"I'll have to get a train." Catherine was hurrying out of the dining room, the clerk at her heels. "When can I?"
"It don't say how bad he's hurt." She felt his hand close about her arm. "You sit down here, and I'll 'phone to the station for you." He drew her into the enclosure behind his counter, and pushed her gently into an old leather chair. "Little fellows stand an awful lot of knocking around. I've got three, so I ought to know. Now, take it easy. Where you want to go? New York City?"
Grateful tears in Catherine's eyes made prismatic edges around his solid figure. As she watched him thumbing a railroad folder, her panic lifted slightly. Perhaps—oh, perhaps Spencer wasn't badly hurt. Charles would be frightened, would want her.
"Um. That's too bad. You just missed a good train." He turned to the telephone. "Gimme the station. Yea-uh. That's right."
Henrietta would be there.
"When's the next through train east, Chuck? Huh? No, the next one." He spit his words out of the corner of his mouth toward the receiver. "Any word of that out of Chicago yet? Well, say, I got a lady here got to get to New York on it. Got to, I said. You got any berths here? Well, you could wire for one, couldn't you? What you hired for?"
He hung up the earpiece.
"He says there's trouble west of here. Snow. That seven o'clock just went through, late. He's gonna let me know about the midnight."
"I'd better go to the station."