Lidgerwood nodded gravely.  “I should say your guess has already verified itself.  All it lacks is the name of the man who loosened the fish-plate bolts and pulled the spikes.”

“That’s about all.”

The superintendent’s eyes narrowed.

“Who was missing out of the Angels crowd of trouble-makers yesterday, Mac?”

“I hate to say,” said the trainmaster.  “God knows I don’t want to put it all over any man unless it belongs to him, but I’m locoed every time it comes to that kind of a guess.  Every bunch of letters I see spells just one name.”

“Go on,” said Lidgerwood sharply.

“Hallock came somewhere up this way on 202 yesterday.”

“I know,” was the quick reply.  “I sent him out to Navajo to meet Cruikshanks, the cattleman with the long claim for stock injured in the Gap wreck two weeks ago.”

“Did he stop at Navajo?” queried the trainmaster.

“I suppose so; at any rate, he saw Cruikshanks.”

“Well, I haven’t got any more guesses, only a notion or two.  This is a pretty stiff up-grade for 202—­she passes here at two-fifty—­just about an hour before Clay found that loosened rail—­and it wouldn’t be impossible for a man to drop off as she was climbing this curve.”

But now the superintendent was shaking his head.

“It doesn’t hold together, Mac; there are too many parts missing.  Your hypothesis presupposes that Hallock took a day train out of Angels, rode twelve miles past his destination, jumped off here while the train was in motion, pulled the spikes on this loosened rail, and walked back to Navajo in time to see the cattleman and get in to Angels on the delayed Number 75 this morning.  Could he have done all these things without advertising them to everybody?”

“I know,” confessed the trainmaster.  “It doesn’t look reasonable.”

“It isn’t reasonable,” Lidgerwood went on, arguing Hallock’s case as if it were his own.  “Bradford was 202’s conductor; he’d know if Hallock failed to get off at Navajo.  Gridley was a passenger on the same train, and he would have known.  The agent at Navajo would be a third witness.  He was expecting Hallock on that train, and was no doubt holding Cruikshanks.  Your guesses prefigure Hallock failing to show up when the train stopped at Navajo, and make it necessary for him to explain to the two men who were waiting for him why he let Bradford carry him by so far that it took him several hours to walk back.  You see how incredible it all is?”

“Yes, I see,” said McCloskey, and when he spoke again they were several rail-lengths nearer the up-track end of the wreck, and his question went back to Lidgerwood’s mention of the expected special.

“You were saying something to Dawson about Williams and a special train; is that Mr. Brewster coming in?”

“Yes.  He wired from Copah last night.  He has Mr. Ford’s car—­the Nadia.”

The trainmaster’s face-contortion was expressive of the deepest chagrin.