“Who is running it?” inquired the other man rather anxiously, Judson decided.

“Williams and Bradford.  A fool for luck, every time.  We might have had to ecraser a couple of our friends.”

The French was beyond Judson, but the mine-owner’s tone supplied the missing meaning, and the listener under the floor had a sensation like that which might be produced by a cold wind blowing up the nape of his neck.

“There is no such thing as luck,” rasped the other voice.  “My time was damned short—­after I found out that Lidgerwood wasn’t coming on the passenger.  But I managed to send word to Matthews and Lester, telling them to make sure of Williams and Bradford.  We could spare both of them, if we have to.”

“Good!” said Flemister.  “Then you had some such alternative in mind as that I have just been proposing?”

“No,” was the crusty rejoinder.  “I was merely providing for the hundredth chance.  I don’t like your alternative.”

“Why don’t you?”

“Well, for one thing, it’s needlessly bloody.  We don’t have to go at this thing like a bull at a gate.  I’ve had my finger on the pulse of things ever since Lidgerwood took hold.  The dope is working all right in a purely natural way.  In the ordinary run of things, it will be only a few days or weeks before Lidgerwood will throw up his hands and quit, and when he goes out, I go in.  That’s straight goods this time.”

“You thought it was before,” sneered Flemister, “and you got beautifully left.”  Then:  “You’re talking long on ‘naturals’ and the ’ordinary run of things,’ but I notice you schemed with Bart Rufford to put him out of the fight with a pistol bullet!”

Judson felt a sudden easing of strains.  He had told McCloskey that he would be willing to swear to the voice of the man whom he had overheard plotting with Rufford in Cat Biggs’s back room.  Afterward, after he had sufficiently remembered that a whiskey certainty might easily lead up to a sober perjury, he had admitted the possible doubt.  But now Flemister’s taunt made assurance doubly sure.  Moreover, the arch-plotter was not denying the fact of the conspiracy with “The Killer.”

“Rufford is a blood-thirsty devil—­like yourself,” the other man was saying calmly.  “As I have told you before, I’ve discovered Lidgerwood’s weakness—­he can’t call a sudden bluff.  Rufford’s play—­the play I told him to make—­was to get the drop on him, scare him up good, and chase him out of town—­out of the country.  He overran his orders—­and went to jail for it.”

“Well?” said the mine-owner.

“Your scheme, as you outlined it to me in your cipher wire this afternoon, was built on this same weakness of Lidgerwood’s, and I agreed to it.  As I understood it, you were to toll him up here with some lie about meeting Grofield, and then one of us was to put a pistol in his face and bluff him into throwing up his job.  As I say, I agreed to it.  He’ll have to go when the fight with the men gets hot enough; but he might hold on too long for our comfort.”