Singularly enough, it took me, trained accountant as I was, a full month to find out what I had been let in for, and why the job I was holding down had been given to an ex-convict. It was my duty to check the railroad waybills on consignments of coal, to correct the weights, and to make claims for overcharges and shortages. I made these claims as I had been told to make them, taking the figures of the weights from Peters, who, in turn, took them from the scale men in the yard. It was Peters who gave the snap away one night when we two were working overtime in the otherwise deserted offices. "Say, Weyburn; you've got about the coldest nerve of any fellow I've ever run up against," he said, looking up from his place across the flat-topped desk. "What makes you say that, Tommy?" I asked. "Because it's so. I've been watching you. You've been sitting on the lid for an even month, now, and never batting an eye when these railroad fellows come at you and make their little roar about the overcharges. Believe me, it takes nerve to do that--and carry it off as if you were reading 'em a verse out o' the Bible. Blaisdell, the lad who was here before you, went batty and talked in his sleep. Told me once he couldn't see anything but stripes, any way he looked." "I don't know what you're talking about," I said, with a sudden sinking of the heart. "Why should it take nerve to tell a railroad agent he's been overcharging us?" Peters's laugh was a cackle. "You're the traffic man of this outfit: do you know the rates on coal from the mines to Western Central common points?" "Of course I do." "Got 'em all down in the printed tariff, so you can't help knowing 'em, eh? Consolidated Coal pays these rates, doesn't it?--all according to Hoyle and the Interstate Commerce laws?" "I suppose we pay them. I check the bills as they are presented." "Exactly. But every little so-while you have to make a whaling big claim on the railroad company for overcharges, and maybe you've noticed that these claims are always paid--or maybe you haven't?" I was beginning to see the hole in the millstone. "I make the claims on the weights as you give them to me, Peters. Do you mean to tell me that you've been giving me false figures?" The yard clerk stuck his tongue in his cheek. "I'm not telling you anything. You know as well as I do that it's against the law to give or receive rebates. But if you're not a heap greener than you look, you know that we're getting our cut rates, just the same. All we need is a man right here at your desk who has the nerve to make out the claims, and is fly enough to do a little bluffing and ask no questions. You're all right, Bertie." "But the figures of the weights," I insisted. "You are the man who gives them to me, and you are responsible if they are wrong."