sense than to come—­” At this point the closing door cut the sentence of objurgation, and Lidgerwood continued his round of inspection, trying vainly to recall the identity of the chance-met man whose face, half hidden under the drooping brim of a worn campaign-hat, was vaguely familiar.  The recollection came at length, with the impact of a blow.  The “chuckle-headed fool” of Gridley’s malediction was Richard Rufford, the “Killer’s” younger brother.

Lidgerwood said nothing of this incident to Dawson, whom he found patrolling the roundhouse.  Here, as at the shops and in the yard, everything was quiet and orderly.  The crews for the three sections of the midnight freight were all out, guarding their trains and engines, and Dawson had only Bradford and the roundhouse night-men for company.

“Nothing stirring, Fred?” inquired the superintendent.

“Less than nothing; it’s almost too quiet,” was the sober reply.  And then:  “I see you haven’t sent the Nadia out; wouldn’t it be a good scheme to get a couple of buckboards and have the women and Judge Holcombe driven up to our place on the mesa?  The trouble, when it comes, will come this way.”

Lidgerwood shook his head.

“My stake in the Nadia is precisely the same size as yours, Fred, and I don’t want to risk the buckboard business.  We’ll do a better thing than that, if we have to let the president’s party make a run for it.  Get your smartest passenger flyer out on the table, head it east, and when I send for it, rush it over to couple on to the Nadia—­with Williams for engineer.  Has Benson had any trouble in the yard?”

“There has been nobody to make any.  Tryon came down a few minutes ago, considerably more than half-seas over, and said he was ready to take his engine and the first section of the east-bound midnight—­which would have been his regular run.  But he went back uptown peaceably when Benson told him he was down and out.”

Lidgerwood did not extend his round to include Benson’s post at the yard office, which was below the coal chutes.  Instead, he went over to the Nadia, thinking pointedly of the two added mysteries:  the fact that Gridley had told a deliberate lie to account for his appearance in Angels, and the other and more recent fact that the master-mechanic was conferring, even in terms of profanity, with Rufford’s brother, who was not, and never had been, in his department.

Under the “umbrella roof” of the Nadia’s rear platform the young people of the party were sitting out the early half of the perfect summer night, the card-tables having been abandoned when Benson had brought word of the tacit armistice.  There was an unoccupied camp-chair, and Miss Brewster pointed it out to the superintendent.

“Climb over and sit with us, Howard,” she said, hospitably.  “You know you haven’t a thing in the world to do.”

Lidgerwood swung himself over the railing, and took the proffered chair.