Page:Frank Packard - On the Iron at Big Cloud.djvu/196

, that wound in his head came from a long-handled union-wrench I grabbed out of the tool box. He went down like a felled ox—but it was too late. Before I could reach a lever we were in splinters."

Dahleen stopped. Carleton never stirred, he was leaning forward, his elbows on his desk, his chin in his hands, his face strained, eyes intently fastened on the other.

Dahleen fumbled a second with his watch chain, twisting it around his fingers, then he went on:

"While I laid in the hospital I turned the thing over in my mind pretty often, long before the doctors thought I knew my own name again, and I figured that, if it was ever known, old Coogan was down and out for fair even if when he got better his head turned out all right again, because he wouldn't be ever trusted in a cab under any circumstances, you understand? If he didn't come out straight why that ended it, of course; but I had it in my mind that it was only what they call a temporary aberration. I couldn't queer him if that was all, could I? So I said to myself, 'Jimmy, all you know is that the "air" wouldn't work.' That's what I told you that day; and then you sprang that flask on me. You were right, I had forgotten it. Whisky in the cab on the night of an accident is pretty near an open and shut game. It was him or me, and I couldn't tell you the story then without doing Coogan cold, but Coogan's gone now and it can't hurt him. That's all."

The tick of the clock on the wall, the click of the sounder from the dispatcher's room next door were