“It is none of your business, Mr. Lidgerwood,” said the carved figure with the gloomy eyes that never blinked.

“By heavens!  I’m making it my business, Hallock!  These men who were robbed say that you are an embezzler, a thief.  If you are not, you’ve got to clear yourself.  If you are, you can’t stay in the Red Butte service another day:  that’s all.”

Again there was a silence surcharged with electric possibilities.  Lidgerwood bit the end from a cigar and lost three matches before he succeeded in lighting it.  Hallock sat perfectly still, but the sallow tinge in his gaunt face had given place to a stony pallor.  When he spoke, it was still without anger.

“I don’t care a damn for your chief clerkship,” he said calmly, “but for reasons of my own I am not ready to quit on such short notice.  When I am ready, you won’t have to discharge me.  Upon what terms can I stay?”

“I’ve stated them,” said the one who was angry.  “Discharge your trust; make good in dollars and cents, or show cause why you were caught with an empty cash-box.”

For the first time in the interview the chief clerk switched the stare of the gloomy eyes from the memorandum desk calendar, and fixed it upon his accuser.

“You seem to take it for granted that I was the only grafter in the building and loan business,” he objected.  “I wasn’t; on the contrary, I was only a necessary cog in the wheel.  Somebody had to make the deductions from the pay-rolls, and——­”

“I’m not asking you to make excuses,” stormed Lidgerwood.  “I’m telling you that you’ve got to make good!  If the money was used legitimately, you, or some of your fellow-officers in the company, should be able to show it.  If the others left you to hold the bag, it is due to yourself, to the men who were held up, and to me, that you set yourself straight.  Go to Flemister—­he was your president, wasn’t he?—­and get him to make a statement that I can show to the grievance committee.  That will let you out, and me, too.”

Hallock stood up and leaned over the desk end.  His saturnine face was a mask of cold rage, but his eyes were burning.

“If I thought you knew what you’re saying,” he began in the grating voice, “but you don’t—­you can’t know!” Then, with a sudden break in the fierce tone:  “Don’t send me to Flemister for my clearance—­don’t do it, Mr. Lidgerwood.  It’s playing with fire.  I didn’t steal the money; I’ll swear it on a stack of Bibles a mile high.  Flemister will tell you so if he is paid his price.  But you don’t want me to pay the price.  If I do——­”

“Go on,” said Lidgerwood, frowning, “if you do, what then?”

Hallock leaned still farther over the desk end.

“If I do, you’ll get what you are after—­and a good deal more.  Again I am going to ask you if it is worth while to throw me overboard.”

Lidgerwood was still angry enough to resent this advance into the field of the personalities.