And it was news: news from Ames Station reporting the Irving Special _in_ at 1.52 A. M.--out at 1.54! We all heard it together, or it might not have been believed. The Irving Special, eastbound, safely past Number One, westbound, on a single track when their meeting orders had lapped! Past without a word of danger or of accident, or even that they had seen Number One and stopped in time to avoid a collision? Exactly; not a word; nothing. In at 52; out at 54. And the actors hard asleep in the berths--and on about its business the Irving Special--that's what we got from Ames.
Callahan looked around. "Gentlemen, what does this mean? Somebody here is insane. I don't know whether it's me or you, Blackburn. Are you horsing me?" he exclaimed, raising his voice angrily. "If you are, I want to say I consider it a damned shabby joke."
Bucks put up a hand and without a word of comment repeated Blackburn's story just as the despatcher had told it. "In any event there's nothing to do now; it's on us or we're past it. Let us wait for Number One to report."
Callahan pored over the order book. "Maybe," he asked after a while, "didn't you send the orders right and copy them wrong in the book, Blackburn?"
The despatcher shook his head. "They went as they stand. The orders lapped, Callahan. Wait till we hear from Number One. I feel sure she is safe. Wait."
Bucks was pacing the floor. Callahan stuck silent to the key, taking what little work came, for I saw neither of the chiefs wanted to trust Blackburn at the key. He sat, looking, for the most part, vacantly into the fire. Callahan meantime had the orders repeated back from Ames and Rosebud. It was as Blackburn had said; they did lap; they had been sent just as the order book showed. There was nothing for it but to wait for Rosebud to hear from Number One. When the night operator there called the despatcher again it brought Blackburn out of his gloom like a thunderclap.
"Give me the key!" he exclaimed. "There is Rosebud." Callahan pushed back and Blackburn, dropping into the chair, took the message from the night operator at Rosebud.
Blackburn answered him, and strangely, with all the easy confidence of his ordinary sending. He sat and took and sent like one again master of the situation.