[CHAPTER XX--THE CRAZY ORDERS]
All Stanley Junction was agog with the story of the "crazy" train orders the day after the storm.
It was one of the most remarkable occurrences of risk and danger ever known in the history of the Great Northern.
Expert railroad men looked grave, as the facts came out. Citizens generally shuddered, as they realized how nearly the caprice of a mad leverman had come to causing wide-spread death and disaster.
Ralph Fairbanks himself was thrilled and amazed, as he learned from Jack Knight's lips the facts of the case.
From ten o'clock the evening the storm until nearly two o'clock the ensuing morning, a madman had controlled the Great Northern train system at Stanley Junction, out and in.
For over three hours, therefore, Ralph, at the depot switch tower, had been the plaything of a crazed, delirious human being, who, by force and cunning, had usurped the place of trusty, experienced old Joe Bryson.
This was the way it had all come about:
When the master mechanic and Jack Knight reached the limits tower after the report of the double wreck, they had found it in total darkness.
The ladder trap was bolted. They had to break the trap open. Entering the tower room and securing a light, they discovered a strange and startling condition of affairs.