“I know, Howard, you’re nervous—­you can’t help being nervous,” she said, cutting him to the quick when nothing was farther from her intention.  “But you haven’t stopped to think what you’re asking.  If there is any real danger for us—­which I can’t believe—­that is all the more reason why we shouldn’t run away and leave your cousin Ned behind.  I wouldn’t think of it for an instant, and neither would any of the others.”

Being hurt again in his tenderest part by the quite unconscious gibe, Lidgerwood did not press his proposal further.

“I merely wished to state the case and to give you a chance to get out and away from the trouble while we could get you out,” he said, a little stiffly.  Then:  “It is barely possible that the others may agree with me instead of with you:  will you tell them about it when they come back to the car, and send word to my office after you have decided in open council what you wish to do?  Only don’t let it be very late; a delay of two or three hours may make it impossible for us to get the Nadia over the Desert Division.”

Mrs. Brewster promised, and the superintendent went upstairs to his office.  A glance into Hallock’s room in passing showed him the chief clerk’s box-like desk untenanted, and he wondered if Judson would find his man somewhere in the town.  He hoped so.  It would be better for all concerned if the arrest could be made without too many witnesses.  True, Hallock had few friends in the railroad service, at least among those who professed loyalty to the management, but with explosives lying about everywhere underfoot, one could not be too careful of matches and fire.

The superintendent had scarcely closed the door upon his entrance into his own room when it was opened again with McCloskey’s hand on the latch.  The trainmaster came to report that a careful search of Callahan’s files had not disclosed any message to Leckhard.  Also, he added that Dix, who should have come on duty at three o’clock, was still absent.

“What do you make out of that?” queried Lidgerwood.

McCloskey’s scowl was grotesquely horrible.

“Bullying or bribery,” he said shortly.  “They’ve got Dix hid away uptown somewhere.  But there was a message, all right, and with your name signed to it.  Callahan saw it on Dix’s hook this morning before the boy came down.  It was in code, your private code.”

“Call up the Copah offices and have it repeated back,” ordered the superintendent.  “Let’s find out what somebody has been signing my name to.”

McCloskey shook his grizzled head.  “You won’t mind if I say that I beat you to it, this time, will you?  I got Orton, a little while ago, on the Copah wire and pumped him.  He says there was a code message, and that Dix sent it.  But when I asked him to repeat it back here, he said he couldn’t—­that Mr. Leckhard had taken it with him somewhere down the main line.”

Lidgerwood’s exclamation was profane.  The perversity of things, animate and inanimate, was beginning to wear upon him.