Bascom laughed hardily.
“You’ll never catch a newspaper man,” he said. “But I’ll tell you this: Parker Higginson is a pretty smooth politician, and he’s got a mighty long arm when it comes to reaching for the thing he wants. He was the man who got me my jobhere, and I’ll bet those New York people who appointed me don’t know yet why they did it. Another thing: when I’m gone, Higginson will still be here—don’t you forget that!”
“We’ll try to remember it,” Sprague promised. Then he looked at his watch. “The overland passenger, westbound, will be here in a few minutes, and when it goes, you may go with it, Mr. Bascom. But first we want a few more names, the names of the New York people who are behind both you and Mr. Higginson.”
Bascom got up, went to a wardrobe in one corner of the office, and dragged out two heavy suit-cases.
“I’ve been fixed for this for some little time,” he volunteered. “Send Murtagh to the stone-pile for splitting on us, and I won’t make any claim for the half-month’s salary that’s due me. As to the names of the big fellows, I only wish I knew them, Mr. Sprague. If I did, I’d go east instead of west and make somebody come across with big money. As it is, I guess it’s South America for mine. Good-night, all. I wish you luck with the booze-fighters, Mr. Maxwell. You’ll have a bully good time loading some of them back onto the water-automobile.” And he went out into the night with a suit-case in either hand.
“Talk about cold gall!” said Starbuck, when the door closed behind the retreating figure of the big master mechanic; “Great Cat! that fellow’s got enough to swim in.” Then he turned to Sprague. “Is the show over?”
The man from Washington laughed genially.
“That is for Maxwell to say. We might go uptown and give those newspaper people a bad quarter of an hour, though I doubt if we’d make any money at it.”
Maxwell looked up quickly.
“You think they’re in it, Calvin? Bascom wasn’t lying about that part of it?”
“Yes; they are in it up to their necks. I suppose it’s politics for Higginson. Haven’t I heard somewhere that he is one of the State bosses?”
“You might have,” drawled Starbuck. “He’s It, all right.”
Sprague stood up and yawned sleepily.
“Perhaps, a little later on, we can throw a scare into this Mr. Parker Higginson,” he suggested. “Just now, I’m for the hotel and a few winks of much-needed sleep. Tarbell, you go up to my office and get Murtagh. Have him locked up on a charge of—oh, any old charge will do; breaking into my office to-night, if you can’t think of anything better. If we can manage to hold onto himfor a while, we may be able to keep this Mr. Higginson quiet while Maxwell is straightening out his booze-fighters. Let’s go.”
“Hold on, just a minute,” pleaded Maxwell. “There are three of us here who have seen the wheels go round, and I don’t forget that I was the one who said there weren’t any wheels. How in the name of all that is wonderful have you been able to work this puzzle out in less than twelve hours, Sprague?”
The big chemistry expert sat down again and locked his hands behind his head.
“My gosh!” he said; “have I got to open up a kindergarten for you fellows when I’m so sleepy that I don’t know what I’m going to have for breakfast to-morrow morning? It was easy, dead easy. Half an hour with those delayed train crews at Angels this morning showed me that the discipline strings were all off; one of the freight conductors even offered me a nip out of his pocket-flask when I intimated that I was thirsty. With that for a pointer, I had my eyes open at the wreck, and what I saw there you all know. Moreover, I noticed that the pocket-flasks were all alike, as if they’d all been handed out over the same bar. All straight, so far?”
“Go on,” said Maxwell.
“I got my first pointer on Bascom at the wreck, too. I saw that the men in the trainmaster’s gang didn’t drink when the boss was looking, a condition which didn’t apply in the other crew. Again, I noticed that Bascom took his track-clearing privilege with a large and handsome disregard for the salvage. He didn’t care how much property was destroyed in the process, and once I saw him give the signal to the crane engineer to drop a car loaded with automobiles—which was promptly done and the autos properly smashed.”
“The cold-blooded devil!” growled the superintendent.
“When we reached town, Tarbell here promptly confirmed my guess about the whiskey; and in the evening Calmaine helped some more by going with me over the pay-rolls for new names, and over the cost-sheets for increases. Naturally, we dwelt longest upon the motive-power and repair department, with its huge increases, and it so happened that my eye fell upon the various charges for vitriol in carboys. I asked Calmaine what use a railroad shop had for so much sulphuric acid, and he told me it was used to pickle castings. Afterward I sent Tarbell out to bring me samples of water from the tanks of the crippled locomotiveson the shop track and of the oil in their cylinder-cups. Analyses of both, which I made on the spot, showed the presence of sulphuric acid in the water, and also in the oil.”
“Still, you didn’t have any cinch on Bascom,” Starbuck put in.
“No, but things were leaning pretty heavily his way. Tarbell had traced Murtagh for me and had found out the one thing that I needed to know; namely, that Murtagh had been ‘placed’ onThe Times-Recordby Bascom’s recommendation. Murtagh was the man who put the threatening note under my door; the note was printed on a scrap of scratch-paper—copy paper—of the sort that you rarely find outside of a newspaper office. Here I simply put two and two together. Bascom had been conferring with Higginson, or his editor, or both of them, and telling them of my rubbernecking at the wreck. They had agreed among themselves that I’d better be warned off the grass, and they took about the stupidest possible way they could think of to do it.”
“Still, you didn’t have Bascom,” reiterated Starbuck.
“No; but he was the man who had been signing the requisitions for the big purchases of acid, and I was far enough along to chance a jump athim. I knew that if he were the man who was poisoning the locomotives, he wasn’t trusting anybody else; he was doing it himself, often and by littles. I wasn’t at all sure of catching him to-night, of course; but we saw him down here at the fire, and I thought there was an even chance that he might stay and do a little more devilment.”
Maxwell stood up and shook himself into his coat.
“I’m onto you now, Sprague,” he chuckled, in a brave attempt to jolly himself out of the depressive nightmare which had been weighing him down for weeks. “You’re a guesser—a bold, bad four-flusher, with a perfectly miraculous knack of drawing the other card you need when you reach for it. Now, if you could only guess me out some way in which I can straighten up these poor fellows of mine who have been pulled neck and heels off of the water-wagon——”
“Pshaw! that’s a cinch,” said the big man, yawning sleepily again. “We’ll just put our heads together and get out a little circular letter, talking to the boys just as you’d talk to a bunch of them in your office. Tell ’em it’s all off, and the bar is closed and padlocked, and you’ll have ’em all eating out of your hand again, same as they used to. You don’t believe it can be done? You letme write the letter and I’ll show you. All you have to do is to apply the scientific principle; surround the whole subject and look at it calmly and dispassionately, and—ye-ow! Say, I’m going to chance another guess—the last in the box. If you don’t head me over to the hotel and my room, you’ll have to carry me over and put me to bed. And that’s no joke, with a man of my size. Let’s go.”