“All right—you know so much! Listen to this,” and Ralph told him of his discovery through the aid of the old timekeeper. “And now here is this man who was with Andy McCarrey last night.”
“Who’s that? Whitey Malone? I just saw him, sobered up, but with two beautiful black eyes.”
“We never gave him those,” declared Ralph. “I bet McCarrey pitched into him for losing the list Perrin sent by him. Well, that other man I heard McCarrey call ‘Grif’ must be Griffin Falk, and he acts as McCarrey’s secretary, or right-hand man. Mac is no literary character. He can talk, but the words have to be put into his mouth. They say Grif writes his speeches and handles all his correspondence.”
“Then we know quite some to tell Mr. Bob Adair,” said Zeph, with satisfaction.
“You are right we do. Here is this list. I have written beside Perrin’s writing the full names of the four men and what they do in the shops and how they stand in the union. They will have to be watched from now on. Well, it is nothing in my young life. I am going to tend to my knitting and keep out of any trouble, that’s all.”
Zeph fairly giggled. “I hear you,” he said. “But you won’t be able to sit up in this conning tower of yours and calmly watch a ruction down below without getting into it, and getting in with both feet.”
“No, no! Nothing like that,” declared Ralph, smiling and shaking his head as his friend departed.
The young train dispatcher really meant what he said. He hated to see things going wrong for the division—for the whole Great Northern system, in fact. But he had his job, and his place in the railroad system, and he did not mean to step aside.
He considered himself quite invulnerable where he sat. He was independent of everybody save his good friend, Glidden, at main headquarters. As long as he managed to drive through his schedules with some kind of regularity, Ralph felt that nobody could actually hurt him with the company.
But not long after luncheon one of the callboys came to the door of his little private office and said: