“Good. Pitch out,” was the curt command, and the four of them left the hotel to make a circuit through ill-lighted streets and around the lower end of the eastern railroad yard to come at the long line of shop buildings from the rear.
On the way Maxwell inquired curiously: “What do you know about pickling-sheds, Calvin?”
“I know that every well-regulated foundry has one where castings which are to be machined are treated with acid to take the hard sand-scale off.”
“And why, just why, are you anxious to get a near-hand view of ours, at this time of night?”
“I’m hoping we shall find the answer to that in your foundry yard, Dick. If we don’t, the joke will be on me.”
The approach to the locomotive-repairing section of the railroad plant was made through a river-bank yard littered with slag dumps, piled flasks, and heaps of scrap iron. There was no moon, and when they got among the lumber sheds in the rear of the car-shops the darkness was almost tangible. But Tarbell knew the ground, and when he finally called a halt the twin cupola stacks of the foundry loomed before them in the darkness and the acrid smell of the warm, moist moulding sand was in the air.
When the pickling-shed had been located for him, Sprague chose the waiting-place under a flask shelter directly opposite and the silent watch began. For a weary half-hour nothing happened. Though the month was August, a cool wind crept down from the Timanyoni snow peaks, and the splash and gurgle of the near-by river added its suggestion of chill to the moonless night. Over in the western yards the night crew was making up the midnight freights; but with the buildings of the plant intervening, the noises of the shifter’s exhaust and the clankings and crashings of the shunted cars came faintly to the ears of the watchers.
On the even hour of one the watchman made his round. They could see his lantern twinkling through the windows of the shops, and later he made a circuit of the outbuildings. His route led him finally through the foundry, and as he came out the light of his lantern fell upon the piled castings and the pickling-troughs, and on the carboys of vitriol. There were four of the boxed acid-holders standing under the shed. Sprague drew down his left cuff and made pencil marks on it in the darkness when the watchman passed on.
It was possibly fifteen minutes after the watchman had disappeared when Maxwell broke the strained silence with a whisper.
“Duck!” he said to Starbuck, who was standing up. “Dunkell’s coming back—without his lantern!”