DISASTROUS WRECK
ON THE SHORE LINE
EXPRESS RUNS INTO OPEN SWITCH
--
TEN LIVES LOST, AND
MORE THAN A SCORE INJURED
--
FAILURE OF BLOCK SIGNALS

The letters seemed to stand up before me as large as a Malted Milk
signboard. With a shuddering apprehension I read the details.
Apparently the express that left Providence at four o'clock on
Saturday afternoon had crashed into an open siding near Willdon
about six o'clock, and collided with a string of freight empties.
The baggage car had been demolished and the smoker had turned over
and gone down an embankment. There were ten men killed... my head
swam. Was that the train the Professor had taken? Let me see. He
left Woodbridge on a local train at three. He had said the day
before that the express left Port Vigor at five.... If he had
changed to the express.....

In a kind of fascinated horror my eye caught the list of the dead.
I ran down the names. Thank God, no, Mifflin was not among them.
Then I saw the last entry:

UNIDENTIFIED MAN, MIDDLE-AGED.

What if that should be the Professor?

And I suddenly felt dizzy, and for the first time in my life I