Not to make a mystery of it for ourselves, Tom had passed another milestone in the descent to the valley of lost souls.  Or rather, let us say, he had taken a longer step backward toward the primitive.  Daggered amour-propre is rarely a benign wound.  Oftener than not it gangrenes, and there is loss of sound tissue and the setting-up of strange and malevolent growth.  With the passing of the first healthful shock of honest resentment, Tom became a man of one idea.  Somewhere in the land of the living dwelt a man who had robbed him, intentionally or otherwise, indirectly, but none the less effectually, of the ennobling love of the one woman; to find that man and to deal with him as Joab dealt with Amasa became the one thing worth living for.

The first step was taken in secrecy.  One day a stranger, purporting to be a walking delegate for the United Miners, but repudiated as such by check-weigher Ludlow, took up his residence in Gordonia and began to interest himself, quite unminer-like, in the various mechanical appliances of the Chiawassee plant, and particularly in the different sources of its water supply.

Divested of his cloakings, this sham walking delegate was a Pinkerton man, detailed grudgingly from the Chicago storm-center on Tom’s requisition.  His task was to scrutinize Nancy Bryerson’s past, and to identify, if possible, one or more of the three men who, in January of the year 1890, had inspected and repaired the pipe-line running from the coke-yard tank up to the barrel-spring on high Lebanon.

To the detective the exclusion card on Tom’s door did not apply, and the conferences between the hired and the hirer were frequent and prolonged.  If we shall overhear one of them—­the final one, held on the day of the Farleys’ return to Paradise and Warwick Lodge—­it will suffice.

“It looks easy enough, as you say, Mr. Gordon,” the human ferret is explaining; “but in point of fact there’s nothing to work on—­less than nothing.  Three years ago you had no regular repair gang, and when a job of that kind was to be done, any Tom, Dick or Harry picked up a helper or two and did it.  But I think you can bet on one thing:  none of the three men who made that inspection is at present in your employ.”

“In other words, you’d like to get back to your job at Pullman,” snaps Tom.

“Oh, I ain’t in any hurry!  That job looks as if it would keep for a while longer.  But I don’t like to take a man’s good money for nothing; and that’s about what I’m doing here.”

Tom swings around to his desk and writes a check.

“I suppose you have no further report to make on the woman?”

“Nothing of any importance.  I told you where she is living—­in a little cabin up on the mountain in a settlement called Pine Knob.”

“Yes; but I found that out for myself.”

“So you did.  Well, she’s living straight, as far as anybody knows; and if you can believe what you hear, the only follower she ever had was a young mountaineer named Kincaid.  I looked him up; he’s been gone from these parts for something over three years.  He is ranching in Indian Territory, and only came back last week.  You can check him off your list.”