THE WIRE DEVILS
By Frank L. Packard
Author of “Greater Love Hath No Man,” “The Adventure of Jimmie
Dale,” Etc.
A. L. Burt Company Publishers New York
1918
CONTENTS
THE WIRE DEVILS
I—THE SECRET CODE
II—THE TEN-DOLLAR COUNTERFEIT NOTE
III-THE PAYMASTER'S SAFE
IV—AT BALD CREEK STATION
V—IN WHICH A CASH BOX DISAPPEARS
VI—SOME OF THE LITTLE SPIDERS
VII—WANTED—THE HAWK—DEAD OR ALIVE
VIII—THREADS IN THE WEB
IX—THE LOOTING OF THE FAST MAIL
X—THE THIRD PARTY
XI—THE LEAD CAPSULE
XII—BLINDMAN'S-BUFF
XIII—THE MAN WITH THE SCAR
XIV—THE CLUE
XV—THE LADYBIRD
XVI—AN EVEN BREAK
XVII—A HOLE IN THE WALL
XVIII—THE HAWK PACKS HIS VALISE
XIX—BIRDS OF A FEATHER
XX—“CONFIDENTIAL” CORRESPONDENCE
THE WIRE DEVILS
I—THE SECRET CODE
TWO switch lights twinkled; one at the east, and one at the west end of
the siding. For the rest all was blackness. Half way between the
switch lights, snuggled close against the single-tracked main line,
the station, little more than a shanty and too insignificant to boast a
night operator, loomed up shadowy and indistinct. Away to the westward,
like jagged points sticking up into the night and standing out in relief
against the skyline, the Rockies reared their peaks. And the spell of
the brooding mountains seemed to lie over all the desolate, butte-broken
surrounding country—for all was utter silence.
And then there came a sound, low at first, like a strange muttering from
somewhere to the westward.
It died away, grew louder, was hushed again—and broke into a sustained
roar. Came then the quick, short gasps of the exhaust—it was a
freight, and a heavy one. And suddenly, from up the track, circling
an intervening butte, an electric headlight cut streaming through the
black. It touched the little station in a queerly inquisitive way in the
sweep of its arc, lingered an instant over the platform, then swung to
the right of way, and held there, the metals glistening like polished
silver ribbons under the flood of light.
Straining, panting at its load, reddening the sky as the fire-box door
was flung open, the big tenwheeler stormed by, coughing the sparks
heavenward from its stack. The roar in the still night grew deafening,
as boxcar, flat and gondola, lurching, swaying, clanking, groaning,
an endless string, tugging at one another, grinding their flanges,
screaming as they took up the axle play, staggered with a din infernal
past the lonely and unlighted station.
The roar sank into a gradually diminishing murmur. The tail-lights
winked like mischievous little red eyes in the distance—and vanished.
All was stillness and that brooding silence again.
And then a man's form, like a black shadow in the darkness, rose from
the trackside, and crept to the platform, and along the platform to the
station door.
The man bent forward, and the round, white ray of a pocket flashlight
played upon the lock. He examined the lock for an instant appraisingly,
then drew a bunch of skeleton keys from his pocket, and, selecting one
of the number without hesitation, unlocked the door, stepped inside, and
closed the door behind him.
The flashlight swept in a circle around the interior of the little
station. There were but two rooms—the small waiting room which he had
entered, and in which he now stood; and, partitioned off from this, the
door open, a still smaller inner room, the agent's office. He moved at
once into the latter, and his flashlight, swiftly now, searched around
the walls and held upon the clock. It was six minutes to ten.
“Pretty close work!” muttered the man. “Six minutes to wait.”
The ray travelled now over the operator's table, and from the table
to the switchboard. He reached out, “cut in” the office circuit,
listened for an instant as the sounder began to chatter—then the ray
swept over the table again. Under a newspaper, that the day man had
apparently flung down at haphazard on leaving the office, he found a pad
of telegraph blanks, from which, evidently wary of the consequences
of using a pad with its resultant tell-tale impressions on the under
sheets, he tore off a sheet and laid it down ready to hand before him.
This done, he nodded complacently, sat down in the operator's chair,
tilted the chair back, put his feet up on the table, and coolly picked
up the newspaper. It was the evening edition of the Selkirk City
Journal, that had presumably been tossed off at the station by a
charitable train crew of some late afternoon train out from the city.
He held the paper in one hand, the flashlight in the other, scanned the
page, which happened to be an inner one, cursorily, turned it over,
and suddenly leaned forward a little in his seat. He was staring at
the headline at the top right-hand corner of the front page. NOTORIOUS
CRIMINAL RELEASED FROM SING SING POLICE ARE WARNED THAT MAN MAY BE IN
THIS VICINITY HARRY MAUL, ALIAS THE HAWK, KNOWN TO BE IN THE WEST
The telegraph sounder chattered volubly for an instant, as though to
challenge and silence the raucous ticking of the clock, and ended in a
splutter of wrath, as it were, at the futility of its attempt. The clock
ticked on. There was no other sound. And then the man spoke aloud.
“That's me,” he said. “The Hawk.” The paper rattled in his
hand. There was a twisted smile on his lips in the darkness. “I guess
I'm pretty well known.”
The Hawk's eyes fixed on the text, and he began to read:
“It is reported that Harry Maul, better known to the police as
the Hawk, safe-breaker, forger and thief, one of the cleverest
'gentleman' crooks in the country, who is at large again after a
five-years' penitentiary term, is somewhere in the West.
“The crime wave that has recently been sweeping over Selkirk City
and its vicinity, and particularly the daring and, in too many cases,
successful outrages with which the railroad officials and detectives
have been called upon to cope of late, may, as a very plausible theory,
have lured the Hawk here as to a promising field in which to resume his
criminal operations. Certain it is that, while we have been the victims
of a band of mysterious desperadoes for some time past, the last week
or so has seen a very marked increase in the number of crimes that have
been committed—a significant coincidence with the Hawk's release
from Sing Sing.
“A twenty-thousand-dollar diamond necklace was stolen from a private
car two nights ago; there was an express car robbery on Monday of this
week; and a sleeping car was thoroughly and systematically looted the
night before. True, it is mere conjecture to connect the Hawk with these
in any way, since the gang that has been operating in this neighbourhood
has proved itself quite capable of all and more than this without any
outside and highly specialised assistance, and it would appear is in no
whit inferior in resource and devilish ingenuity to the best, or worst,
that Sing Sing has to offer in the shape of this so-called Hawk; but,
out of conjecture, one question naturally suggests itself.
“Granting the presence of the Hawk, is he here as a rival of the
criminals of whose existence we are already only too well aware, or
is he one of them through old-time associations before Sing Sing put a
temporary check upon his activities?”
There was more—a virulent outpouring of wrath at the intolerable
extent to which the community, its life and property, was being
endangered, and a promise of summary vengeance upon the criminals if
caught.
“Quite so!” murmured the Hawk, lowering his feet slowly to the
floor. “I guess it wouldn't be healthy to get caught around these
parts. I have a feeling that it would be the nearest telegraph pole
instead of a trial!”
He tossed the newspaper back on the table. The sounder, spasmodic in its
chatter, for the moment was still. All was silence, profound, absolute.
Then the clock struck, loud, resonant, smashing through the silence,
startling. And at the same instant the sounder broke into a quick
tattoo. The Hawk snatched a pencil from his pocket, and jerked his body
forward—then relaxed again.
“Stray stuff,” he muttered. “Got in ahead of him. We'll get it
in a minute now.”
Pencil poised in his hand, the flashlight playing on the blank sheet
of paper before him, the Hawk waited. The sounder ceased—and almost
instantly broke again, rattling sharply through the room. The Hawk
nodded, as his pencil began to travel across the paper.
“'mtlky'—stroke at five. Two-three-one tonight,” he said
aloud.
Without pause, without hesitation, without the slightest indication of
spacing to break its continuity, the sounder rattled on—and finally,
as abruptly as it had begun, it stopped.
On the sheet of paper the Hawk had written this:
mtlkyeqodktrpcvkqlmtp kpwrtrgtftuqcyqtnt tsghv ukopgfkxtiku kqprelcn
rcatocuvgdatf gumttlvgpvjf qwucpmtfkp uckjihg vqptkijvrsa wvpxodtt
dgtqprg qplqosd
He reached out for the pad, tore off another sheet, and in two parallel
columns set down the letters of the alphabet, one column transposed.
There was a faint smile on his lips, as he turned again to the cipher
and began to write in another line of letters under the original
message.
“I wonder what Poe and his predominant 'e' would do with this!”
he chuckled. “'Combi'—stroke two. Key letter—stroke three.”
He frowned the next instant. “What's this! Ah—stroke three,
instead of one.” He completed the transposition, stared at the several
lines which were now scattered with vertically crossed-out letters,
whistled low under his breath, and a grim look settled on his face.
The message now read:
—-combi—natio—-ninup-perdr—eftsi—dediv—sion—al
paymasterdesk—fousan dinsaj—feton-ight-autnum—-beron-eonjob
Mechanically, he separated words and sentences, and, eliminating the
superfluous letters, wrote out the translation at the bottom of the
sheet:
“Combination in upper drawer left side divisional paymaster ('.)
desk. Ten thousand in safe to-night. Put Number One on job.”
The Hawk stood up, “plugged out” the station circuit, and, gathering
up the two sheets of paper he had used, put them in his pocket; then,
leaving the door of the operator's room open behind him, as he had
found it, he stepped out from the station to the platform, and, with his
skeleton key, relocked the station door. He stood for a moment
staring up and down the track. The switchlights blinked back at him
confidentially. He listened. The eastbound freight, from which he
had jumped some twenty minutes before, would cross Extra No. 83, the
westbound way freight, at Elkton, seven miles away, but there was no
sound of the latter as yet.
He turned then, and, jumping from the platform to the track, swung into
a dog-trot along the roadbed. The Hawk smiled contentedly to himself.
It was all timed to a nicety! A mile or so to the west, the right of way
rose in a stiff grade that the way freight would be able to negotiate at
no better speed than the pace at which a man could crawl. He could make
the distance readily, board her there, and the way freight would get
him to Selkirk—and the divisional paymaster's office!—by about
midnight.
He ran on, the swing and ease of a trained athlete in his stride. And,
as he ran, he took the sheets of paper from his pocket, and, tearing
them into small fragments, scattered the pieces at intervals here and
there.
He reached the foot of the grade, and paused to look back along the
track, as suddenly from behind him came the hoarse scream of an engine
whistle. That was the way freight now, whistling perfunctorily for the
deserted station! He had made the grade in plenty of time, though the
nearer to the top he could get the better, for the freight, requiring
all the initial impetus it could attain, would hit the foot of the grade
wide open.
The Hawk broke into a run again, glancing constantly back over his
shoulder as he sped on up the grade. And then, when he was well on
toward the summit, opening the night like a blazing disk as it rounded a
curve, he caught the gleam of the headlight. It grew larger and
larger, until, beginning to fling a luminous pathway up the track
that, gradually lengthening, crept nearer and nearer to him, he
swerved suddenly, plunged down the embankment, and, well away from the
trackside, dropped flat upon the ground.
The engine, slowed, was grunting heavily on the incline as it strained
by the spot where he lay; there was the glimmer of the front-end
brakeman's lamp from the top of one of the forward cars—and, with a
quick, appraising glance to measure the length of the train, the Hawk,
on hands and knees, crawled forward, and up the embankment, and, in the
shadow of the rolling cars themselves, stood up. There would be sharp
eyes watching from the cupola of the caboose. He laughed a little. And
not only the train crew there, perhaps! The railroad detectives, at
their wits' ends, had acquired the habit of late of turning up in the
most unexpected places!
A boxcar rolled by him, another, and still another—but the Hawk's
eyes were fixed a little further along toward the rear on an open space,
where, in the darkness, a flat car gave the appearance of a break in the
train. The flat car came abreast of him. He caught the iron foot-rung,
jumped, and, with a powerful, muscular swing, flung himself aboard.
The car was loaded with some kind of carriage, or wagon,
tarpaulin-covered. The Hawk crawled in under the tarpaulin, and lay down
upon his back, pillowing his head on a piece of timber that blocked the
carriage wheels.
The train topped the grade, gained speed, and roared on through the
night. Occasionally, during what was close to a two-hours' run, it
stopped at intermediate stations, and the Hawk peered furtively out from
under the tarpaulin to locate the surroundings, with which he appeared
to be intimately familiar; and once, nearing the end of the run, as
the faint-suffused glow from the city's lights in the distance showed
under the shadows of the towering peaks, he spoke aloud, “Ten thousand
dollars,” remarked the Hawk pleasantly. “Nice picking for a few
hours' work—ten thousand dollars!”
II—THE TEN-DOLLAR COUNTERFEIT NOTE
THE Hawk crawled out from under the tarpaulin and dropped to the ground,
as the freight, slowing down, began to patter in over the spur switches
of the Selkirk yard. He darted, bent low, across several spurs to escape
the possibility of observation from the freight's caboose; then began
to make his way toward the roundhouse ahead of him. He would have
to pass around behind the roundhouse in order to get up opposite the
station and the divisional offices. The Hawk glanced sharply about
him as he moved along. He dodged here and there like some queer,
irresponsible phantom flitting amongst the low, myriad red, green and
purple lights that dotted the yard; and he carefully avoided those other
lights, the white lights of the yardsmen, now bobbing as the men ran up
and down, now swinging from the footboard of a passing switcher, that
seemed to be unusually ubiquitous—for the Hawk was secretive, and for
certain good and valid reasons was possessed of an earnest desire that
no stranger should be reported prowling around the railroad yard that
night.
He reached the roundhouse, stepped close up against the wall to take
advantage of the security afforded by the shadows, and began to circle
the building. The Hawk was treading silently now. Halfway around the
building he halted abruptly, his head cocked suddenly in a listening
attitude toward a small, open and lighted window on a level with his
shoulders, and in order to pass which he had just been on the point of
stooping down.
“I think,” said the Hawk softly to himself, “I think this sounds
as though it interested me.”
He crept cautiously forward, and from the edge of the window glanced
inside. It was the turner's “cubbyhole,” or office. The door was
closed, and two men were standing there, talking earnestly. The
Hawk's face, dimly outlined now in the window light, smooth-shaven,
square-jawed, the eyes and forehead hidden by the brim of the slouch
hat that was pulled forward almost to the bridge of his nose, set with
a curious and significant smile. It was not a bad place for a private
conference! He had thought he had recognised the voice—and he had not
been mistaken. The big, heavy-built, thin-lipped, pugnacious-faced man
was MacVightie, the head of the railroad's detective force; the other,
a smaller man, with alert grey eyes, his forehead furrowed anxiously,
whose clenched hand rested on the table, was Lanson, the division
superintendent.
“I don't know, damn it, MacVightie!” Lanson was saying savagely.
“I don't know what to think, or believe—I only know that a Pullman
hold-up one night, a twenty-thousand-dollar necklace stolen the next,
an express car looted, and several other little pleasant episodes all
jammed one on top of the other, means hell to pay out here and nothing
to pay it with, unless we can do something almighty quick!”
“Any more of those messages?” inquired MacVightie—there was an
ominous abstraction in his tones.
“Yes—to-night.”
“Make anything of it?”
“No,” said Lanson; “and I think it's about time to put a kink
in that little business, whether they mean anything or not. This
cat-and-mouse game we've been playing isn't——”
“We'll get back to that in a minute,” interrupted MacVightie
quietly. “Here's a little something else that may possibly fit into
the combination.” He reached into his pocket, took out his pocketbook,
opened it, and handed the division superintendent a crisp new ten-dollar
note.
The Hawk's lips thinned instantly, and he swore sharply under his
breath.
“What's this?” asked Lanson, in surprise. “Phony!” said
MacVightie laconically. “Counterfeit!” Lanson turned the note over
in his hands, staring at first one side and then the other. “Are you
sure? I'd take it any time.”
“You'd have lots of company with you”—there was a sudden rasp
in the detective's voice. “Pretty good one, isn't it? The East is
being flooded with them. Two of them showed up in the banks here in the
city yesterday, and one to-day.”
Lanson frowned perplexedly.
“I don't get you, MacVightie,” he said.
“Suppose they were being struck off around here,” suggested
MacVightie curtly. “I don't say they are, but suppose it were
so. They'd likely be shoved out as far away from this locality as
possible, wouldn't they—back East, say. They're so good that a
jag of them got by before they began to be detected—and now suppose we
assume that they're beginning to sift back around the country.”
“Well?”
“Well”—MacVightie caught the superintendent up quickly—“I
didn't say I could prove it; but, coupled with the fact that I happen
to know that the police have traced the work back to somewhere west of
Chicago, I've got a hunch that the gang that is operating around here
and the crowd that is turning out the phony money is the same outfit.
The Lord knows”—he smiled bitterly—“they're clever enough! And
to go back to those messages now. If there was anything in them at
all, anything more than some irresponsible idiot tampering with a key
somewhere, we were face to face, not with a mere gang of train robbers,
but with an organised criminal league as dangerous and powerful as has
ever existed in this country—and that's what made me hesitate. We
couldn't afford to take any chances, to start out after a mare's
nest, and we had to make as nearly sure of our ground as possible before
we played a card. We went on the principle that if it was only somebody
playing the goat, he'd get tired of it before long if no one paid
any attention to him; if it meant anything more than that, he'd keep
on.” MacVightie's pugnacious face screwed up into a savage grimace.
“Well, maybe this counterfeiting idea has had something to do with
deciding me, but, anyway, I'm satisfied now. He has kept on. And I'm
satisfied now that those messages are a cipher code that the gang is
using, and that our cat-and-mouse play, as you call it, instead of being
abortive, is exactly what's going to land our men for us. That's
one thing I came to tell you to-night—that I'm ready now to take the
gloves off on this wire game.”
Lanson smashed his fist down on the table top. “Good!” he exclaimed
grimly. “I'd like to make things hot for somebody, and it'll at
least be easy enough to catch whoever is using the wire.” MacVightie
shook his head.
“Oh, no; it won't!” he said evenly. “I didn't mean to give you
that impression, and don't you make the mistake of under-estimating
the brains we're up against, Lanson. I'm no expert on telegraphy,
that's your end of it, but I know they wouldn't sit in on any game
where they didn't hold trumps up their sleeves. Get me? Now let's
see what it looks like. As I understand it, these messages, no matter
from what point on the division they are sent, would be heard on every
sounder on the line—that's right, isn't it?”
“Yes—sure! Of course!” agreed Lanson.
“And it might be an operator working with them as an inside man;
or, with the necessary outfit, the wire could be tapped at any point,
couldn't it?”
“Yes,” said Lanson; “but the minute he starts in, we could begin
to 'ground' him out.”
“Go on!” invited MacVightie. “I'm listening.”
“We could tell whether he was working east or west of any given
point,” explained the superintendent; “and, with the operators
instructed beforehand, practically narrow him down to, say, between two
stations.”
The Hawk, as he, too, listened, permitted an amused smile to flicker
across his lips.
“Um!” said MacVightie. “And would he be aware that this
'grounding' process was going on?”
“Yes—naturally,” admitted Lanson. “We can't prevent that.”
MacVightie shook his head again.
“That doesn't sound good to me,” he said slowly. “All he'd
have to do would be to beat it then—and the next time start in fifty
miles away, and you'd have to begin all over again. And, besides,
who's receiving the messages? You can't put any tabs on that. Every
sounder from Selkirk City to Rainy River registers them, and all
a man's got to do is listen. You see, Lanson, it's not so
easy—eh?”
Lanson frowned.
“Well, what do you suggest?” he asked uncomfortably. “We can stop
it.”
“But we don't want to stop it!” returned MacVightie. “We could
have done that from the first. What we want is our man now. And it
strikes me that the first thing to do is to find out whether one of our
own operators is in on this or not. Unless the line is tapped somewhere,
it's a cinch that a station key is being used, isn't it? Send some
linemen that you can trust over the division. If they find anything at
all, they'll find the spot where the messages are coming from, won't
they? If they find nothing, we'll know we've got to look nearer
home—amongst our own men.”
Lanson, in his turn, shook his head.
“Not necessarily,” he objected. “We've a number of small
stations where there's no night operator. They might have got into one
of those. The messages all come through at night.”
“Well, I'll call the turn there!” responded Mac-Vightie, with a
short laugh. “See that I get a list of those stations in the morning,
and I'll detail men to take care of that end of it.”
The Hawk drew back a little, shifting his strained position—the amused
smile was no longer on his lips.
“And as for that 'ground' business,” went on Mac-Vightie, “go
slow with it till you get your linemen's report. Don't do any more
than try it out with some operator you can absolutely depend upon, say,
about halfway down the line. You say you would be able to tell whether
the messages were coming from east or west of that point; that'll
cut the division in half for us as far as our search is concerned, and
that's worth taking a chance on. But don't overdo it, Lanson. We
don't want to throw any scare into him—yet.”
“All right,” agreed Lanson. “I'll start things moving to-night.
Martin, at Bald Creek, will be the best man, I guess. I'll send a
letter down to him on No. 8.”
“And warn him to make no reports by wire,” cautioned MacVightie.
“All right—yes, naturally,” agreed the superintendent again.
Then, after a short pause, anxiously: “Anything turned up at all,
MacVightie? Any clue to that necklace? The governor's wife is making a
holler that's reached from here to the road's directors down in Wall
Street.”
“Damn it,” growled MacVightie. “I'm well enough aware of
it—but the necklace isn't any more important than any one of the
other affairs, is it? No; there's nothing—not a blamed thing!”
“Well, what about this Sing Sing convict, the Hawk, that the papers
are featuring to-night?” Lanson asked. “Anything in that?”
“I don't know—maybe,” McVightie answered viciously. “He's
only one more, anyway. This gang was operating before he was
released—and it's likely enough, if they're old pals of his, that
he's come out here to give them a hand. The New York police say
he went to Chicago immediately after his release, two weeks ago. The
Chicago police reported him there, and then he disappeared; then Denver
spotted him a few days later—and that's the last that's been
seen of him. You can make what you like of that. He's certainly been
hitting a pretty straight trail west. He wasn't stopped, of course,
because he isn't 'wanted' at present; he's only a man with a
bad record, and labelled dangerous. We were warned to look out for him,
that's all.”
“Got his description?” inquired Lanson.
“Yes”—MacVightie's laugh was a short bark. “Medium height,
broad-shouldered, muscular, black hair, black eyes, straight nose,
good-looking, and gentlemanly in appearance and manner, dresses well,
age twenty-four to twenty-six, no distinctive marks or disfigurement.”
“There's probably not more than twenty-five thousand men in Selkirk
City who would answer to every detail of that!” Lanson commented
sarcastically.
“Exactly!” admitted MacVightie. “And that's——”
The Hawk was creeping forward again in the shadows of the roundhouse.
“Yes, I guess it interested me,” muttered the Hawk; “I guess it
did. I guess I'm playing in luck to-night.”
III-THE PAYMASTER'S SAFE
FROM the roundhouse it was only a few yards to the rear of the long,
low-lying freight sheds and, unobserved, the Hawk gained this new
shelter. He stole quickly along to the further end of the sheds; and
there, crouched down again in the shadows, halted to make a critical
survey of his surroundings. .
Just in front of him, divided only by a sort of driveway for the
convenience of the teamsters, was the end wall of the station, and, in
the end wall—the window of the divisional paymaster's office. The
Hawk glanced to his left. The street upon which the station fronted, an
ill-savoured section of the city, was dark, dimly lighted, and deserted;
the only sign of life being the lighted windows of a saloon on
the corner of a narrow lane that bisected the block of somewhat
disreputable, tumble-down wooden structures that faced the station. To
his right, on the other side of the freight shed, the railroad yard
had narrowed down to the station tracks and a single spur alongside the
shed. There was no one in sight in either direction.
The Hawk's eyes strayed back to the paymaster's window. The station,
like its surrounding neighbours, was an old wooden building; and, being
low and only two-storied, the second-story window offered inviting
possibilities. From the sill of the lower window, a man who was at all
agile had the upper window at his mercy. Against this mode of attack,
however, was the risk of being seen by any one who might pass along
the street, or by any one who might chance upon the end of the station
platform.
“What's the use!” decided the Hawk, with an abrupt shrug of his
shoulders. “Play safe. There's a better way.”
The Hawk crept across the driveway, reached the street side of the
station, peered cautiously around the corner of the building, and,
satisfied that he was unobserved, edged down along the building for
a short distance, paused in a doorway, glanced quickly about him
again—and then the door opened and closed, and he was standing in a
murky passageway, that was lighted only by a single incandescent far
back by a stair well.
He stood motionless, listening. From above, through the stillness, came
the faint drumming of a telegraph key. There should be no one upstairs
now but the dispatcher, whose room was at the opposite end of the
building from the paymaster's office—and, possibly, with the
dispatcher, a call boy or two. And the hallway above, he could see, was
dark.
Moving stealthily forward, as noiseless as a cat in his tread, the Hawk
took a mask from his pocket, slipped it over his face, and began to
mount the stairs. He gained the landing—and halted again. It was pitch
black here, since even the door of the dispatcher's room, where there
would be a light, was closed.
And then once more the Hawk moved forward—and an instant later, the
paymaster's door at the extreme end of the corridor, under the deft
persuasion of his skeleton keys, had closed behind him.
It was not quite so dark here. The lights from the platform and the yard
filtered in through the window in a filmy sort of way; but it was too
dark to distinguish objects in anything more than grotesque, shapeless
outlines.
The Hawk produced his flashlight, and turned it upon the lock he had
just picked. It was a spring lock, opened readily from the inside by the
mere turning of the doorhandle. He tried it carefully, assuring himself
that it could not be opened from the corridor without a key—and then
his light swept around the room. It played in its circuit upon the
paymaster's flat-topped desk against the wall, and upon a large safe
in the corner, near the window, whose polished nickel dial sent back
an answering flash under the darting ray; but the Hawk, for the moment,
appeared to be interested in neither desk nor safe. The flashlight was
holding in a kind of dogged inquisitiveness upon another door close to
the window, and directly opposite the safe.
He stepped without a sound across the room, and, reaching this door,
snapped off his flashlight. He tried the door cautiously, found it
unlocked, and very softly opened it the space of an inch. He listened
attentively. There was no sound. He pushed the door open, switched on
his flashlight again, and stepped through the doorway. It appeared to be
a clerks' office—for the paymaster's staff, presumably. The Hawk
seemed to possess a peculiar penchant for doors. The only thing in the
room that apparently held any interest for him now was the door that
opened, like the paymaster's, upon the corridor. He slipped quickly
across the room, and, as before, examined the lock. Like the other, it
was a spring lock; and, like the other, he tested it to make sure it was
locked on the outside.
“Ten thousand dollars,” confided the Hawk to the lock, “isn't to
be picked up every night; and we can't afford to take any chances, you
know.”
He began to retrace his steps toward the paymaster's office, but now,
obviously, with more attention to the details of his surroundings, for
his flashlight kept dancing quick, jerky flashes in all directions about
him.
“Ah!” The exclamation, low-breathed, came suddenly. “I thought
there ought to be something like this around here!”
From, beside a desk, he stooped and picked up an empty pay satchel;
then, returning at once to the other office, but leaving the connecting
door just ajar, he dropped the pay bag in front of the safe, and went
silently over to the desk—a mouse running across the floor would have
made more commotion than the Hawk had made since his entry into the
station.
“... Upper drawer, left side,” he muttered, “Locked, of
course—ah!” A tiny key, selected from its fellow outlaws, was
inserted in the lock—and the Hawk pulled out the drawer, and began to
rummage through its contents.
From the back of the drawer, after perhaps a minute's search, he
picked up a card, and with a nod of satisfaction began to study it.
“'Left—two right; eighty-seven, one quarter—left; three...
'” The Hawk's eyes travelled swiftly over the combination. He
read it over again, “Thank you!” murmured the Hawk whimsically—and
dropped the card back in the drawer, and locked the drawer.
A moment more, and the white beam of the flashlight was playing on the
face of the safe, and the silence of the room was broken by the faint,
musical, metallic whirring of the dial. Bent forward, a crouching form
in the darkness, the Hawk worked swiftly, a sure, deft accuracy in every
movement of his fingers. With a low thud, as he turned the handle, the
heavy bolt shot back in its grooves, and the ponderous door swung open.
And now the flashlight's ray flooded the interior of the safe, and the
Hawk laughed low—before him, lying on the bottom of the safe, neatly
banded as they had come from the bank, were a dozen or fifteen little
packages of banknotes.
The Hawk dropped on his knees, and reached for the pay bag. Ten thousand
dollars was not so bulky, after all—if the denominations of the
notes were large enough. He riffled one package through his
fingers—twenties! Gold, yellow-back twenties!
There was a sort of beatific smile on the Hawk's lips. He dropped the
package into the bag.
Tens, and twenties, and fives—the light, in a curiously caressing way,
was lingering on the little fortune as it lay there on the bottom of the
safe. There was only a pile or two of ones, and the rest was—what was
that!
The smile vanished from the Hawk's lips, and, in a rigid, tense,
strained attitude, he hung there, motionless. What was that—that dull,
rasping, sound! It was like some one clawing at the wall outside. The
window!
With a single motion, as though stirred to life by some galvanic shock,
the Hawk's hand shot out and swept the packages of banknotes into the
bag. He snapped off his flashlight. The room was in darkness.
That sound again! And now a creak! The window was being opened.
Something black was bulking there on the sill outside—and something
queerly white, a man's face, was pressed against the pane, peering in.
The Hawk glanced sharply around him. Inch by inch he was pushing the
safe door shut. He could not reach the door leading to the clerks'
office, for he would have to pass by the window, and—he shrank back
quickly, the safe door closed but still unlocked, and crouched low in
the corner against the wall. The window slid up to the top, and with a
soft pad, like some animal alighting on the floor, the man had sprung
into the room.
The Hawk's fingers crept into his pocket and out again, tight-closed
now upon an automatic pistol. The other's flashlight winked, went out,
then shot across the room, locating the desk—and once more all was
darkness.
There was not a sound now, save the short, hurried breathing of the
other, panting from the exertion of his climb. Then the man's step
squeaked faintly crossing the room—and the Hawk, a few inches at a
time, began to edge along the wall away from the neighbourhood of the
safe.
Then the man's flashlight gleamed again, lighting up the top of the
desk. There was a sharp, ripping sound, as of the tearing of wood under
pressure, and the upper drawer, forced open by a steel jimmy, was pulled
out.
“Birds of a feather!” said the Hawk grimly to himself. “Number
One, of the Wire Devils! I didn't beat him to it by as much margin as
I thought I would!”
The Hawk shifted his automatic to the hand that was clutching the pay
bag, and, with the other hand, began to feel in wide sweeps over the
wall above his head. The electric-light switch, he had noticed in that
first quick glance when he had entered the room, a glance that had
seemed to notice nothing, and yet in which nothing had escaped the
sharp, trained eyes, was somewhere about here.
“Dangerous—for both of us—if it's seen outside,” communed the
Hawk with himself again. “But when he finds the safe unlocked, and the
goods gone, there'll be trouble. If he gets a flashlight on me, he's
got me where he wants me. Ah—here it is!” The Hawk's fingers
touched the switch. He lowered the pay bag cautiously to the floor
between his feet, his automatic free in his hand again.
There was a rustling of papers in the drawer; then the man's hand,
holding a card, was outlined as though thrown upon a screen, as, with
his other hand, he focused his flashlight upon it. Then the flashlight
swung an arc over the opposite wall, and pointed a pathway to the safe,
as the man turned abruptly and stepped back across the room.
The Hawk, one hand raised to the switch on the wall, his automatic
outflung a little in the other, tense, like an animal in leash, watched
the other's movements.
The dark-outlined form was in shadowy relief against the light, that
played now upon the glistening knob and dial of the safe. The man gave
a preliminary, tentative twist at the handle. Came a quick, dismayed,
hissing sound, like the sharp intake of 'breath. The safe door was
wrenched open with a jerk. There was a low, angry cry now. The man
sprang back, and as though involuntarily, in a sort of uncertain,
panic-struck search, his flashlight shot along the wall—and fell full
upon the Hawk.
The Hawk's finger pressed the switch. The room was ablaze with
light. With a startled, furious oath, the man's hand was sweeping
significantly toward his pocket.
“No, you don't!” snarled the Hawk, covering the other. “No, you
don't! Cut that out!” His eyes, behind the mask, narrowed suddenly.
“Hello!” he sneered. “It's 'Butcher' Rose—I might have
known from the way you opened that drawer!”
It was a moment before the man answered.
“Blast you!” he whispered finally. “You gave me a bit of a start,
you did! I thought at first you were a 'bull'.” His eyes fastened
on the pay bag at the Hawk's feet. The top gaped open, disclosing the
banknotes inside. The man raised his eyes to the Hawk's, and a cunning
look came over his thin, hatchet-like face. “Caught with the goods
this time, eh?” he jerked out.
The Hawk smiled unpleasantly.
“Yes,” he said. “The nest's empty. What is it they used to tell
us in the nursery?—it's the early bird that grabs the worm. How long
you been out in these parts, Butcher?”
“Look here,” said the Butcher ingratiatingly, ignoring the question,
“I guess it's a case of split—eh?”
“You've got a nerve!” ejaculated the Hawk coolly.
“Well, put that light out, then, and we'll talk it over,”
suggested the Butcher. “If it's seen from outside, we'll both get
caught.”
“I'd rather take a chance on that, than a chance on you,” replied
the Hawk curtly. “There's nothing to talk over. I've got the coin,
and you've got a frost—all you've got to do now is beat it.”
Sharp, little, black, ferret eyes the Butcher had, and they roamed
around the room now in an apparently aimless fashion—only to come back
and fix hungrily on the bag of banknotes again. A sullen look came into
his face, and the jaw muscles twitched ominously.
“So you're the Hawk they're talking about, eh?” he said, trying
to speak smoothly. “Well, there's no use of us quarrelling. If you
know me, we must be old pals. Take off that mask, and let's have a
look at you. There ain't any reason why we can't be pals again.”
“Nix!” said the Hawk softly. “Nothing doing, Butcher! It suits me
pretty well the way it is. I've made it a rule all my life to play a
lone hand, and the more I see of the raw work that guys like you try to
get away with, the more I pat myself on the back. Savvy? Why, say,
even a drag-worker on Canal Street wouldn't show his face to a
self-respecting crook for a month, he'd be so ashamed, if he took a
crowbar to a desk drawer the way you did, you poor boob!”
The Butcher's face flushed, and he scowled.
“You're looking for trouble, ain't you!” he said hoarsely.
“Well, mabbe you'll get it—and mabbe you'll get more than
you're looking for. How'd you get wise to this game to-night?”
“It's the way I make my living—getting wise. How'd you
suppose?” queried the Hawk insolently.
The Butcher was chewing at his lips angrily; his eyes, closed to slits,
searched the Hawk's masked face.
“This is the second time!” he said, between his teeth. “You
pinched that necklace, and——”
“O-ho!” exclaimed the Hawk, with a grin. “So you were after that,
too, were you?”
The Butcher's flush deepened.
“That's none of your damned business!” he gritted. “And if I
thought——” He bit his lips quickly.
“Go on!” invited the Hawk sweetly. “Don't mind me. If you
thought—what?”
“You've had the luck with you,” mumbled the Butcher, half to
himself. “It can't be anything else, there's no chance of a leak.
But I'm going to tell you something—your luck's going to get a
hole kicked in it. I'll tell you something more. There's a few of us
that have picked out this little stamping ground for ourselves, and we
ain't fond of trespassers. Get that? It ain't going to be healthy
for you to linger around here over more than one train!”
“Are the rest of 'em all like you?” inquired the Hawk maliciously.
“You'll find out quicker than you'll want to, perhaps!” the
Butcher retorted furiously.
“All right!” said the Hawk. “And now I'll tell you a little
something. I don't know who are in this gang of yours, but you might
take them a little message from me. If they're finding it crowded out
here, they'd better move on to somewhere where competition isn't so
likely to put them out of business through lack of brains, because
I'm kind of figuring on hanging around until it gets time to open
my château down at Palm Beach and stick my feet up on the sofa for a
well-earned rest. Do you stumble to that? And”—the Hawk was drawling
now—“I might say, Butcher, that I don't like you. My fingers are
crossed on that trespassing gag. It don't go! I don't scare for
any half-baked outfit of near-crooks! I stick here as long as there's
anything worth sticking for.”
The Butcher's eyes seemed to be fascinated by the pay bag—they were
on it again. He choked a little, swallowing hard; and, attempting a
change of front, forced a smile.
“Well, don't get sore!” he said, in a whining tone. “Mabbe I was
only trying to chuck a bluff, and got called. But, say, how'd you like
to break in here to-night like I did, and find another fellow'd got
all the swag? Say, it's damned rough, ain't it? Say, it's fierce!
And, look here, I'm in on it now, anyhow. I know who took it. I'm
going to keep my mouth shut, ain't I? You ain't going to leave me
out in the cold, are you? All I ask is a split.”
“It's not much!” said the Hawk, in a velvet voice. “It hardly
seems enough. You're too modest, Butcher. Why don't you ask for the
whole of it? You might as well—you'd stand just as much chance of
getting it!”
The smile faded from the Butcher's lips, and his face became contorted
with rage again. He raised his fist and shook it at the Hawk. He cursed
in abandon, his lips livid, beside himself with passion.
“You'll get yours for this!” He choked, in his fury, over his
words. “You think you're slick! I'll show you what you're up
against inside of twenty-four hours! You'll crawl for this, d'ye
hear, blast you—you'll crawl!—you'll——”
The Hawk's automatic, dangling nonchalantly in his hand, swung
suddenly upward to a level with the other's eyes.
“That's enough, you cheap skate!”—there was a cold, menacing
ring in the Hawk's voice now. “I've heard enough from you. You and
your hot-air crowd of moth-eaten lags! If you, or any of you, run foul
of me again, you won't get off so easy! Tell 'em that! Tell 'em
the Hawk said so! And you beat it! And beat it—now!” He caught up
the pay bag, and advanced a step.
The Butcher retreated sullenly.
“Get out of that window!” ordered the Hawk evenly. “And take a
last tip from me. If you try to plant me, if you let a peep out of you
while I'm making my own getaway, I'll get you for it, Butcher, if
it's the last thing I ever do. Go on, now! Step quicker!”
Still sullenly, mumbling, his mouth working, the Butcher retreated
backward toward the window. The Hawk, his lips like a thin straight line
just showing under the mask, followed grimly, step by step. And then,
suddenly, both men halted, and their eyes met and held each other's in
a long tense gaze.
From outside in the corridor came the sound of voices and footsteps. The
footsteps drew nearer; the voices grew louder. The Hawk shot a glance
toward the door. He drew in his breath sharply. No, there was
no fanlight, the light would not show in the hall. That was the
superintendent's voice. That letter Lanson was going to send down on
No. 8! The other, probably, was MacVightie. Yes; it was MacVightie—he
caught the detective's gruff tones now. The door on the opposite side
of the corridor from the paymaster's room opened.
The Butcher licked his lips.
“Me for the window, and for it quick!” he muttered under his breath.
He turned, and, his back to the Hawk now, tiptoed to the window, turned
again sideways, as though to throw one leg over the sill—and his right
hand, hidden, suddenly lifted the side of his coat.
It came quick, quick as the winking of an eye. Racketing through room
and building, like the detonation of a cannon in the silence, came the
roar of a revolver shot, as the Butcher fired through his coat pocket.
Mechanically, the Hawk staggered backward; and then, the quick, keen
brain working like lightning, he reeled, dropped the pay bag, and
clutched wildly at his side. He was not hit. The Butcher had missed. So
that was the man's game! Clever enough! They'd break in here at the
sound of the shot, and find him dead or wounded on the floor!
The Butcher, a devil's triumph in his face now, came leaping back from
the window, and, stooping, snatched at the pay bag.
“I'd put another in you to make sure,” whispered the Butcher
fiercely; “only they'll get you anyway, you——”
The Hawk straightened, his arm streaked outward from his side, his
pistol butt crashed on the Butcher's skull, and he was upon the other
like a flash, his free hand at the Butcher's throat.
From the room opposite came startled cries; across the corridor came the
rush of feet—then the doorhandle was tried, the door shaken violently.
The Butcher was struggling but feebly, making only a pitiful effort to
loosen the Hawk's clutch upon his throat, hanging almost limply in the
Hawk's arms, half dazed by the blow upon his head. White to the lips
with passion, the Hawk whipped his hand into the other's pocket,
whipped out the other's revolver, and flung the man away from him.
And then, as the Butcher reeled and lurched backward to the window, and,
clawing frantically at the sill, attempted to work his way out, the Hawk
ran silently back, picked up the pay bag, and, jumping to the window
again, caught the Butcher roughly by the collar of the coat.
The Butcher, white, haggard-faced with fear, moaned.
“For God's sake!” he pleaded piteously. “Let me go! Let me go!
For God's sake, let me go—they'll get me!”
There was a terrific crash upon the door, as of some heavy body hurled
against it. The Hawk laughed mirthlessly.
“If I let you go, you'd break your neck!”—the Hawk's words
were coming through clenched teeth. “Don't worry, Butcher! They'll
not get you. I don't want them to get you. I want to get you myself
for this. Some day, Butcher, some day I'll do the getting!” He
pushed the Butcher's feet over the sill. “Feel with your toes for
the window casing beneath! Quick!” He leaned out, gripping at the
Butcher's collar, lowering the man—his lips were close against the
Butcher's ear. “Some day—for this—you yellow cur—you and me,
Butcher—remember—some day!”
A crash again upon the door! The Butcher's feet were on the lower
sill; but here the man lost his hold, and toppled to the ground. The
Hawk glanced backward into the room. The door was yielding now. He
looked out of the window again. The Butcher had regained his feet, and
was swaying against the wall, holding to it, making his way slowly,
weakly toward the corner.
The Hawk threw one leg over the sill. With a rip and tear, the door
smashed inward, sagging from its lower hinge. Came a hoarse yell.
MacVightie was plunging through the doorway.
Instantly the Hawk, hugging the pay bag, drew back his leg, and dove
into the clerk's room through the door which he had left ajar. There
would have been no use in letting the Butcher go at all if he led the
chase through the window—the man was barely crawling away. Across the
room, light enough now from the open doorway behind him to point the
way, raced the Hawk. He reached the corridor door, as MacVightie lunged
through the connecting door in pursuit.
MacVightie's voice rose in a bellow of warning:
“Look out there, Lanson! The next door—quick!”