“Where’s Number Two?” asked Allan.
“Number Two will be here in four or five minutes,” answered the other dispatcher.
“And that freight ought to have been here ten minutes ago!” wailed the first speaker. “Oh, its enough to drive a man crazy,” and he went on calling Schooley’s.
The east bound flyer could not, of course, be permitted to leave Wadsworth until the west-bound freight had pulled in, or had been definitely located. It was lost as completely as though it had wandered away to the farthest corner of the globe.
Allan stood for a moment with a line of perplexity between his eyebrows. Then he looked up with a sudden interest as he heard the faint click-click, click-click which told that the operator at Schooley’s had answered at last.
“How about extra west?” clicked the dispatcher.
“Passed here at 9.22,” came the answer.
Allan glanced at the clock. It was 9.47; in other words, the train had passed Schooley’s twenty-five minutes previously, and Schooley’s was only seven miles out. That seven miles should have been covered in fifteen minutes at the outside. What, then, had happened to delay the train?
A long whistle in the distance told of the approach of the flyer, and a minute later, it rumbled into the station and came wheezing to a stop. The train would stop for five minutes to change engines. That it should be held up longer than that by a freight train was heartrending. It was over half an hour late already, and Allan had hoped that some of this lost time might be made up on the run east to Parkersburg.
“There’s only one thing to be done,” he said, “and that’s to flag out till we find that freight train,” and he hurried down the stairs to give the necessary orders.