I wasn't gone very long on this second excursion into the woozy-woozies, though it was night-time, and the shaded electric light was turned on when I opened my eyes and found Mrs. Sheila sitting by the bedside. The pie-faced nurse was gone; or at least I didn't see her anywhere; and the change in Mrs. Sheila sort of made me gasp. She wasn't any less pretty as she sat there with her hands clasped in her lap, but she was different; sober, and with the laugh all gone out of the big gray eyes, and a look in them as if she had suddenly become so wise that nobody could ever fool her.

"You are feeling better now?" she asked, when she found me staring at her.

I told her I guessed I was, but that my hand hurt me some.

"You have had a great shock of some kind—besides the burn, Jimmie," she rejoined, folding up the bed covers so that the bandaged hand would rest easier. "The doctors are all puzzled. Does your head feel quite clear now—so that you can think?"

"It feels as if I had a crazy clock in it," I said. "But the thinking part is all right. Have you heard anything from Mr. Norcross yet?"

"Not a word. It is all very mysterious and perplexing. We have been hoping that you could tell us something when you should recover sufficiently to talk. Can't you, Jimmie?"

Remembering what Maisie Ann had told me just before I went off the hooks, I thought I might tell her a lot if I dared to. But that wouldn't do. So I just said:

"I told Maisie Ann all I knew about Mr. Norcross. He left the office some little time before I did—with Mr. Ripley. I didn't know where they were going."

"They went to the hotel," she helped out. "Mr. Ripley says they sat in the lobby until after ten o'clock, and then Mr. Norcross went up to his rooms."

Of course, I knew that Mr. Ripley knew all about the Hatch ruction; but if he hadn't told her, I wasn't going to tell her. She had got ahead of me, there, though; perhaps she had been talking with the major, who always knew everything that was going on.

"There was some trouble in connection with Mr. Hatch that evening, wasn't there?" she asked.

"Hatch had some trouble—yes. But I guess the boss didn't have any," I replied.

"Tell me about it," she commanded; and I told her just as little as I could; how Hatch had had an interview with the boss earlier in the evening, while I was away.

"It wasn't a quarrel?" she suggested.

"Why should they quarrel?" I asked.

She shook her head. "You are sparring with me, Jimmie, in some mistaken idea of being loyal to Mr. Norcross. You needn't, you know. Mr. Norcross has told me all about his plans; he has even been generous enough to say that I helped him make them. That is why I can not understand why he should do as he has done—or at least as everybody believes he has done."

I saw how it was. She was trying to find some explanation that would clear the boss, and perhaps implicate the Hatch crowd. I couldn't tell her the real reason why he had run away. Maisie Ann had been right as right about that; we must keep it to our two selves. But I tried to let her down easy.

"Mr. Van Britt has told you about those two telegrams that came after Mr. Norcross left the office," I said, still covering up the fact that the telegrams hadn't been delivered—that they were probably in the pocket of my coat right now, wherever that was. "They were enough to make any man throw up his hands and quit, I should say."

"No," she insisted, looking me straight in the eyes. "You are not telling the truth now, Jimmie. You know Mr. Norcross better than any of us, and you know that it isn't the least little bit like him to walk out and leave everything to go to wreck. Have you ever known of his doing anything like that before?"

I had to admit that I hadn't; that, on the other hand, it was the very thing you'd least expect him to do. But at the same time I had to hang on to my sham belief that it was the thing he had done: either that, or tell her the truth.

"Every man reaches his limit, some time!" I protested. "What was Mr. Norcross to do, I'd like to know; with Mr. Chadwick getting scared out, and Mr. Dunton threatening to fire him?"

"The thing he wouldn't do would be to go off and leave all of his friends, Mr. Van Britt and Mr. Hornack, and all the rest, to fight it out alone. You know that as well as I do, Jimmie Dodds!"

There was actually a flash of fire in the pretty gray eyes when she said that, and her loyal defense of the boss made me love her good and hard. I wished, clear to the bottom of my heart, that I dared tell her just why it was that Mr. Norcross had thrown up his hands and dropped out, but that was out of the question.

"If you won't take my theory, you must have one of your own," I said; not knowing what else to say.

"I have," she flashed back, "and I want you to hurry and get well so that you can help me trace it out."

"Me?" I queried.

"Yes, you. The others are all so stupid! even Mr. Van Britt and Mr. Ripley. They insist that Mr. Norcross went east to see and talk with Mr. Chadwick. They have found out that Mr. Chadwick left Chicago the day after he sent that telegram, to go up into the Canadian woods to look at some mines, or something. They say that Mr. Norcross has followed him, and that is why they don't hear anything from him."

"What do you think?" I asked.

She didn't answer right away, and in the little pause I saw a sort of frightened look come into her eyes. But all she said was, "I want you to hurry up and get well, Jimmie, so you can help."

"I'm well enough now, if they'll let me get up."

"Not to-night; to-morrow, maybe." Then: "Mr. Van Britt is down-stairs with Cousin Basil. He has been very anxious to talk with you as soon as you were able to talk. May I send him up?"

Of course I said yes; and pretty soon after she went away, our one and only millionaire came in. He looked as he always did; just as if he had that minute stepped out of a Turkish bath where they shave and scrub and polish a man till he shines.

"How are you, Jimmie?" he rapped out. "Glad to see you on earth again. Feeling a little more fit, to-night?"

I told him I didn't think it would take more than half a dozen fellows of my size to knock me out, but I was gaining. Then he sat down and put me on the question rack. I gave him all I had—except that thing about the undelivered telegrams and two or three others that I couldn't give him or anybody, and at the end of it he said:

"I've been hoping you could help out. I don't need to tell you that this new turn things have taken has us all fought to a standstill, Jimmie. I've known 'the boss', as you call him, ever since we were boys together, and I never knew him to do anything like this before."

"We're in pretty bad shape, aren't we?" I suggested.

"We couldn't be in worse shape," was the way he put it. Then he told me a little more than Maisie Ann had; how President Dunton had wired to stop all the betterment work on the Short Line until the new general manager could get on the ground; how the local capitalists at the head of the new Citizens' Storage & Warehouse organization were scared plumb out of their shoes and were afraid to make a move; and how the newspapers all over the State were saying that it was just what they had expected—that the railroad was crooked in root and branch, and that a good man couldn't stay with it long enough to get his breath.

"Then the new general manager has been appointed?" I asked.

He nodded. "Some fellow by the name of Dismuke. I don't know him, and neither does Hornack. He is on his way west now, they say."

"And there is no word from Mr. Chadwick?"

"Nothing direct. His secretary wires that he is somewhere up north of Lake Superior, in the Canadian mining country and out of reach of the telegraph."

"Mr. Norcross hasn't shown up at Mr. Chadwick's Chicago offices?" I ventured.

"No. The telegraph people have been wiring everywhere and can't get any trace of him."

"Tell them to try Galesburg. That's where his people live."

"I know," he said; and he made a note of the address on the back of an envelope. Then he came at me again, on the "direct," as a lawyer would say.

"You've been closer to Norcross in an intimate way than any of us, Jimmie: haven't you seen or heard something that would help to turn a little more light on this damnable blow-up?"

I hadn't—outside of the one thing I couldn't talk about—and I told him so, and at this he let me see a little more of what was going on in his own mind.

"You're one of us, in a way, Jimmie, and I can talk freely to you. I'm new to this neck of woods, but the major tells me that the Hatch crowd is a pretty tough proposition. Mrs. Macrae goes farther and insists that there has been foul play of some sort. You say you weren't present when Hatch called on Norcross at the office that night?"

"No; I came in just after Hatch went away."

"Did Norcross say anything to make you think there had been a fight?"

"He told me that Hatch was abusive and had made threats—in a business way."

"In a business way? What do you mean by that?"

I quoted the boss's own words, as nearly as I could recall them.

"So Hatch did make a threat, then? He said that Norcross might as well resign one time as another?"

"Something like that, yes."

"Can you add anything more?"

I could, but I didn't want to. Mr. Van Britt didn't know anything about the Sand Creek Siding hold-up, or I supposed he didn't, and I didn't want to be the first one to tell him. Besides, the whole business was beside the mark. Maisie Ann knew, and I knew, that the boss, strong and unbreakable as he was in other ways, had simply thrown up his hands and quit because somebody had told him that Mrs. Sheila had a husband living. So I just said:

"Nothing that would help out," and after he had talked a little while longer our only millionaire went down-stairs again.

It's funny how things change around for a person just by giving them time to sort of shake down into place and fit themselves together. Nobody came up any more that night; not even the pie-faced nurse; and I had a good chance to lie there looking up at the ceiling pattern of the wall paper and thinking things out to a finish.

After a while the thin edge of the wedge that Mrs. Sheila had been trying to drive into me began to take hold, just a little, in spite of what I knew—or thought I knew. Was it barely possible, after all, that there had been foul play of some sort? There were plenty of mysteries to give the possibility standing-room.

In the first place, something had been done to me by somebody: it was a sure thing that I hadn't crippled and half-killed myself all by my lonesome. Then they had said that the boss stayed up with Mr. Ripley that night until after ten o'clock, and had then gone up to go to bed. That being the case, how could anybody have got to him between that time and the leaving time of the midnight Fast Mail to tell him about Mrs. Sheila?

Anyway it was stacked up, it made a three-cornered puzzle, needing somebody to tackle it right away; and when I finally went to sleep it was with the notion that, sick or no sick, I was going to turn out early in the morning and get busy.