The company detective drew a thick envelope from his pocket and laid it upon the desk.  The vice-president tore it open and read rapidly through the file of letters it had enclosed, tearing them one by one from the hold of the brass fastener at the upper left-hand corner as he glanced them over.  “The chuckle-headed fools!” he gritted, apostrophizing the writers of the letters.  And then:  “Gibbert, I’d like to go into this a little deeper, if we had time; I’d like to know why in hell every man in this State with whom we’ve had a private business arrangement found it necessary to spread the details out on paper and send them to young Blount!  Here; burn these things as I hand them to you.”

The small man struck a match and, using the wide-mouthed metal cuspidor for an ash-pan, lighted the letters one at a time as they were given to him.  When the cinder skeleton of the final sheet had been crushed into ashes, he rose from his knees and reached for his hat.

“Any other orders?” he asked.

“No; nothing more.  You are reasonably sure that you haven’t been recognized here by any of our local people?”

“I’ve kept the ‘make-up’ on most of the time.  I’ve been in Mr. Gantry’s office a couple of times, and in Mr. Kittredge’s once, and neither of them caught on to me.”

“That’s good.  You’d better go now.  O’Brien has gone after Gantry and Kittredge, and I don’t care to have them find you here.  Better take the first train back to Chicago.  These mutton-headed police here might possibly get on your track, and we don’t want to have to explain anything to them.”

Five minutes after the small man had dropped from the step of the “008,” to disappear in the box-car shadows, Gantry and Kittredge came down the yard and entered the private car.  Again the vice-president said, “How are you?” and nodded toward the nearest chairs.  “Sit down; I’ll be through in a minute,” and he went on reading the file of papers taken up at the departure of the detective.  At the end of the minute he shot a question at the two who were waiting.

“You got my message?”

Gantry answered for himself and the superintendent.  “Yes.  Your orders have been carried out.  The yards are posted, and nobody, outside of a few of our own men, knows that your car is here.”

The vice-president took one of the long black cigars from the open box on the flat-topped desk, and passed the box to his two lieutenants.

“Light up,” he said tersely.  “I’m due in Twin Canyons City to-morrow morning, and we’ve got to thresh this thing out in a hurry.  Any change in the situation since your last report?”

Gantry shook his head.  “Nothing very important.  Blount’s up-town office was broken into last night and his safe ripped open with dynamite, as I suppose you have read in the papers.  Who did it, or why it was done, nobody seems to know.”

“Well, what came of it?”

“Nothing, so far as I can find out,” returned the traffic manager.  “Blount had been to the Gordon dance, and he saw the light in his office as he was coming down-town.  When he went up to find out what was going on, he caught the safe-blower fairly in the act, but the fellow got away.”