The two young men heard, gasped, and backed away. When they were gone, Maxwell unlocked the door of his business office, snapped on the lights, opened his desk, and pressed the electric button which summoned Connolly, the night despatcher.
“I thought you’d like to know that we’ve caught up with the dead man, Dan,” he said, when the fat despatcher came in; and then he briefed the story of the chase, winding up with a peremptory order to be sent to the division despatcher at the Copah end of the line not to let the eastbound connection get away from the Fast Mail at the main line junction.
When Connolly had gone back to his key, Maxwell wheeled upon his guest.
“It’s late, Calvin, and by all the laws of hospitality I ought to take you home and put you to bed. But I’ll be hanged if you shall close an eye until you’ve told me how you did all this!”
The expert chemist ex-foot-ball coach planted himself in the easiest of the office chairs and chuckled joyously.
“Gets you, does it?” he said; and then: “I’m not sure that I can explain it so that you will understand, but I’ll try. In the first place, it is necessary to go at these little problems with a perfectly open mind—the laboratory mind, which is neither prejudiced nor prepossessed nor in any way concerned with anything but the bare facts. Reason, and the proper emphasis to be placed upon each fact as it comes to bat, are the two needful qualities in any problem-solving—and about the only two.”
“You are soaring around about a mile over my head; but go on,” said Maxwell.
“All right; I’ll set out the facts in the order in which they came to me. First, I see a dozen men loading a coffin into an express-car. I note the extreme weight, and wonder how a dead man, any dead man who doesn’t have to have his coffin built to order, can be so infernally heavy. Next, you tell me about your proxy fact—which doesn’t have any bearing at the moment—and then you tell me about the dead man, and how his friends were shipping him to Kentucky. Then comes the news of the bizarre hold-up in Cromarty Gulch. Instantly the reasoning mind, the laboratory mind, if you prefer, goes to work, with the two foreknown facts—the heavy-dead-man fact, and the fact that your chief clerk is on that train with his valuable papers—clamoring each for its hearing. Don’t let me bore you.”
“Heavens—you’re not boring me! What next?”
“Reason, the laboratory brand of it, tells me immediately that your proxy fact has the emphasis. You had told me that your Wall Street opponents had been throwing stumbling-blocks in your way in the obtaining of the proxies. Here, said I, is the last desperate resort. Nevertheless, there were complications. I was pretty sure that the hold-ups had taken Calmaine and his papers; that this was what the hold-up was for. But in order to get track of them—and of Calmaine—other facts must be added. We added them on the trip with the special train; all we needed, and a few more thrown in for good measure.”