“I don’t,” Maxwell denied. Then his smile of amusement changed to one of amazement. “How could you know all these things about this man if you were on the other side of a closed door, Calvin?”
Sprague laughed. “See how easy it is to jump to conclusions,” he derided. “I wasn’t on the other side of a closed door; I was in the corridor when the fellow passed me, looking for the number on the door. I saw him leave the note. I’ll ask one question, and then we’ll dismiss that phase of the case. Is the wrecking-train back from Lobo yet?”
“Yes; it came in about four o’clock with the string of crippled cars. But you say you have found the germ; does that mean that you are going to prove up on your assertion about the epidemic?”
“I can’t tell what it means yet; but I can tell you the name of the germ. It’s whiskey.”
“Drinking among the men?”
“Worse than that; drunkenness among the men. Enough of it, I should say, to account for all of your troubles and then some.”
“Oh, you’re off—’way off!” objected the harassed one irritably. “I know there is some drinking; in a wide-open country like this it is almost impossible to stamp it out entirely. But to account for the epidemic in that way, you’d have to imagine every other man in the service carrying a pocket-pistol on the job!”
“And you think that couldn’t happen without your knowing it, eh? A little farther along I may have some statistics to show you; but just now I’m looking not so much for the germ as for the germ-carrier.”
Maxwell smiled wearily.
“Still sticking to the theory that the blight is imported, are you? It’s the only time I’ve ever known you to be ‘yellow,’ Calvin. I can imagine some wild-eyed newspaper reporter hatching such an idea, but not you. Think of the absurdity of a bunch of Wall Street stock-jobbers trying to get at us in any such indirect way as that—shipping whiskey in here to demoralize our working force! Pshaw! When these fellows get busy and go to work, they want action—quick action.”