“No word from Judson yet?” he asked, when McCloskey’s homely face appeared 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 tickled the boss machinist, Lidgerwood?”

“I don’t know.  Why?”

Benson looked at McCloskey.

“Just as we came in, he was standing over you with a look in his eyes as if he were about to murder you, and couldn’t quite make up his mind as to the simplest way of doing it.  Then the look changed to his usual cast-iron smile in the flirt of a flea’s hind leg—­at some joke you were telling, I took it.”