“Hardly.”

“It was this gang we are presupposing—­the gang that has been stealing lumber and lime and other material by the car-load.”

“Well?”

“I believe we’ll get to the bottom of all the looting on this switching-engine business.  They have overdone it this time.  You can’t put a locomotive in your pocket and walk off with it.  You say you’ve wired Copah?”

“Yes.”

“Who was at the Copah key—­Mr. Leckhard?”

“No.  I didn’t want to advertise our troubles to a main-line official.  I got the day-despatcher, Crandall, and told him to keep his mouth shut until he heard of it some other way.”

“Good.  And what did Crandall say?”

“He said that the ’16 had never gone out through the Copah yards; that it couldn’t get anywhere if it had without everybody knowing about it.”

Lidgerwood’s abstracted gaze out of the office window became a frown of concentration.

“But the object, McCloskey—­what possible profit could there be in the theft of a locomotive that can neither be carried away nor converted into salable junk?”

The trainmaster shook his head.  “I’ve stewed over that till I’m threatened with softening of the brain,” he confessed.

“Never mind, you have a comparatively easy job,” Lidgerwood went on.  “That engine is somewhere this side of the Crosswater Hills.  It is too big to be hidden under a bushel basket.  Find it, and you’ll be hot on the trail of the car-load robbers.”

McCloskey got upon his feet as if he were going at once to begin the search, but Lidgerwood detained him.

“Hold on; I’m not quite through yet.  Sit down again and have a smoke.”

The trainmaster squinted sourly at the extended cigar-case.  “I guess not,” he demurred.  “I cut it out, along with the toddies, the day I put on my coat and hat and walked out of the old F. & P.M. offices without my time-check.”

“If it had to be both or neither, you were wise; whiskey and railroading don’t go together very well.  But about this other matter.  Some years ago there was a building and loan association started here in Angels, the ostensible object being to help the railroad men to own their homes.  Ever hear of it?”

“Yes, but it was dead and buried before my time.”

“Dead, but not buried,” corrected Lidgerwood.  “As I understand it, the railroad company fathered it, or at all events, some of the officials took stock in it.  When it died there was a considerable deficit, together with a failure on the part of the executive committee to account for a pretty liberal cash balance.”

“I’ve heard that much,” said the trainmaster.

“Then we’ll bring it down to date,” Lidgerwood resumed.  “It appears that there are twenty-five or thirty of the losers still in the employ of this company, and they have sent a committee to me to ask for an investigation, basing the demand on the assertion that they were coerced into giving up their money to the building and loan people.”