isn't all
to the bad; some say he is a woman-killer; but they all agree that he's
as spiteful as an Indian. He wanted your job: supposing he still wants
it."

"Stick to the facts, Mac," said the superintendent. "You're theorizing
now, you know."

"Well, by gravels, I will!" rasped McCloskey, pushed over the cautionary
edge by Lidgerwood's indifference to the main question at issue. "What I
know don't amount to much yet, but it all leans one way. Hallock puts in
his daytime scratching away at his desk out there, and you'd think he
didn't know it was this year. But when that desk is shut up, you'll find
him at the roundhouse, over in the freight yard, round the switch
shanties, or up at Biggs's--anywhere he can get half a dozen of the men
together. I haven't found a man yet that I could trust to keep tab on
him, and I don't know what he's doing; but I can guess."

"Is that all?" said Lidgerwood quietly.

"No, it isn't! That switch-engine dropped out two weeks ago last Tuesday
night. I've been prying into this locked-up puzzle-box every way I could
think of ever since. _Hallock knows where that engine went!_"

"What makes you think so?"

"I'll tell you. Robinson, the night-crew engineer, was a little late
leaving her that night. His fireman had gone home, and so had the
yardmen. After he had crossed the yard coming out, he saw a man sneaking
toward the shifter, keeping in the shadow of the coal-chutes. He was
just curious enough to want to know who it was, and he made a little
sneak of his own. When he found it was Hallock, he went home and thought
no more about it till I got him to talk."

Lidgerwood had gone back to the pencil and the blotting-pad and the
making of squares.

"But the motive, Mac?" he questioned, without looking up. "How could the
theft or the destruction of a locomotive serve any purpose that Hallock
might have in view?"

McCloskey did not mean any disrespect to his superior officer when he
retorted: "I'm no 'cyclopaedia. There are lots of things I don't know.
But unless you call it off, I'm going to know a few more of them before
I quit."

"I don't call it off, Mac; find out what you can. But I can't believe
that Hallock is heading this organized robbery and rebellion."

"Somebody is heading it, to a dead moral certainty, Mr. Lidgerwood; the
licks are coming too straight and too well-timed."

"Find the man if you can, and we'll eliminate him. And, by the way, if
it comes to the worst, h