Kent fell back on his secretive habit yet once again.

“I don’t care to anticipate the climax, Hildreth.  By one o’clock one of two things will have happened:  you’ll get a wire that will make your back hair sit up, or I’ll get one that will make me wish I’d never been born.  Let it rest at that for the present; you have work enough on hand to fill up the interval, and if you haven’t, you can distribute those affidavits I gave you among the compositors and get them into type.  I want to see them in the paper to-morrow morning, along with the other news.”

“Oh, we can’t do that, David!  The time isn’t ripe.  You know what I told you about——­”

“If the time doesn’t ripen to-night, Hildreth, it never will.  Do as I tell you, and get that stuff into type.  Do more; write the hottest editorial you can think of, demanding to know if it isn’t time for the people to rise and clean out this stable once for all.”

“By Jove!  David, I’ve half a mum-mind to do it.  If you’d only unbutton yourself a little, and let me see what my backing is going to be——­”

“All in good season,” laughed Kent.  “Your business for the present moment is to write; I’m going down to the Union Station.”

“What for?” demanded the editor.

“To see if our crazy engineer is still mistaking his orders properly.”

“Hold on a minute.  How did the enemy get wind of your plot so quickly?  You can tell me that, can’t you?”

“Oh, yes; I told you Hawk was one of the party in the private car.  He fell off at the yard limits station and came back to town.”

The night editor stood up and confronted his visitor.

“David, you are either the coolest plunger that ever drew breath—­or the bub-biggest fool.  I wouldn’t be standing in your shoes to-night for two such railroads as the T-W.”

Kent laughed again and opened the door.

“I suppose not.  But you know there is no accounting for the difference in tastes.  I feel as if I had never really lived before this night; the only thing that troubles me is the fear that somebody or something will get in the way of my demented engineer.”

He went out into the hall, but as Hildreth was closing the door he turned back.

“There is one other thing that I meant to say:  when you get your two columns of sensation, you’ve got to be decent and share with the Associated Press.”

“I’m dud-dashed if I do!” said Hildreth, fiercely.

“Oh, yes, you will; just the bare facts, you know.  You’ll have all the exciting details for an ‘exclusive,’ to say nothing of the batch of affidavits in the oil scandal.  And it is of the last importance to me that the facts shall be known to-morrow morning wherever the Associated has a wire.”

“Go away!” said the editor, “and dud-don’t come back here till you can uncork yourself like a man and a Cuc-Christian!  Go off, I say!”

It wanted but a few minutes of eleven when Kent mounted the stair to the despatcher’s room in the Union Station.  He found M’Tosh sitting at Donohue’s elbow, and the sounders on the glass-topped table were crackling like overladen wires in an electric storm.