This was coming to be an old subject and a sore one.  The trainmaster still insisted that Hallock was the man who was planning the robberies and plotting the downfall of the Lidgerwood management, and he wanted to have the chief clerk systematically shadowed.  And it was Lidgerwood’s wholly groundless prepossession for Hallock that was still keeping him from turning the matter over to the company’s legal department—­this in spite of the growing accumulation of evidence all pointing to Hallock’s treason.  Subjected to a rigid cross-examination, Judson had insisted that a part, at least, of his drunken recollection was real—­that part identifying the voices of the two plotters in Cat Biggs’s back room as those of Rufford and Hallock.  Moreover, it was no longer deniable that the chief clerk was keeping in close touch with the discharged employees, for some purpose best known to himself; and latterly he had been dropping out of his office without notice, disappearing, sometimes, for a day at a time.

Lidgerwood was recalling the last of these disappearances when the second wrecking-train, having backed to the nearest siding to admit of a reversal of its make-up order and the placing of the crane in the lead, came up to go into action.  McCloskey shaded his eyes from the sun’s glare and looked down the line.

“Hello!” he exclaimed.  “Got a new wrecking-boss?”

The superintendent nodded.  “I have one in the making.  Dawson wanted to come along and try his hand.”

“Did Gridley send him?”

“No; Gridley is away somewhere.”

“So Fred’s your understudy, is he?  Well, I’ve got one, too.  I’ll show him to you after a while.”

They were walking back over the ties toward the half-buried 195.  The ten-wheeler was on its side in the ditch, nuzzling the opposite bank of a low cutting.  Dawson had already divided his men:  half of them to place the huge jack-beams and outriggers of the self-contained steam lifting machine to insure its stability, and the other half to trench under the fallen engine and to adjust the chain slings for the hitch.

“It’s a pretty long reach, Fred,” said the superintendent.  “Going to try it from here?”

“Best place,” said the reticent one shortly.

Lidgerwood was looking at his watch.

“Williams will be due here before long with a special from Copah.  I don’t want to hold him up,” he remarked.

“Thirty minutes?” inquired the draftsman, without taking mind or eye off his problem.

“Oh, yes; forty or fifty, maybe.”

“All right, I’ll be out of the way,” was the quiet rejoinder.

“Yes, you will!” was McCloskey’s ironical comment, when the draftsman had gone around to the other side of the great crane.

“Let him alone,” said Lidgerwood.  “It lies in my mind that we are developing a genius, Mac.”

“He’ll fall down,” grumbled the trainmaster.  “That crane won’t pick up the ’95 clear the way she’s lying.”