"That is all right, but you're forgetting something. The paper railroad is--or was once--an interstate corporation, and so may ask for relief from the federal courts, thus going over Judge Warner's head. I'm not saying anything against Lorching, the federal judge at Red Butte. I've met him, and he is a good jurist and presumably an honest man. But he is well along in years, and has an exaggerated notion of his own importance. Stanton, or rather his figurehead railroad people, have asked him to intervene, and he has taken the case under advisement. That is where we stand this morning." Starbuck was nodding slowly. "I see what you mean, now," he said. "If Lorching jumps the wrong way for us, you're looking to see a United States marshal walk up to Bartley Williams some time to-day and tell him to quit. That would put the final kibosh on us, wouldn't it?" Smith was rising in his place. "_I'm_ not dead yet, Billy," he rejoined cheerfully. "I haven't let it get this far without hammering out a few expedients for our side. If I can manage to stay in the fight to-day and to-morrow----" A little new underclerk had come in from the hotel office and was trying to give Starbuck a note in a square envelope, and Starbuck was saying: "No; that's Mr. Smith, over there." Smith took the note and opened it, and he scarcely heard the clerk's explanation that it had been put in his box the evening before, and that the day clerk had been afraid he would get away without finding it. It was from Verda Richlander, and it had neither superscription nor signature. This is what Smith read: "My little ruse has failed miserably. Mr. K's. messenger found my father in spite of it, and he--the messenger--returned this evening: I know, because he brought a note from father to me. Come to me as early to-morrow morning as you can, and we'll plan what can be done." Smith crushed the note in his hand and thrust it into his pocket. Starbuck was making a cigarette, and was studiously refraining from breaking in. But Smith did not keep him waiting. "That was my knock-out, Billy," he said with a quietness that was almost overdone. "My time has suddenly been shortened to hours--perhaps to minutes. Get a car as quickly as you can and go to Judge Warner's house. I have an appointment with him at nine o'clock. Tell him I'll keep it, if I can, but that he needn't wait for me if I am not there on the minute." XXVI The Colonel's "Defi" Though it was only eight o'clock, Smith sent his card to Miss Richlander's rooms at once and then had himself lifted to the mezzanine floor to wait for her. She came in a few minutes, a strikingly beautiful figure of a woman in the freshness of her morning gown, red-lipped, bright-eyed, and serenely conscious of her own resplendent gifts of face and figure. Smith went quickly to meet her and drew her aside into the music parlor. Already the need for caution was beginning to make itself felt. "I have come," he said briefly.