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That it was too late to take this means of reaching Little Butte and the Wire-Silver mine was a small matter; it merely meant that he would be obliged to order out the service-car and go special, if he should finally decide to act upon Flemister's suggestion.
Judson knew nothing about the letter in which Flemister had promised to arrange for a meeting between Lidgerwood and the ranchman Grofield. What he did know was that he had followed Hallock almost to the door of Flemister's office, and that he had seen a shadowed face on the office window-shade which could be no other than the face of the chief clerk.
But one thing was certain: of all the minor officials in the railway service, Hallock was the one who was best able to forward and to conceal Flemister's thieveries. It was in the midst of these subterranean investigations that Lidgerwood had a call from the owner of the Wire-Silver.
Thereupon I told them to go straight to blazes, and walked away down the spur, but when I got out of sight around the first curve I took to the timber on the butte slope and climbed to a point from which I could look over into Flemister's carefully built enclosure." "Well, what did you see?" "Much or little, just as you happen to look at it.
Rankin was never much of a bragger or much of a talker, but he let out a few hints, and, accordin' to Red Desert rulin's, Flemister wasn't much better than a dead man, right then. But it blew over, some way, and now " "Now he is Flemister's accomplice in a hanging matter, you would say. I'm afraid you are right, Judson," was the superintendent's comment; and with this the subject was dropped.
We have time orders against 73 at Timanyoni, and we would have to wait there, anyhow. What do you know now? more than you knew the last time we talked?" Benson shook his head. "Nothing that would do us any good in a jury trial," he admitted reluctantly. "We are not going to find out anything more until you send somebody up to Flemister's mine with a search-warrant."
"I'll bet Flemister is doing his share of the looting," laughed the president. "Is he alone in the mine?" "I don't know that he has any partners. Somebody told me, when I first came over here, that Gridley, our master-mechanic, was in with him; but Gridley says that is a mistake that he thinks too much of his reputation to be Flemister's partner."
Judson backed away and stared again, muttering to himself. If he had not traced Hallock almost to the door of Flemister's quarters, there might have been room for the thin edge of the doubt wedge.
It was not a special weakness of Flemister's to say the damaging thing under pressure of the untoward and unanticipated event; it is rather a common failing of human nature. In a flash he appeared to realize that he had admitted too much.
This, in Judson's prefiguring, was a small matter. The tall man, whom the ex-engineer had unmistakably recognized at the moment of train-forsaking as Rankin Hallock, was doubtless on his way to Flemister's head-quarters at the foot of the western slope.
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