“but I am sure he cannot be thoroughly bad, for he wasn't very
old—just a young man.”
She was a very simple, trusting little old lady—as well as a sweet
little old lady. Why should her illusions be dispelled? The Hawk nodded
gravely.
“Perhaps,” suggested the Hawk, “perhaps he hasn't had any one to
keep him straight. Perhaps he hasn't got what keeps a good many chaps
straight—a good mother.”
The mist was quick in her eyes again. He had not meant to bring
that—he had meant only to show her a genuine admiration and respect.
“Perhaps not,” she answered slowly. “But if he has, I hope she
will never know.” She shook her head again; and then: “But you have
not told me yet what you would like, sir?”
The Hawk gave his order. He ate mechanically. Back in his mind he was
reviewing a rather extensive acquaintanceship with certain gentry whose
morals were not wholly above reproach. Failing, however, to identify the
individual with the counterfeit note as one of this select number, he
finally dismissed the man somewhat contemptuously from his mind.
“Just a piker crook, I guess,” decided the Hawk. “I'd like to
have found out though how many more of those he's got, and who the
fool was that let an amateur skate like that loose with any of the
goods!”
He finished his meal, paid his bill, smiled a goodnight to old Mother
Barrett, walked out of the short-order house, and made his way over to
the station. Five minutes later, having purchased a magazine, the Hawk,
with a ticket in his pocket for a station a number of miles beyond
Burke's Siding, curled himself up with his pipe on a seat in the
smoker of the local.
The train started, and the Hawk apparently became immersed in his
magazine. The Hawk, however, though he turned a page from time to time,
was concerned with matters very far removed from the printed words
before him. The game to-night was more hazardous, more difficult, and
for a vastly greater stake than any in which he had before pitted his
wits or played his lone hand against the combined brains of the Butcher,
his fellows, and their unknown leader, who collectively were referred to
by the papers as—the Wire Devils.
The Hawk tamped down the ash in the bowl of his pipe with a wary
forefinger. He, the Hawk, according to MacVightie, was the leader
of this ingenious criminal league! It was very complimentary of
MacVightie—very! Between MacVightie and the Wire Devils themselves, he
was a personage much sought after! MacVightie, however, was not without
grounds for his assertion and belief—the Hawk grinned pleasantly—he,
the Hawk, had certainly, and for some time back, helped himself to the
leader's share of the spoils, and helped himself very generously!
The grin died away. He had beaten them so far, appropriated from under
their very noses the loot they had so carefully planned to obtain, and
he had mocked and taunted them contemptuously in the doing of it; but
the cold fact remained that luck sometimes was known to turn, and
that the pitcher that went too often to the well ran the risk of
getting—smashed! If they ever caught him, his life would not be worth
an instant's purchase. He knew some of them, and he knew them well for
what they were, and he laboured under no delusions on that score! The
Butcher, for example, who was the Number One of the message, had already
nearly done for him once; and the Butcher had nothing on Number Three,
who was the Bantam, or on Number Seven, who was Whitie Jim—or, it
was safe to presume, on any of the others that he had not yet
identified—this Number Four and Number Six, for instance, who were
mentioned in the cipher message to-night. And how many more were there?
He did not know—except that there was the Master Spider of them all.
The Hawk had ceased now even to turn cursorily the pages of the
magazine. He was staring out of the window.
“I wonder,” muttered the Hawk grimly, “when I'll run up against
him? And who he is? And where the head office is?”
He nodded his head after a moment. MacVightie had called the turn. The
Wire Devils formed as powerful and dangerous a criminal organisation as
had probably ever existed anywhere. And not for very long would they put
all their resources at work to pull off some coup, only to find that he,
the Hawk, had made use of their preparations to snatch the prize away
from them; they were much more likely to put all their resources at
work—with the Hawk as their sole objective!
The Hawk's lips tightened. He might under-estimate, but he could not
exaggerate, his danger! The man in the seat behind him might be one of
them for all he knew. Somewhere, hidden away in his web, at the end of
a telegraph wire, was the Master Spider directing the operations; and
there must be very many of them—the little spiders—spread all over
the division. Where there was a telegraph sounder that sounder carried
the messages, the plans, the secret orders of the brain behind the
organisation; and the very audaciousness with which they made themselves
free of the railroad's telegraph system to communicate with each
other was in itself a guarantee of success. If one of their messages was
interfered with, they threatened to cut the wires; and that meant, if
luckily it meant no more, that train operating was at an end until
the break could be located and repaired. Were they tapping the wire
somewhere? What chance was there to find out where? There were hundreds
of old splices on the wires. Or, if found, what would prevent them
tapping the wire on the next occasion many miles away? Also the sources
of information that they tapped must be far-flung. How, for instance,
unless they too had a “Bud” back there in New York, did they know of
this diamond shipment coming through to-night?
The Hawk's lips grew still a little tighter. His safety so far had
depended on the fact that he possessed the key to their cipher messages,
which not only enabled him to reap where they had sown, but warned
him of any move they might make against him. But it was becoming
increasingly difficult to intercept those messages. He had MacVightie
to thank for that. Where before he had only to crawl into some little
way-station where there was no night operator, MacVightie now had every
one of those stations securely guarded. Yes, it had become exceedingly
more difficult! If only he could find out where those messages emanated
from, or the system in force for receiving them!
The Hawk slid further down in his seat, tossed the magazine to one
side, pulled his hat over his eyes, and appeared to sleep. All that was
neither here nor there—to-night. He had the message to-night—but he
had not yet got that twenty thousand dollars in unset stones! He would
perhaps do well, now that he had the leisure, to give the details of
that matter a little more critical attention than they had received
when he had made up his mind that his best chance lay in the three miles
between Burke's Siding and the point where the Butcher and his men
planned to hold up the train. According to the message, the implication
was that there would be nobody in the express car at that time except
a drugged messenger. And now, somehow, he did not quite like the
appearance of that. It seemed a little queer. What was the object of
drugging the man if they did not take immediate advantage of it? He
pondered the problem for a long time. No, after all, it was logical
enough—since they meant to remove the safe bodily. There evidently was
not a specialised cracksman amongst them who had lifted his profession
to the plane of art, no “knob-twirler” such as—well, such as
himself! The Hawk opened his eyes sleepily to inspect the tips of his
carefully manicured fingers. Otherwise, with no one to interfere but
a drugged messenger, they could have opened the safe, looted it, and,
since the Fast Mail carried only through express matter, have slipped
away from the car at the first stop, with no one being the wiser until,
somewhere up the line, the messenger returned to life and gave the
alarm.
Yes, it was very craftily worked out. The Master Spider was far from a
fool! They would have to “soup” the safe, and blow it open. If they
attempted that while the train was en route they ran the risk of being
heard, and trapped like rats in the car; and if they were heard, even
if they managed to stop the train and make their escape, they invited
instant and definite pursuit on the spot. The reason for drugging the
express messenger became quite evident now. If the man were already
helpless when they held up the train, they, at one and the same time,
assured their access to an otherwise guarded car without danger to
themselves, and without danger of being balked at the last moment of
their reward—which the messenger, with a small package like that,
might easily have been able to accomplish if he were a game man. He
could have opened the safe, say, the instant the first alarm came as
they tried to force the car door, taken out the package, and secreted
it somewhere. It needed only the nerve after that to defy them, and they
had evidently given him credit for it whether he possessed it or not.
Yes, decidedly, the Master Spider was no fool in the spinning of his
web! As it was, the safe, which would only be a small affair anyhow,
would disappear bodily; and between the point where the train was held
up and the point where they finally left the engine and express car
there would be a distance of at least ten miles, even allowing that they
approached no nearer than within two miles of Bradley, the first station
west of Burke's Siding. With the wires cut and the coaches of the Fast
Mail stalled three miles out of Burke's, considerable time must elapse
before any one could make a move against them; and even when the pursuit
finally started, MacVightie, for instance, would be confronted with
that somewhat illusive stretch of ten miles in which to decide where
the pursuit should begin. Ten miles was some little distance! MacVightie
would be quite at liberty to make his guess, and there was the chance,
with the trifling odds of some few odd thousand to one against it, that
he might guess right—unless he guessed that the safe had been removed
at the point where the engine and car were finally left, in which case
MacVightie would guess wrong.
If the Hawk was asleep, he was perhaps dreaming—for the Hawk
smiled. The chances were just about those few odd thousand to one
that MacVightie would guess exactly that way—wrong. Yes, it was an
exceedingly neat little web that the Master Spider had spun. If he, the
Hawk, were permitted to make a guess, he would guess that the safe would
never be found!
His mind reverted to the cipher message. The safe was to be delivered at
“five-mile crossing.” Where that was the Hawk did not know—except
that it must necessarily be somewhere between the point where the train
was held up and Bradley. However, that was a detail with which he need
hardly concern himself. Long before this “five-mile crossing”
was reached, his vest pocket, if he played in luck, would be very
comfortably lined! He would enter the express car as the Fast Mail
pulled out of Burke's Siding, trust to certain long and intimate
experience to open the safe—and get off the train as it slowed down
at the Butcher's very thoughtful request! For the rest, the
details—circumstances must govern there. In the main, that would be
his plan.
The Hawk “slept” on. Station after station was passed. His mind now
dealt in little snatches of thought. There was MacVightie and the police
circular; and the search of his room that day; and speculation as to
how they had managed to drug the express messenger; and the man with the
counterfeit ten-dollar bill in old Mother Barrett's short-order house;
and the little old woman herself, with her shabby clothes and her tired,
gentle face—and finally the Hawk stirred, glanced at his watch, and,
as the train whistled, picked up his magazine and sauntered down the car
aisle to the door.
They were approaching Burke's Siding. The Hawk opened the door, went
out on the platform, and descended to the lowest step. The train slowed.
A water-tank loomed up, receded—and the Hawk dropped to the ground.
A minute later, as the tail-lights winked by and came to a stop at the
station a short distance down the track, he had made his way back, to
the water-tank, crossed to the opposite side of the track, and stretched
himself out on the grass in the hollow at the foot of the embankment.
The Fast Mail's sole excuse for a stop at Burke's Siding was the
water-tank—which would bring the express car to a halt directly in
front of the spot where he now lay.
The local pulled out, and racketed away into the night. The tail-lights
vanished. Silence fell. There was only the chirping of the insects
now, and the strange, queer, indefinable medley of little night-sounds.
Burke's Siding was a lonely place. There was a faint yellow gleam from
the station windows, and there was the twinkle of the switch lights—no
other sign of life. It was pitch black—so black that the Hawk could
just barely distinguish the outline of the water-tank across the track.
“It's a nice night,” observed the Hawk pleasantly to himself. “A
very nice night! It's strange how some people prefer a moon!”
IX—THE LOOTING OF THE FAST MAIL
THE minutes went by, ten, fifteen, twenty of them—a half hour—and
then, from far down the track, hoarse through the night, came the
scream of a whistle. From his pocket the Hawk took out his diminutive
flashlight, thin as a pencil. It might have been the winking of a
firefly, as he played it on the dial of his watch.
“On the dot!” murmured the Hawk. “Some train—the Fast Mail! I
guess, though, she'll be a little late, at that, to-night—when
she pulls into Selkirk!” A roar and rumble was in the night again,
increasing steadily in volume. Down the right of way, in the distance, a
flash of light stabbed through the black. It grew brighter and brighter.
The Hawk, wary of the spread of the powerful electric headlight, edged
further away from the trackside. And now the rails gleamed like polished
silver—and the water-tank stood up out of the darkness, a thing of
monstrous size. There was the hiss of steam, the rasp and grind of the
setting brakes, the glinting rays from the windows of a long string
of coaches that trailed back to the station platform, and a big
ten-wheeler, like some human thirsty thing, was panting beside the
water-tank.
The engineer, with his torch, swung from the gangway for an oil around.
There was the creak of the descending spout, the rush of water, and,
silhouetted against the water-tank, the Hawk could make out the
fireman standing on the back of the tender. And now, poking with his
long-spouted oil can, weirdly swallowed up in the darkness at intervals
as he thrust the torch far in under the big machine, the engineer moved
slowly along the side of the engine, and finally disappeared around the
end of the pilot.
The Hawk stole forward closer to the track again, his eyes on the
fireman, who, now that the engineers torch was on the other side, was
more sharply outlined than before. Came then the swish and gush of water
as it overflowed, the spout banged back against the water-tank, and the
fireman scrambled back over the tender into the cab. It was the
moment the Hawk had been waiting for. Swiftly, but still crawling as a
safeguard against being seen by any of the train crew in the rear, he
moved up the embankment, and in an instant had swung himself up between
the tender and the forward door of the express car. There was no
platform here, of course, but the end beam of the car, making a sort of
wide threshold, gave him ample room on which to stand.
The roar of escaping steam drowned out all other sounds; the back of the
tender hid him from any chance of observation from the cab. He tried the
door cautiously. It was locked, of course—there were twenty thousand
dollars' worth of stones in the safe inside! The Hawk felt carefully
over the lock with his fingers, classifying it in the darkness, as it
were, by the sense of touch, and produced from his packet his bunch of
skeleton keys. He inserted one of the keys, worked with it for a
moment, then shook his head, and selected another. This time he felt
the lock-bolt slide back. The train was jerking into motion now. He
exchanged his keys for his automatic, turned the knob softly, opened the
door an inch, and listened. Even the Wire Devils were not infallible,
and if by any chance the messenger—
The Hawk whistled low and contentedly under his breath. He had caught a
glimpse of the interior of the car—and now he slipped quickly through
the door, closing the door behind him.
A quarter length down the car, in the aisle made by the express packages
which were piled high on either side, the messenger, a young man of
perhaps twenty-two, was huddled, apparently unconscious, in his chair.
In a flash the Hawk was down the car, and bending sharply over the
other. The man sat in a helpless, sagging attitude; he was breathing
heavily, and his head, hanging forward and a little to one side, swayed
limply with the motion of the car. There was no question as to the
messenger's condition—he was drugged, and well drugged. From the
man, the Hawk's eyes travelled to a sort of desk, or ledge, built out
from the side of the car, and topped by a pigeonholed rack stuffed with
express forms and official-looking manila envelopes. On the desk was a
small leather satchel containing some lunch, and a bottle of what was
evidently cold tea, now but barely a quarter full; and, as though to
supply further evidence that the man had succumbed in the midst of his
meal, a little to one side lay a meat sandwich, half eaten.
The Hawk nodded quietly to himself, as again his eyes shifted—this
time to a small safe, about three feet square, that stood beneath the
desk. It was quite easy to understand now. The Wire Devils had only to
ascertain the fact that it was the messenger's habit to eat his lunch
at a certain time, choose the point of attack on the line to correspond
therewith, and see that a sufficient quantity of knockout drops was
introduced into the cold tea—not a very weighty undertaking for the
Wire Devils!
Well, it was a bit rough on the boy—the Hawk was kneeling now in front
of the safe—but he, the Hawk, was greatly indebted to the Wire Devils!
Twenty thousand dollars was a snug little sum—quite a snug little sum!
The figure in the chair, with swaying head, breathed stertorously; there
was the pound, quick in its tempo, of the trucks beating at the rail
joints; the give-and-take of the car in protesting little creaks; and,
over all, a muffled roar as the Fast Mail tore through the night—but
the Hawk heard none of this. His ear was pressed close against the face
of the safe listening for the tumblers' fall, as his fingers twirled
the dial knob.
After a little while the Hawk spoke aloud.
“Left, twenty-eight, one quarter... two right, fourteen... two left,
eighteen, one-half,” he said.
He straightened up, swung the handle of the safe—and a dismayed,
anxious look flashed across his face. There was not much time, very
little time—-and he had missed it! How far along those three miles
from Burke's Siding to where the Butcher was waiting had the train
already come?
He tried again, coolly, methodically—and again he missed.
“I guess I'm out of practice to fall down on a tin box like
this!” he muttered grimly. “But the first two are right, that's
sure—it's the last turn that's wrong somewhere. Give me another
minute or two”—he was twirling the dial knob with deft, quick
fingers once more—“that's all I ask, and——”
A sudden jolt flung him forward against the safe. Came the scream of the
whistle, the screech of the tight-set brakes, the bump, and jerk, and
pound, and grind of the flying train coming to an emergency stop. The
limp form of the messenger, sliding down, was almost doubled over the
arm of the chair.
In an instant the Hawk had recovered his balance, and, his face set like
iron, his jaws clamped hard, he snatched at the knob, and with desperate
haste now made another attempt. There were a few seconds left, a few
seconds before the train would come finally to a standstill and—no,
they were gone now, those seconds—and he had missed again!
His automatic was in his hand as he stood up. It was no longer a
question of twenty thousand dollars' worth of unset diamonds—it was
a question of his life. There was a bitter smile on his lips, as he ran
for the forward door. It looked as though the pitcher had at last gone
once too often to the well! The train had stopped now. He reached the
door, and opened it guardedly a little way. A great red flare from
somewhere ahead lighted up the night. He heard and recognised the
Butcher's voice, menacing, raucous, punctuated with vicious oaths:
“Get out of that cab, and get out damned quick! Down you come—jump
now! Now, boys, run 'em back, and keep firing down the length of the
train as you go; and if these guys don't run faster than you do, let
'em have it in the back! Beat it now—beat it like hell! I'll pull
out the minute you're uncoupled. You two grab the rear end as she
moves, there's room enough for you, and you can bust in the door,
and——”
A fusilade of shots rang out. Flashes cut the black. The Butcher's two
companions, evidently driving the engineer and fireman before them, were
coming on the run along the trackside from the cab. The Hawk retreated
back a step, and closed the car door. He heard the men rush past
outside. The fusilade seemed to redouble in intensity; and now, added to
it, were shouts and yells from the rear of the train itself, and—if he
were not mistaken—answering shots.
His hand on the doorknob, he stood waiting tensely. With the Butcher on
guard out there in front, it would have been equivalent to suicide
to have opened the door again until he knew the other was back in the
cab—against the background of the lighted interior he would have made
a most excellent mark for the Butcher!
His eyes swept past the huddled form of the young messenger in the
chair, and fixed speculatively on the safe. He nodded suddenly, grimly.
Twenty thousand dollars! Well, he wasn't beaten yet—not till he
threw down his own hand of his own accord—not till he lost sight of
the safe for keeps!
Over the shouts and revolver shots came the sharp, vicious hiss of the
air-hose, as it was uncoupled; and then, with a violent jerk, the car
started forward, as the Butcher evidently whipped the throttle open.
And, coincidently, there was a smash upon the rear door—and the Hawk
opened the forward door and slipped out again.
A din infernal was in his ears. Like a maddened thing under the
Butcher's unscientific spur, the big ten-wheeler was coughing the
sparks heavenward in a volleying stream, while the huge drivers raced
like pinwheels in another shower of sparks as the tires sought to bite
and hold. And now the rear door of the car crashed inward; the shots
came fast as a gatling, and shouts, screams and yells added their quota
to the uproar.
The Hawk, crouched by the door, moved suddenly to one side, as he caught
the dull, ominous spat of a bullet against one of the panels. The train
crew and those of the passengers who were armed were, very obviously,
keeping up a running fight from the stalled section of the train, and
pumping their bul-lets through the broken rear door and up the aisle of
the express car as long as they could hold the range; and, from within,
he could distinguish the duller, muffled reports of the Butcher's
confederates firing in return, preventing any attempt being made to rush
the rear of the car.
And then the sounds began to recede and die away. The men inside the car
ceased firing, and he could hear them now moving the safe out from the
side of the car. It seemed as though a very long interval of time had
been consumed in the hold-up; but in reality he knew it had been little
more than a matter of seconds—the time it had taken the two men to run
the length of the car, uncouple it, and leap on the rear end. The fight
afterwards could hardly count, for once the express car began to pull
away the thing was done.