"About ten o'clock I was playin' pool in Rafferty's place with the butt end of the cue. After that, things got kind o'hazy."
"Well, I want you to buckle down and think hard. Don't you remember going over to Cat Biggs's about noon, and sitting down at one of the empty card-tables to drink yourself stiff?"
Judson could not have told, under the thumbscrews, why he was prompted to tell Gridley a plain lie. But he did it.
"I can't remember," he denied. Then then needle-pointed brain got in its word, and he added, "Why?"
"I saw you there when I was going up to dinner. You called me in to tell me what you were going to do to Lidgerwood if he slated you for getting drunk. Don't you remember it?"
Judson was looking the master-mechanic fairly in the eyes when he said, "No, I don't remember a thing about that."
"Try again," said Gridley, and now the shrewd gray eyes under the brim of the soft-rolled felt hat held the engineer helpless.
"I guess—I do—remember it—now," said Judson, slowly, trying, still ineffectually, to break Gridley's masterful eyehold upon him.
"I thought you would," said the master-mechanic, without releasing him. "And you probably remember, also, that I took you out into the street and started you home."
"Yes," said Judson, this time without hesitation.