“I don’t know about that. I guess it happens that way, once in a while, on any railroad. But Bascom is all kinds of capable.”
Sprague shook his head. “The true test of capability is always in the final result, my son,” he said reflectively; adding, “and results nowadays are usually measured in dollars and cents. As an outsider, I should say that this Mr. Bascom is a pretty expensive man to have around, judging from his cost sheets. He drinks some, doesn’t he?”
The young chief clerk closed one eye gravely.
“I’m not supposed to know anything about that, Mr. Sprague.”
“No, of course not. As you might say, it’s nobody’s business but Mr. Bascom’s. By the way, what is that whistle blowing so persistently for?”
Calmaine leaped out of his chair as if it had been suddenly connected with the grounding wire of a forty-kilowatt generator.
“By George! it’s a fire!” he exclaimed; and the sound of hurrying feet in the corridor confirmed the surmise. Maxwell’s door opened at the same instant, and the three rushed out to join the crowd which was already streaming across the yard tracks toward the company’s shops.
The fire was in the shops, originating in the boiler-room; and, thanks to the timely alarm and the comparative earliness of the hour, it was soon extinguished. Investigation, promptly instituted on the spot by the superintendent, proved that it was the result of pure carelessness. Some of the mechanics had washed their overalls and had hung them too near the sheet-iron stack in the fire-room; that was all.
Sprague lingered at Maxwell’s elbow while the investigation was going on, and he appeared to be a more or less perfunctory listener when Bascom, oozing wrathful profanity at every pore, told the superintendent what he would do to the careless clothes-driers when they should show up in the morning. But later, after the return to the head-quarters offices, the man from Washington sat for a long time in Maxwell’s easiest chair, smoking steadily and with his gaze fixed upon the disused gas chandelier marking the exact centre of the ceiling.
It was not until after Maxwell had finished his quota of night work and was closing his desk that Tarbell came in to make a whispered report to the big man apparently dreaming in the easy-chair.