“Very well, indeed.”
“Good. When we get in, make it your first care to see the newspaper people and to persuade them not to make any mention of this little miss-go of to-night. That’s the first move and it’s an important one. Can you work it?”
“Sure. But I don’t see the point.”
“Never mind about that; I probably sha’n’t do anything that you think I ought to do. Now about this man Tarbell; is he known as a company detective?”
“No, not generally known; he’s on the pay-roll as a spare operator—relief man, you know.”
“That’s better. When I meet him I’ll see if I can’t get him interested in chemistry. That’s how you’re going to account for me, you know. I’m an old friend of yours, a Government man out of the Department of Agriculture off on a vacation. Incidentally, I might be wanting to buy a mine, or something of that sort—anything to start the town gossip on a harmless chase and to keep it as far as possible from the real reason for my stop-over.”
“Everything goes,” said Maxwell. “I’ll start the gossip. What else?”
“Nothing out of the ordinary. I shall ask you to give me the run of your railroad office, and I’d like to meet anybody and everybody, when it falls in naturally—but always as the chemistry sharp; get that well ground into your cosmos. But here—what’s this? Are we already back in Brewster?”
“We are,” said the superintendent, with a glance out of the window. Then he became the regretful host again. “I hate to have you go back to the hotel, Calvin. It’s just my crooked luck to have you come along when the house is shut up and Mrs. Maxwell and the babies are out of town. They’re due to come home in a day or two, and I’m selfish enough to hope that we can keep you over. Let’s drop off here at the crossing. It’s nearer to the hotel, and it’ll give me a chance to reach The Tribune office before Treadwell’s young men come in with their scare stuff.”
It was a half-hour after the arrival of the unwrecked Limited, and the story of the curious false alarm was just getting itself passed from lip to ear among the loungers in the Hotel Topaz lobby, when the Government man came down from his room to file a rather lengthy New York message with the hotel telegraph operator.