cab with a revolver."

For an instant, no more than a breathing space, no one spoke; then
Spence's voice, with a queer sag in it, broke the silence:

"Extra Thirty-four left Spider Cut eight minutes ago."

Carleton, master always of himself, and master always of the situation,
spoke before the words were hardly out of the despatcher's mouth:

"Order the wrecker out, Spence--jump! Mulligan, go down and help get
the crew together." And then, as Spence and Mulligan hurried from the
room, Carleton looked at the master mechanic. "Well, Tommy, what do
you make of this?" he demanded grimly.

Regan, with thinned lips, was pulling viciously at his mustache.

"What do I make of it!" he growled. "A mail train in the ditch, and
nothing worth speaking of left of the two-twenty-nine--that's what I
make of it!"

Carleton shook his head.

"Doesn't it strike you as a rather remarkable coincidence that our
wires should go out, and P. Walton should go off his head with delirium
at the same moment?"

"Eh!" snapped Regan sharply. "Eh!--what do you mean?"

"I don't mean anything," Carleton answered, clipping off his words.
"It's strange, that's all--I think we'll go up with the wrecker, Tommy."

"Yes," said Regan slowly, puzzled; then, with a scowl and a tug at his
mustache: "It does look queer, queerer every minute--blamed queer! I
wonder who P. Walton is, and where he came from anyhow?"

"You asked me that once before," Carleton threw back over his shoulder,
moving toward the door. "P. Walton never said."

And while Regan, still tugging at his mustache, followed Carleton down
the stairs to the platform, and ill-omened call boys flew about the
town for the wrecking crew, and the 1018, big and capable, snorting
from a full head of steam, backed the tool car, a flat, and the
rumbling derrick from a spur to the main line, P. Walton still sat,
smiling strangely, clinging to the window sill of the laboring 229,
staring out into the night through the cab glass ahead.

"You see," said P. Walton to himself, as though summing up an argument
dispassionately, "ditching a train travelling pretty near a mile a
minute is apt to result in a few casualties, and Nulty might get hurt,
and if he didn't, the first thing they'd do would be to pass him out
for keeps, anyway, on Spud's account. They're not a very gentle lot--I
remember the night back at Joliet that Larry and the Butcher walked out
with the guards' clothes on, after crackin