Angelic rumor hinted that he was a periodic drunkard:  he was both more and less than that.  Like many another man, Henry Gridley lived a double life; or, perhaps it would be nearer the truth to say that there were two Henry Gridleys.  Lidgerwood, the Dawsons, the little world of Angels at large, knew the virile, accomplished mechanical engineer and master of men, which was his normal personality.  What time the other personality, the elemental barbarian, yawned, stretched itself, and came awake, the unspeakable dens of the Copah lower quarter engulfed him until the nether-man had gorged himself on degradation.

To his men, Gridley was a tyrant, exacting, but just; ruling them, as the men of the desert could only be ruled, with the mailed fist.  Yet there was a human hand inside of the steel gauntlet, as all men knew.  Having once beaten a bullying gang-boss into the hospital at Denver, he had promptly charged himself with the support of the man’s family.  Other generous roughnesses were recorded of him, and if the attitude of the men was somewhat tempered by wholesome fear, it was none the less loyal.

Hence, when he entered the roundhouse, industrious silence supplanted the discussion of the superintendent’s case.  Glancing at the group of enginemen, and snapping out a curt criticism of Broadbent’s slowness on the valve-seats, he beckoned to Judson.  When the discharged engineer had followed him across the turn-table, he faced about and said, not too crisply, “So your sins have found you out one more time, have they, John?”

Judson nodded.

“What is it this time, thirty days?”

Judson shook his head gloomily.  “No, I’m down and out.”

“Lidgerwood made it final, did he?  Well, you can’t blame him.”

“You hain’t heard me sayin’ anything, have you?” was the surly rejoinder.

“No, but it isn’t in human nature to forget these little things.”  Then, suddenly:  “Where were you day before yesterday between noon and one o’clock, about the time you should have been taking your train out?”

Judson had a needle-like mind when the alcohol was out of it, and the sudden query made him dissemble.

“About ten o’clock I was playin’ pool in Rafferty’s place with the butt end of the cue.  After that, things got kind o’hazy.”

“Well, I want you to buckle down and think hard.  Don’t you remember going over to Cat Biggs’s about noon, and sitting down at one of the empty card-tables to drink yourself stiff?”

Judson could not have told, under the thumbscrews, why he was prompted to tell Gridley a plain lie.  But he did it.

“I can’t remember,” he denied.  Then then needle-pointed brain got in its word, and he added, “Why?”

“I saw you there when I was going up to dinner.  You called me in to tell me what you were going to do to Lidgerwood if he slated you for getting drunk.  Don’t you remember it?”

Judson was looking the master-mechanic fairly in the eyes when he said, “No, I don’t remember a thing about that.”