“I’ve sent for him already,” said Helena numbly.

“Have you, dear?” Miss Harvey said.  “That was very thoughtful of you—­I’m sure he’ll be here presently then.  And now, dear, it is much better that you should go.”

There were no tears in Helena’s eyes as she stepped down from the car vestibule to the tracks—­only a drawn misery in her face.  That was Doc over there, pacing up and down on the platform in the darkness—­wasn’t it weird the way his cigar glowed bright and then went out and then glowed bright again—­like a gigantic firefly!

She was across the tracks before he saw her, then, hurrying forward, he helped her to the platform.

“Well?” he asked quickly.

Helena did not answer.

Madison took the cigar from his lips, leaned forward, and peered into Helena’s face—­then drew back with a low whistle.

“Dead?” he said.

Helena nodded.

“Miss Harvey wants to see you,” she said.

“Say,” said Madison slowly, “first crack out of the box this looks bad, don’t it?  If this gets around here without a muffler on it, it might make the railroad companies hang fire with those circulars for excursion rates to Needley—­what?”

“I—­I think I hate you!” Helena cried out suddenly, passionately.  “She’s—­she’s dead—­and that’s all you think about!”

Madison stared at Helena for a moment calmly.

“Now, look here, Helena,” said he quietly, “don’t get excited.  Of course I’m sorry—­I’m not a brute and I’ve got feelings—­but I can’t afford to lose my head.  Something’s got to be done, and done quick.  We don’t want this headlined in every paper in the United States to-morrow morning—­Thornton wouldn’t want it either.  You say Miss Harvey wants to see me?  Well, that’ll help some—­she’ll probably do as she’s told, and—­”

Madison paused abruptly, gazed abstractedly at the private car across the tracks on the siding, and pulled at his cigar.

Helena watched him in silence—­a little bitterly.  That quick, clever, cunning brain of his was at work again—­scheming—­scheming—­always scheming—­and Naida Thornton was dead.

“I’ll tell you,” said Madison, speaking again as abruptly as he had stopped.  “It’s simple enough.  There’s a westbound train due in an hour or so—­we’ll couple the private car onto that and send it right along to Chicago.  What the authorities don’t know won’t hurt them.  There’s no reason for anybody except Thornton to know what’s happened till she gets there—­I’ll wire him.  The main thing is that the car won’t be here in the morning, and that’ll take a little of the intimate touch of Needley off.  It might well have happened on her way home—­journey too much for her—­left too soon—­see?  Thornton’ll see it in the right light because he’s got fifty thousand dollars worth of faith in what’s going on here—­get that?  He won’t want to harm the ‘cause.’  There’ll be some publicity of course, we can’t help that—­but it won’t hurt much—­and Thornton can gag a whole lot of it—­he’d want to anyway for his own sake.  Now then, kid, there’s Sam over there—­you pile into the wagon and go home, while I get busy—­and don’t you say a word about this, even to the Flopper.”