He supported the operator to a chair, and O'Neill ran to the inner room. The moment his eye covered the order book he saw what had happened. "Extra 81 is against a passenger special," exclaimed O'Neill, huskily, seizing the key. "There's the order--Extra 81 from Cambridge to meet Number 50 at Sumter and Special 833 has orders to Cambridge, and nothing against Extra 81. If I can't catch the freight at Red Desert we're in for it--wake up Morris Blood, quick, he's in there asleep."
Blood, working late in his office, had rolled himself in a blanket on the lounge in Callahan's old room, and unfortunately Morris Blood was the soundest sleeper on the division. Glover called him, shook him, caught him by the arm, lifted him to a sitting position, talked hurriedly to him--he knew what resource and power lay under the thick curling hair if he could only rouse the tired man from his dreamless sleep. Even Blood's own efforts to rouse himself were almost at once apparent. His eyes opened, glared helplessly, sank back and closed in stupor. Glover grew desperate, and lifting Morris to his feet, dragged him half way across the dark room.
O'Neill, rattling the key, was looking on from the table like a drowning man. "Leave your key and steady him here against the door-jamb, Garry," cried Glover; "by the Eternal, I'll wake him." He sprang to the big water-cooler, cast away the top, seized the tank like a bucket, and dashed a full stream of ice-water into Morris Blood's face.
"Great God, what's the matter? Who is this? Glover? What? Give me a towel, somebody."
The spell was broken. Glover explained, O'Neill ran back to the key, and Blood in another moment bent dripping over the nervous despatcher.
The superintendent's mind working faster now than the magic current before him, listened, cast up, recollected, considered, decided for and against every chance. At that moment Red Desert answered. No breath interrupted the faint clicks that reported on Extra 81. O'Neill looked up in agony as the sounder spelled the words: "Extra 81 went by at 3.05." The superintendent and the despatcher looked at the clock; it read 3.09.
O'Neill clutched the order book, but Glover looked at Morris Blood. With the water trickling from his hair down his wrinkled face, beading his mustache, and dripping from his chin he stood, haggard with sleep, leaning over O'Neill's shoulder. A towel stuffed into his left hand was clasped forgotten at his waist. From the east room, operators, their instruments silenced, were tiptoeing into the archway. Above the little group at the table the clock ticked. O'Neill, in a frenzy, half rose out of his chair, but Morris Blood, putting his hand on the despatcher's shoulder, forced him back.