“That is what I have been calling it; a reckless disregard for the value of anything and everything that can be included in a requisition.  There is a good deal of that, I know; the right-of-way is littered from end to end with good material thrown aside.  But I’m afraid that isn’t the worst of it.”

The trainmaster was nursing a knee and screwing his face into the reflective scheme of distortion.

“Those things are always hard to prove.  Short of a military guard, for instance, you couldn’t prevent Angels from raiding the company’s coal-yard for its cook-stoves.  That’s one leak, and the others are pretty much like it.  If a company employee wants to steal, and there isn’t enough common honesty among his fellow-employees to hold him down, he can steal fast enough and get away with it.”

“By littles, yes, but not in quantity,” pursued Lidgerwood.

“‘Mony a little makes a mickle,’ as my old grandfather used to say,” McCloskey went on.  “If everybody gets his fingers into the sugar-bowl——­”

Lidgerwood swung his chair to face McCloskey.

“We’ll pass up the petty thieveries, for the present, and look a little higher,” he said gravely.  “Have you found any trace of those two car-loads of company lumber lost in transit between here and Red Butte two weeks ago?”

“No, nor of the cars themselves.  They were reported as two Transcontinental flats, initials and numbers plainly given in the car-record.  They seem to have disappeared with the lumber.”

“Which means?” queried the superintendent.

“That the numbers, or the initials, or both, were wrongly reported.  It means that it was a put-up job to steal the lumber.”

“Exactly.  And there was a mixed car-load of lime and cement lost at about the same time, wasn’t there?”

“Yes.”

Lidgerwood’s swing-chair “righted itself to the perpendicular with a snap.”

“Mac, the Red Butte mines are looking up a little, and there is a good bit of house-building going on in the camp just now:  tell me, what man or men in the company’s service would be likely to be taking a flyer in Red Butte real estate?”

“I don’t know of anybody.  Gridley used to be interested in the camp.  He went in pretty heavily on the boom, and lost out—­so they all say.  So did your man out there in the pig-pen desk,” with a jerk of his thumb to indicate the outer office.

“They are both out of it,” said Lidgerwood shortly.  Then:  “How about Sullivan, the west-end supervisor of track?  He has property in Red Butte, I am told.”

“Sullivan is a thief, all right, but he does it openly and brags about it; carries off a set of bridge-timbers, now and then, for house-sills, and makes a joke of it with anybody who will listen.”

Lidgerwood dismissed Sullivan abruptly.

“It is an organized gang, and it must have its members pretty well scattered through the departments—­and have a good many members, too,” he said conclusively.  “That brings us to the disappearance of the switching-engine again.  No one man made off with that, single-handed, Mac.”