His foot was on the threshold of the stairway door when Judson overtook him.
"Mac told me to report to you when I couldn't get at him," the ex-engineman began abruptly. "There's something hatching, but I can't find out what it is. Are you thinking about goin' out on the road anywhere to-night, Mr. Lidgerwood?"
Lidgerwood's decision was taken on the instant.
"Yes; I think I shall go west in my car in an hour or so. Why?"
"There ain't any 'why,' I guess, if you feel like goin'. But what I don't savvy is why them fellows back yonder in the waitin'-room are so dead anxious to find out if you are goin'."
As he spoke, a man who had been skulking behind a truck-load of express freight, so near that he could have touched either of them with an out-stretched arm, withdrew silently in the direction of the lunch-room. He was a tall man with stooping shoulders, and his noiseless retreat was cautiously made, yet not quite cautiously enough, since Judson's sharp eyes marked the shuffling figure vanishing in the shadow cast by the over-hanging shelter roof of the station.
"By cripes!—look at that, will you?" he exclaimed, pointing to the retreating figure. "That's Hallock, and he was listening!"
Lidgerwood shook his head.
"No, that isn't Hallock," he denied. And then, with a bit of the man-driving rasp in his voice: "See here, Judson, don't you let McCloskey's prejudices run away with you; make a memorandum of that and paste it in your hat. I know what you have been instructed to do, and I have given my consent, but it is with the understanding that you will be at least as fair as you would be if McCloskey's bias happened to run the other way. I don't want you to make a case against Hallock unless you can get proof positive that he is disloyal to the company and to me; and I'll tell you here and now that I shall be much better pleased if you can bring me the assurance that he is a true man."
"But that was Hallock," insisted Judson, "or else it was his livin' double."