man limped around the station to board the service-car while Maxwell went into the office to do his telegraphing.
When the superintendent returned half an hour later he found his self-invited guest lounging luxuriously in the easiest of the big wicker chairs in the open compartment of the car, smoking the fattest of black cigars and reading a two-days-old Denver paper.
"This is something like," he said. "I was never cut out for a pioneer, Richard ”

“ Besides, it isn't a case for a detective; even for the best amateur detective in the bunch—which is easily what Sprague might claim to be, you'd say. You see, there isn't anything special to detect. What we need is a doctor; not a plain-clothes man. ”

“ By this time they had reached the service-car special, and Maxwell passed the word to his engineer to back up the line to Angels. When the wreck and the wreckers had vanished beyond the hill curves, Benson filled his short pipe and at the lighting of it asked another question.
"I've been wondering if we couldn't get a little expert help on this thing, Maxwell. Have you tried to interest Mr. Sprague in this discipline business?"
The superintendent shook his head.
"Sprague isn't going around doing odd jobs in psychology for anybody and everybody," he deprecated. ”