Blood, working late in his office, had rolled himself in a blanket on the lounge in Callahan's old room, and unfortunately Morris Blood was the soundest sleeper on the division. Glover called him, shook him, caught him by the arm, lifted him to a sitting position, talked hurriedly to him--he knew what resource and power lay under the thick curling hair if he could only rouse the tired man from his dreamless sleep. Even Blood's own efforts to rouse himself were almost at once apparent. His eyes opened, glared helplessly, sank back and closed in stupor. Glover grew desperate, and lifting Morris to his feet, dragged him half way across the dark room. O'Neill, rattling the key, was looking on from the table like a drowning man. "Leave your key and steady him here against the door-jamb, Garry," cried Glover; "by the Eternal, I'll wake him." He sprang to the big water-cooler, cast away the top, seized the tank like a bucket, and dashed a full stream of ice-water into Morris Blood's face. "Great God, what's the matter? Who is this? Glover? What? Give me a towel, somebody." The spell was broken. Glover explained, O'Neill ran back to the key, and Blood in another moment bent dripping over the nervous despatcher. The superintendent's mind working faster now than the magic current before him, listened, cast up, recollected, considered, decided for and against every chance. At that moment Red Desert answered. No breath interrupted the faint clicks that reported on Extra 81. O'Neill looked up in agony as the sounder spelled the words: "Extra 81 went by at 3.05." The superintendent and the despatcher looked at the clock; it read 3.09. O'Neill clutched the order book, but Glover looked at Morris Blood. With the water trickling from his hair down his wrinkled face, beading his mustache, and dripping from his chin he stood, haggard with sleep, leaning over O'Neill's shoulder. A towel stuffed into his left hand was clasped forgotten at his waist. From the east room, operators, their instruments silenced, were tiptoeing into the archway. Above the little group at the table the clock ticked. O'Neill, in a frenzy, half rose out of his chair, but Morris Blood, putting his hand on the despatcher's shoulder, forced him back. "They're gone," cried the frantic man; "let me out of here." "No, Garry." "They're gone." "Not yet, Garry. Try Fort Rucker for the Special." "There's no night man at Fort Rucker." "But Burling, the day man, sleeps upstairs----" "He goes up to Bear Dance to lodge." "This isn't lodge night," said Blood. "For God's sake, how can you get him upstairs, anyway?" trembled O'Neill. "On cold nights he sleeps downstairs by the ticket-office stove. I spent a night with him once and slept on his cot. If he is in the ticket-office you may be able to wake him--he may be awake. The Special can't pass there for ten minutes yet. Don't stare at me. Call Rucker, hard."