“Is the train usually on time?”
“Well, I should smile. That's Charlie Mills's train, and the old man ain't been conductor on this road twenty-two years for nothin'.”
“Mills? Does he live on Shawmut Avenue?”
“Dunno. Billy, where does Charlie Mills live?”
“Somewhere at the South End. Shawmut Avenue, I think.”
“Thank you,” said the assistant, and, helping himself to a time-table, he went back rejoicing to his seat in the waiting room. He had stumbled upon an unexpected bit of luck.
There might be another story written in connection with this one; the story of a veteran railroad man whose daughter had been very, very ill with a dreaded disease of the lungs, and who, when other physicians had given up hope, had been brought back to health by a celebrated specialist of our acquaintance. But this story cannot be told just now; suffice it to say that Conductor Charlie Mills had vowed that he would put his neck beneath the wheels of his own express train, if by so doing he could confer a favor on Dr. John Spencer Morgan.
The assistant saw by his time-table that the Cape Cod express reached Brockboro at 8:05. He went over to the telegraph office and wrote two telegrams. The first read like this:
CALVIN S. WISE, The People's Drug Store, 28 Broad Street, Brockboro, Mass.:
Send package 1,500 units Diphtheritic Serum marked with my name to station. Hand to Conductor Mills, Cape Cod express. Train will wait. Matter life and death.