Francis Lynde

“ 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. ”

“ Some hour or so later the evening train came in from the west, and at the outpouring of passengers from it one, a man whose air of prosperous independence was less in the grave, young-old face and the loosely fitting khaki service clothes than in the way in which he carried his shoulders, was met by a boy from the superintendent’s office, and the word passed sent him diagonally across the grass-covered plaza to swing himself lightly over the railing of the hotel porch. ”

“ Instantly the sweating fireman jerked his fire-door open, and the four pairs of eyes in the flyer’s cab were all fixed upon the motionless red dot over the track when Cargill sounded his second call.
While the whistle echoes were still yelling in the surrounding hills the climax came. Out of the station door darted a man with a red lantern. Cargill pounced upon the throttle, and in the same second the brakes went into the emergency notch with a jerk that flung the superintendent and the fireman against the boiler-head and slammed the guest unceremoniously into the cab corner. ”

“ The chemistry man nodded.
“Somebody is reaching for you with a big stick; that is very evident, Maxwell. And there are brains behind it, too, when you come to think of it. If you wanted to kill a man without getting hanged for murder, one way to do it would be to persuade him to commit suicide. Has it ever occurred to you that somebody may be trying the same experiment on your railroad?” ”

“ 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. ”

“ Again a silence, broken only by the train clamor, settled down upon the three in the Pullman smoking-room. After a time Maxwell drew a long breath and said:
“It was a narrow squeak; a horribly narrow squeak, Calvin. We have a good deal to say nowadays about the lawlessness of the mob and the individual; but big money doesn’t seem to know that there are any such things as justice and equity and a square deal.”
Sprague sat up and methodically relighted his cigar.
“Oh, I don’t know about that,” he demurred. “You can’t say that all big money is lawless. ”

“ When the bottle was filled the carboy slowly righted itself; the hands came in view again to remove the funnel and to replace the stopper; and then the search-light went out with the faint snap of an electric switch. 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. ”

“ It was in Davis’s office that he met Tarbell; and the keen-eyed, sober-faced young fellow who was carried on the division pay-rolls as a relief operator became his guide on a walking tour of the shops and the yards. Tarbell saw in Mr. Maxwell’s guest nothing more than an exceedingly affable gentleman with an immense capacity for interesting himself in the workaday details of a railroad outfit; but at one o’clock, when Maxwell joined Sprague at a quiet corner table for two in the hotel café, there were several surprises awaiting the superintendent. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ A slow smile spread itself over Sprague’s smooth-shaven, good-natured face.
“If I had as tender a neck as that, Dick, I’d have night sweats thinking about it; I should, for a fact,” he averred. And then, after a pause: “Ah; I’ve been waiting for that. The lights have just gone out in your office over there in the railroad building. Who is so industrious as to stay on the job until nearly midnight?”
“It is Harvey Calmaine, my paragon of a chief clerk. He’s a mighty hard-working young fellow—a treasure, as you may remember. ”

“ The chemistry sharp was holding up his hand and laughing.
“No, no; hold on, Dick. You’ll have to let me tackle the thing in my own way, and there won’t be any grand-stand plays in it—in fact, I don’t mean to appear personally in it at all. Let’s see where we stand. You have a division detective of some sort, haven’t you?—a fellow who does the gun-play act when it becomes necessary?”
“We have; a young fellow named Archer Tarbell, who got his experience chasing cattle thieves in Montana. He’s a fine fellow, and it’s breaking his heart because he can’t get the nippers on our wire-devil.” ”

“ By noon of the day following the false alarm run of the wrecking-train to Timanyoni Canyon, all Brewster, or at least the railroad part of it, knew that Superintendent Maxwell was entertaining an old college classmate at the Hotel Topaz. For the town portion of the gossip there was some little disagreement as to Mr. Calvin Sprague’s state and standing. Some had it that the big, handsome athlete was a foot-ball coach taking his vacation between seasons. Others said that he was a capitalist in disguise, looking for a ground-floor investment in Timanyoni mines. ”

“ Good big money is an undoubted blessing; it is only bad big money that is a curse.”
Maxwell’s smile was mirthless.
“When a man puts a gun in your face and holds you up, it isn’t very consoling to remember that there are a good many other men in the world who wouldn’t treat you that way,” he commented. And then: “I hope we’ve seen the last of this fight in the dark with that stock-jobbing gang in New York.”
“You haven’t,” 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. ”

“ The wrecking-train had been backed down to the station spur to take on the hospital car, and it was standing ready for the eastward flight; two flat-cars loaded with blocking and tackle, a desert tank-car filled with water, two work-train boxes crowded to the doors with men, and, next to the engine, which was one of the big “Pacific types” used on the fast mail runs, a heavy steam crane powerful enough to lift a locomotive and swing it clear at a single hitch.
“Who’s pulling us, Blacklock?” Maxwell asked, overtaking the little man with the hot eyes. ”

“ 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; but I want to tell you three together what I have often told Maxwell: I’ve got a hunch. I don’t know a blessed thing. ”

“ Sprague smiled impassively. “I shouldn’t be able to convince you that it is knowledge,” he admitted. “You’d call it nothing more than a wild guess. Isn’t that our auto that I hear?”
Maxwell stepped to a window and looked down upon the plaza.
“It’s somebody’s auto,” he said. “There are two men in it.” And a moment later—“They are coming up here.”
The demonstrator of scientific principles hooked his elbows on the counter railing and laughed gently. “Our two nervous friends from the Molly Baldwin,” he predicted. “They are still worrying about the loss of their corpse.” ”

“ The fat despatcher knew precisely where the Limited was, but he glanced at his train-sheet from sheer force of habit.
“On time at Angels, double-heading with the Nine-thirteen, and the Six-five,” he said. Then he shifted over to the car-record man’s cause for jubilation. “I didn’t know you were a married man, Bolton. If I ever get out of the woods and make good on the job, I’m going to do it myself.” ”

“ 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. 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 demand is that the railroad be turned over to its rightful owners at once. If it is not complied with, you, Judge Watson, and you, Mr. Dimmock, and you, Mr. Hunniwell”—indicating each in turn with a squarely pointed forefinger—“may choose your alternative: which is to go with me to Judge Walsh’s chambers, where I shall lay before the gentlemen there assembled this packet of evidence.” ”

“ Starbuck and Sprague had drawn rein at the outskirts of the construction camp, and they were not molested until Sprague took a flat black box from his pocket, opened it into a camera, and was preparing to take a snap-shot of the dam. At that, a man who had been lounging in the door of the camp commissary, a dark-faced, black-bearded giant in brown duck and service leggings, crossed the camp street and threw up a hand in warning. ”

“ Sprague laughed good-naturedly as he followed Starbuck’s lead toward the river. He was well used to being joked about his size, and there were times when he rather encouraged the joke. Big men are popularly supposed to be more or less helpless, physically, and Sprague was enough of a humorist to enjoy the upsetting, now and then, of the popular tradition. ”

“ Can you get us there without arousing anybody’s curiosity?”
“Sure,” said Tarbell.
“Good. Pitch out,” was the curt command, and the four of them left the hotel to make a circuit through ill-lighted streets and around the lower end of the eastern railroad yard to come at the long line of shop buildings from the rear.
On the way Maxwell inquired curiously: “What do you know about pickling-sheds, Calvin?”
“I know that every well-regulated foundry has one where castings which are to be machined are treated with acid to take the hard sand-scale off.” ”

“ 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.”
Benson’s left eye closed itself slowly in qualified dissent.
“What does Mr. Sprague himself have to say about it?” he queried.
“He hasn’t said anything. In fact, I haven’t seen him for over two weeks. He’s been out with Billy Starbuck, gathering soil specimens; they are still out somewhere, I don’t know just where.” ”

“ Sprague saw the index pointer go up to thirty-five, jump to forty, crawl steadily onward until it had passed the forty-five and was mounting to the fifty. After that he saw no more, for the simple reason that he was obliged to close his unprotected eyes against the hurricane speed blast. The big man from Washington had asked for the fastest car in Brewster and for a man who was not afraid to drive it. ”

“ Stillings paused with his hand on the dash of the runabout. “That so?” he queried. “More piracy?”
“Nothing actually in sight, as yet. But Dick has been getting fresh tips from the New York head-quarters. The big-money people who want your railroad have been keeping pretty quiet since the Mesquite fizzle; possibly they were afraid you folks might have the evidence on them. But now the air seems to be full of lightning again, and nobody, not even President Ford himself, appears to know just where it is going to strike.” ”

“ Think it over between now and dinner-time, and weigh the consequences to Dick, Sprague. If there’s another earthquake on the way, and you throw him down, he’s a ruined man. I know what you will say: that he is well fixed and doesn’t have to be a railroad superintendent. That’s all right, but his job means more to him than it might to a poor man; it’s his ambition. If there is anything I can do——”
The big chemistry expert shook his head. “There isn’t anything that anybody can do, Robert,” he said soberly; and at that, Stillings eased the clutch in and drove away. ”

“ But he said it, and what is more, he said it to—Jennings!”
This time the attorney’s start carried him out of his chair and stood him upon his feet.
“I shall have to see Smith at once,” he said hurriedly. “Still, I can’t believe that these New York stock pirates would authorize any such murderous thing as this!”
“Authorize murder or violence? Of course not; big business never does that. What it does is to put a man into the field, telling him in general terms the end that is to be accomplished. The head pushers would turn blue under their finger-nails if you’d charge them with murder.” ”