Page:Cy Warman--The express messenger and other tales of the rail.djvu/206

194 many lives—was sent at 9-31. It was signed with the initials of the train-master, but at a time when that gentleman was dead to the world, and had been so for two whole minutes.

No man was in a better position to know these facts than the superintendent, who was the only man in the despatcher's office at the moment when the "mysterious message" flashed over the wire, and whose business it was to investigate the whole matter. As the investigation proceeded, the superintendent became intensely interested in the mystery. For a while he kept the matter to himself, but these things will out, and in less than a month's time the "mysterious message" became the leading topic in shops, cabs, way-cars, and boarding-houses. To say that the clocks were at variance would not satisfy a railroad man, for they had taken time at 9, only a half hour before the message went out. The operator at Westcreek declared that at the end of the twenty-four hours following the receipt of the "mysterious message," his clock had not varied one second. Not a few of the employees refused to become excited or even interested