“An hour will do; I’ll show up within that time.”
Later, the superintendent, wading through the files of business correspondence which always accompanied him in his goings to and fro on the line, had window glimpses of Sprague strolling up and down beside the waiting trains in the yard or standing to chat with some member of the loafing crews.
The glimpses were provocative of good-natured incredulity on the part of the desk-worker. Thrice during the summer of warfare Sprague had been able to step into the breach, each time with signal success. But in each of the three former instances there had been tangible causes with which to grapple; flesh-and-blood criminals to be ferreted out and apprehended. Maxwell, glancing out of the window again, shook his head despondently. What could the keenest intelligence avail in the case of an entire railroad suffering from an acute attack of nervous disintegration and recklessness? Nothing, the superintendent decided; there was nothing for it but to settle down upon a grim determination to outlive and worry through the period of disaster; and he was still grinding away at his desk with that thought in the back part of his mind when Sprague came in and announced his willingness to be taken on to the wreck.
Maxwell gave the necessary order, and in due time the one-car special had repassed the few miles intervening between Angels and Lobo Cut, to come to a stand on the curve of hazard. Sprague was lighting a fresh cigar preparatory to a plunge into the track-clearing activities, and Maxwell looked up from his work.
“Want me to get off with you?” he asked.
“No; it’s the very thing I don’t want,” declared the expert briefly; and therewith he went out to drop from the car-step and to take the plunge alone.
In the two hours which had elapsed since the departure of the superintendent’s car the track-clearers at both ends of the wreck had made astonishingly good progress. Step by step the master mechanic had worked his big crane up the line, tossing the derelicts aside or righting them upon the rails, as their condition warranted; and farther along Fordyce, with his huge tackle and its pulling locomotive, had been equally enthusiastic.
It was Sprague’s boast that his methods of investigation, in the field of his hobby, as in all others, were purely scientific; and he insisted that the true scientist and the most successful is the one who can best qualify as a shrewd and wholly impartial observer.
Where another man might have asked questions, he stood aside and looked on and listened. In the fierce toil of track-clearing no one seemed to pay any attention to him, and the picture which presented itself was a life-sketch of the railroad force in petto and in the raw. The big onlooker took his time and made his mental jottings thoughtfully, strolling from one group to another and lingering longest near the hot boiler-cab of the great crane where a wizened human automaton in dirty overalls and jumper jerked the levers and spun the wheels of the hoist in obedience to the signals given by the flashily dressed master mechanic.
It wanted less than a quarter of an hour of noon when the final obstruction was heaved aside, and the track gang, which had been following the wreckers, trued and spiked the distorted rails of the main line into place. Sprague closed his mental note-book and went back to join Maxwell.