"I saw your office lights from the street," was the way the Red Tower president began on me, and his voice took me straight back to the Oregon woods and a lumber camp where the saw-filers were at work. "Where is Mr. Norcross?"

I told him that Mr. Norcross was up-town, and that I didn't suppose he would come back to the office again that night, now that it was so late. Instead of going away and giving it up, he sat right still, boring me with his little gray eyes and shifting the black cigar from one corner of his mouth to the other.

"My name is Hatch, of the Red Tower Company," he grated, after a minute or two. "You're the one they call Dodds, aren't you?"

I admitted it, and he went on.

"Norcross brought you here with him from the West, didn't he?"

I nodded and wondered what was coming next. When it did come it nearly bowled me over.

"What pay are you getting here?"

It was on the tip of my tongue to cuss him out right there and then and tell him it was none of his business. But the second thought (which isn't always as good as it's said to be) whispered to me to lead him on and see how far he would go. So I told him the figures of my pay check.

"I'm needing another shorthand man, and I can afford to pay a good bit more than that," he growled. "They tell me you are well up at the top in your trade. Are you open to an offer?"

I let him have it straight then. "Not from you," I said.

"And why not from me?"

Here was where I made my first bad break. All of a sudden I got so angry at the thought that he was actually trying to buy me that I couldn't see anything but red, and I blurted out, "Because I don't hire out to work for any strong-arm outfit—not if I know it!"

For a little while he sat blinking at me from under his bushy eyebrows, and his hard mouth was drawn into a straight line with a mean little wrinkle coming and going at the corners of it.

When he got ready to speak again he said, "You're only a boy. You want to get on in the world, don't you?"

"Supposing I do: what then?" I snapped.

"I'm offering you a good chance: the best you ever had. You don't owe Norcross anything more than your job, do you?"

"Maybe not."

"That's better. Put on your hat and come along with me. I want to show you what I can do for you in a better field than railroading ever was, or ever will be. It'll pay you—" and he named a figure that very nearly made me fall dead out of my chair.

Of course, it was all plain enough. The boss had him on the hip with that kidnapping business, with me for a witness. And he was trying to fix the witness. It's funny, but the only thing I thought of, just then, was the necessity of covering up the part that Mrs. Sheila and Maisie Ann had had in the hold-up affair that he was so anxious to bury and put out of sight.

"I guess we needn't beat about the bushes any longer, Mr. Hatch," I said, bracing up to him. "I haven't told the sheriff, or anybody but Mr. Norcross, what I know about a certain little train hold-up that happened a few weeks ago down at Sand Creek Siding; but that isn't saying that I'm not going to."

At this he flung the stump of the black cigar out of the window, found another in his pocket, and lighted it. If I had had the sense of a field mouse, I might have known that I was no match for such a man; but I lacked the sense—lacked it good and hard.

"You're like your boss," he said shortly. "You'd go a long distance out of your way to make an enemy when there is no need of it. That hold-up business was a joke, from start to finish. I don't know how you and Norcross came to get in on it; the joke was meant to be on John Chadwick. The night before, at a little dinner we were giving him at the railroad club, he said there never was a railroad hold-up that couldn't have been stood off. A few of us got together afterward and put up a job on him; sent him over to Strathcona and arranged to have him held up on the way back."

Again I lost my grip on all the common, every-day sanities. My best play—the only reasonable play—was to let him go away thinking that he had made me swallow the joke story whole. But I didn't have sense enough to do that.

"Mr. Chadwick didn't take it as a joke!" I retorted.

"I know he didn't; and that's why we're all anxious now to dig a hole and bury the thing decently. Perhaps we had all been taking a drop too much at the club dinner that night."

At that I swelled up man-size and kicked the whole kettle of fat into the fire.

"Of course, it was a joke!" I ripped out. "And your coming here to-night to try to hire me away from Mr. Norcross is another. The woods are full of good shorthand men, Mr. Hatch, but for the present I think I shall stay right where I am—where a court subp[oe]na can find me when I'm wanted."

"That's all nonsense, and you know it—if you're not too much of a kid to know anything," he snapped, shooting out his heavy jaw at me. "I merely wanted to give you a chance to get rid of the railroad collar, if you felt like it. And there'll be no court and no subp[oe]na. The poorest jack-leg lawyer we've got in Portal City would make a fool of you in five minutes on the witness-stand. Nevertheless, my offer holds good. I like a fighting man; and you've got nerve. Take a night and sleep on it. Maybe you'll think differently in the morning."

Here was another chance for me to get off with a whole skin, but by this time I was completely lost to any sober weighing and measuring of the possible consequences. Leaning across the desk end I gave him a final shot, just as he was getting up to go.

"Listen, Mr. Hatch," I said. "You haven't fooled me for a single minute. Your guess is right; I heard every word that passed between you and Mr. Henckel that Monday morning in the Bullard lobby. As I say, I haven't told anybody yet but Mr. Norcross; but if you go to making trouble for him and the railroad company, I'll go into court and swear to what I know!"

He was half-way out of the door when I got through, and he never made any sign that he heard what I said. After he was gone I began to sense, just a little, how big a fool I had made of myself. But I was still mad clear through at the idea that he had taken me for the other kind of a fool—the kind that wouldn't know enough to be sure that the president of a big corporation wouldn't get down to tampering with a common clerk unless there was some big thing to be stood off by it.

Stewing and sizzling over it, I puttered around with the papers on my desk for quite a little while before I remembered the two telegrams, and the fact that I'd have to go and stick the three-bladed knife into Mr. Norcross. When I did remember, I shoved the messages into my pocket, flicked off the lights and started to go up-town and hunt for the boss.

After closing the outer door of the office I don't recall anything particular except that I felt my way down the headquarters stair in the dark and groped across the lower hall to the outside door that served for the stair-case entrance from the street. When I had felt around and found the brass knob, something happened, I didn't know just what. In the tiny little fraction of a second that I had left, as you might say, between the hearse and the grave, I had a vague notion that the door was falling over on me and mashing me flat; and after that, everything went blank.