Mr. Norcross chased out and tried to overtake Collingwood, going as far as the foot of the stairs. I went, too, but got only far enough to meet the boss coming up again. There was nothing doing. The station policeman had seen the crazy rounder jump into a taxi and go spinning off up-town.

That settled the Collingwood business for the time being, but there was another jolt waiting for us when we got back to the office. While we were both out, Mr. Van Britt had blown in from his room at the foot of the hall and we found him lounging comfortably in the chair that Collingwood had just vacated.

"I thought maybe you'd turn up again pretty soon, since you'd left the doors all open," was the way he started out. Then: "Sit down, Graham; I want to talk a few lines."

Mr. Norcross took his own chair and twirled it to face the general superintendent. "Say it," he commanded briefly.

Mr. Van Britt hooked his thumbs in his armholes.

"I've just been figuring a bit on the general outlook: you have a decently efficient operating outfit here, what with Perkins and Brant and Conway handling the three divisions as self-contained units. You don't need a general superintendent any more than a monkey needs two tails."

"What are you driving at?" was the curt demand.

"Well, suppose we say retrenchment, for one thing. As I size it up, you might just as well be saving my salary. It would buy a good many new cross-ties in the course of a year."

"That's all bunk, and you know it," snapped the boss. "The organization as it stands hasn't a single stick of dead wood in it. You know very well that a railroad the size of the Short Line can't run without an individual head of the operating department."

Mr. Van Britt laughed a little at that.

"If you should get some one of these new efficiency experts out here he would probably tell you that you could cut your staff right in two in the middle."

I could see that the boss was getting mighty nearly impatient.

"You are merely turning handsprings around the edges of the thing you have come to say, Upton," he barked out. "Come to the point, can't you? What have you got up your sleeve?"

"Nothing that I could make you understand in a month of Sundays. I'm sore on my job and I want to quit."

"Nonsense! You don't mean that?"

"Yes, I do. I'm tired of wearing the brass collar of a soulless corporation. What's the use, anyway? I found a bunch of dividend checks from my bank at home in the mail to-day, and what good does the money do me? I can't spend it out here; can't even tip the servants at the hotel without everlastingly demoralizing them. I'm like the little boy who wanted to go out in the garden and eat worms."

The boss was frowning thoughtfully.

"You're not giving me a show, Upton," he protested. "Can't you blow the froth off and let me see what's in the bottom of the stein?"

"Pledge you my word, it's all froth, Graham. I want to climb up on the mesa behind the shops and take a good deep breath of free air and shake my fist at your blamed old cow-track of a railroad and tell it to go to the devil. You shouldn't deny me a little pleasure like that."

It was getting under the boss's skin at last. "I can't believe that you really want to resign," he broke out, sort of hopelessly. "It's simply preposterous!"

"Pull it down out of the future and put it in the present, and you've got it," said Mr. Van Britt. "I have resigned. I wrote it out on a piece of paper and dropped it into your mail box as I came through the outer office. It's signed, sealed, and delivered. You'll give me a testimonial, or something of that sort, 'To Whom It May Concern,' won't you? I've been obedient and faithful and honest and efficient, and all that, haven't I?"

"I'd like to know first where you got your liquor, Upton. That is the most charitable construction I can put upon all this. Why, man alive! you're quitting me in the thick of the toughest fight the grafters have put up!"

"Yes, I know; but a man's got only one life to live, and I've always had a sneaking sympathy for the high private in the front rank who didn't want to stand up and get himself shot full of holes. I'm running, and if you should ask me why, I'd tell you what the retreating soldier told Stonewall Jackson; he said he was running only because he couldn't fly."

Once more the boss grew silently thoughtful. Out of the digging mental inquiry he brought this:

"Has this sudden notion of yours anything to do with Sheila Macrae, Upton?"

"Pledge you my word again. I met Sheila on the street to-day and promised her that I wouldn't so much as tip my hat to her while Collingwood is on this side of the Missouri River."

"But if you quit, you'll go East yourself, won't you?"

"Maybe, after a while. For the time being, I'd like to loaf on you for a week or so and watch the wheels go around without my having to prod them. It's running in my mind that this newest phase of the C. S. & W. business is going to stir up a mighty pretty shindy, and I had a foolish notion that I'd like to stick around and look on—as an innocent bystander."

"The innocent bystander usually gets shot in the leg," the boss ripped out, with the brittlest kind of humor. And then: "I suppose I shall have to let you do what you want to—and let you pick your own time for giving me the real reason. But you're crippling me most savagely, Upton—and at a time when I am least able to stand it."

Mr. Van Britt got up and edged his way toward the door.

"It's a good reason, Graham; and sometime—say when we are walking through the pearly gates of the New Jerusalem together—maybe I'll tell you about it. If I were really a good scrapper, I'd stay and help you fight it out with Hatch; but you know the old saying—capital is always cowardly; and my present credit at the Portal City National is pretty well up to a quarter of a million, thanks to the dividends I deposited to-day. Good-night. I'll see you in the morning—if by that time you haven't decided to cut me cold."

I kept right busy over the indexes after Mr. Van Britt went away, just to give the boss a little chance to catch up with himself. He sure was catching it hot and heavy on all sides. The way things had turned out, he couldn't go to the major's any more, and now his railroad organization was beginning to go to pieces on him. It certainly was tough. All we needed now was for President Dunton to come smashing in with one more good jolt and it would be all over but the obsequies, the monument and the epitaph. At least, that is the way it looked to me.

It was along about ten o'clock when the boss closed his desk with a bang and said we'd better saw it off for the night. I walked up-town with him and as we were passing the Bullard he turned in to ask the night clerk if Collingwood was in his room. The answer was nix; that the young New Yorker hadn't been seen since dinner.

On the way out we saw Mr. Van Britt at the telegraph alcove. He had apparently been making good use of his first half-hour or so of freedom. He was handing in a thick bunch of telegrams for transmission, and he rather pointedly turned the sheaf face down upon the marble slab when we came along, as much as to say "it's none of your business what I'm doing."

It struck me as sort of curious that he should have so much wire correspondence when he claimed to be taking a rest, and why he was so careful not to let us get a glimpse of what it was all about. But the whole thing was now so horribly muddled that a little mystery more or less on anybody's part couldn't make much difference; and that was the thought I took to bed with me a little later after we reached our rooms in the railroad club.