ttering wire--got it before
it was half told--cut Beale out and began to pound the Gap call. And
as though it were before him in reality, that stretch of track, fifteen
miles of it, from Blind River to the Gap, unfolded itself like a grisly
panorama before his mind. There wasn't a half mile of tangent at a
single stretch in the whole of it. It swung like the writhings of a
snake, through cuts and tunnels, hugging the canyon walls, twisting this
way and that. Anywhere else there might be a chance, one in a thousand
even, that they would see each other's headlights in time--here it was
disaster quick and absolute.

Donkin's lips were set in a thin, straight line. The Gap answered him;
and the answer was like the knell of doom. He had not expected
anything else; he had only hoped against hope. The second section of
the Limited had pulled out of the Gap, eastbound, two minutes before.
The two trains were in the open against each other's orders.

In the next room, Carleton and Regan, over their pipes, were at their
nightly game of pedro. Donkin called them--and his voice sounded
strange to himself. Chairs scraped and crashed to the floor, and an
instant later the super and the master mechanic were in the room.

"What's wrong, Bob?" Carleton flung the words from him in a single
breath.

Donkin told them. But his fingers were on the key again as he talked.
There was still one chance, worse than the thousand-to-one shot; but it
was the only one. Between the Gap and Blind River, eight miles from
the Gap, seven miles from Blind River, was Cassil's Siding. But there
was no night man at Cassil's, and the little town lay a mile from the
station. It was ten o'clock--Donkin's watch lay face up on the table
before him--the day man at Cassil's went off at seven--the chance was
that the day man might have come back to the station for something or
other!

Not much of a chance? No--not much! It was a possibility, that was
all; and Donkin's fingers worked--the seventeen, the life and
death--calling, calling on the night trick to the day man at Cassil's
Siding.

Carleton came and stood at Donkin's elbow, and Regan stood at the
other; and there was silence now, save only for the key that, under
Donkin's fingers, seemed to echo its stammering appeal about the room
like the sobbing of a human soul.

"CS--CS--CS," Donkin called; and then, "the seventeen," and then, "hold
second Number Two." And then the same thing over