“And he wouldn’t believe it?” queried Benson.
“No; the last thing he said to me as his train was pulling out proved that he didn’t. He intimated that there wasn’t any ‘act-of-God’ verdict to be brought in, in our case, and told me to go back to Brewster and dig until I found the real cause.”
By this time they had reached the service-car special, and Maxwell passed the word to his engineer to back up the line to Angels. When the wreck and the wreckers had vanished beyond the hill curves, Benson filled his short pipe and at the lighting of it asked another question.
“I’ve been wondering if we couldn’t get a little expert help on this thing, Maxwell. Have you tried to interest Mr. Sprague in this discipline business?”
The superintendent shook his head.
“Sprague isn’t going around doing odd jobs in psychology for anybody and everybody,” he deprecated. “He is a Government chemist, and he is out here on the Government’s business. Besides, it isn’t a case for a detective; even for the best amateur detective in the bunch—which is easily what Sprague might claim to be, you’d say. You see, there isn’t anything special to detect. What we need is a doctor; not a plain-clothes man.”
Benson’s left eye closed itself slowly in qualified dissent.
“What does Mr. Sprague himself have to say about it?” he queried.
“He hasn’t said anything. In fact, I haven’t seen him for over two weeks. He’s been out with Billy Starbuck, gathering soil specimens; they are still out somewhere, I don’t know just where.”
Neither of the two men riding the rear platform of the backing service-car spoke again until the car stopped with a jerk at the edge-of-the-desert station with the celestial name, which had once been the head-quarters of the original Red Butte Western Railroad. Then Benson summed up the situation in a couple of terse sentences.