The spectator., 1921-05-13
CHAPTER K
In the Coal Yard

1 knew, Just as well as could be without being able to prove it-that we were shadowed on the trip up from the railroad building to the hotel. and 1t made me nervous. There could be only one reason now for any such logging of the boss. The grafters were not trying to find out what he was doing; they didn't need to, be- cause he was advertising his doings- or Juneman was-~in the newspapers. What they were trying to do was to catch him off his guard and do him up-this time to stay done up.
 It was safe to assume that they wouldn't tumble the ball second time. Mir. Ripley had stood the thing fairly on it's feet when he said that our campaign was purely oneman proposition, so far as it had yet gone. People who had met the boss and had done business with him liked him but the old-time prejudice against the railroad was so widespread and so bitter that 1t couldn't be overcome all at once. Juneman, our publicity man. was doing his best, but as yet we had no party following in the state at large which would stand by us and see that We got justice.
 I was chewing this over while we sat at dinner in the Bullard cafe, and I guess Mir. Norcross was, too, for he didn't say much don't know whether he knew anything about the shadow ing business 1 speak of or not, but he might have. We hadn't more than given our dinner order. when one of Hatch's clerks, cock-eyed chap named kestler. came in and took table just far enough from ours to be out of the way. and near enough to listen in if we said anything.
 When we finished, Kestler was just getting his service of ice-eream; but l noticed that he left 1t untouched and got up and followed us to the lobby. It made me hot enough to want to turn on him and knock his crooked eye out, but of course, that wouldn't have done any good.
 After Mir. Norcross had bought some cigars at the stand he said he guessed he'd run out to Major Hendricks for little while and with that he went up to his rooms Though the major was the one he named, I knew he meant that he was going to see Mrs. Sheila. l remembered what he had said to Ripley about a woman's giving him germ ideas and such things, and I guess it was really so. Every time he spent an evening at the majors he'd come back with lot of new mo- tions fer popularizing the Short Line.
 When he said that. about going out to the majors, Kestler was near enough to overhear it, and so he waited, lounging in the lobby and pretending to read paper. About half-past seven the boss came down and asked me to call taxi for him. I did it; and Kestler loafed around just long enough to see him start off. Then he lit out, himself. and something in the way he did 1t made me take out after him.
 The first thing I knew I was trail- ing him through the railroad yard and on down past the freight house toward the big, fenced-in, Red Tower coal yards.
 At the coal yard he let himself in through wicket in the wagon gates. and l noticed that he used key and locked the wicket after he got inside. put my eye to a crack in the high stockade fence and saw that the little shack office that was used for scale house was lighted up. My burnt hand was healing tolerably we'll by this time and l could use it little. There was slack pile just outside of the big gate, and by climbing to the top of 1t I got over the fence and crept up to the scale-house.
 A small window in one end of the shack, opened about two inches at the bottom, answered well enough for a