The Night Operator Part 27

"Ask him what I say," repeated Regan shortly. "What was Dan like in the cab to-night?"

Spence bent over his key again. There was a pause before the answer came.

"He says he hadn't seen Dan so cheerful for months," said Spence presently.

Regan nodded, kind of curiously, kind of as though it were the answer he expected--and then he nodded at Carleton, and the two went back to the super's room.

Regan closed the door behind him.

Carleton dropped into his chair, his gray eyes hard and full of pain.

"I don't understand, Tommy," he said heavily. "It's almost as though you knew it was going to happen."

Regan came across the floor and stood in front of the desk.

"I did," he said in a low way. "I think I was almost certain of it."

Carleton pulled himself forward with a jerk in his chair.

"Do you know what you are saying, Tommy?" he asked sharply.

"I'll tell you," Regan said, in the same low way. "I went over to the roundhouse to-night before Dan took the 304 out. I didn't see Dan anywhere about, and I asked Dawes where he was. Dawes said he had gone back to the fitters' benches to look for some washers. I walked on past the tender and I found him there down on the floor on his knees by one of the benches--but he wasn't looking for any washers. He was praying."

With a sharp exclamation, Carleton pushed back his chair, and, standing, leaned over the desk toward Regan.

Regan swallowed a lump in his throat--and shook his head.

"He didn't see me," he said brokenly, "he didn't know I was there. He was praying aloud. I heard what he said. It's been ringing in my head all night, word for word, while I was trying to play with those"--he jerked his hand toward the scattered cards on the desk between them.

"I can hear him saying it now. It's the queerest prayer I ever heard; and I guess he prayed the way he lived--as though he was kind of intimate with G.o.d."

"Yes?" prompted Carleton softly, as Regan paused.

Regan turned his head away as his eyes filled suddenly--and his voice was choked.

"What he said was this, just as though he was talking to you or me: 'You know how it is, G.o.d. I wouldn't take that way myself unless You fixed it up for me, because it wouldn't be right unless You did it.

But I hope, G.o.d, You'll think that's the best way out of it. You see, there ain't nothing left as it is, but if we fixed it that way there'd be the fraternal insurance to take care of the missus, and she wouldn't never know. And then, You see, G.o.d, I guess my work is all done, and--and I'd kind of like to quit while I was still on the pay roll--I'd kind of like to finish that way, and to-night's the last chance. You understand, G.o.d, don't You?'"

Regan's lips were quivering as he stopped.

There was silence for a moment, then Carleton looked up from the blotter on his desk.

"Tommy," he said in his big, quiet way, as his hand touched Regan's sleeve, "tell me why you didn't stop him, then, from going out to-night?"

Regan didn't answer at once. He went over to the window and stared out at the twinkling switch lights in the yards below--he was still staring out of the window as he spoke.

"He didn't put it up to me," said Regan. "He put it up to G.o.d."

VII

"THE DEVIL AND ALL HIS WORKS"

Maguire was a little, washed-out, kind of toil-bent hostler in the roundhouse--and he married old. How old? n.o.body knew--not even old Bill himself--fifty something. Mrs. Maguire presented him with a son in due course, and the son's name was Patrick Burke Maguire--but the Hill Division, being both terse and graphic by nature and education, called him "Noodles."

Noodles wasn't even a pretty baby. Tommy Regan, who was roped in to line up at the baptismal font and act as G.o.dfather because old Bill was a boiler-washer in the roundhouse, which was reason enough for the big-hearted master mechanic, said that Noodles was the ugliest and most forbidding looking specimen of progeny he had ever seen outside a zoological garden. Of course, be it understood, Regan wasn't a family man, and G.o.d-fathering wasn't a job in Regan's line, so when he got outside the church and the perspiration had stopped trickling nervously down the small of his back and he'd got a piece of blackstrap clamped firmly home between his teeth, he told old Bill, by way of a grim sort of revenge for the unhappy position his good nature had led him into, that the offspring was the dead spit of its father--and he congratulated Noodles.

The irony, of course, was lost. The boiler-washer walked on air for a week. He told the roundhouse what Regan had said--and the roundhouse laughed. Bill thought the roundhouse thought he was lying, but that didn't dampen his spirits any. It wasn't everybody could get the master mechanic of the division to stand up with _their_ kids!

Everybody was happy--except Noodles. Noodles, just about then, developed colic.

Noodles got over the colic, got over the measles, the mumps, the whooping cough, and the scarlet fever--that may not have been the order of their coming or their going, but he got over them all. And when he was twelve he got over the smallpox; but he never got over his ugliness--the smallpox kind of put a stop-order on any lurking tendency there might have been in that direction. Also, when he was twelve, he got over all the schooling the boiler-washer's limited means would span, which wasn't a university course; and he started in railroading as a call boy.

There was nothing organically bad about Noodles, except his exterior--which wasn't his fault. One can't be blamed for hair of a motley red, ubiquitous freckles wherever the smallpox had left room for them, no particular colored eyes, a little round k.n.o.b of uptilted nose, and a mouth that made even the calloused Dutchy at the lunch counter feel a little mean inwardly when he compared it with the mathematically cut slab of contract pie, eight slabs to the pie plate, and so much so that he went to the extent of--no, he never gave Noodles an extra piece--but he went to the extent of surrept.i.tiously pocketing Noodles'

nickel as though he were obtaining money under false pretenses--which was a good deal for Dutchy to do--and just shows.

There was nothing _organically_ bad about Noodles--not a thing.

Noodles' troubles, and they came thick and fast with the inauguration of his railroad career, lay in quite another direction--his irrepressible tendency to practical jokes, coupled with a lack of the sense of the general fitness of things, consequences and results, and an absence of even a bowing acquaintance with responsibility that was appalling.

The first night Noodles went on duty as call boy, armed with a nickel thriller--that being only half the price of a regular dime novel--and visions of the presidency of the road being offered him before he was much older, Spence was sitting in on the early night trick. There was a lot of stuff moving through the mountains that night, and the train sheet was heavy. And even Spence, counted one of the best despatchers that ever held down a key on the Hill Division, was hard put to it, both to keep his crowding sections from treading on each other's heels, and to jockey the east and westbounds past each other without letting their pilots get tangled up head-on. It was no night or no place for foolishness--a despatcher's office never is, for that matter.

Noodles curled himself up in a chair behind the despatcher--and started in on the thriller. His first call was for the crews of No. 72, the local freight east, at 8.35, and there was nothing to do until then unless Spence should happen to want him for something. The thriller was quite up to the mark, even "thriller" than usual, but Noodles left the hero at the end of the first chapter securely bound to the mill-wheel with the villain rushing to open the gate in the dam--and his eyes strayed around the room.

It wasn't altogether the novelty of his surroundings--no phase of railroading was altogether a novelty to any Big Cloud youngster--there was just a sort of newness in his own position that interfered with any protracted or serious effort along literary lines. From a circuit of the room, his eyes went to the fly-specked, green-shaded lamp on the despatcher's table, then from the lamp to the despatcher's back--and fixed on the despatcher's back.

His eyes held there quite a long time--then his fingers went stealthily to the lapel of his coat. Spence had a habit when hurried or anxious of half rising from his chair, as though to give emphasis to his orders every time he touched the key. Spence was both hurried and anxious that night and the key was busy. In the somewhat dim light, Spence, to Noodles' fancy, a.s.sumed the aspect of an animated jumping jack.

Deftly, through long experience, Noodles coiled his pin with a wicked upshoot to the center of attack, cautiously lowered his own chair, which had been tilted back against the wall, to the more stable position of four legs on the floor, leaned forward, and laid the pin at a strategic point on the seat of Spence's chair. Two minutes later, kicked bodily down the stairs, Noodles was surveying the Big Cloud yards by moonlight from the perspective of the station platform.

Noodles' career as a call boy had been brief--and it was ended. Old Bill, the boiler-washer, came to the rescue. He explained to Regan who the G.o.dfather of the boy was and what bearing that had on the case, and how he'd larruped the boy for what he'd done, and how the boy hadn't meant anything by it--and could the boy have another chance?

Regan said, "Yes," and said it shortly, more because he was busy at the time and wanted to get rid of Old Bill than from any predisposition toward Noodles. Noodles wasn't predisposing any way you looked at him, and Regan had a good look at his G.o.dson now for about the first time since he'd sponsored him, and he didn't like Noodles'

looks--particularly. But Regan, not taking too serious a view of the matter, said yes, and put Noodles at work over in the roundhouse under the eye of his father.

Here, for a month, in one way or another, Noodles succeeded in making things lively, and himself cordially disliked by about everybody in the shops, the roundhouse, and the Big Cloud yards generally. And there was a hint or two thrown out, that reached Regan's ears, that old Bill had known what he was doing when he got one of the "big fellows" as G.o.dfather for as ugly a blasted little nuisance as the Hill Division had known for many a long day. Regan got to scowling every time he saw Noodles' unhandsome countenance, and he took pains on more than one occasion to give a bit of blunt advice to both Noodles and Noodles'

father--which the former received somewhat ungraciously, and the latter with trepidation.

And then one night as it grew dark, just before six o'clock, while Bill and the turner and the wipers were washing up and trying to put in the time before the whistle blew, Noodles dropped into the turntable pit and wedged the turntable bearings with iron wedgings. Half an hour later, when the night crew came to swing it for the 1016, blowing hard from a full head of steam and ready to go out and couple on to No. 1 for the westbound run, they couldn't move it. It took them a few minutes before they could find out what the matter was, and another few to undo the matter when they did find out--and No. 1 went out five minutes late.

n.o.body asked who did it--it wasn't necessary. They just said "Noodles," and waited to see what Noodles' G.o.dfather would do about it.

They did not have long to wait. The Limited five minutes late out of division and the delay up to the motive-power department, which was Regan's department, would have been enough to bring the offender, whoever he might be, on the carpet with scant ceremony even if it had been an _accident_. Regan was boiling mad.

Noodles didn't show up the next day. Deep in Noodles' consciousness was a feeling that his nickel thriller and a certain spot he knew up behind the b.u.t.te, where many a pleasant afternoon had been pa.s.sed when he should have been at school, was more conducive to peace and quietness than the center of railroad activities--also Noodles ached bodily from his father's attentions.

Old Bill, too, kept conveniently out of sight down in a pit somewhere every time the master mechanic showed his nose inside the roundhouse during the morning--but by afternoon, counting the edge of Regan's wrath to have worn smooth, he followed Regan out over the turntable after one of the master mechanic's visits.

"Regan," he blurted out anxiously, "about the bhoy, now."