They were at the door of the train despatcher’s room, and Brant paused. “Better ask Disbrow about the special,” he said, with a glance at the darkened transom of the superintendent’s office. “Harry doesn’t seem to be here.”
The reporter acted upon the suggestion; and when he was alone in the corridor Brant went quickly to the door of the darkened office. It was ajar, and when he pushed it open the light from the hall fell full upon the figure of the chief clerk lying inert and helpless across the open desk.
Brant took in the situation at a glance, closed the door softly, and walked back toward the despatcher’s room. Jarvis was a good fellow, but he already knew too much about Antrim’s affair, and he must be got rid of at all hazards. He met the reporter as the latter was coming out of Disbrow’s door.
“Get what you wanted?” he inquired.
“No. You railroad fellows are all of a piece when it comes to giving up anything that the public would care to read about. Disbrow says he doesn’t know anything about a special train—didn’t know the president was coming. Between you and me and the gatepost, I think he doesn’t know much of anything.”
“Then you’ll have to forego the item.”
“Forego nothing! I’ll hang around this old shack till morning, now, but what I’ll find out about that train.”
Brant laughed. “I like your persistence, even if it is a little out of proportion to the object. Come into my office here and sit down and smoke a cigar while I try my hand at it. I owe you a good turn, anyway.”
Brant unlocked the door of the chief engineer’s rooms, and, telling the reporter to make himself comfortable while he waited, left him. But since it was no time for half measures he took the precaution to set the catch of the nightlatch as he closed the door, locking Jarvis in.
Hurrying back to the superintendent’s office, he turned on the light and tried to rouse Antrim, shaking him roughly and sparing neither blows nor abuse. Nothing coming of this, he was beginning to despair of any measure of success which should antedate the end of the reporter’s patience, when his eye lighted upon the unfinished letter to the train despatcher. Written as it had been, in the dark, it was a barely legible scrawl, but he made shift to decipher it, pieced it out with Jarvis’s information and Disbrow’s ignorance, and knowing much more about building railways than about operating them, jumped at once to the conclusion that the special train was rushing onward to certain destruction. Wherefore he forgot the imprisoned reporter, overlooked the very obvious expedient of notifying the despatcher by word of mouth, and fell upon Antrim with renewed buffetings to which the assumed exigencies lent stinging vigour.