As it is prone to do in time of need, the stimulant played him false at first, though he gauged the doses with careful accuracy and repeated them frequently. All through the forenoon he found himself struggling with a vague sense of uncertainty, a mental obscuration which made perplexing puzzles out of the well-known details of the office work. The mail was heavy that day, and in the absence of the superintendent the chief clerk’s tasks were multiplied. There was an unusual influx of callers, each with a grievance real or fancied, and a dribbling stream of telegrams trickled insistently through the clicking relay on his desk. To make a bad matter worse, his telegraph operator was sick, and such wire business as came to the office he had to handle himself. It was some time during this hazy interval that a message, repeated from some station on the Eastern Division, came from the despatcher’s office at Lone Pine Junction. It was from the general manager, who, with the president and his party in the private car Aberystwyth, was on the line moving westward. Some member of the party was sick, and in consequence the car was running as a special train, with orders giving it right of way over all other trains. Similar orders were required for the Western Division, and Antrim turned to the stenographer: “Take a message to the general manager, care car Aberystwyth, running as special train on Eastern Division,” he directed; and when Bertram’s pencil stopped, he dictated: “Your message to-day. Car Aberystwyth will be run as special train on Western Division, Lone Pine Junction to Denver, with right of way over all trains.” “Get that off as quick as you can, and when you come back I’ll give you the letter to the despatcher,” he said, and a few minutes later Bertram took the message to the telegraph office. When he came back Antrim had something else for him to do, and in the rush of the forenoon’s work the stenographer forgot all about the letter to the train despatcher--the letter without which the despatcher would know nothing about the arrangement made for the special. But if Bertram forgot, so did the chief clerk, though the omission hung over Antrim like a vague threat, which he tried vainly to define. At noon the threat had become a part of the general obscurity through which he seemed to be groping his way, and by that time he was so far behind with the business of the day that he went without dinner to save the noon hour, substituting yet other potations for the midday meal.