Over on the sidewalk loggia porch of the Hotel Topaz fronting the electric-lighted railroad plaza, Maxwell, the division superintendent, was sitting out the evening with a broad-shouldered, solidly built young man whose big frame, clear gray eyes, and fighting jaw were the outward presentments of a foot-ball “back” rather than those of the traditional college professor.
“I don’t mind piping myself off to you, Dick, though the full size of my job isn’t generally known,” the athletic-looking stop-over guest was saying. “You got the first part of it right; I’m down on the Department of Agriculture pay-rolls as a chemistry sharp. But outside of that I’ve half a dozen little hobbies which they let me ride now and then. You’ll guess what one of them is when I tell you that I was the man who fried out the evidence in the post-office cases last winter.”
“What!” exclaimed Maxwell. “But your name didn’t appear.”
The big man with the smooth-shaven, boyish face smiled contentedly.
“My name never appears. That is the high card in the game. So far as that goes, I never mess or meddle in the police details. My part of the job is always and only the theoretical stunt. They come to me and I tell ’em what to do. And just about half the time they haven’t the least idea why they are doing it.”
“Say, Calvin; that interests me a lot more than you know,” was the young superintendent’s eager comment. “I wish you didn’t have to go on to the coast to-morrow morning. We’ve developed an original little Chinese puzzle of our own here in the Timanyoni that is pretty nearly driving the last one of us wild-eyed. If you could stop over——”
The interruption came in the shape of a one-armed man with a lantern, sprinting like a base-runner across from the railroad building to the hotel. It was the night watchman summoned by the despatcher, and ten seconds later he had delivered his message.
“The Lord have mercy!” gasped the superintendent, bounding out of his chair, “the Limited?—in the ditch and on fire, you say? For Heaven’s sake, where?”
“’Tis at Lobo Cut; ’tis Angels reporting it, sorr, so Misther Connolly did be saying. He’s clearing f’r the wreck-train now, and he axed would you be coming over.”
“Tell him I’ll be over in a minute or two: as soon as I’ve called up the hospital and turned out the doctors.”