iding, and the switch was right;
everybody was agreed on that, and it showed that way on the face of
it--and that was as it should have been. The operator at Elbow Bend
swore that he had shown his red, and that it was showing when the
Limited swept by. He said he knew it was going to be a close shave
whether the freight, a little late and crowding the Limited's running
time, would be clear of the main line without delaying the express, and
he had shown his red before ever he had heard her whistle--his red was
showing. The engine crew and the train crew of Extra No. 49, west,
backed the operator up--the red was showing.

Brannigan, the fireman, didn't count as a witness. The only light he'd
seen at all was the west-end switch light, the curve had hidden
anything ahead until after he'd pulled his door and turned to the
tender for coal, and by then they were past the station. And Owsley,
pretty badly smashed up, and in bed down in Mrs. McCann's short-order
house, talked kind of queer when he got around to where he could talk
at all. They asked him what color light the station semaphore was
showing, and Owsley said white--white as the moon. That's what he
said--white as the moon. And they weren't quite sure he understood
what they were driving at.

For a week that's all they could make out of it, and then, with Regan
scratching his head over it one day in confab with Carleton, the
superintendent, it came more by chance than anything else.

"Blamed if I know what to make of it!" he growled. "Ordinary, six
men's words would be the end of it, but Owsley's the best man that ever
latched a throttle in our cabs, and for twenty years his record's
cleaner than a baby's. What he says now don't count, because he ain't
right again yet; but what you can't get away from is the fact that
Owsley's not the man to have slipped a signal. Either the six of them
are doing him cold to save their own skins, or there's something queer
about it."

Carleton, "Royal" Carleton, in his grave, quiet way, shook his head.

"We've been trying hard enough to get to the bottom of it, Tommy," he
said. "I wish to the Lord we could. I don't think the men are
lying--they tell a pretty straight story. I've been wondering about
that patch Owsley had on his eye, and----"

"What's that got to do with it?" cut in the blunt little master
mechanic, who made no bones about his fondness for the engineer. "He
isn't blind in the other, is he?"

Car