"I forgot Order 79," came Bob Duffy's message. "I let Third Eighty go without it. They left here at seven—fifty"—fifty something, Giddings never heard fifty what. The match went into the ink, the pipe into the water-pail, and Giddings, before Bob Duffy finished, like a drowning man was calling Elcho with the life and death, the Nineteen call.
"Hold Special 326!" he cried over the wire the instant Elcho replied.
But Elcho, steadily, answered this:
"Special—Three-twenty-six—left—here—seven-fifty-five."
Giddings, with both hands on the table, raised up like a drunken man. The West End was against it. Third Eighty in the open and going against the De Molay Four. Bucks, Callahan, wife—everybody—and Rock Point a blind siding that no word from anybody on earth could reach ahead of Third Eighty.
Giddings sprang to the open window and shouted to anybody and everybody to call Martin Duffy. But Martin Duffy spoke behind him.
"What do you want?" he asked; it came terribly quick on Giddings as he turned.
"What's the matter?" exclaimed Martin, looking into the boy's face. "Speak, can't you? What's the matter, Giddings?"
"Bob forgot Order 79 and let Third Eighty go without it—and Special 326 is out of Elcho," choked Giddings.
"What?"