The orders were carried out precisely as they were given. Kirgan took one of the huskies and tramped off in the darkness down the main line, and Gorcher, turning our engine on the "Y," headed back east. This time he wasn't so awfully careful of the curves and sags as he had been coming up, and we made Banta at a record clip. While he was in the Banta wire office, getting orders for Portal City, Mr. Norcross took the time-card out of its cage in the cab and fell to studying it by the light of the gauge lamp. Gorcher came back pretty soon with his clearance, which gave him the right to run to Arroyo as first section of Number Eighteen.
The boss blew up like a Roman candle when he saw that train order. It meant that we were to take the siding at Arroyo with the freight that was just behind us, and wait there for the westbound "Flyer," the "Flyer" being due in Portal City from the east at 9:15, and due to leave there, coming west, at 9:20. I didn't realize at the moment why the boss was so sizzling anxious to cut out the delay which would be imposed on us by the wait at Arroyo, but the anxiety was there, all right.
"Billy, it's eighteen miles to Portal, and you've got twenty minutes to make it against the 'Flyer's' leaving time," he ripped out. "Can you do it?"
Gorcher said he could, if he didn't have to lose any more time getting his order changed.
"Let her go!" snapped the boss. "I'm taking all the responsibility."
That was enough for Gorcher, and the way we hustled out of the Banta yard was a caution. By the time we hit the last set of switches the old "Pacific-type" was lurching like a ship at sea, and once out on the long grass-country tangents she went like a shot out of a gun. Of course, with nothing to pull but her own weight she had plenty of steam, and all Gorcher had to do was to keep her from choking herself with too much of it.
He did it to the queen's taste; and in exactly eight minutes out of Banta we tore over the switches at Arroyo. That left us ten miles to go, and twelve minutes in which to make them. It looked pretty easy, and it would have been if the night crew hadn't been switching in the lower Portal City yard when we finished the race and Gorcher was whistling for the town stop. There was a hold-out of perhaps two minutes while the shifter was getting out of our way, and when we finally went clattering up through the yard, the "Flyer," a few minutes late, was just pulling in from the opposite direction.
A yardman let us in on the spur at the end of the headquarters building, and the boss was off in half a jiffy. "Come along with me, Jimmie," he commanded quickly, and I couldn't imagine why he was in such a tearing hurry. Pushing through the platform crowd, made up of people who were getting off the "Flyer" and those who were waiting to get on, he led the way straight up-stairs to our offices.
Of course, there was nobody there at that time of night, and the place was all dark until we switched the electrics on. There was a little lavatory off the third room of the suite, and Mr. Norcross went in and washed his face and hands. In a minute or two he came out, put on his office coat, opened up his desk, lighted a cigar and sat down at the desk as though he had just come in from a late dinner at the club. And still he had me guessing.
The guess didn't have to wait long. While I was making a bluff at uncovering my typewriter and getting ready for business there was a heavy step in the hall, and a red-faced, portly gentleman with fat eyes and little close-cropped English side-whiskers came bulging in. He had a light top-coat on his arm, and his tan gloves were an exact match for his spats.