ibles a mile high. Flemister will tell you
so if he is paid his price. But you don't want me to pay the price. If I
do----"

"Go on," said Lidgerwood, frowning, "if you do, what then?"

Hallock leaned still farther over the desk end.

"If I do, you'll get what you are after--and a good deal more. Again I
am going to ask you if it is worth while to throw me overboard."

Lidgerwood was still angry enough to resent this advance into the field
of the personalities.

"You've had my last word, Hallock, and all this talk about consequences
that you don't explain is beside the mark. Get me that statement from
Flemister, and do it soon. I am not going to have it said that we are
fighting graft in one place and covering it up in another."

Hallock straightened up and buttoned his coat.

"I'll get you the statement," he said, quietly; "and the consequences
won't need any explaining." His hand was on the door-knob when he
finished saying it, and Lidgerwood had risen from his chair. There was a
pause, while one might count five.

"Well?" said the superintendent.

"I was thinking again," said the man at the door. "By all the rules of
the game--the game as it is played here in the desert--I ought to be
giving you twenty-four hours to get out of gunshot, Mr. Lidgerwood.
Instead of that I am going to do you a service. You remember that
operator, Rufford, that you discharged a few days ago?"

"Yes."

"Bart Rufford, his brother, the 'lookout' at Red Light's place, has
invited a few of his friends to take notice that he intends to kill you.
You can take it straight. He means it. And that was what brought me up
here to-night--not that memorandum on your desk calendar."

For a long time after the door had jarred to its shutting behind
Hallock, Lidgerwood sat at his desk, idle and abstractedly thoughtful.
Twice within the interval he pulled out a small drawer under the
roll-top and made as if he would take up the weapon it contained, and
each time he closed the drawer to break with the temptation to put the
pistol into his pocket.

Later, after he had forced himself to go to work, a door slammed
somewhere in the despatcher's end of the building, and automatically his
hand shot out to the closed drawer. Then he made his decision and
carried it out. Taking the nickel-plated thing from its hiding-place,
and breaking it to eject the cartridges, he went to the end door of the
corridor, which opened into the unused space under the r