Fully two hours beyond the time when the superintendent had crossed the railroad plaza to climb the stair of the head-quarters building, Tarbell, strolling along the plaza-fronting street, swung himself over the railing of the loggia porch and took the chair next to the man from Washington, who was still sitting as Maxwell had left him and still smoking.
“I’ve been waiting for you,” said the patient smoker, without taking his eyes from the row of lighted windows in the railroad building opposite.
“I allowed you would be,” rejoined Tarbell in his gentle Tennessee-mountain drawl. And then, quite as calmly: “I reckon I’ve found the answers to all them questions you ’lotted to me. I reckon I’ve got him.”
“I’ve been betting on you, Tarbell,” was the word of approval. Then: “It comes pretty near home, doesn’t it?”
“It sure does. It’s goin’ to hurt Mr. Maxwell good and plenty. He counts all the men in the home office as his fam’ly, and there’s never been one o’ them to go back on him till now.”
“What is your evidence?” queried Sprague.
“I reckon you’d call it circumstantial—and so will the judge. But it hobbles him all right. There’s a cut-in on the despatcher’s wires over yonder, ’way up under the roof where nobody’d find it, with four little fine lead wires goin’ down in the wall. I couldn’t find where they come out at, but I reckon that don’t make any difference: they’re there.”
“Anything else?”
“Yes. I’ve got a letter that I hooked out of his coat pocket not ten minutes ago; a letter from some gang boss o’ his’n in New York, givin’ him goss for not showin’ up results, and allowin’ to pull some sort of a gun on him if the papers don’t begin to print scare heads about a certain railroad management, pronto.”
The chemistry expert smiled shrewdly.