ify him."

"And that man is----"

"--Pennington Flemister, ex-president of the defunct Building and Loan.
You know where the money went, Flemister."

"Maybe I do. What of that?"

"I can only offer a suggestion, of course. You are a pretty smooth liar,
Pennington; it wouldn't be much trouble for you to fix up a story that
would satisfy Lidgerwood. You might even show up a few documents, if it
came to the worst."

"Well?"

"That's all. If you get a good, firm grip on that club, you'll have
Hallock, coming and going. It's a dead open and shut. If he falls in
line, you'll agree to pacify Lidgerwood; otherwise the law will have to
take its course."

The man in the buckboard was silent for a long minute before he said:
"It won't work, Gridley. Hallock's grudge against me is too bitter. You
know part of it, and part of it you don't know. He'd hang himself in a
minute if he could get my neck in the same noose."

The master-mechanic threw the whittled match away, as if the argument
were closed.

"That is where you are lame, Flemister: you don't know your man. Put it
up to Hallock barehanded: if he comes in, all right; if not, you'll put
him where he'll wear stripes. That will fetch him."

The men of the derrick gang were righting the last of the derailed
box-cars, and the crew of the wrecking-train was shifting the cripples
into line for the return run to Angels.

"We'll be going in a few minutes," said the master-mechanic, taking his
foot from the wheel-hub. "Do you want to meet Lidgerwood?"

"Not here--or with you," said the owner of the Wire-Silver; and he had
turned his team and was driving away when Gridley's shop foreman came up
to say that the wrecking-train was ready to leave.

Lidgerwood found a seat for himself in the tool-car on the way back to
Angels, and put in the time smoking a short pipe and reviewing the
events of his first day in the new field.

The outlook was not wholly discouraging, and but for the talk with
Gridley he might have smoked and dozed quite peacefully on his coiled
hawser, in the corner of the car. But, try as he would, the importunate
demon of distrust, distrust of himself, awakened by the
master-mechanic's warning, refused to be quieted; and when, after the
three hours of the slow return journey were out-worn, McCloskey came to
tell him that the train was pulling into the Angels yard, the explosion
of a track torpedo under the wheels made him start like a nervous woman.