merely the accessories which were carrying her nearer and nearer
her goal--a telegraph operator.

The fireman's watch hung on a hook alongside and the hands showed
twenty-five minutes past midnight. It was standard time both here and
in Toronto; so that would be the time at the _Recorder_ office
also--12.25 a.m. They would be well into the rush of the night's work
by now. The boys would be in from assignments and pounding out "copy"
in the city room. The wires would be warming up and the "flimsy"
arriving at the telegraph editor's desk in bunches, and old man
Jeffreys would be reaching in the left bottom drawer of his scarred old
desk for his little package of bread and cheese with an apple or a
banana to top it off; he always ate that twenty-five minutes after
midnight, just before the linotype men and the rest of the
composing-room staff, who ate at the all-night restaurant around the
corner, straggled back to their work.

Cristy began to go over the things she must do and to arrange them in
the order she must do them. The very first thing would be the messages
to McAllister and Brennan; there must be no delay in getting the police
into action. If they could surprise their quarry over at Waring's
house on the Island--catch them in the middle of it--it would provide a
dramatic climax to the sensational story. She could trust her editor
not to overlook any such opportunity and her eyes sparkled as she
pictured the uproar that would follow those messages in the _Recorder_
office. The old place would be buzzing and the whole staff on the jump
like a bunch of excited kids!

Impatiently she peered out ahead, looked for lights down the track,
glanced continually at the hands of the watch. She ran hastily over
the strong features of the sensation, marshalling her facts, getting
the general scheme of the story into her head in proper newspaper style
and planning a strong "lead."

She became so engrossed in this that not until a vibrant shudder passed
through the engine did she notice. The engineer was leaning out the
window on his side of the cab, one hand on a lever. She threw a quick
glance out the narrow window in front of her and saw that they were
bowling down a straight stretch of track and that far ahead in the
darkness were little specks of light.

A station! It must be the station at last!

Anxiously she watched the far-away dots arrange themselves slowly into
switch lights beside the track. The la