When he turned out of his sleeper in the early morning at Agua Caliente station, car Naught-seven had been thrown in on a siding a little farther up the line, and Ormsby recognized the burly person of the governor and the florid face and pursy figure of the receiver, in the group of men crossing from the private car to the waiting Inn tally-ho.  Being a seasoned traveler, the club-man lost no time in finding the station agent.

“Isn’t there some way you can get me up to the hotel before that crowd reaches?” he asked; adding:  “I’ll make it worth your while.”

The reply effaced the necessity for haste.

“The Inn auto will be down in a few minutes, and you can go up in that.  Naught-seven brought Governor Bucks and the receiver and their party, and they’re going down to Megilp, the mining camp on the other side of the State line.  They’ve chartered the tally-ho for the day.”

Ormsby waited, and a little later was whisked away to the hotel in the tonneau of the guests’ automobile.  Afterward came a day which was rather hard to get through.  Breakfast, a leisurely weighing and measuring of the climatic, picturesque and health-mending conditions, and the writing of a letter or two helped him wear out the forenoon; but after luncheon the time dragged dispiteously, and he was glad enough when the auto-car came to take him to the station for the evening train.

As it happened, there were no other passengers for the east-bound Flyer; and finding he still had some minutes to wait, Ormsby lounged into the telegraph office.  Here the bonds of ennui were loosened by the gradual development of a little mystery.  First the telephone bell rang smartly, and when the telegraph operator took down the ear-piece and said “Well?” in the imperious tone common to his kind, he evidently received a communication that shocked him.

Ormsby overheard but a meager half of the wire conversation; and the excitement, whatever its nature, was at the other end of the line.  None the less, the station agent’s broken ejaculations were provocative of keen interest in a man who had been boring himself desperately for the better part of a day.

“Caught him doing it, you say?...  Great Scott!...  Oh, I don’t believe that, you know ... yes—­uh-huh—­I hear ...  But who did the shooting?” Whether the information came or not, Ormsby did not know, for at this conjuncture the telegraph instruments on the table set up a furious chattering, and the railway man dropped the receiver and sprang to his key.

This left the listener out of it completely, and Ormsby strolled out to the platform, wondering what had happened and where it had happened.  He glanced up at the telephone wires:  two of them ran up the graveled driveway toward Breezeland Inn; the poles of the other two sentineled the road to the west down which the tally-ho had driven in the early morning.

In the reflective instant the telegraph operator dashed out of his bay-windowed retreat and ran up the track to the private car.  In a few minutes he was back again, holding an excited conference with the chauffeur of the Inn automobile, who was waiting to see if the Flyer should bring him any fares for the hotel.