“Do I hit the target?”
The conductor nodded. “You win, Mr. Webster,” he admitted.
“Occasionally I lose, old-timer. Well?”
“Who the devil is Sweeney?”
John Stuart Webster turned to his cosmopolitan comrades of the national game. “Listen to him,” he entreated them. “He has worked for the company, lo, these many years, and he doesn't know who Sweeney is?” He eyed the conductor severely. “Sweeney,” he declared, “is the man who is responsible for the whichness of the why-for. Ignorance of the man higher up excuses no sleeping-car conductor, and if your job is gone when you reach Salt Lake, old-timer, don't blame it on me, but rather on your distressing propensity to ask foolish questions. Vamos, amigo, and leave me to my despair. Can't you see I'm happy here?”
“No offense, Mr. Webster, no offense. I can let you have a stateroom——”
“That's trading talk. I'll take it.”
The conductor gave him his receipt and led him back to the stateroom in the observation-car. At the door Webster handed him a five-dollar bill. “For you, son,” he said gently, “just to take the sting out of what I'm about to tell you. Now that I possess your receipt and know that ten men and a boy cannot take it away from me, I'm going to tell you who Sweeney is.”
“Who is he?” the conductor queried. Already he suspected he had been outgeneralled.
“Sweeney,” said Mr. Webster, “is the chief clerk in one of Chicago's most pretentious hotels and a young man who can find all the angles of a situation without working it out in logarithms. I wired him the details of my predicament; he heard the Macedonian cry and kicked in. Neat, is it not?”