SOMETHING BAD
Ralph Fairbanks sat down on the edge of the narrow bed and watched
Zeph open the envelope. He had all the curiosity that his friend had
about the contents of it, but he displayed more placidity. Zeph was
always as eager as a bird dog on the scent.
“What do you suppose this is?” he murmured, drawing out a folded piece
of paper.
“A doctor’s prescription?” suggested Ralph grimly.
Zeph gave a look, then uttered a disappointed ejaculation.
“Shucks! Why, it’s only a list of names. Not another thing. Four
names. Shucks!”
Ralph held out his hand for the paper and Zeph gave it up, his face
screwed into an expression of disappointment.
“It’s a roast for us,” he muttered.
But Ralph made no comment—at first. He read aloud the column of names.
“Lyons, Bertholdt, Mike Ranny, Peters.”
“Do you know ’em?” asked Zeph, with some curiosity.
“Perhaps. I know Mike Ranny. He has a brother Bob. Bob takes out
Number Eighty-two. He is a good engineer. But Mike is a shopman. Yes,
I guess I can identify him.”
“And those others?” asked Zeph.
“Perhaps. But that isn’t the first thing to do. Here is a list of
names that Whitey was carrying to Andy McCarrey. Very secret about it.
And we are led to believe the list was coming from Jim Perrin.”
“All right! All right!” returned Zeph impatiently. “What’s the
answer?”
“I can find out if Perrin really wrote these names down. I’ll do so
to-morrow first thing. Then we may identify the four persons named.
Just why Lyons, Bertholdt, Peters and Mike Ranny are named here to
Andy McCarrey, we can only surmise. But we may believe that the four
men belong to the shopmen’s union and Perrin has selected them for
some certain matter which McCarrey wishes put over.”
Zeph merely nodded his head and humped his shoulders forward, staring
in Ralph’s face.
“But remember, we are only supposing these things. Got to identify the
writing of the names and the men owning them,” the young dispatcher
continued.
“Huh!” exclaimed Zeph. “And even then we won’t know anything. Got to
wait till something happens. Gee!”
“You come to me to-morrow noon and I’ll know something,” said Ralph,
rising and putting away the paper in his wallet. “And then, I think,
we’d better get in touch with Mr. Adair.”
“I’d like to have something to show him,” murmured Zeph. “Something
good.”
“You are more likely to have something bad to show him,” returned
Ralph seriously. “I believe, Zeph, that this Andy McCarrey, with Jim
Perrin to help him, could swing more than half of the shopmen in
Rockton.”
“It’s a queer proposition. How does it come this McCarrey butts in
here? And him not a union man, nor even an employee of the Great
Northern?”
“I give it to you straight, Zeph,” sighed Ralph, buttoning his coat
over the wallet. “I believe McCarrey followed the new supervisor
here.”
“What!”
“No ‘what’ about it. Mr. Hopkins—the G. M. admitted it to me—got into
trouble on an eastern railroad. This McCarrey had a run-in with Barton
Hopkins there. As soon as Mr. Hopkins took hold here at Rockton as
supervisor of the division, McCarrey appeared.”
“And then the trouble started?” demanded Zeph.
“You said it. It looks like a personal fight, more than anything else,
between McCarrey and the super.”
“But why do our men lend themselves so easily to the leadership of an
outsider like McCarrey?”
“He’s got their number, I guess,” grumbled Ralph. “He knows how Mr.
Hopkins starts friction with the men. ‘Discipline!’ Humph!”
“He’s a regular red flannel shirt, is he?” grumbled Zeph Dallas. “I
heard he had everybody scratching. Has he jumped you yet, Ralph?”
“Not much. And I don’t suppose he’ll try to. We get our orders from
Mr. Glidden at main headquarters.”
“Well,” remarked Zeph wisely, “I never saw one of these wiseacres who
try to tell everybody their business, who didn’t butt in more or less
on things that didn’t concern ’em. But, of course, Mr. Hopkins can
talk turkey to the men in all other branches of the service on this
division.”
“He can and does. And he has got the men so sore that they are willing
to be led by anybody who promises to help them get square with the
super. McCarrey needs only to sit back and wait, and things will come
his way.”
“That club you had just now ought to have come his way,” sighed Zeph.
“Going? Well, good-night, Ralph.”
“Good-night. Better go to bed—if the mince pie and milk will let you
sleep. And don’t fail to show up at the offices to-morrow noon.”
Ralph went home in a very serious frame of mind. His mother was
serious, too, the next morning, when she found the coat he had worn
the evening before had a great rent in it and two buttons torn off.
“I never knew it to fail, Ralph,” she said, rather sharply for her,
“that when Zeph Dallas comes around you get into trouble. You have
been in a fight. Look at that scratch on your cheek. What did you do
last night?”
“You are a wonderfully close observer, Mother,” said Ralph, laughing.
“How is it you always see so much?”
“Indeed?” and she smiled ruefully at him. “Why shouldn’t I observe
every little thing about my son? At least, until some other woman has
a better right to him.”
“Goodness me!” complained Ralph, with twinkling eyes. “You talk as
though I was in danger of being kidnapped.”
“How do I know? There was the young lady you were talking of at
supper.”
“And I believe she and her family are going to be in more trouble
before it is all said and done,” muttered Ralph.
But he got out of explaining in detail about his adventure with Zeph
Dallas the previous evening. He knew, however, his mother was merely
in fun about Cherry Hopkins. Secretly, whenever Ralph thought of the
pretty blonde girl, he felt anxiety for her safety. Such rascals as
Whitey Malone and the other fellows who would do Andy McCarrey’s
bidding might really do Cherry serious harm.
He went to the dispatchers’ offices early, saw that the day-trick men
were getting on all right, and then went in search of a timekeeper
who, he knew, was to be trusted. This gray-haired employee of the
Great Northern was one of those loyal men who considered any blow at
the road a blow at their own livelihood and future prospects.
“Think you could recognize Jim Perrin’s writing wherever you saw it,
John?” the young chief dispatcher asked.
“Jim Perrin, is it? A bad egg. It is too bad he leads so many around
by the nose. I know his handwriting well. I ought to. He has been
signing for his pay check for ten years here.”
“Look at this,” said Ralph, thrusting the list of four names in front
of the timekeeper. “What do you think?”
The man studied the names through his spectacles. Then he nodded.
“I know them, too,” he said. “They are all in the shops here. Billy
Lyons, Abe Bertholdt, Micky Ranny, brother of Bob, the hoghead, and
Sam Peters. Yes, I know ’em all.”
“That is not just what I asked you,” Ralph explained. “Who do you
think wrote those names on that paper?”
“Oh! Oh!” cried the timekeeper. “That’s the idea, is it?” He squinted
at the four brief lines of writing. “Who wrote ’em down for you, is
it? What is this, Mr. Fairbanks? One of the new super’s efficiency
tricks, I dunno?”
“Now, John!” exclaimed Ralph, laughing, “do you think I would lend
myself to any of his nonsense?”
He turned around while the timekeeper was chuckling and saw Mr. Barton
Hopkins standing behind them in the doorway of the little office. The
supervisor stared at the young train dispatcher with a very grim
visage indeed. Without doubt he had heard enough to understand the
meaning of Ralph’s reply to the timekeeper.
When the supervisor had turned on his heel and disappeared, Ralph said
to the timekeeper, with no shadow of change in his voice:
“Well? How about it?”
The man fumbled the leaves of a ledger and finally compared the
writing on the sheet of paper with something in the ledger. He
beckoned Ralph closer.
“Look there, now, Mr. Fairbanks. D’you see where he has signed for his
check last week? And I could show you a hundred other signatures.
There’s the P in Peters and the same letter in Perrin. They’re like
two peas in a pod, ain’t they, now?”
“I believe you!”
“The little r’s in Perrin are like the little r in Bertholdt and in
Peters. D’you see?”
“I see.”
“That’s your answer. Jim Perrin wrote them four names with his own
fist. I’d swear to it.”
“Thank you, John,” Ralph replied soberly. “I may have more to say to
you about this later. Keep it to yourself.”
“Sure, sir, I’ve the tight lip on me,” said the timekeeper.
Ralph wished, as he went back to his office, that he had had “the
tight lip” as well. He had allowed his tongue to get him in bad with
Mr. Barton Hopkins. The supervisor was the kind of man that would not
easily forget a slight.
“He’ll easily forget that I saved his daughter from that gang
yesterday,” thought Ralph. “But he will remember that I spoke
slightingly of him to another employee.
“I told Zeph something bad was likely to be the word he sent Mr.
Adair. Guess the ‘something bad’ may be connected with my peace of
mind. I’m going to be on the lookout from now on for Mr. Barton
Hopkins to get his gaff into me.”
It came sooner than Ralph really expected.