“Go a little easy on the inferences,” laughed the chemistry expert. “I didn’t say it was Connolly, though it looks rather bad for him at the present stage of the game. He is in debt, and he wants to get married.”
“But, good Lord! what has that got to do with——”
“Hold on,” interposed the expert calmly. “We haven’t come to that part of it yet. As I say, this stop-order was sent from the yard office. How do I know? Because the sender left his trail behind him in the shape of a wire recently cut and recoupled—the cutout being made to keep the message from repeating itself in the head-quarters office where it might be heard by anybody who happened to be standing around.”
“But Connolly couldn’t leave his wire to go to the yard office.”
“Unfortunately for him, he did leave it. About half an hour after the wrecking-train left he called Davis, who was sleeping in one of the bunk-rooms in your wickiup attic. His excuse was that he was so rattled that he couldn’t hold himself down at the train-desk. Davis relieved him for an hour or so, and then he came back.”
“Still I can’t believe it of Connolly,” Maxwell persisted. “If he sent that message to Timanyoni last night, that makes him responsible for all the others—the devil-messages, as the men are calling them. Some of these have come in the night, while he was on duty. How could he have worked it in that case?”
Again the chemistry expert laughed. “A suspicious person might draw a bunch of inferences,” he said, “throwing out a dark hint or so about a concealed cut-in on the wires after they enter the attic of the railroad building and a hidden set of instruments. Also, the same person would probably point to the fact that Connolly wasn’t at his desk when the fake wreck notice came last night. It was your chief clerk, Calmaine, who took it from the wire, and he tells me he was subbing for Connolly for a few minutes while Connolly went upstairs for his smoking-tobacco.”
“My Lord!” said Maxwell; “you’ve put it upon Connolly, fair and square, Calvin; it’s all over but the hanging!”
“There you go again,” joked the Government man, with his good-natured grin. “I haven’t said it is Connolly. But I will say this: with another half-day at it, I’ll probably be able to turn the case over to Tarbell—and the newspapers.”
“The newspapers?”