“Which one was it?” asked Kent; and he had to wait till the reply came from Durgan.

“It was Hawk, the right-of-way man.  He broke and ran for the nearest electric-car line the minute he hit the ground, Durgan says.  Does he count?”

“No,” said Kent; but it is always a mistake to under-rate an enemy’s caliber—­even that of his small arms.

XXVIII

THE NIGHT OF ALARMS

If Editor Hildreth had said nothing in his evening edition about the impending strike on the Trans-Western, it was not because public interest was waning.  For a fortnight the newspapers in the territory tributary to the road had been full of strike talk, and Hildreth had said his say, deprecating the threatened appeal to force as fearlessly as he condemned the mismanagement which was provoking it.

But it was Kent who was responsible for the dearth of news on the eve of the event.  Early in the morning of the last day of the month he had sought out the editor and begged him to close the columns of the Evening Argus to strike news, no matter what should come in during the course of the day.

“I can’t go into the reasons as deeply now as I hope to a little later,” he had said, his secretive habit holding good to the final fathom of the slipping hawser of events.  “But you must bear with me once more, and whatever you hear between now and the time you go to press, don’t comment on it.  I have one more chance to win out, and it hangs in a balance that a feather’s weight might tip the wrong way.  I’ll be with you between ten and twelve to-night, and you can safely save two columns of the morning paper for the sensation I’m going to give you.”

It was in fulfilment of this promise that Kent bestirred himself after he had sent a wire to Ormsby, and M’Tosh had settled down to the task of smoothing Callahan’s way westward over a division already twitching in the preliminary rigor of the strike convulsion.

“I am going to set the fuse for the newspaper explosion,” he said to his ally.  “Barring accidents, there is no reason why we shouldn’t begin to figure definitely upon the result, is there?”

M’Tosh was leaning over Despatcher Donohue’s shoulder.  He had slipped Donohue’s fingers aside from the key to cut in with a peremptory “G.S.” order suspending, in favor of the fast mail, the rule which requires a station operator to drop his board on a following section that is less than ten minutes behind its file-leader.

“The fun is beginning,” said the train-master.  “Tischer has his tip from Durgan to keep Callahan’s tail-lights in sight.  With the mail treading on their heels the gentlemen in the Naught-seven will be chary about pulling Patsy down too suddenly in mid career.  They have just passed Morning Dew, and the operator reports Tischer for disregarding his slow signal.”

“Can’t you fix that?” asked Kent.