But he was not permitted to make the discoveries.  The woman had taken two or three steps into the car, still groping her way as if the brightly lighted interior were the darkest of caverns, when some one swung over the railing of the observation platform, and Superintendent Leckhard appeared at the open door.  Without hesitation he entered and touched the woman on the shoulder.  “Hello, Madgie,” he said, not ungently, “you here again?  It’s pretty late for even your kind to be out, isn’t it?  Better trot away and go to bed, if you’ve got one to go to; he isn’t here.”

The woman put her hands to her face, and Lidgerwood saw that she was shaking as if with a sudden chill.  Then she turned and darted away like a frightened animal.  Leckhard was drawing a chair up to face Lidgerwood.

“Did she give you a turn?” he asked, when Lidgerwood reached up and turned the desk-lamp on full again.

“Not exactly that, though it was certainly startling enough.  I had no warning at all; when I looked up, she was standing pretty nearly where she was when you came in.  She didn’t seem to see me at all, and she was talking crazily all the time to some one else—­some one who isn’t here.”

“I know,” said Leckhard; “she has done it before.”

“Whom is she trying to find?” asked Lidgerwood, wishing to have his suspicion either denied or confirmed.

“Didn’t she call him by name?—­she usually does.  It’s your chief clerk, Hallock.  She is—­or was—­his wife.  Haven’t you heard the ghastly story yet?”

“No; and, Leckhard, I don’t know that I care to hear it.  It can’t possibly concern me.”

“It’s just as well, I guess,” said the main-line superintendent carelessly.  “I probably shouldn’t get it straight anyway.  It’s a rather horrible affair, though, I believe.  There is another man mixed up in it—­the man whom she is always asking if Hallock has killed.  Curiously enough, she never names the other man, and there have been a good many guesses.  I believe your head boiler-maker, Gridley, has the most votes.  He’s been seen with her here, now and then—­when he’s on one of his ‘periodicals.’  By Jove!  Lidgerwood, I don’t envy you your job over yonder in the Red Desert a little bit....  But about the consolidation of the yards here:  I got a telegram after I wired you, making it necessary for me to go west on main-line Twenty-seven early in the morning, so I stayed up to talk this yard business over with you to-night.”

It was well along in the small hours when the roll of blue-print maps was finally laid aside, and Leckhard rose yawning.  “We’ll carry it out as you propose, and divide the expense between the two divisions,” he said in conclusion.  “Frisbie has left it to us, and he will approve whatever we agree upon.  Will you go up to the hotel with me, or bunk down here?”

Lidgerwood said he would stay with his car; or, better still, now that the business for which he had come to Copah was despatched, he would have the roundhouse night foreman call a Red Butte Western crew and go back to his desert.