w who
that third man is. He has complicated things so that I don't dare move,
even against Flemister, until I know more. We are not at the ultimate
bottom of this thing yet."

"We're far enough to put the handcuffs onto Mr. Pennington Flemister any
time you say," asserted Judson. "There was one little thing that I
forgot to put in the report: when you get ready to take that missing
switch-engine back, you'll find it _choo-chooin'_ away up yonder in
Flemister's new power-house that he's built out of boards made from Mr.
Benson's bridge-timbers."

"Is that so? Did you see the engine?" queried the superintendent
quickly.

"No, but I might as well have. She's there, all right, and they didn't
care enough to even muffle her exhaust."

Lidgerwood took a slender gold-banded cigar from his desk-box, and
passed the box to the ex-engineer.

"We'll get Mr. Pennington Flemister--and before he is very many hours
older," he said definitely. And then: "I wish we were a little more
certain of the other man."

Judson bit the end from his cigar, but he forbore to light it. The Red
Desert had not entirely effaced his sense of the respect due to a
superintendent riding in his own private car.

"It's a queer sort of a mix-up, Mr. Lidgerwood," he said, fingering the
cigar tenderly. "Knowin' what's what, as some of us do, you'd say them
two'd never get together, unless it was to cut each other's throats."

Lidgerwood nodded. "I've heard there was bad blood between them: it was
about that building-and-loan business, wasn't it?"

"Shucks! no; that was only a drop in the bucket," said Judson, surprised
out of his attitude of rank-and-file deference. "Hallock was the
original owner of the Wire-Silver. Didn't you know that?"

"No."

"He was, and Flemister beat him out of it--lock, stock, and barrel: just
simply reached out an' took it. Then, when he'd done that, he reached
out and took Hallock's wife--just to make it a clean sweep, was the way
he bragged about it."

"Heavens and earth!" ejaculated the listener. Then some of the hidden
things began to define themselves in the light of this astounding
revelation: Hallock's unwillingness to go to Flemister for the proof of
his innocence in the building-and-loan matter; his veiled warning that
evil, and only evil, would come upon all concerned if Lidgerwood should
insist; the invasion of the service-car at Copah by the poor demented
creature whose cry was still for vengeance upon her b