"And this is how I have arranged to save the 'Lark' and get 'Red Mike' red-handed. The Southern Pacific superintendent knows all this and will bring the 'Lark' to a stop as close to the derailer on the track as he can. My detectives will be hidden all around. As the train pulls to a stop they'll close in and everything will be over."
John gasped at the sheer audacity of the story as it fell from Gibson's lips. He saw Brennan, his eyes glittering, nervously taking deep inhales of tobacco smoke.
"Now, this is what you are to do," Gibson continued. "You will go with my detectives and see the whole show with your own eyes. You will be the only reporters with them. I am to meet 'Red Mike' at 7 and go with him. You can understand how essential it is that everything goes just as I planned it. If there's a slip-up anywhere it means my life. 'Red Mike' has told me that he'll kill me if he finds that he has been double-crossed.
"That's all I need to tell you, I think, except that you will meet my detectives outside this building at half past seven. I'm doing this to save the lives of the passengers on the 'Lark' and to show the people of Los Angeles that the detectives of the police department, as I have charged, aren't on their jobs. It should convince them that there is something at least in what I have been saying."
He glanced at his watch again.
"It's half past six now," he said. "I must get out of here. 'Red Mike' is waiting for me and I can't let him become suspicious."
He rose from his chair.
"By the way, have you boys guns?" he asked. Brennan and John answered negatively by shaking their heads. He reached into a drawer of his desk and drew out two automatic pistols.
"My detectives will carry rifles and sawed-off shotguns," he said, handing the pistols to the reporters. "You boys might as well have these."
He hesitated, a half-smile on his lips.