selecting one of the number without hesitation, unlocked the door, stepped inside, and closed the door behind him.
The flashlight swept in a circle around the interior of the little station. There were but two rooms the small waiting room which he had entered, and in which he now stood; and, partitioned off from this, the door open, a still smaller inner room, the agent's office. He moved at once into the latter, and his flashlight, swiftly now, searched around the walls and held upon the clock. It was six minutes to ten.
"Pretty close work!" muttered the man. "Six minutes to wait."
The ray travelled now over the operator's table, and from the table to the switchboard. He reached out, "cut in" the office circuit, listened for an instant as the sounder began to chatter then the ray swept over the table again. Under a newspaper, that the day man had apparently flung down at haphazard on leaving the office, he found a pad of telegraph blanks, from which, evidently wary of the consequences of using a pad with its resultant tell-tale impressions on the under sheets, he tore off a sheet and laid it down ready to hand before him.
This done, he nodded complacently, sat down in the operator's chair, tilted the chair back, put his feet up on the table, and coolly picked up the newspaper. It was the evening edition of the Selkirk City Journal, that had presumably been tossed off at the station by a charitable train crew of some late afternoon train out from the city. He held the paper in
