Judson knew the temper of the Timanyoni miners.  To be seen crouching on the boss’s doorstep would be to take the chance of making a target of himself for the first loiterer of the day shift who happened to look his way.  Dismissing the risky expedient, he made a third circuit from moon-glare to shadow, this time upon hands and knees.  To the lowly come the rewards of humility.  Framed level upon stout log pillars on the down-hill side, the head-quarters warehouse and office sheltered a space beneath its floor which was roughly boarded up with slabs from the log-sawing.  Slab by slab the ex-engineer sought for his rat-hole, trying each one softly in its turn.  When there remained but three more to be tugged at, the loosened one was found.  Judson swung it cautiously aside and wriggled through the narrow aperture left by its removal.  A crawling minute later he was crouching beneath the loosely jointed floor of the lighted room, and the avenue of the ear had broadened into a fair highway.

Almost at once he was able to verify his guess that there were only two men in the room above.  At all events, there were only two speakers.  They were talking in low tones, and Judson had no difficulty in identifying the rather high-pitched voice of the owner of the Wire-Silver mine.  The man whose profile he had seen on the window-shade had the voice which belonged to the outlined features, but the listener under the floor had a vague impression that he was trying to disguise it.  Judson knew nothing about the letter in which Flemister had promised to arrange for a meeting between Lidgerwood and the ranchman Grofield.  What he did know was that he had followed Hallock almost to the door of Flemister’s office, and that he had seen a shadowed face on the office window-shade which could be no other than the face of the chief clerk.  It was in spite of all this that the impression that the second speaker was trying to disguise his voice persisted.  But the ex-engineer of fast passenger-trains was able to banish the impression after the first few minutes of eavesdropping.

Judson had scarcely found his breathing space between the floor timbers, and had not yet overheard enough to give him the drift of the low-toned talk, when the bell of the private-line telephone rang in the room above.  It was Flemister who answered the bell-ringer.

“Hello!  Yes; this is Flemister....  Yes, I say; this is Flemister; you’re talking to him....  What’s that?—­a message about Mr. Lidgerwood?...  All right; fire away.”

“Who is it?” came the inquiry, in the grating voice which fitted, and yet did not fit, the man whom Judson had followed from his boarding of the train at Angels to Silver Switch, and from the gulch of the old spur to his disappearance on the wooded slope of Little Butte ridge.

The listener heard the click of the telephone ear-piece replacement.

“It’s Goodloe, talking from his station office at Little Butte,” replied the mine owner.  “The despatcher has just called him up to say that Lidgerwood left Angels in his service-car, running special, at eight-forty, which would figure it here at about eleven, or a little later.”