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"You can't put it all over me that way, Flemister; you can't, and, by God, you sha'n't! You're in the hole just as deep as I am, foot for foot!" "Oh, no, my friend," said the cooler voice. "I haven't been stealing in car-load lots from the company that hires me; I have merely been buying a little disused scrap from you.
"So far as our station records show, Flemister has had no material, save coal, shipped in over either the eastern or the western spur for several months." "Then you believe that he took your bridge-timbers and sawed them up into lumber?" "I do as firmly as I believe that the sun will rise to-morrow. And that isn't all of it, Lidgerwood. He is the man who has your switch-engine.
"Who was the tall man?" he asked. "I thought he was Hallock I called him Hallock." The trainmaster shook his head. "They're about the same build; but we were all off wrong, Mr. Lidgerwood 'way off. It's been Gridley: Gridley and his side-partner, Flemister, all along.
I was sure, at the time, that it was Hallock; and besides, I heard him talking to Flemister afterward, and I saw his mug shadowed out on the window curtain, just as I've been telling you. All I can say crosswise, is that I didn't get to see him face to face anywhere; in the gulch, or in the office, or in the mine, or any place else." "Yet you are convinced, in your own mind?" "I am."
Flemister, let me tell you something: I don't care any more for my own life than a sane man ought to care, but the murdering devil who pulled the spikes on that rail reached out, unconsciously perhaps, but none the less certainly, after a life that I would safe-guard at the price of my own.
It was from Flemister, and it called for a decision which the superintendent was willing to postpone for the moment. After he had read thoughtfully through everything else on the waiting list, he took up the mine-owner's letter again. All things considered, it was a little puzzling.
"I said I could name you, and I will!" he cried, springing to his feet. "You," pointing to the smaller man, "you are Pennington Flemister; and you," wheeling upon the tall man and lowering his voice, "you are Rankin Hallock!" The light of the fire in the shop yard had died down until its red glow no longer drove the shadows from the corners of the room.
"Have you ever suspected him of being mixed up in the looting?" "I haven't known enough about him to form an opinion." Benson stepped to the door communicating with the outer office, and closed it quietly. "Your man Hallock out there; how is he mixed up with Flemister?" "I don't know. Why?"
The cynical assertion that the worst of men can win the love of the best of women is something both more and less than a mere contradiction of terms; and since Eleanor Brewster's manly ideal was apparently builded upon physical courage as its pedestal, Flemister, in his dare-devil character, was quite likely to be the man to embody it.
"I am not looking for quarrelsome occasions with you or with any one," was the placable rejoinder. "And I hope you are not going to force me to show you up. Is there anything else? If not, I'm afraid I shall have to ask you to excuse me. This is one of my many busy days." After Flemister had gone, Lidgerwood was almost sorry that he had not struck at once into the matter of the thieveries.
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