CHAPTER X
IN THE SWITCH TOWER
Without pausing at the museum, Allan boarded a car back to the city. After all, he reflected, Betty Heywood was right—train-dispatching had little to do with art and artists. He realized that he had looked at the paintings and the statuary from the outside, as it were; he had been interested in them, it is true, as he would have been interested in a play or a novel. They had entertained him, they had helped him to pass a pleasant hour, and that was all. He did not feel that they were vital to him—vital in the sense that a thorough knowledge of railroading was.
In a word, he was narrowing into a specialist, as every man who really accomplishes anything in the world must do. His work had become the only really necessary and vital thing to him. He had found his groove, and while he still possessed the power to climb out of his groove occasionally and to look about the world and find amusement in it, it was in his groove that he felt most at home, that he was strongest and most efficient and most contented.
For his efficiency—the knowledge that he was really doing something in the world—rejoiced him and moved him to stronger effort.
So his feet naturally led him back to the great depot which formed the Union terminal for all the lines of railroad entering Cincinnati. It was a place which might well be interesting to any one, so crowded was it with life and well-directed skill. To any one looking at it understandingly it was more than interesting. It was engrossing. Nowhere else did the life-blood of traffic pulse quite so strongly; nowhere else was there quite such an opportunity to study human nature; and nowhere else was perfection of organization in railroading so necessary and so evident.
It was this latter point which interested Allan most of all, and so, with merely a fleeting glance at the crowds hurrying past him, he bent his steps along one of the narrow cement platforms which ran out under the train-shed like long, gray fingers. In the midst of the tangle of tracks just beyond the train-shed, stood a tall, box-like structure, its upper story entirely enclosed in glass. Dodging an outgoing train, Allan hastened toward this queer tower, climbed the narrow stair which led to its upper story, opened the door and looked in.
“Hello, Jim,” he said, to a man in shirt-sleeves who stood looking down upon the busy yards. “May I come in?”
The man turned quickly and held out his hand.
“Sure, Mr. West,” he said. “Come in and sit down,” and he motioned toward a chair.
Just then a bell overhead rang sharply.