is desk.

"Humph!" he muttered; "Acheson's making better time with me than he ever
has before. I wonder if Williams has succeeded in talking him over to
our side? He is certainly running like a gentleman to-day, at all
events."

The superintendent sat down to Tadasu's table and took his time to
Tadasu's excellent dinner, indulging himself so far as to smoke a
leisurely cigar with his black coffee before plunging again into the
sea of work. Not to spoil his improving record, Engineer Acheson
continued to make good time, and it was only a little after eleven
o'clock when Lidgerwood, looking up from his work at the final slowing
of the wheels, saw the masthead lights of the Copah yards.

Taking it for granted that Superintendent Leckhard had long since left
his office in the Pacific Southwestern building, Lidgerwood gave orders
to have his car placed on the station-spur, and went on with his work.
Being at the moment deeply immersed in the voluminous papers of a claim
for stock killed, he was quite oblivious of the placement of the car,
and of everything else, until the incoming of the fast main-line mail
from the east warned him that another hour had passed. When the mail was
gone on its way westward, the midnight silence settled down again, with
nothing but the minimized crashings of freight cars in the lower
shifting-yard to disturb it. The little Japanese had long since made up
his bunk in one of the spare state-rooms, the train crew had departed
with the engine, and the last mail-wagon had driven away up-town.
Lidgerwood had closed his desk and was taking a final pull at the short
pipe which was his working companion, when the car door opened silently
and he saw an apparition.

Standing in the doorway and groping with her hands held out before her
as if she were blind, was a woman. Her gown was the tawdry half-dress of
the dance-halls, and the wrap over her bare shoulders was a gaudy
imitation in colors of the Spanish mantilla. Her head was without
covering, and her hair, which was luxuriant, hung in disorder over her
face. One glance at the eyes, fixed and staring, assured Lidgerwood
instantly that he had to do with one who was either drink-maddened or
demented.

"Where is he?" the intruder asked, in a throaty whisper, staring, not at
him, as Lidgerwood was quick to observe, but straight ahead at the
portieres cutting off the state-room corridor from the open compartment.
And then: "I told you I would come, Ran