stray stuff, routine railroad business, going over the wires. The Hawk,
flat on the floor and at one side of the jamb now, stared through the
doorway. It was the doorway leading to the cellar. The stairs, halfway
down, turned abruptly at right angles. The Hawk was rewarded with a view
of the stone foundation wall of the house, nothing more. But for the
moment the Hawk was lost to his immediate surroundings. The Hawk's
criminal acquaintanceship was wide, varied and intimate, and his mind
was still not entirely recovered from the startled amazement which the
recognition of that voice had brought him. He was quite fully conversant
with the Ladybird's record—only he had thought the Ladybird dead!
The Ladybird was not an ordinary criminal; instead of having spent
twenty years in Sing Sing, as was very justly his due, the police had
spent those twenty years in trying to put him there—and the Ladybird
was still to know the restrictions of a cage! Clever, fearless, cunning,
Napoleonic in the scope and breadth of his operations, the biggest
scoops on the blotters of the New York police, and, higher up, on
the Federal records, were laid to the Ladybird's door; but always,
somewhere, the thread of evidence broke—sometimes not till the door
itself was reached—but always it broke; the thread had never crossed
the threshold. The man himself was highly educated, a man now well on
toward fifty. In the underworld there were a thousand different stories
of his early life—that he had been a professor of science in a great
university; that he came of a rich family high up in the social scale;
that he had been, in fact, everything that the spice of imagination
could supply to enhance the glamour that surrounded him in the sordid
empire of Crimeland, where so many were his followers and worshippers.
But here, too, the thread was broken. None knew who he had been;
none knew where he had come from. They knew him only as one who was
invulnerable against the attacks and efforts of the police, as a peer
of their own unholy realm, as one whose name was a name to conjure
with—for in the name, the “moniker” they themselves had given the
Ladybird on account of his effeminate voice and manner, derision was
neither intended nor implied. There were limits and bounds to even the
underworld's temerity, and none knew better than the underworld the
sinister incongruity of those effeminate characteristics. Where another
might bellow and roar his rage, and threaten, the Ladybird lisped his
words—and struck.
But he, the Hawk, had thought the Ladybird dead! The man had been badly
hurt a year ago in a railroad accident somewhere in the East, and the
report had spread, and had been credited even in the inner circles of
the underworld, that he was dead. The Hawk's lips twisted grimly. The
Ladybird had seen to it evidently that the report was not denied! And
so, instead, the man was a cripple now, weaving his plots, and scheming
with that black, cunning brain of his from a wheel chair! Well, he——
The Hawk reached quickly into his pocket for pencil and paper—there
would be just light enough to enable him to see. The sounder was
rattling a brisk, tattoo, but it was no longer stray stuff. The message,
in quick, sure “sending,” was coming in the Wire Devils' secret
code. Letter by letter the Hawk jotted it down:
“pikxtfbmez byqetbqfsl kgqmbokufec srfijojeremb sthfgsbk bnfebvwq
jduuvsfpq xwfsnlipb ouflmnfsbg jeborr ettjupuj ohllsppn.”
The sounder ceased abruptly. There was silence. The Hawk replaced pencil
and paper in his pocket. The minutes passed—the message was evidently
being decoded. Then the Ladybird's voice:
“Very well! Code a message to Number One, and tell him Number Seven
has completed his work. Tell him again to take no chances by hurrying
things; that he is to wait until they are asleep. And warn him again
that under no circumstances is our hand to show in this to-night.”
A slight confusion followed from below—the scuf-, fling of feet, the
murmur of voices mingling with curious, indefinable metallic sounds. And
then suddenly the Ladybird's voice again:
“No—never mind that message! Damn my cursed, useless legs!” A
flow of unbridled oaths followed—the sacrilege the more horrible, the
menace the more ghastly for the languid, conversational tones in which
the blasphemy rolled so smoothly from the man's lips. “I'll trust
to no message tonight! Curse my legs! If I could only get there myself!
Failure! Failure! Failure! Gnats! But I will not have my plans ruined
to-night by any fool! Here, you, Dixer! Where's Dixer?”
“I'm here,” a voice answered.
“Listen, them!” murmured the Ladybird. “You haven't got any
more brains than any of the rest of them, but you're so cautious you
wouldn't take a chance on swapping a Mexican dollar for a gold eagle
unless you had a bottle of acid in your pocket—for fear the eagle was
bad! I want caution tonight, and I want orders obeyed to the letter, and
that's all I want. You take the runabout and go down there. You've
lots of time. Tell Number One you're in charge. I'll wire him to
that effect. And now pay attention to me so you won't have ignorance
for an excuse! It's time the police and the rags they call newspapers
around here had a little something to divert their attention—from us.
They're getting to be pests, and I want a lull in which to devote a
little more attention to—the Hawk. It's about time they understood
we are modest enough not to hog all the lime-light!” He laughed
a little, a low, modulated, dulcet laugh, that rippled like a
woman's—but in the ripple there was something that was akin to a
shudder. “Twice in the last month, the Traders' National has made
remittances to its banking correspondent at Elkhead for the mine country
pay rolls and on account of general business. They did it very neatly,
they fooled us completely—because the remittances were only piker
amounts, and because it was only a question of letting them get fed up
enough with their own cleverness to pull a good one! They're pulling
a good one to-night!” The Ladybird's laugh rippled out again.
“To outwit us, and paying us the compliment of not daring to trust to
ordinary means of shipment, they've had a little arrangement in force
with Lanson, the division superintendent. It was very simple. Lanson,
in his car, making a trip over the division, could never interest
us—certainly not! Why should it? Only they did not count on Number
Eleven inside the bank. Very well! They wrapped their banknotes up in
small packages, sealed them with the bank's seal, wrapped these small
packages up again into an innocent looking parcel without a seal, and
handed it over to a trusted young employé by the name of Meridan—Paul
Meridan. On both the former occasions, Meridan left the bank at the
usual closing hour, took the parcel with him, and went home; but,
later on, in the evening, he slipped down to the railroad yard, boarded
Lanson's private car, locked the parcel up in a small cupboard at the
bottom of the bookcase with which the main compartment of the car is
equipped, smoked a cigar with Lanson, turned in, the car was coupled to
the night express, and in the morning Meridan delivered his package in
Elkhead.
“That was the way it was done before, Dixer”—the Ladybird's
voice, if anything, grew softer—“and that's the way it is being
done this time—only there are more little sealed packages in the
parcel to-night. And to-night Meridan will sneak out of his home again,
and go down to the private car with the money as usual. Your way, yours
and the Butcher's, and that of the rest of you, would be to lay a
blackjack over Meridan's head on the way to the railroad yard, and
snatch the parcel. It's not my way. It's too hot, as it is, around
here now, and there's got to be a big enough noise made to attract
attention to the other side of the fence and give us a breathing spell.
Paul Meridan stands for this to-night. There's nothing new about one
of those ubiquitous 'trusted employés' going wrong, but everybody
sucks in their breaths just the same every time it happens, and the
splash is always just as big. Understand? Number One has got a dummy
package identical in appearance with Meridan's—each of the small
packages is sealed with the bank's seal in dark-green wax, and the
whole is wrapped up with the bank's special wrapping paper and tied
precisely as is the one Meridan has in his possession. Number Eleven
did his work well. There was, of course, no opportunity to effect the
exchange in the bank itself, and the dummy parcel had to be made up
outside, but there was no difficulty in carrying away enough wrapping
paper and wax for the purpose—and, as far as the seal was concerned,
it was you, Dixer, who engraved it a week ago, wasn't it?”
“Yes,” said Dixer. “You took me off the new twenty-spot plate for
that.”
“Exactly!” lisped the Ladybird. “Well, though this exchange could
not be effected in the bank, there was no great ingenuity required to
get Meridan to handle, perhaps only to lift, say, a pile of the bank's
wrapping paper from one position on a table or desk to another. If
the under sheet happened to be slightly smeared, and so left a not too
evident, but still well-defined finger print, it was, I am afraid, our
friend Meridan's great misfortune! That was one of the sheets Number
Eleven took away with him. Very good! Meridan delivers his package to
his bank's correspondent in Elkhead to-morrow morning. When the seals
are broken, the little packages are found to contain—piles of blotting
paper, neatly and carefully cut to the size of banknotes! There could
be no reason for suspecting Meridan, the trusted employé—no one
would think of such a thing. He had simply been the victim of a clever
substitution. He was entirely blameless. Naturally! That would be the
way Meridan would reason, and that would be the way they would figure he
had reasoned when they read the letter from 'a friend' that we are
sending to-night, and which they will receive in the morning. Meridan
did have an ample opportunity to effect the substitution himself. The
letter simply suggests a close inspection of the wrappers for finger
prints, and directs attention to Apartment B, on the ground floor of The
Linden—a rather fashionable abode for a young and newly married bank
clerk—where there might possibly be found certain articles such as,
say, a counterfeit of the bank's seal, a quantity of the bank's
special dark-green wax, and some superfluous sheets of the bank's
particular wrapping paper!”
There was utter silence from the cellar below for an instant, then there
came a callous guffaw.
“Some plant, all right!” applauded a voice hoarsely. “And it was
twenty-five thousand dollars, you said, wasn't it, chief?”
Again that rippling laugh, soft, low and silvery.
“Twenty-five thousand dollars is correct,” corroborated the
Ladybird. “And now, Dixer, if you fail, you'll talk to me—you've
seen all the cards. Number One has a duplicate key to the private car,
and a duplicate key to the bookcase cupboard. Don't enter the car
until you are sure Meridan, Lanson and the porter are asleep. I want
caution—and I will settle with the man until he will wish he had never
been born who lets our hand show in this tonight. The car won't be
moved from the siding until the Eastern Express is made up at midnight,
but don't touch the car while it is on the siding at all if it means
taking any chances; in that case you and Number One can get berths in
the Pullman, and, with the private car right behind you, you can then
make the exchange sometime during the night. You'll find Number One
and the rest of them in the old freight shed near the roundhouse, and,
with the private car right behind you, you can then make the exchange
sometime during the night. You'll find Number One and the rest of them
in the old freight shed near the roundhouse, and——”
The Hawk was wriggling silently back across the floor. There was no
scheme on foot to-night that was aimed at him; there was, instead,
twenty-five thousand dollars—in cash. He gained the window, and swung
to the sill. Footsteps, hurried, sounded from the direction of the
cellar stairs. The Hawk dropped to the ground, stole noiselessly around
the rear of the house, and reached the shelter of the grove of trees.
Here, he paused, slipped his mask into his pocket, and, for a moment,
a look of puzzled hesitation was in his face; then, running again,
but making a wide detour to avoid the guarded section of the track, he
headed for a point that would intercept the right of way quite close to
the Conmore station. And, as he ran, he jerked his watch and flashlight
from his pockets. It was a quarter past nine. It was early yet, very
early, and they certainly would not make any attempt on the car much
before midnight, but, for all that, the Hawk, who was intimately
conversant with the train schedules, shook his head impatiently, as he
sped along—there were twenty miles between himself and Selkirk, and
the quickest, as indeed the only way to get there, since, unlike Dixer,
he was not possessed of a runabout, was slow at best. There were no
westbound passenger trains scheduling Conmore for two hours or more,
and he would scarcely have dared to risk boarding one at the station if
there had been—there remained, then, not by choice, but by necessity,
the way freight. The way freight “made” Conmore at about ten
o'clock, and Selkirk at about eleven-thirty.
It would serve admirably, of course, if——He shook his head again,
and then laughed shortly. There were no “ifs”—he would be a
passenger on the way freight.
XVI—AN EVEN BREAK
IT took the Hawk some twenty-five minutes to reach the spot he had
selected as his objective, a spot some fifty yards east of the Conmore
siding switch, and here he lay down in the grass under the shelter of
the embankment. It was very quiet, very still, very dark; there was
nothing in sight save the winking station lights in the distance, and
the siding switch light nearer at hand.
“Twenty-five thousand dollars!” said the Hawk very softly to
himself. He rolled the words like some sweet morsel on his tongue.
“Twenty-five thousand dollars—in cash!”
The Hawk spread out one side of his coat, and under its protection, in
a diminutive but steady little glow of light, the tiny flashlight played
its ray upon the sheet of paper across which he had scrawled the Wire
Devils' code message.
“Key letter—x. One-two-three—stroke at four,” muttered the
Hawk—and in parallel columns set down the letters of the alphabet, one
column transposed.
It took the Hawk much longer to decode the message than it had taken
those in the house to perform the same task. The Hawk was working under
difficulties. A stone, none too flat, served to rest his paper upon, and
he had only two hands with which to manipulate pencil, flashlight and
coat. At the expiration of perhaps half an hour the result of his work
looked like this:
0242
And then the Hawk looked up—the throb and mutter of a distant train
was in the air. Pencil, paper and flashlight were restored to his
pockets, and he drew further back from the right of way. Far down the
track the way freight's headlight flashed into view. A minute passed,
another, and still another. And now, where the Hawk had lain, the ground
was ablaze with light—then black again; there was the roar of steam,
a grind and clash and shatter ricochetting down the string of cars, the
scream and shriek of brake-shoes, and then, a panting thing, as though
the big mogul were drawing in deep breaths after great exertion, the way
freight came to a standstill a few yards from the siding switch.
The Hawk crept forward, his eyes sweeping down the length of the train
in a keen, tense gaze. There was a flat car—it showed in a curious
open space, like a break in the black thread stretched along the
track—but it was too far away, and too perilously close to the
caboose. His eyes travelled back; and, being nearer to the train now
he discerned a boxcar, empty, its door open, almost in front of him. He
crawled forward until he was abreast of it, and until he lay close
up against the rails, looked cautiously up and down the length of the
train, sprang to his feet, and in an instant lay stretched out far back
in the interior of the car.
The train moved forward, stopped again at the station, and again moved
forward. The Hawk reverted to his pencil, paper and flashlight. The code
message now read:
seal waxp aper plan tedb ehin dlar gefr amed pict ureo verm ante lmer
idan ssit ting room
It was now simply a matter of grouping the letters properly, and the
Hawk wrote out the message at the bottom of the sheet:
Seal, wax (and) paper planted behind large framed picture over mantel
Meridan('.s sitting room.
The Hawk stared at it grimly.
“'Yea,” said the Hawk, “I guess that's right! I guess the job
is wished on the young fellow to a finish; he wouldn't have a hope,
and MacVightie would never look any further.” The Hawk was silent for
a moment. “Twenty-five thousand dollars—in cash!” murmured the
Hawk again.
The way freight ran slowly, very slowly—and it had already been from
ten to fifteen minutes late in reaching Conmore. At the next station
the train crew seemed possessed of a perversity infernal for shifting,
shunting and lifting cars. The Hawk, fuming with impatience, consulted
his watch, as they finally pulled out into the clear again. It was
twenty-five minutes of eleven.
The train rattled, bumped and jerked its way along—and at the
remaining intermediate stations there was more delay. And when,
approaching Selkirk at last, the Hawk consulted his watch again as the
train whistled, he was conscious that his impatience was tempered with
a sort of sullen, philosophical expectation of defeat. His luck had
been too abundant during the early part of the evening! It was now ten
minutes of twelve. He leaned out of the doorway, peering ahead. They
were just rolling into the Selkirk yard.
The Hawk swung himself out from the car, dropped to the ground, darted
quickly to one side over several spur tracks, and stood still. The way
freight, like a snail, dragged past him, opening, as it were, a panorama
of the scene in the yard: the low switch lights, red, green, purple and
white, like myriad and variegated fireflies hovering everywhere over
the ground; the bobbing lantern of a yardman here and there; the dancing
gleam of a headlight, as the little yard engine shot fussily away from a
string of lighted coaches—the Eastern Express—which it had evidently
just made up and backed down on the main line beside the station; while
to his right, up the yard, on one of the spurs, perhaps a hundred yards
away, its platform showing in the glow of the dome light, stood the
superintendent's car; and to his left, not quite so far up the yard,
and therefore nearer to him than the private car, the Hawk could make
out the black, irregular outline of the old freight shed.
The yard engine wheezed its way importantly up past the station,
stopped, a switch light winked, changed colour, and the shunter began to
puff its way back. The Hawk shrugged his shoulders resignedly. The game
was up and he was too late, unless Dixer had been forced to defer his
attempt until some time during the run that night, which was
hardly likely. The yard engine was backing down now to take the
superintendent's car up to the main line, preparatory to running
it back and coupling it to the string of coaches beside the station
platform. The Hawk smiled in the darkness without mirth, as he lost
sight of the little switcher on the other side of the private car. Well,
at least, he could gamble on the one chance that was left! There was
only one thing to do—go over to the station and get a Pullman berth.
If Dixer and the Butcher—the Butcher was “Number One”—were on
the Pullman, the money was still in the private car, and——
The Hawk's eyes narrowed suddenly. A man, crouched and running
swiftly, circled the end of the private car, and headed in the direction
of the freight shed—and like a flash the Hawk whirled and leaped
forward, running silently toward the same goal. The Hawk's brain,
stimulated, keen, alert, worked with lightning speed, and suddenly a
strange low laugh was on his lips. Their courses were convergent, his
and that black running shape's, and the other had not noticed him, and
there appeared to be something, a package, under the other's arm.
The Hawk, as he ran, slipped his mask over his face. Was it the dummy
package—or the twenty-five thousand in cash? Had the man succeeded,
or had the yard engine, backing down to couple on, disturbed him in his
attempt just at the psychological instant? Again that strange low laugh,
in a panting breath, was on the Hawk's lips. It did not matter! There
was a way now. He was not too late. If he got both of the packages
he could not lose—and there was a way to accomplish that, a wild,
dare-devil way, but a sure way!
It was black, pitch black, in near the shed, and the Hawk, with
the shorter distance to cover, reached the edge of the freight shed
platform, and crouched down on the track. Came the faint crash and bump
of the yard engine coupling to the private car; then the short, quick
gasps of a runner out of breath, and a flying form bounded across
the tracks, sprang to the platform, and dashed for the freight shed
door—and the Hawk, his muscles, rigid, taut as steel, released
suddenly, as a coiled spring is released, leaped and hurled himself upon
the other.
There was a yell of dismay, of surprise and fury, that seemed to echo
from one end of the yard to the other. The man went down in a heap
from the impact. The package, from under his arm, rolled off along the
platform—and the Hawk in a swoop was upon it. He snatched it up, and
running like a deer now, headed for the yard engine and the private car.
Came another yell from behind him. He heard the freight shed door flung
violently open; and then, in grim emphasis of a sudden chorus of wild,
infuriated shouts from Dixer's waiting companions, the vicious
tongue flame of a revolver split the black, and the roar of the report
reverberated through the yard like a cannon shot.
And now from the yard itself, the roundhouse and the station came
answering shouts. On the Hawk ran—he was alongside the private car
now, which was already in motion—and now he was opposite the cab of
the yard engine. The fireman, at the sudden pandemonium, head thrust
out, was hanging in the gangway. The Hawk's automatic swung to a line
with the other's head.
“Get out!” gritted the Hawk coldly. “Both of you—you and your
mate! Get out—on the other side!”
The man, with a dazed oath, retreated, and the Hawk sprang through the
gangway. The engineer, jumping from his seat, hesitated, and in the
yellow light of the cab lamp looked for the fraction of a second into
the muzzle of the Hawk's automatic, and into the hard, uncompromising
black eyes behind the mask—and followed the fireman in a hasty exit
through the opposite gangway.
The Hawk snatched at the throttle, pulled it wider—and, like a beast
stung to sudden madness under the spur, the yard engine quivered, and in
a storm of exhausts, coughing the red sparks skyward from the stack, the
drivers racing, spitting fire as they sought to bite and hold the
steel, plunged forward. Ahead the way was clear to the main line, but
behind——The Hawk dropped his package on the floor of the cab,
leaned suddenly far out through the gangway, and as suddenly fired, his
automatic cutting a lane of flame through the darkness. He had fired
at the ground, but his shot had been effective. The engineer or the
fireman, he could not distinguish which, leaping to board the private
car by the rear platform, leaped back instead, and with a series of wild
gesticulations, in which arms and fists waved furiously, vanished in the
darkness.