“I don’t know,” laughed Ralph, going to the door. “Zeph is a born vagabond. Nothing keeps him long in one place but some intrigue in which he can have a part. He says he is preparing himself to wear Bob Adair’s shoes.” “Mr. Adair is a very fine man,” said Mrs. Fairbanks. “But his calling is hazardous. I should not like to bring up a son to be a detective.” “Zeph never had any bringing up,” declared Ralph, as he went out, and the echoes of his mother’s last remark, “Poor fellow!” rang in his ears as he started downtown. Like most railroad terminal towns, Rockton had a poor section, inhabited by railroad laborers and those hanging to their skirts, and also a much better group of dwellings. Ralph passed through the better part of town without, of course, apprehending any trouble. Nor was he accosted when he crossed the tracks and approached the station, over which the dispatchers’ offices were situated. For his first thought was, after all, of the night’s schedule. One cannot have the responsibility that Ralph Fairbanks shouldered without having one’s work uppermost in one’s mind all of the time. The two men on duty welcomed their young chief cheerfully. There really was not an employee of the road about the Rockton terminal who had not some reason for liking Ralph. They might not all agree with him on railroad matters; but they had to respect his independence. “Fellow in here to see you a while back, Chief,” said one of the men on duty. “Who was it?” “Nobody I ever saw before,” was the reply. “Kind of an odd stick.” Ralph described his friend, Zeph Dallas, and the operator nodded. “That’s the fellow. Can’t be any mistake.” “Didn’t he say where he could be found?” asked Ralph. “No, Chief. A close-mouthed duck, if you ask me. He slipped in and slid out again like an eel through a sewer pipe.” Ralph laughed. “Some metaphor, I’ll say, Johnny. Well, the sched.’s all right, I guess?” “Things are going sweet,” he was told. “But when they come to double up those wheat trains next week, how we going to get the new Midnight Flyer into the clear between here and Oxford? That is what is bothering me, Chief.” “If you want to know,” admitted Ralph, as he opened the door to depart, “that little thing is bothering me, too.” He was not, however, bothering his mind over railroad affairs when he descended the stairs to the yard. He was thinking of Zeph. That peculiar and vagabondish fellow must be around Rockton for some pertinent design. And it was evident that he wanted to see his old chum, Ralph Fairbanks. The latter walked down the yard and looked in at the open windows of one of the lighted shops. The night crew was at work on one of the big freight haulers. Like a row of giant elephants a number of other locomotives stood in the gloomy end of the shop. Repairs were away behind schedule. He heard the hoarse voice of McGuire, one of the oldest and most faithful shop foremen, bawling his crew out for their clumsiness.