What about fuse?" he murmured.

His eyes closed.

Tolliver pressed the backs of his hands against his face. If only his
suspense might force refreshing tears as Sonny cried away his infant
agonies!

Numerous people asleep in that long Pullman train, and the special
thundering down! Sally and Sonny a half mile away in the lonely house!
And that drink-inspired creature on the floor--what was he capable of in
relation to those unknown, helpless travelers? But what was he capable
of; what had he, perhaps, been capable of towards those two known ones
that Tolliver loved better than all the world?

Tolliver shuddered. As long as Joe was here Sally and Sonny would not be
troubled. But where had Joe been just now? How had Sally and Sonny fared
while Tolliver had waited for that stumbling step on the stairs? He had
to know that, yet how could he? For he couldn't leave Joe to care for
all those lives on the special and thirty-three.

He removed his coat and cap, and replaced them on the hook. He took a
fuse from the box and lighted it. He raised the window and threw the
fuse to the track beneath. It sputtered and burst into a flame, ruddy,
gorgeous, immense. It etched from the night distant fences and trees. It
bent the sparkling rails until they seemed to touch at the terminals of
crimson vistas. If in the storm the locomotive drivers should miss the
switch lamps, set against them, they couldn't neglect this bland banner
of danger, flung across the night.

When Tolliver closed the window he noticed that the ruddy glow filled
the room, rendering sickly and powerless the yellow lamp wicks. And
Tolliver clutched the table edge, for in this singular and penetrating
illumination he saw that Joe imitated the details of sleep; that beneath
half-closed lids, lurked a fanatical wakefulness, and final resolution
where, on entering the tower, he had exposed only indecision.

While Tolliver stared Joe abandoned his masquerade. Wide-eyed, he got
lightly to his feet and started for the trap.

Instinctively, Tolliver's hand started for the drawer where customarily
the revolver was kept. Then he remembered, and was sorry he had sent the
revolver to Sally. For it was clear that the poison in Joe's brain was
sending him to the house while Tolliver was chained to the tower. He
would have shot, he would have killed, to have kept the man here. He
would do what he could with his hands.

"Where you going?" he asked hoarsely.

Joe laughed h