“They’re pretty anxious in the city. I must answer.” Then he went to the instrument and sent the most undisciplined message that had ever gone over the wires from a subordinate to a superior.
CHAPTER II—PROMOTION
IN the train despatcher’s office at Warmington, one hundred and twenty miles to the east of Hitchen’s Siding, the force was hard at work under the electric light. Philip Manson, division superintendent, strolled in, although it was long past his office hours, for he was one of those indefatigable railroad men loth to take his fingers off the pulse of the great organisation he controlled, and no employee of the road could be certain of any hour, night or day, when Manson might not be standing unexpectedly beside him. As this silent man surveyed the busy room, listening to the click of the telegraphic sounders, which spoke to him as plainly as if human lips were uttering the language of the land, he was startled by a cry from Hammond, the train despatcher. Hammond sprang like a madman to the sender, and the key, at lightning speed, rattled forth—“Sidetrack Sixteen. Sidetrack Sixteen.”
Instinctively the division superintendent knew what had happened. To the most accurate of men, faithful and exact through years of service, may come an unaccountable momentary lapse of vigilance. The train despatcher had forgotten Number Sixteen! Instantly the road spread itself out before the mind’s eye of the superintendent. He knew every inch of it. The situation revealed itself to his mathematical brain as a well-known arrangement of men and pawns would display to an expert what could or could not be done on the chess-board. He knew where Number Three would lose further time on the up-grades, but now, alas! it was speeding along a flat country, where every minute meant a mile. Nevertheless, there was one chance in a thousand that the express had not yet reached Hitchen’s, and his quick mind indicated the right thing to be done.
“Tell him to stop Number Three,” he snapped forth.
The despatcher obeyed. Where disaster was a matter of moments, there was little use in awaiting the slow movements of a heavy freight-train when the express, a demon of destruction, was swooping down on the scene. There came no answer to the frenzied appeal. Every man in the room was on his feet, and each held his breath as if the crash and the shrieks could leap across one hundred and twenty miles and penetrate into that appalled office. Then the sounder began, leisurely and insolent:
“I sidetracked Sixteen on my own, and set the signal against Three until Sixteen was in. Are you people crazy, or merely plain drunk?”
The tension snapped like an overstrained wire. One man went into shriek after shriek of laughter; another laid his head on his desk and sobbed. Hammond staggered into a chair, and an assistant held a glass of water to his ashen lips. The division superintendent stood like a statue, a deep frown marking his displeasure at the flippant message that had come in upon such a tragic crisis. But the assurance that the express was safe cleared his brow.