"Excuse me, sir, but that's exactly what he's got to do in these here parts. A train's the on'y hope he's got of gettin' quick to where he can get an outfit. On'y a damn fool 'd try to make the lake immediate. I aint sayin' as he mightn't lay low for a while, but he can't stick that out long."
"Well, I'll be gone all day with Foster up the Lone Hollow spur. Back by dark. That's all the time I can give you, Bob. If you haven't a lead before No. 2 gets here, I'm afraid I can't wait." He got up from the table.
"That's all right, Mr. Wade. But I'll have a message to show you when you get back this evening," said Cranston confidently.
Nevertheless the only message which he was able to show the President on his return was a wire from Johnston that there was no trace of Podmore among his passengers, and that everybody who had boarded last night's westbound train on the Wardlow division was accounted for. It was with considerable secret disappointment that the Chief of the Special Service Department of the C.L.S. made arrangements for the President's car to continue eastward with No. 2, while he remained behind at Wardlow; for thereby Cranston was losing a splendid opportunity to demonstrate his ability at cross-questioning in the presence of the magnate. He was only human.
Cranston, however, had been taught by experience that time is never up till the last moment. Although his belongings were packed, he left his suitcase aboard the car and long after he had said good-bye to Wade, long after the President was in his berth for the night, the detective sat doggedly on in the despatcher's office, smoking his pipe. His patience was rewarded about an hour before No. 2 was due.
The message was from Thorlakson and came over the wire from the night operator at Indian Creek. The Icelander was holding Podmore at Thorlakson Siding as instructed. Cranston already had made arrangements for a special engine to run them back up the line, and having issued definite instructions he went back to the private car and unpacked his pyjamas.
One of those methodical individuals who are born every now and then with the gift of interpreting railway schedules would have had no great difficulty in locating "Thorlakson" in the main-line timetable of the Canadian Lake Shores Railway. It takes the form of a little dagger-mark which, pursued into the fine print of the "Explanatory," yields the information that "Thorlakson" is a flag-station.
Magnus Thorlakson himself, Icelander, must be credited with being one of the oldest and most conscientious section foremen on the division. He, his men, his wife, his children and everything that was his abode in a log shanty on a rise of ground close to the track. The rest of the place consisted of a long siding, a short wooden platform, a tall new standard enclosed water-tank and a little whitewashed shed where the handcar and tools were stored. A creek here slipped out of the woods to find fault with a stone culvert ere it flowed beneath the track and resought silence among the encircling spruce trees.
It was a lonesome, insignificant place with nothing to indicate its selection as a bobbin for threads of destiny. The sun was just coming into the sky above the low-lying hills to the east when the President's special steamed into the siding. From the group, clustered about the tool-shed and awaiting its arrival, a broad-shouldered young man in the flannel shirt and legging boots of a railway engineer separated himself and hurried forward. He waved his hand as he recognized Wade's sturdy figure and laughed to hear the magnate's hearty greeting of surprise, his profane enquiry as to what in Gehenna Philip Kendrick was doing away up here in the woods.
The mere sound of that big vibrant bass voice, the mere vitality of the magnate's presence was stimulating. Here was a two-fisted, hard-headed, straight-spoken man's man who had fought his way to the top by refusing pointblank to stay at the bottom. As Phil stood renewing acquaintance he realized more fully why his aunt had always had such supreme confidence in this old friend of her girlhood.