“I’ve heard that, too,” McCloskey admitted.  “The story goes that the house-building scheme was promoted by the old Red Butte Western bosses, and if a man didn’t take stock he got himself disliked.  If he did take it, the premiums were held out on the pay-rolls.  It smells like a good, old-fashioned graft, with the lid nailed on.”

“There wouldn’t seem to be any reasonable doubt about the graft,” said the superintendent.  “But my duty is clear.  Of course, the Pacific Southwestern Company isn’t responsible for the side-issue schemes of the old Red Butte Western officials.  But I want to do strict justice.  These men charge the officials of the building and loan company with open dishonesty.  There was a balance of several thousand dollars in the treasury when the explosion came, and it disappeared.”

“Well?” said the trainmaster.

“The losers contend that somebody ought to make good to them.  They also call attention to the fact that the building and loan treasurer, who was never able satisfactorily to explain the disappearance of the cash balance, is still on the railroad company’s pay-rolls.”

McCloskey sat up and tilted the derby to the back of his head.  “Gridley?” he asked.

“No; for some reasons I wish it were Gridley.  He is able to fight his own battles.  It comes nearer home, Mac.  The treasurer was Hallock.”

McCloskey rose noiselessly, tiptoed to the door of communication with the outer office, and opened it with a quick jerk.  There was no one there.

“I thought I heard something,” he said.  “Didn’t you think you did?”

Lidgerwood shook his head.

“Hallock has gone over to the storekeeper’s office to check up the time-rolls.  He won’t be back to-day.”

McCloskey closed the door and returned to his chair.

“If I say what I think, you’ll be asking me for proofs, Mr. Lidgerwood, and I have none.  Besides, I’m a prejudiced witness.  I don’t like Hallock.”

Quite unconsciously Lidgerwood picked up a pencil and began adding more squares to the miniature checker-board on his desk blotter.  It was altogether subversive of his own idea of fitness to be discussing his chief clerk with his trainmaster, but McCloskey had proved himself an honest partisan and a fearless one, and Lidgerwood was at a pass where the good counsel of even a subordinate was not to be despised.

“I don’t want to do Hallock an injustice,” he went on, after a hesitant pause, “neither do I wish to dig up the past, for him or for anybody.  I was hoping that you might know some of the inside details, and so make it easier for me to get at the truth.  I can’t believe that Hallock was culpably responsible for the disappearance of the money.”

By this time McCloskey had his hat tilted to the belligerent angle.

“I’m not a fair witness,” he reiterated.  “There’s been gossip, and I’ve listened to it.”

“About this building and loan mess?”