d Wade. "Wrecked from engine to caboose,
eh? What a whack on the head! Might've killed you. How'd you come to
fall off?"

Podmore smiled weakly. He gazed for a moment at Kendrick as if trying
to collect his thoughts. Then he explained that he had been troubled
with insomnia and got up to smoke a cigarette. He had been fool enough
to perch up on the brass rail at the rear of the private car, thinking
the fresh air might make him sleepy. The train had been hitting up a
fast pace on a down grade and as they swung a curve he had lost his
balance and pitched clean down a long fill among the rocks of a creek
bottom. The fall had knocked him senseless. When finally he had
recovered consciousness he had been too ill to move for a long time.
Then the hot sun had driven him to crawl painfully into the woods where
he had lain helpless most of the day, with just enough strength to get
water from the creek. When he began to feel a little better toward
nightfall he had gone back to the track and started for help. Just as
he was ready to give up Kendrick had found him.

Cranston and the President exchanged glances, but Wade merely nodded
when Podmore requested to be allowed to crawl into his berth because he
was feeling "swimmy in the head." Cranston and the steward helped him
aboard and proceeded to put him to bed.

"From that little shake of the head that Cranston just passed you, Mr.
Wade, I gather that he failed to find any trace of the envelope that's
missing," said Kendrick quietly. He smiled at the abruptness with
which the President of the C.L.S. took hold of his arm and walked him
away from the car.

"Let's go over there and see Thorlakson a minute," he said loudly.
"Now, shoot," he added in a lower voice. "What do you know about this
thing, Phil?"

"He's been trying to fill me up with the smoothest line of bunk I ever
listened to. According to him you're the sworn political enemy of
Uncle Milt and have had a finger in the theft--theft, mind you!--of
important secret state documents which would have been the cause of a
financial panic if they had remained in your possession much longer, to
say nothing of undermining public confidence in the present
administration."

"Great Busted Reputations! Did he tell you that?"

"While I was bandaging him. He said he was the reporter who located
the evidence that had convicted Rives and elected my uncle, and that he
was acting now as an agent of the government t