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Now Charley stood, his eyes on Nancy. His eyes were strangely empty. “How do you do?” he said.

Nancy bowed slightly. “How do you do?” she said.

“I missed your name,” said Charley.

“Nancy,” said Nancy.

“Nancy,” said Charley.

“We were married this morning,” said Robert.

“I see,” said Charley. He blinked hard several times, distorting his face, as though trying to make his eyes work better. And then, realizing that the expressions might be mistaken for drunkenness, he explained loudly, “Something in my eye.” He turned to Ned. “I’m not drunk, Ned,” he said.

“Nobody said you were, Charley,” said Ned.

“I don’t suppose this table will do any longer,” said Charley.

WITH HIS HAND ON THE THROTTLE

Earl Harrison was an empire builder by nature, annoyed at being shorter than most men, massively muscled, self-made, insistently the center of any gathering, unable to relax. He had calluses on his palms as tough as the back of a crocodile. He made his living building roads, and, in his middle thirties, was growing rich at it. Legions of trucks, bulldozers, graders, earth movers, rollers, asphalt spreaders, and power shovels carried his name into every corner of the state.

But Earl liked owning the equipment and watching the colossal work it did more than he liked the luxuries it could earn for him. Most of his money went right back into the business, which grew bigger and bigger and bigger, with no end in sight.

Save for good whiskey and cigars and model trains, Earl’s life was Spartan. He worked with his machine operators, and dressed like them most of the time in heavy shoes and faded khaki. His house was small, and his pretty young wife, Ella, had no servants. The hobby of model railroading suited Earl perfectly—the building and controlling of a busy little world complicated with wonderful machinery. And, like his business, the empire on plywood grew as though Napoleon were running it. In his imagination he could make his model railroad as real and important as affairs in the full-scale world.

* * *

The brutish black 4-8-2, its big drivers clashing steel on steel, boomed over the quivering trestle and plunged into the tunnel mouth, whipping the chattering, screaming freight cars behind it. In another five seconds the locomotive, known along the pike as Old Spitfire, burst into the open again with the roar of a wounded devil.

It was Saturday morning, and Earl “Hotbox” Harrison was at the throttle. His gunmetal gray eyes were slits under the visor of his striped cap. His freight was behind time, east-bound on a single track, with the westbound passenger express due. Between Old Spitfire and the safety of the siding ahead was Widow’s Hairpin, the most treacherous curve on the Harrisonburg and Earl City Railroad.

The passenger express whistled mournfully in the distance. Hotbox gritted his teeth. There was only one thing to do. He eased the throttle wide open as Old Spitfire shot past the water tower and into the curve.

The track writhed under the fury of the train. Suddenly, at the peak of the curve, the locomotive tottered and shook. Hotbox cried out. The locomotive leaped free of the tracks, and the train followed its crashing, rolling course down the embankment.

All was still.

“Damn!” said Earl. He shut off the power, left his stool, and went over to where Old Spitfire lay on its side.

“Bent its main rod and side rod,” said Harry Zellerbach sympathetically. He and Earl had been in the basement for two hours, tirelessly shipping mythical passengers and freight back and forth between the oil burner and the water softener.

Earl set Old Spitfire on the tracks, and rolled it back and forth experimentally. “Yeah—and dented the ashpan hopper,” he said gravely. He sighed. “Old Spitfire was the first locomotive I bought when I started the pike. Remember, Harry?”

“You bet I do, Hotbox.”

“And Old Spitfire is going to keep on running till I’m through with the pike.”

“Till hell freezes over,” said Harry with satisfaction. He had reason to be satisfied with the thought. A tall, thin, wan