“That much is easily explained,” she said calmly. “There was a plot to murder you, and at the same time to bring about the first of a series of disasters that would smash the Grillage Company. Did you get a telephone message that a man was hurt, and that you were wanted up here?” “I did. I was at McCulloch’s camp and I took an engine and came up here in a hurry. The accident report was a fake, and I came in to ask Regnier what he knew about it.” “It was a part of the plot,” she went on evenly. “It was Judith Fallon who came and told me. She had already warned me that there was something threatening, but she did not know what it was. That first time was just before Mr. Strayer was hurt, and all she could tell me then was that James Lushing ‘had it in for you,’ as she put it, and was plotting with a man named Black Jack Runnels.” “Runnels?” he queried. “Not Dargin?” “No, it was Runnels; I’m sure of the name. Yesterday she came again. She had heard a little more, but nothing very definite. Then this evening I had been down to the _Athenia_--it came in from Red Butte on the afternoon train, as perhaps you know--and I was on my way back to the Inn. Judith met me on the path; she had been up to the hotel, looking for me.” “Yes,” he encouraged. “She was terribly excited and said that the thing, whatever it was, was to be done this evening, at the changing hour of the shifts. She told me that a man named Backus was to call you by ’phone and tell you that there was a man hurt in the tunnel. Then she said that you had already gone up the line; she saw you on an engine that overtook and passed her.” “I saw a woman running on the Powder Can road, but I didn’t recognize her as Judith,” said David. “You wouldn’t, of course, with the engine running fast. When she told me that you were already on your way up here, I didn’t know what to do. Then I thought of the telephones, and sent her up to the hotel to find Herbert Oswald and ask him to call you at the tunnel ’phone, while I ran down to the _Athenia_ to get father to ’phone. There was nobody in the _Athenia_; father had gone out somewhere. Then I tried to find Mr. Plegg, but he was gone, too. I didn’t know where to look for another telephone nearer than the Inn railroad station, and I was starting to run down there when I saw Callahan on his engine and made him bring me up here.” “But surely you saw the night shift getting ready to come in, didn’t you? Do you mean to tell me that that bunch of thick-headed stone-borers let you come in here alone?” “They were not to blame--not at all. I merely asked if you were in here, and when one of them said you were, I ran.”