placarded the country with circulars offering rewards for the capture
of the Hawk and his gang, the “gang” was moving heaven and earth to
capture the Hawk for its own exclusive purposes—which purposes, in a
word, were an intense desire to recover the proceeds of the robberies
that he, the Hawk, had filched from under the gang's nose, and
thereafter, with such finality as might be afforded by a blackjack, a
knife thrust, or a revolver bullet, to expedite the Hawk's departure
from this vale of tears!
The Hawk's hand curled suddenly into a clenched fist, and his face
grew set. He was facetious—and he had little enough warrant for
facetiousness! They had already shown their teeth. They had shown the
grim, ugly deadliness of their challenge in the thrust with which they
had opened their attack upon him. He had parried the thrust, it was
true—but there would be another—and another. There was something of
remorseless promise, that would stop at nothing, in the extravagantly
laid plans with which they had just attempted to lure him into the
open and trap him. They had failed, it was true, and he had even scored
against them again—but their cunning, their power, their resources,
their malignity remained unimpaired. They would try again. It was
like two adversaries in a dark room, each conscious of the other's
presence, each striving to place the other, each conscious that the
death of one was life for the other. That was the pith of the situation.
The Hawk's teeth clamped together. It was quite certain that they
would run him to earth—unless he were first at the same game! An
organisation as widespread as the one against which he had elected to
pit his wits and play a lone hand, an organisation clever enough to have
seized and put to its own use the entire divisional telegraph system of
a railroad, an organisation callous enough to have counted a score of
murders but incidents in its schemes, and, above all, an organisation
guided by an unknown brain that was a master of cunning and unhampered
by scruples, was an antagonist as sinister as it was powerful. For days
now, in the great majority of cases, he, the Hawk, had turned their
plans to his own account, skimmed, as it were, the cream from their
milk—and there could be but one answer. And they had answered—and
in the opening attack they had just launched against him it was obvious
enough that every resource at their command was to be thrown into the
balance to settle scores with him. They might, and did, laugh at
the police, but to have their prizes pocketed and carried off by a
competitor admitted of but one solution—the annihilation of the
competitor!
The Hawk rose abruptly from his seat, stepped over to the trunk, opened
it, and in an instant had removed the secret tray from the curvature of
the lid. He laid the tray down upon the table; and his fingers, brushing
aside a certain magnificent diamond necklace whose thousand facets
glittered in the light, delved swiftly in amongst pile after pile of
banknotes, and secured a package of papers.
He pushed the tray to one side, sat down again at the table, removed the
elastic band from the package, and began to examine the papers. It was
not the first time he had done this—he did it again now in a sort
of desperation, and simply because it presented the one possibility at
which he might grasp in the hope of obtaining a clue. There were many
papers here, loose sheets, documents in envelopes, and, careful as
he had been before, there was a chance that he had missed the one
thing—in a sentence, in perhaps only a word, or a pencilled note-on
the back of an envelope—that would save him from disaster now.
It was the night before last that Parson Joe, with his fake tube of
radium, had headed the gang in the attempt upon his, the Hawk's, life.
The twisted smile returned to the Hawk's lips, as he turned first one
paper and then another over in his hands. He had been fool enough to
imagine that, besides failure, they had left a well-marked and clearly
defined trail behind them—in the shape of that very comfortably, very
cosily furnished house just on the outskirts of the city, where the
Butcher had proposed to play the rôle of spider to his, the Hawk's,
rôle of fly! It had even seemed a childishly simple matter to pick up
such a thread and follow it. A house was neither rented nor furnished
out of thin air. But the next morning the house was closed and deserted.
It had been sublet—furnished. The subtenant, whose name was of no
consequence, since it was of course assumed, had vanished—that was
all. As far as the gang was concerned the house had lost its usefulness,
and, having lost its usefulness, had simply been evacuated, and,
together with the furniture, left to its own resources!
And it had been the same, on a previous occasion, with Isaac
Kirschell's office. The morning after he, the Hawk, had appropriated
the contents of Kirschell's cash box and had recognised Kirschell
as one of the gang, the suite of rooms in the office building had been
vacant.
The Hawk withdrew the last paper in the pile from its envelope, and
read it with a sort of miserable realisation that its perusal, like
the others, was foredoomed to futility. It was an alleged mortgage,
spurious, of course, for these were Kirschell's papers that had
been in the cash box, and, in the very nature of things, Kirschell's
business had been only a blind to cover a sort of branch headquarters
for the gang. He read it through, however, doggedly—and for his pains
the printed words in their precise legal phraseology seemed to mock at
him and chuckle with devilishly perverted humour.
He tossed the document upon the table, and, his face strained, pushed
back his chair, got up, and began to pace the length of the room with
a tread that, in its quick, nervous litheness and its silence, was like
the pacing of a panther in its cage.
Nothing! And yet there must be something—somewhere! It was his move
now, and there was little time to spare. It had become simply a
question of which of the two, he or the gang, would win this game of
blindman's-buff. It no longer sufficed that he should intercept those
secret code messages in the former haphazard way, for, consistently as
he had haunted the telegraph sounders, he was well enough aware that he
must of necessity have missed many of the messages. He could afford
to miss none of them now. Formerly, a message missed meant but a lost
opportunity to thwart their plans, to add a little more to the contents
of the trunk's false lid; now, since they had shown that they would
stop at nothing to trap him, his life was dependent on having, with
certainty, foreknowledge of their every plan. His defense lay in attack.
He must trace those messages to their source, and trace them quickly
before the Wire Devils should strike again, or leave the field to the
Wire Devils—in other words, quit and run for it!
“Quit!” It was the first sound the Hawk had made, and it was only
a whisper—but the whisper was gritted out through set teeth. Quit!
He laughed a little, low, with menace, without mirth. It was not an
alternative—it was the sting of a curling whip-lash to spur him on.
Well? What was he to do then? It was his move—and there was no time to
spare. He approached the table again, and began to rearrange the papers
into a pile, preparatory to replacing them in the tray. It was veritably
a game of blindman's-buff! They knew him through personal contact, but
only as a man who had always been masked; he knew many of them, and knew
them personally—but only in the play-off of their schemes, when he
had, as it were, snatched the plunder from their hands as he made his
own escape, had he ever seen any of them. Well—the question came
again, more insistent, more imperative, more vital—well, his life was
in the balance, what was he to do? Go out again to-night and haunt a
telegraph sounder, trust to——
He turned suddenly, the spurious mortgage, and the long envelope that
had contained it, in his hand. The document, for some reason or other,
refused to fit into the envelope as neatly or as readily as it had
previously done. He held the envelope up to the light—and the next
instant, flinging the document down on the table, he had ripped the
envelope apart, and from under the inner flap, where it had undoubtedly
been forced by the document itself and afterwards, as he had handled the
envelope, had obviously worked its way partially out again, he extracted
a small, thin slip of yellow paper.
And then for a moment the Hawk stood motionless, but into the dark eyes
there leaped a triumphant flash. In his hand was the return portion of a
railroad ticket that read:
Conmore to Selkirk City.
He whipped the ticket over to scrutinise the date stamp on the back—it
was that of the day prior to his visit to Kirschell's office. And he
laughed a little again, but there was no bitterness in the laugh now.
The clue that he had sought, the clue that Lanson's men had in vain
patrolled and scoured the division's right of way to obtain, was in
his possession.
“It fits—like a glove!” muttered the Hawk, with grim complacence.
“Kirschell had the envelope in his pocket, of course, and in putting
his return ticket in his pocket it slipped into the envelope without
his knowing it, got crowded under the flap, and he thought he had lost
it!” The Hawk turned sharply to the table. “Conmore—eh?” He was
working with feverish haste now, replacing the papers in the tray, and
fitting the tray back into the curvature of the trunk lid. “Number
Thirty-Eight, if she's on time, is due at seven-thirty.” He pulled
out his watch. “Seven-twenty! Conmore—eh?” The light was out,
the door locked behind him. “That's twenty-miles east of here, and
between here and Bald Creek.” He was out of the house now, and running
along the lane that gave on the station street. “Yes,” said the Hawk
again, and there was suppressed elation in his voice, “it fits! It
fits—like a glove!”
The Hawk reached the station, and purchased a ticket; but, as usual, the
ticket did not indicate his destination—it read, not to Conmore, but
to several stations farther along the line. The local pulled in on time.
As it pulled out again, the Hawk, having appropriated the rear seat of
the smoker, lighted, though he inclined little toward that particular
form of tobacco, a cigar.
His slouch hat was jerked a little forward over his eyes. He settled
back in his seat. Like links in a chain, the keen, alert brain was
welding the events of the days gone by into a concrete whole. The
headquarters of the gang, the heart of the web from which the Wire
Devils operated was, logically, as he had known, as MacVightie had
known, outside the city, where the telegraph line could be tapped
without observation and at will. MacVightie's initial and only attempt
to “ground out” the “tap” had indicated that the wire was
being tampered with between Selkirk and Bald Creek. Conmore was between
Selkirk and Bald Creek. And what interest could Kirschell, a New York
crook, have in a place like Conmore, that was little more than a hamlet?
What, then, had prompted Kirschell's trip to Conmore and return? The
Hawk smiled whimsically.
It was not proof absolute, but in his own mind it was proof quite
sufficient. Kirschell's visit to Conmore had been a visit to the
headquarters of the gang. Also, material proof apart, he sensed
intuitively that he had struck the right trail. Those messages, keeping
the unknown brain that schemed and plotted each move in instant touch
with every unit of the widespread organisation, making it possible for
them to strike at a moment's warning at any point over a hundred miles
of country, emanated—from Conmore.
The train stopped at a station, and went on again. The Hawk nursed his
cigar sedulously, and stared out of the window. Twenty minutes went by.
And then the train stopped again—at Conmore.
The Hawk did not move, save that his eyes rested casually on a passenger
who was making a hurried and belated dash for the door. It was quite
possible that the man was not one of the gang, and equally possible that
the man was—he, the Hawk, did not recognise the other. But he would do
the Wire Devils less than justice to credit them with lack of interest
in passengers for Conmore—or in any occupant of any car who might
have left his seat and found the platform attractive, say, just before
Conmore was reached! If the man was a spy, then—well—the Hawk smiled
at his now burned-to-the-butt cigar—the man would have little to
report!
The train jerked forward into motion again. The station was on the same
side as the Hawk's seat—the Hawk did not look out of the window, but
he was far from being oblivious to the fact that no platform lights had
shown through the car windows on the opposite side of the aisle. The
speed increased a little, but still the Hawk did not stir. The train
rattled over the east-end siding switch of the Conmore yard. And then
the Hawk rose languidly, tossed his cigar butt into the cuspidor,
brushed a very noticeable quantity of cigar ash from his vest, paused
for a drink at the water-cooler, and, as though, his smoke finished, he
was seeking the clearer atmosphere of a rear car, opened the door, and
stepped out on the platform.
The Hawk dropped to the right of way from the side of the train opposite
to that of the station, landed as sure-footed as a cat, flung himself
instantly flat down at the edge of the embankment, and lay still.
The local racketed its way past—the red tail-lights winked, and
vanished—and there fell a silence, a drowsy night silence, broken
only by the chirp of insects and the far-distant mutter of the receding
train. The Hawk raised his head, and looked about him. A few hundred
yards away glinted the station semaphore and window lights; the siding
switch light, nearer, showed green like a huge glowing emerald in
the black; there was nothing else. There was no sign of
habitation—nothing—the little hamlet lay hidden in a hollow a mile
away on the station side of the track.
XV—THE LADYBIRD
THE Hawk rose, and began to move forward. Conmore was certainly an
idealistic spot—from the Wire Devils' standpoint! He frowned a
little. There was no doubt in his mind but that in a general way he had
solved the problem, that somewhere in this vicinity the right of
way held the wire tappers' secret; but, as he was well aware, his
difficulties were far from at an end, and that particular spot might
be anywhere within several miles of Conmore, and it might, with equal
reason, be east or west of the station. And then the Hawk shrugged his
shoulders. The night was early yet, early enough to enable him to cover
several miles of track on both sides of the station, if necessary,
before daylight came. If he had luck with him, he was on the right
side now; if not, then, by midnight, he would start in on the other. It
required the exercise of a little philosophical patience, nothing more.
It was black along the track—a black night, no moon, no stars. And it
was silent. A half hour passed. Like a shadow, and as silent as one, the
Hawk moved forward—from telegraph pole to telegraph pole. A pin point
of light showed far down the right of way, grew larger, brighter, more
luminous—and the Hawk-sought refuge, crouched beneath a culvert, as
a big ten-wheeler and its string of coaches, trucks beating at the
fishplates, quick like the tattoo of a snare drum, roared by over his
head.
Still another half hour passed. It was slow work. He was perhaps, at
most, a mile and a half from the Conmore station. And then, suddenly,
the Hawk dropped to his hands and knees and crawled down the embankment,
and lay flat and motionless in the grass—faint, almost inaudible, a
footstep had crunched on the gravel of the roadbed ahead of him. The
Hawk's only movement now was the tightening of his fingers around the
stock of his automatic, as, out of the blackness, a blacker shape loomed
up, and a man sauntered by along the track.
The Hawk's lips compressed into a grim smile. His caution had not been
exaggerated! The Wire Devils' guard! Luck, at least initial luck, was
with him, then! The “tap” was here east of the station, and at the
next pole probably. But it was more than likely that there was another
guard patrolling on the other side. They would certainly take no
chances, either of surprise, or of being unable to dismantle their
apparatus instantly at the first alarm—and it would almost necessarily
require more than one man for that. He crept forward again, and again
lay still. The man on the track returned—passed by—and, close to the
telegraph pole now, two blurred shapes showed; and then, low, there came
voices, and a laugh.
But now the Hawk was wriggling swiftly away from the track. There was
no longer any need to examine the telegraph poles—the sense of touch
guiding him, he was following an insulated wire, two wires, that lay
along the ground, and, following these wires, he reached the barbed-wire
fence that enclosed the right of way, worked his way through, and here
paused. The wires had apparently disappeared abruptly into the ground.
For perhaps a minute the Hawk lay still, save that his fingers worked
and dug at loose earth; and then, his coat extended on either side of
him, he raised himself an inch or two from the ground, and, beneath his
body, his tiny flashlight glowed for a brief instant, and was restored
to his pocket.
The Hawk began to crawl forward again. He was on the edge of a ploughed
field—a piece of farm land. It was all very simple, and it was very
clear now. In the loose earth there was embedded a small, rough, wooden
box. In this receptacle was a junction box, and from the junction box,
through holes bored in the outer wooden casing, the wires continued
on into a small, flexible conduit. The Hawk smiled grimly. Lanson, and
Lanson's section men might search a thousand years and never solve
the problem. The Wire Devils were not limited to any one single or
particular telegraph pole. They were limited only in the radius of their
operations by the length of the “tap” wires they used. They had only
to tap the line, run their “tap” back, brush the loose earth away
from the top of the wooden casing, open the latter, connect with
the junction box, and their “tap” became an integral part of the
railroad's telegraph system. It was very simple! When they were not
operating—they reversed the process. They disconnected from the main
line, coiled their “tap” wires up, hid them in the wooden casing,
restored the loose earth over the latter's surface, and, save for
one of those thousands of splices on the main line incident to years
of service and differing in no way from any of its fellows, no sign or
vestige of their work remained. It required, of course, a lineman's
outfit and the necessary appliances for work at the top of the telegraph
pole—but that the Wire Devils were adequately equipped in this respect
was so obvious as to make any consideration of that detail absurd. For
the rest, the little conduit laid in a ploughed furrow with the earth
spread back over it completed in perfection and simplicity the unholy
little scheme!
On the Hawk crawled across the field. All this premised a house, a farm
house probably, in the immediate vicinity. The ploughed field must,
of course, never be disturbed, therefore the tenancy of the land
axiomatically was for the moment vested in the Wire Devils, and——ah!
The Hawk, far enough from the railroad now to be secure from
observation, had risen from his hands and knees, and, in a crouched
position, was moving forward more rapidly. A small, wooded tract of
land was showing a little way in front of him; the house undoubtedly was
there.
He gained the trees, made his way through what appeared to be an open
grove of pines, and, on the other side, at the edge of the clearing,
halted, and listened intently. He could just make out a little group of
buildings—the house itself, a barn, and one or two smaller structures,
probably wagon and implement sheds. No light showed from anywhere,
nor was there any sound. Cautiously, silently, the Hawk crossed the
clearing, and began to circuit the house. It was a little strange! The
place seemed absolutely deserted. Had he made a mistake? Naturally, he
could not follow the direction of the buried conduit! Was there another
house in the neighbourhood? He shook his head. There might be another
house, many of them for that matter, but the ploughed field, from its
location, surely belonged to this one. And yet—he halted once more,
and, listening again intently, looked sharply about him.
He was around on the other side of the house now, and now his eyes were
fixed on one of the lower windows. It was not the window of a lighted
room, yet still a faint glow seemed to emanate most curiously from it.
He crept toward it, crouched beneath it, listened again, then partially
straightening up—the window sill was but breast high—peered in.
Of the room itself he could see nothing—only the dull glow of light,
extremely faint, that came, he now discovered, from an open door across
the room. He tried the window; and then, finding the catch unfastened,
with a deft pressure of his fingers upon the sash, he began to raise it
slowly, silently.
And now into the Hawk's dark eyes there leaped for the second time
that night a triumphant flash. Yes, beyond doubt, beyond question,
beyond cavil, here was the heart of the spider's web at last! Muffled,
low, indistinct, barely audible, but equally unmistakable, there came
the clicking of a telegraph instrument.
The Hawk drew his mask from his pocket, slipped it over his face, swung
noiselessly over the window sill, and began to creep across the room
toward the opened door and the glow of light. And, as the clicking of
the sounder grew more distinct and there mingled with it now a murmur of
voices, the Hawk's lips compressed into a thin, straight line. If he
were caught, if a single inadvertent sound betrayed his presence; it
needed no effort of the imagination to picture what would follow. Death,
if it were sudden, would be a very merciful ending—but it would not
be death, if the Wire Devils could prevent it, until they had exhausted
every means, torture ingenious and devilish, for instance, to extort
from him the whereabouts of the plunder taken from them, and which they
knew to be in his possession. He knew much now, he knew their lair at
last, and for a moment, as these thoughts flashed across his mind, he
was prompted to retreat again while he had the chance. An inner voice
called him a fool to persist; another bade him go on. But the latter
voice was right. He knew much—but he did not know enough.
If his life was in peril in the one sense, it was equally in peril in
the other. He did not know enough. Who, for instance, was the master
brain behind the organisation? Where and how, for instance, was the next
trap they would set for him to be laid?
Brief snatches of conversation now began to reach the Hawk, as he drew
nearer to the door:
“... Twenty-five thousand dollars... Traders' National Bank...
superintendent's car... dummy package... counterfeit seals... that's
all right, but MacVightie says the Secret Service is sending a man by
the name of Birks out here....”
And then a voice at which the Hawk involuntarily held his breath, and to
which, at the door now, he listened in a sort of stunned incredulity,
as though he were indeed the sport of his own ears. It was a very quiet
voice, very soft, a velvet voice, a voice whose tones were cultured
tones—and whose language was the language of a pirate of the Spanish
Main.
“Time enough to attend to this Birks personage—what I want is the
Hawk!” came in limpid tones. “And if I were not tied down here in
this damned and double-damned wheel chair, I would have twisted his
throat for him long ago. I furnish brains—and I am cursed with a
miserable, crawling mob of gnats upon whom they are wasted! That's
it—gnats! Gnats—insects—moths—anything that, if shown the light,
knows nothing but to singe its own wings!” The voice was not raised;
it was like a mother's, like a woman's voice, talking plaintively
to a spoiled child—but there was something absolutely deadly in its
inflection.
“The Ladybird!” The Hawk's lips framed the words without sound,
and in a sort of numbed hesitant way. “I—I thought he was dead.”