“Why would you?”
“We’ll have to go back a little for the specific answer in the present case; back to last night, and to the young man who chased out with a red lantern to keep us from running into the passenger train which wasn’t wrecked. Why do you suppose he did that?”
“That’s easy; he heard the passenger coming down the canyon.”
“That was the inference, of course. But when you have taken the thirty-third degree in the exact science of observation, Dick, you’ll learn to distrust inferences and to accept only conclusions. He didn’t hear the passenger; he didn’t know it was coming. If you had been observing him as closely as I was, you would have seen him write this down in his actions as plain as print. He had a much better reason for stopping us—and the passenger. It was a wire order from somebody. If you don’t believe it, have Davis call him up and ask him, when you go back to your office.”
Notwithstanding the criticism just passed upon him by his table-mate, Maxwell again caught at an inference.
“You’ve found the wire-devil, Calvin? You’ve got to the bottom of the thing in a single forenoon?”
“No; not quite to the bottom. But some few things I have learned, beyond any question of doubt. In the first place, this trouble of yours is pretty serious; far more serious than you suspect. In fact, it is designed to remove your railroad from the map, not by murder outright, but by what you might call incited suicide. The condition which you described last night is painfully apparent, even to an outsider like myself. Half of your men are potential powder-mines, ready to blow up if the spark is applied.”
“Go on,” said Maxwell eagerly. “What else did you find out?”
“I learned that a stop-all-trains order was sent to your young man at the canyon station last night, and that, in all probability, it was sent from Brewster. The ultimate question fines itself down to this: did your night despatcher, Connolly, send that order through his own instrument in his own office? or did he, or some other, send it from the upper yard office?—which, as I have remarked, is rather injudiciously cut in on the regular working wire. I’ll venture to make the answer positive; the order was sent from the yard office.”
“Connolly!” said the superintendent under his breath. “I can’t believe it, Calvin. Who ever heard of a fat villain?”