in the doorway.

"No, not yet," was the reply.

"Let me know when you hear from him; and in the meantime I wish you
would go downstairs and see if Gridley came in on 203. If he did, bring
him and Benson up here and we'll hold a council of war. If you see
Dawson, send him home to his mother and sister. He can report to me
later, if he finds it safe to leave his womankind."

The door of the outer office had barely closed behind McCloskey when
that opening into the corridor swung upon its hinges to admit the
master-mechanic. He was dusty and travel-stained, but nothing seemed to
stale his genial good-humor.

"Well, well, Mr. Lidgerwood! so the hoboes have asked to see your hand,
at last, have they?" he began sympathetically. "I heard of it over in
Copah, just in good time to let me catch 203. You're not going to let
them make you show down, are you?"

"No," said Lidgerwood.

"That's right; that's precisely the way to stack it up. Of course, you
know you can count on me. I've got a beautiful lot of pirates over in
the shops, but we'll try to hold them level." Then, in the same even
tone: "They tell me we went into the hole again last night, over at
Little Butte. Pretty bad?"

"Very bad; six killed outright, and as many more to bury later on, I am
told by the Red Butte doctors."

"Heavens and earth! The men are calling it a broken rail; was it?"

"A loosened rail," corrected Lidgerwood.

The master-mechanic's eyes narrowed.

"Natural?" he asked.

"No, artificial."

Gridley swore savagely.

"This thing's got to stop, Lidgerwood! Sift it, sift it to the bottom!
Whom do you suspect?"

It was a plain truth, though an unintentionally misleading one, that the
superintendent put into his reply.

"I don't suspect any one, Gridley," he began, and he was going on to say
that suspicion had grown to certainty, when the latch of the door
opening from the outer office clicked again and McCloskey came in with
Benson. The master-mechanic excused himself abruptly when he saw who the
trainmaster's follower was.

"I'll go and get something to eat," he said hurriedly; "after which I'll
pick up a few men whom we can depend upon and garrison the shops. Send
over for me if you need me."

Benson looked hard at the door which was still quivering under Gridley's
outgoing slam. And when the master-mechanic's tread was no longer
audible in the upper corridor, the young engineer turned to the man at
the desk to say: "What tickle