Further than that, the clerical duties of the position were very heavy. He must make daily reports of the amount of freight handled; and if any freight crew was kept on the road more than sixteen hours, a special report must be prepared for the Interstate Commerce Commission, giving the facts in the case, and explaining why the crew had been kept out so long; for it is unlawful to keep any crew on duty for more than that length of time. A wise provision, for before this law was enacted, in busy seasons, railroads sometimes kept their crews on duty for twenty-four, thirty-six and even forty-eight hours at a stretch—an abuse which inevitably resulted in accidents from the men going to sleep while on duty, or being so exhausted by the long hours as to grow careless and forgetful of orders.
These were the duties when everything was moving in regular order. At other times, the supreme duty of every one connected with the office was to get them back to regular order. For a great railroad system is like a complicated machine—no part can run smoothly unless all are running smoothly, and the throwing of the smallest cog out of gear cripples the entire mechanism. Although the train master was the “trouble man,”—in other words, the man whose especial duty it was to superintend the clearing away of wrecks, and the straightening out of traffic—whenever anything happened to interfere with it, all other work became subordinate to that of restoring traffic to its normal condition.
On this morning, however, everything was moving in regular order; the sounders clicked out the reports of trains on time; there were no calls for cars which could not be answered promptly and no freight along the line which the regular locals could not handle. Conductors came and registered, compared their watches with the big electric clock which kept official time for the division, and departed; others reported in; trainmen loitered before the bulletin board, or gossiped in their lounging-room across the hall; the typewriting machine of the train master’s stenographer clicked steadily away; and there was about the place a contented hum of industry, such as one hears about a bee-hive on a warm day in late spring when the apples are in bloom.
“I heard some bad news about Heywood, while I was in Cincinnati yesterday,” remarked Mr. Plumfield casually, in the course of the morning, referring to the general superintendent.
“Bad news?” questioned Allan, looking up quickly.
“I don’t believe he’s making good. Nothing definite, you know; just a general feeling of dissatisfaction with him. I shouldn’t be surprised if he lost out.”
“What’s the matter with him?”
“You knew his wife died?”
“Yes.”