"Here, Miss Lawson, try putting your arm across my back and your hand on my left shoulder for a while. That's it."
With a thrill he slipped his arm about her waist, but she smiled up at him without protest. They made better progress after that. The steel rails streaked away in the moonlight endlessly before them, endlessly behind with uncompromising sameness.
"I suppose I deserve a good scolding for jumping off the train so far from this Thorlakson place; but the sleeping-car conductor told me the train would not stop on any account, short of a damaged track, until it reached—Indian Creek, I think he said it was. My best plan, he said, was to get off there and ride back to Thorlakson on a handcar. I was warned not to try any moving-picture stunts; but when I found out we'd have to slow up on the grade near the siding, I made up my mind to risk it. So when we slowed up back there, I thought it was the place, and sneaked to the back platform without being seen by anyone but you."
Kendrick shook his head at her, marvelling at her nerve and the foolishness of the whole thing. Not many girls would have dared it. Lucky for her he had seen her or she might have been in a pretty bad plight along these lonely reaches of track before any section hands chanced to find her. He studied her anxiously and decided that it was best to keep her talking while they trudged along.
"Will you tell me how you came to be masquerading as Miss Williams?" he asked. "Or is that something you'd rather not——?"
"Oh, no," she laughed. "That was Mr. Wade's bright suggestion. You know, he's been helping me in my work quite a lot. I have had to keep Daddy in the dark about it for fear he'd put his foot down on the whole thing; so I made a confidant of Mr. Wade."
"Then I've got a bone to pick with him," said Phil. "Why in the dickens didn't he tell me about you being at Ferguson's office when we were both on the same trail?"
"It's just like him not to, Mr. Kendrick. Probably he thought your work and my own would not cross at all and the less either of us knew about the other the safer it would be. Why, he even refused pointblank to tell me what he was going to do with that money—the envelope—that is——"
He saw that she hesitated as if she had said too much.
"You mean the fifty thousand dollars, stolen from the Alderson concern?" asked Phil quickly. "I was going to ask you about that. You mean that Mr. Wade really has that money? You can trust me, Miss Lawson. Surely you know that," he urged. "He said he was piecing together a puzzle of some kind and would tell me all about it soon. How did he come to have that money?"