/L.," and his finger was on the chief
clerk's bell-push before he remembered that it was late, and that there
had been no light in Hallock's room when he had come down the corridor
to his own door.

The touch of the push-button was only a touch, and there was no
answering skirl of the bell in the adjoining room. But, as if the
intention had evoked it, a shadow crossed behind the superintendent's
chair and came to rest at the end of the roll-top desk. Lidgerwood
looked up with his eyes aflame. It was Hallock who was standing at the
desk's end, and he was pointing to the memorandum on the calendar pad.

"You made that note three days ago," he said abruptly. "I saw your train
come in and your light go on. What bill of lading was it you wanted to
see me about?"

For an instant Lidgerwood failed to understand. Then he saw that in
abbreviating he had unconsciously used the familiar sign, "B/L," the
common abbreviation of "bill of lading." At another time he would have
turned Hallock's very natural mistake into an easy introduction to a
rather delicate subject. But now he was angry.

"Sit down," he rapped out. "That isn't 'bill of lading'; it's 'building
and loan.'"

Hallock dragged the one vacant chair into the circle illuminated by the
shaded desk-electric, and sat on the edge of it, with his hands on his
knees. "Well?" he said, in the grating voice that was so curiously like
the master-mechanic's.

"We can cut out the details," this from the man who, under other
conditions, would have gone diplomatically into the smallest details.
"Some years ago you were the treasurer of the Mesa Building and Loan
Association. When the association went out of business, its books
showed a cash balance in the treasury. What became of the money?"

Hallock sat as rigid as a carved figure flanking an Egyptian propylon,
which his attitude suggested. He was silent for a time, so long a time
that Lidgerwood burst out impatiently, "Why don't you answer me?"

"I was just wondering if it is worth while for you to throw me
overboard," said the chief clerk, speaking slowly and quite without
heat. "You are needing friends pretty badly just now, if you only knew
it, Mr. Lidgerwood."

The cool retort, as from an equal in rank, added fresh fuel to the fire.

"I'm not buying friends with concessions to injustice and crooked
dealing," Lidgerwood exploded. "You were in the railroad service when
the money was paid over to you, and you are in the ra