“No, it isn’t!  That switch-engine dropped out two weeks ago last Tuesday night.  I’ve been prying into this locked-up puzzle-box every way I could think of ever since. Hallock knows where that engine went!”

“What makes you think so?”

“I’ll tell you.  Robinson, the night-crew engineer, was a little late leaving her that night.  His fireman had gone home, and so had the yardmen.  After he had crossed the yard coming out, he saw a man sneaking toward the shifter, keeping in the shadow of the coal-chutes.  He was just curious enough to want to know who it was, and he made a little sneak of his own.  When he found it was Hallock, he went home and thought no more about it till I got him to talk.”

Lidgerwood had gone back to the pencil and the blotting-pad and the making of squares.

“But the motive, Mac?” he questioned, without looking up.  “How could the theft or the destruction of a locomotive serve any purpose that Hallock might have in view?”

McCloskey did not mean any disrespect to his superior officer when he retorted:  “I’m no ’cyclopaedia.  There are lots of things I don’t know.  But unless you call it off, I’m going to know a few more of them before I quit.”

“I don’t call it off, Mac; find out what you can.  But I can’t believe that Hallock is heading this organized robbery and rebellion.”

“Somebody is heading it, to a dead moral certainty, Mr. Lidgerwood; the licks are coming too straight and too well-timed.”

“Find the man if you can, and we’ll eliminate him.  And, by the way, if it comes to the worst, how will Hepburn, the town marshal, stand?”

The trainmaster shook his head.

“I don’t know.  Jack’s got plenty of sand, but he was elected out of the shops, and by the railroad vote.  If it comes to a show-down against the men who elected him——­”

“That is what I mean,” nodded Lidgerwood.  “It will come to a show-down sooner or later, if we can’t nip the ringleaders.  Young Rufford and a dozen more of the dropped employees are threatening to get even.  That means train-wrecking, misplaced switches, arson—­anything you like.  At the first break there are going to be some very striking examples made of all the wreckers and looters we can land on.”

McCloskey’s chair faced the window, and he was scowling and mouthing at the tall chimney of the shop power-plant across the tracks.  Where had he fallen upon the idea that this carefully laundered gentleman, who never missed his daily plunge and scrub, and still wore immaculate linen, lacked the confidence of his opinions and convictions?  The trainmaster knew, and he thought Lidgerwood must also know, that the first blow of the vengeful ones would be directed at the man rather than at the company’s property.

“I guess maybe Hepburn will do his duty when it comes to the pinch,” he said finally.  And the subject having apparently exhausted itself, he went about his business, which was to call up the telegraph operator at Timanyoni to ask why he had broken the rule requiring the conductor and engineer, both of them, to sign train orders in his presence.