Such reckless disregardings of the simple necessities speedily brought their own penalties. By half past one o’clock he was little better than an automaton, doing whatever came to hand mechanically and by force of long habit. By three he had fairly entered the drunkard’s paradise--that exalted frame of mind in which the most abstruse problems seem to solve themselves of their own motion. After that, all things were easy of accomplishment, and the chief clerk shut and locked his office at six o’clock with the comforting conviction that he was quite himself again; that, notwithstanding the perplexities of the morning, he had acquitted himself with his old-time vigour and perspicacity. Then he went to supper, and when he found that he had overshot the mark and could eat nothing, he began dimly to realize that he was in a bad way and forced himself to drink a double allowance of strong coffee. The slight stimulant began presently to counteract the effect of the greater, and with the first gleams of returning sobriety the threat of the forenoon renewed itself with added insistence. When that happened he went to his room and sat down on the edge of the bed to reason it out. For an hour or more he wrestled with the thing, coming no nearer the truth than this: that out of the struggle came a great and growing conviction that he had left something of critical moment undone. That was enough. Things left undone in a railway superintendent’s office may easily mean anything in the category of disaster, and Antrim groped for his hat and coat and went out, meaning to borrow yet again of the usurer, and then to go back to his office to search for the slipped cog. Fortunately for the latter resolve, the brisk walk in the cool night air sobered him sufficiently to send him straight to the office without the preliminary. Letting himself in and leaving the door ajar, he turned the key of the incandescent lamp over his desk and sat down to go painfully over the business of the day. It was slow work. His fingers were clumsy, and there was a curious haze before his eyes which seemed to befog the mental as well as the physical vision. Under such conditions it was not wonderful that he overlooked the message relating to the movements of the president’s special train; and when he had gone through the day’s correspondence without discovering anything amiss, he was dismayed afresh to find that the threat of impending disaster was increased rather than diminished, and his pulse quickened with a rising fever of apprehension.