“And that same ‘big boss’ is sitting up yonder in Cat Biggs’s back room, right now, givin’ his orders and tellin’ ’em what to do,” was Judson’s crowning guess, and since Hallock had not been visible since the early afternoon, for the three men sitting under the superintendent’s desk lamp, Judson’s inference stood as a fact assured.  It was Hallock who had fomented the trouble; it was Hallock who was now directing it.

“I suppose you didn’t see anything of Grady, my stenographer?” inquired Lidgerwood, when Judson had made an end.

The engineer shook his head.  “Reckon they’ve got him cooped up along with Dix?”

“I hope not.  But he has disappeared.  I sent him up to Mrs. Dawson’s with a message late this afternoon, and he hasn’t shown up since.”

“Of course, they’ve got him,” said McCloskey, sourly.  “Does he know anything that he can tell?”

“Nothing that can make any difference now.  They are probably holding him to hamper me.  The boy’s loyal.”

“Yes,” growled McCloskey, “and he’s Irish.”

“Well, my old mother is Irish, too, for the matter of that,” snapped Judson.  “If you don’t like the Irish, you’ll be finding a chip on my shoulder any day in the week, except to-day, Jim McCloskey!”

Lidgerwood smiled.  It brought a small relaxing of strains to hear these two resurrecting the ancient race feud in the midst of the trouble storm.  And when the trainmaster returned to his post in the wire office, and Judson had been sent back to Biggs’s to renew his search for the hidden ring-leader, it was the memory of the little race tiff that cleared the superintendent’s brain for the grapple with the newly defined situation.

Judson’s report was grave enough, but it brought a good hope that the crucial moment might be postponed until many of the men would be too far gone in liquor to take any active part.  Lidgerwood took the precautions made advisable by Tryon’s threat to steal an engine, sending word to Benson to double his guards on the locomotives in the yard, and to Dawson to block the turn-table so that none might be taken from the roundhouse.

Afterward he went out to look over the field in person.  Everything was quiet; almost suspiciously so.  Gridley was found alone in his office at the shops, smoking a cigar, with his chair tilted to a comfortable angle and his feet on the desk.  His guards, he said, were posted in and around the shops, and he hoped they were not asleep.  Thus far, there had been little enough to keep them awake.

Lidgerwood, passing out through the door opening upon the electric-lighted yard, surprised a man in the act of turning the knob to enter.  It was the merest incident, and he would not have remarked it if the door, closing behind Gridley’s visitor, had not bisected a violent outburst of profanity, vocalizing itself in the harsh tones of the master-mechanic, as thus:  “You ——­ ——­ chuckle-headed fool!  Haven’t you any better