VI
EVERYMAN'S SHARE
"This switching-engine mystery opens up a field that I've been trying toget into for some little time, Mac," the superintendent began, after thehalf-hour had elapsed and the trainmaster had returned to the privateoffice. "Sit down and we'll thresh it out. Here are some figures showingloss and expense in the general maintenance account. Look them over andtell me what you think."
"Wastage, you mean?" queried the trainmaster, glancing at the totals inthe auditor's statement.
"That is what I have been calling it; a reckless disregard for the valueof anything and everything that can be included in a requisition. Thereis a good deal of that, I know; the right-of-way is littered from end toend with good material thrown aside. But I'm afraid that isn't the worstof it."
The trainmaster was nursing a knee and screwing his face into thereflective scheme of distortion.
"Those things are always hard to prove. Short of a military guard, forinstance, you couldn't prevent Angels from raiding the company'scoal-yard for its cook-stoves. That's one leak, and the others arepretty much like it. If a company employee wants to steal, and thereisn't enough common honesty among his fellow-employees to hold him down,he can steal fast enough and get away with it."
"By littles, yes, but not in quantity," pursued Lidgerwood.
"'Mony a little makes a mickle,' as my old grandfather used to say,"McCloskey went on. "If everybody gets his fingers into thesugar-bowl----"
Lidgerwood swung his chair to face McCloskey.
"We'll pass up the petty thieveries, for the present, and look a littlehigher," he said gravely. "Have you found any trace of those twocar-loads of company lumber lost in transit between here and Red Buttetwo weeks ago?"
"No, nor of the cars themselves. They were reported as twoTranscontinental flats, initials and numbers plainly given in thecar-record. They seem to have disappeared with the lumber."
"Which means?" queried the superintendent.
"That the numbers, or the initials, or both, were wrongly reported. Itmeans that it was a put-up job to steal the lumber."
"Exactly. And there was a mixed car-load of lime and cement lost atabout the same time, wasn't there?"
"Yes."
Lidgerwood's swing-chair "righted itself to the perpendicular with asnap."
"Mac, the Red Butte mines are looking up a little, and there is a goodbit of house-building going on in the camp just now: tell me, what manor men in the company's service would be likely to be taking a flyer inRed Butte real estate?"
"I don't know of anybody. Gridley used to be interested in the camp. Hewent in pretty heavily on the boom, and lost out--so they all say. Sodid your man out there in the pig-pen desk," with a jerk of his thumb toindicate the outer office.
"They are both out of it," said Lidgerwood shortly. Then: "How aboutSullivan, the west-end supervisor of track? He has property in RedButte, I am told."
"Sullivan is a thief, all right, but he does it openly and brags aboutit; carries off a set of bridge-timbers, now and then, for house-sills,and makes a joke of it with anybody who will listen."
Lidgerwood dismissed Sullivan abruptly.
"It is an organized gang, and it must have its members pretty wellscattered through the departments--and have a good many members, too,"he said conclusively. "That brings us to the disappearance of theswitching-engine again. No one man made off with that, single-handed,Mac."
"Hardly."
"It was this gang we are presupposing--the gang that has been stealinglumber and lime and other material by the car-load."
"Well?"
"I believe we'll get to the bottom of all the looting on thisswitching-engine business. They have overdone it this time. You can'tput a locomotive in your pocket and walk off with it. You say you'vewired Copah?"
"Yes."
"Who was at the Copah key--Mr. Leckhard?"
"No. I didn't want to advertise our troubles to a main-line official. Igot the day-despatcher, Crandall, and told him to keep his mouth shutuntil he heard of it some other way."
"Good. And what did Crandall say?"
"He said that the '16 had never gone out through the Copah yards; thatit couldn't get anywhere if it had without everybody knowing about it."
Lidgerwood's abstracted gaze out of the office window became a frown ofconcentration.
"But the object, McCloskey--what possible profit could there be in thetheft of a locomotive that can neither be carried away nor convertedinto salable junk?"
The trainmaster shook his head. "I've stewed over that till I'mthreatened with softening of the brain," he confessed.
"Never mind, you have a comparatively easy job," Lidgerwood went on."That engine is somewhere this side of the Crosswater Hills. It is toobig to be hidden under a bushel basket. Find it, and you'll be hot onthe trail of the car-load robbers."
McCloskey got upon his feet as if he were going at once to begin thesearch, but Lidgerwood detained him.
"Hold on; I'm not quite through yet. Sit down again and have a smoke."
The trainmaster squinted sourly at the extended cigar-case. "I guessnot," he demurred. "I cut it out, along with the toddies, the day I puton my coat and hat and walked out of the old F. & P.M. offices withoutmy time-check."
"If it had to be both or neither, you were wise; whiskey and railroadingdon't go together very well. But about this other matter. Some yearsago there was a building and loan association started here in Angels,the ostensible object being to help the railroad men to own their homes.Ever hear of it?"
"Yes, but it was dead and buried before my time."
"Dead, but not buried," corrected Lidgerwood. "As I understand it, therailroad company fathered it, or at all events, some of the officialstook stock in it. When it died there was a considerable deficit,together with a failure on the part of the executive committee toaccount for a pretty liberal cash balance."
"I've heard that much," said the trainmaster.
"Then we'll bring it down to date," Lidgerwood resumed. "It appears thatthere are twenty-five or thirty of the losers still in the employ ofthis company, and they have sent a committee to me to ask for aninvestigation, basing the demand on the assertion that they were coercedinto giving up their money to the building and loan people."
"I've heard that, too," McCloskey admitted. "The story goes that thehouse-building scheme was promoted by the old Red Butte Western bosses,and if a man didn't take stock he got himself disliked. If he did takeit, the premiums were held out on the pay-rolls. It smells like a good,old-fashioned graft, with the lid nailed on."
"There wouldn't seem to be any reasonable doubt about the graft," saidthe superintendent. "But my duty is clear. Of course, the PacificSouthwestern Company isn't responsible for the side-issue schemes of theold Red Butte Western officials. But I want to do strict justice. Thesemen charge the officials of the building and loan company with opendishonesty. There was a balance of several thousand dollars in thetreasury when the explosion came, and it disappeared."
"Well?" said the trainmaster.
"The losers contend that somebody ought to make good to them. They alsocall attention to the fact that the building and loan treasurer, who wasnever able satisfactorily to explain the disappearance of the cashbalance, is still on the railroad company's pay-rolls."
McCloskey sat up and tilted the derby to the back of his head."Gridley?" he asked.
"No; for some reasons I wish it were Gridley. He is able to fight hisown battles. It comes nearer home, Mac. The treasurer was Hallock."
McCloskey rose noiselessly, tiptoed to the door of communication withthe outer office, and opened it with a quick jerk. There was no onethere.
"I thought I heard something," he said. "Didn't you think you did?"
Lidgerwood shook his head.
"Hallock has gone over to the storekeeper's office to check up thetime-rolls. He won't be back to-day."
McCloskey closed the door and returned to his chair.
"If I s
ay what I think, you'll be asking me for proofs, Mr. Lidgerwood,and I have none. Besides, I'm a prejudiced witness. I don't likeHallock."
Quite unconsciously Lidgerwood picked up a pencil and began adding moresquares to the miniature checker-board on his desk blotter. It wasaltogether subversive of his own idea of fitness to be discussing hischief clerk with his trainmaster, but McCloskey had proved himself anhonest partisan and a fearless one, and Lidgerwood was at a pass wherethe good counsel of even a subordinate was not to be despised.
"I don't want to do Hallock an injustice," he went on, after a hesitantpause, "neither do I wish to dig up the past, for him or for anybody. Iwas hoping that you might know some of the inside details, and so makeit easier for me to get at the truth. I can't believe that Hallock wasculpably responsible for the disappearance of the money."
By this time McCloskey had his hat tilted to the belligerent angle.
"I'm not a fair witness," he reiterated. "There's been gossip, and I'velistened to it."
"About this building and loan mess?"
"No; about the wife."
"To Hallock's discredit, you mean?"
"You'd think so: there was a scandal of some sort; I don't know what itwas--never wanted to know. But there are men here in Angels who hintthat Hallock killed the woman and sunk her body in the Timanyoni."
"Heavens!" exclaimed Lidgerwood, under his breath. "I can't believethat, Mac."
"I don't know as I do, but I can tell you a thing that I do know, Mr.Lidgerwood: Hallock is a devil out of hell when it comes to paying agrudge. There was a freight-conductor named Jackson that he had a shindywith in Mr. Ferguson's time, and it came to blows. Hallock got the worstof the fist-fight, but Ferguson made a joke of it and wouldn't fireJackson. Hallock bided his time like an Indian, and worked it around sothat Jackson got promoted to a passenger run. After that it was easy."
"How so?"
"It was the devil's own game. Jackson was a handsome young fellow, andHallock set a woman on him--a woman out of Cat Biggs's dance-hall. Fromthat to holding out fares to get more money to squander was only a stepfor the young fool, and he took it. Having baited the trap and set it,Hallock sprung it. One fine day Jackson was caught red-handed and turnedover to the company lawyers. There had been a good bit of talk and theymade an example of him. He's got a couple of years to serve yet, Ibelieve."
Lidgerwood was listening thoughtfully. The story which had ended sodisastrously for the young conductor threw a rather lurid sidelight uponJackson's accuser. Fairness was the superintendent's fetish, and therevenge which would sleep on its wrongs and go about deliberately andpainstakingly to strike a deadly blow in the dark was revolting to him.Yet he was just enough to distinguish between gross vindictiveness andan evil which bore no relation to the vengeful one.
"A financially honest man might still have a weakness for playing evenin a personal quarrel," he commented. "Your story proves nothing morethan that."
"I know it."
"But I am going to run the other thing down, too," Lidgerwood insisted."Hallock shall have a chance to clear himself, but if he can't do it, hecan't stay with me."
At this the trainmaster changed front so suddenly that Lidgerwood beganto wonder if his estimate of the man's courage was at fault.
"Don't do that, Mr. Lidgerwood, for God's sake don't stir up the devilin that long-haired knife-fighter at such a time as this!" he begged."The Lord knows you've got trouble enough on hand as it is, withoutdigging up something that belongs to the has-beens."
"I know, but justice is justice," was the decisive rejoinder. "Thequestion is still a live one, as the complaint of the grievancecommittee proves. If I dodge, my refusal to investigate will be usedagainst us in the labor trouble which you say is brewing. I'm not goingto dodge, McCloskey."
The contortions of the trainmaster's homely features indicated an inwardstruggle of the last-resort nature. When he had reached a conclusion hespat it out.
"You haven't asked my advice, Mr. Lidgerwood, but here it is anyway.Flemister, the owner of the Wire-Silver mine over in Timanyoni Park, wasthe president of that building and loan outfit. He and Hallock are atdaggers drawn, for some reason that I've never understood. If you couldget them together, perhaps they could make some sort of a statement thatwould quiet the kickers for the time being, at any rate."
Lidgerwood looked up quickly. "That's odd," he said. "No longer ago thanyesterday, Gridley suggested precisely the same thing."
McCloskey was on his feet again and fumbling behind him for thedoor-knob.
"I'm all in," he grimaced. "When it comes to figuring with Gridley andFlemister and Hallock all in the same breath, I'm done."
Lidgerwood made a memorandum on his desk calendar to take the buildingand loan matter up with Hallock the following day. But another wreckintervened, and after the wreck a conference with the Red Buttemine-owners postponed all office business for an additional twenty-fourhours. It was late in the evening of the third day when thesuperintendent's special steamed home from the west, and Lidgerwood, whohad dined in his car, went directly to his office in the Crow's Nest.
He had scarcely settled himself at his desk for an attack upon theaccumulation of mail when Benson came in. It was a trouble call, and theyoung engineer's face advertised it.
"It's no use talking, Lidgerwood," he began, "I can't do business onthis railroad until you have killed off some of the thugs andhighbinders."
Lidgerwood flung the paper-knife aside and whirled his chair to face thenew complaint.
"What is the matter now, Jack?" he snapped.
"Oh, nothing much--when you're used to it; only about a thousanddollars' worth of dimension timber gone glimmering. That's all."
"Tell it out," rasped the superintendent. The mine-owners' conference,from which he had just returned, had been called to protest against thepoor service given by the railroad, and knowing his present inability togive better service, he had temporized until it needed but this one moretouch of the lash to make him lose his temper hopelessly.
"It's the Gloria bridge," said Benson. "We had the timbers all ready topull out the old and put in the new, and the shift was to be made to-daybetween trains. Last night every stick of the new stock disappeared."
Lidgerwood was not a profane man, but what he said to Benson in thecoruscating minute or two which followed resolved itself into a veryfair imitation of profanity, inclusive and world-embracing.
"And you didn't have wit enough to leave a watchman on the job!" hechafed--this by way of putting an apex to the pyramid of objurgation."By heavens! this thing has got to stop, Benson. And it's going to stop,if we have to call out the State militia and picket every cursed mile ofthis rotten railroad!"
"Do it," said Benson gruffly, "and when it's done you notify me and I'llcome back to work." And with that he tramped out, and was too angry toremember to close the door.
Lidgerwood turned back to his desk, savagely out of humor with Bensonand with himself, and raging inwardly at the mysterious thieves who werelooting the company as boldly as an invading army might. At this, themost inauspicious moment possible, his eye fell upon the calendarmemorandum, "See Hallock about B/L.," and his finger was on the chiefclerk's bell-push before he remembered that it was late, and that therehad been no light in Hallock's room when he had come down the corridorto his own door.
The touch of the push-button was only a touch, and there was noanswering skirl of the bell in the adjoining room. But, as if theintention had evoked it, a shadow crossed behind the superintendent'schair and came to rest at the end of the roll-top desk. Lidgerwoodlooked up with his eyes aflame. It was Hallock who was standing at thedesk's end, and he was pointing to the memorandum on the calendar pad.
"You made that note three days ago," he said abruptly. "I saw your traincome in and your light go on. What bill of lading was it you wanted tosee me about?"
For an instant Lidgerwood failed to understand. Then he saw that inabbreviating he had unconsciously used the familiar sign,
"B/L," thecommon abbreviation of "bill of lading." At another time he would haveturned Hallock's very natural mistake into an easy introduction to arather delicate subject. But now he was angry.
"Sit down," he rapped out. "That isn't 'bill of lading'; it's 'buildingand loan.'"
Hallock dragged the one vacant chair into the circle illuminated by theshaded desk-electric, and sat on the edge of it, with his hands on hisknees. "Well?" he said, in the grating voice that was so curiously likethe master-mechanic's.
"We can cut out the details," this from the man who, under otherconditions, would have gone diplomatically into the smallest details."Some years ago you were the treasurer of the Mesa Building and LoanAssociation. When the association went out of business, its booksshowed a cash balance in the treasury. What became of the money?"
Hallock sat as rigid as a carved figure flanking an Egyptian propylon,which his attitude suggested. He was silent for a time, so long a timethat Lidgerwood burst out impatiently, "Why don't you answer me?"
"I was just wondering if it is worth while for you to throw meoverboard," said the chief clerk, speaking slowly and quite withoutheat. "You are needing friends pretty badly just now, if you only knewit, Mr. Lidgerwood."
The cool retort, as from an equal in rank, added fresh fuel to the fire.
"I'm not buying friends with concessions to injustice and crookeddealing," Lidgerwood exploded. "You were in the railroad service whenthe money was paid over to you, and you are in the railroad service now.I want to know where the money went."
"It is none of your business, Mr. Lidgerwood," said the carved figurewith the gloomy eyes that never blinked.
"By heavens! I'm making it my business, Hallock! These men who wererobbed say that you are an embezzler, a thief. If you are not, you'vegot to clear yourself. If you are, you can't stay in the Red Butteservice another day: that's all."
Again there was a silence surcharged with electric possibilities.Lidgerwood bit the end from a cigar and lost three matches before hesucceeded in lighting it. Hallock sat perfectly still, but the sallowtinge in his gaunt face had given place to a stony pallor. When hespoke, it was still without anger.
"I don't care a damn for your chief clerkship," he said calmly, "but forreasons of my own I am not ready to quit on such short notice. When I amready, you won't have to discharge me. Upon what terms can I stay?"
"I've stated them," said the one who was angry. "Discharge your trust;make good in dollars and cents, or show cause why you were caught withan empty cash-box."
For the first time in the interview the chief clerk switched the stareof the gloomy eyes from the memorandum desk calendar, and fixed it uponhis accuser.
"You seem to take it for granted that I was the only grafter in thebuilding and loan business," he objected. "I wasn't; on the contrary, Iwas only a necessary cog in the wheel. Somebody had to make thedeductions from the pay-rolls, and----"
"I'm not asking you to make excuses," stormed Lidgerwood. "I'm tellingyou that you've got to make good! If the money was used legitimately,you, or some of your fellow-officers in the company, should be able toshow it. If the others left you to hold the bag, it is due to yourself,to the men who were held up, and to me, that you set yourself straight.Go to Flemister--he was your president, wasn't he?--and get him to makea statement that I can show to the grievance committee. That will letyou out, and me, too."
Hallock stood up and leaned over the desk end. His saturnine face was amask of cold rage, but his eyes were burning.
"If I thought you knew what you're saying," he began in the gratingvoice, "but you don't--you _can't_ know!" Then, with a sudden break inthe fierce tone: "Don't send me to Flemister for my clearance--don't doit, Mr. Lidgerwood. It's playing with fire. I didn't steal the money;I'll swear it on a stack of Bibles a mile high. Flemister will tell youso if he is paid his price. But you don't want me to pay the price. If Ido----"
"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 Iam going to ask you if it is worth while to throw me overboard."
Lidgerwood was still angry enough to resent this advance into the fieldof the personalities.
"You've had my last word, Hallock, and all this talk about consequencesthat you don't explain is beside the mark. Get me that statement fromFlemister, and do it soon. I am not going to have it said that we arefighting 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 consequenceswon't need any explaining." His hand was on the door-knob when hefinished saying it, and Lidgerwood had risen from his chair. There was apause, while one might count five.
"Well?" said the superintendent.
"I was thinking again," said the man at the door. "By all the rules ofthe game--the game as it is played here in the desert--I ought to begiving you twenty-four hours to get out of gunshot, Mr. Lidgerwood.Instead of that I am going to do you a service. You remember thatoperator, Rufford, that you discharged a few days ago?"
"Yes."
"Bart Rufford, his brother, the 'lookout' at Red Light's place, hasinvited 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 uphere to-night--not that memorandum on your desk calendar."
For a long time after the door had jarred to its shutting behindHallock, Lidgerwood sat at his desk, idle and abstractedly thoughtful.Twice within the interval he pulled out a small drawer under theroll-top and made as if he would take up the weapon it contained, andeach time he closed the drawer to break with the temptation to put thepistol into his pocket.
Later, after he had forced himself to go to work, a door slammedsomewhere in the despatcher's end of the building, and automatically hishand shot out to the closed drawer. Then he made his decision andcarried 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 thecorridor, which opened into the unused space under the rafters, andflung the weapon to the farthest corner of the dark loft.
The Taming of Red Butte Western Page 6