Chapter IV: Part 4

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.

They were moving fast now, and with every instant the speed was increasing. The Hawk clutched at the handrail, and lowered himself to the iron foot-rung which, on the express car, served in lieu of steps. Here, having chosen the opposite side to that of the Butcher at the throttle in the cab, he ran no risk of being observed. This “five-mile crossing,” wherever it was, promised to concern him a great deal more than he had anticipated! He leaned out, and clung there, staring ahead.

The big ten-wheeler was swaying and staggering like a drunken thing; the rush of the wind whipped at his face; a deafening roar sang in his ears. The Fast Mail usually ran fast; but the Butcher was running like a dare-devil, and the bark of the exhaust had quickened now into a single full-toned note deep as thunder.

With a sort of grim placidity, the Hawk clung to the lurching rail. Far ahead along the right of way, a shaft of light riven through walls of blackness, played the headlight. Shadowy objects, trees that loomed up for an instant and were gone, showed on the edge of the wavering ray. They tore through a rock cut, and, in the confined space and in the fraction of a second it took to traverse it, the roar was metamorphosed into an explosion. And then suddenly, as though by magic, the headlight shot off at a tangent, and the glistening lines of steel, that were always converging but never meeting, were gone, and the ray fell full upon a densely wooded tract where leaves and foliage became a soft and wonderful shade of green under the artificial light. The Hawk braced himself—and just in time. The ten-wheeler, unchecked, swung the curve with a mighty lurch, off drivers fairly lifted from the rails. She seemed to hang there hesitantly for a breathless instant, then with a crunch, staggering, settled back and struck into her stride again.

The thunder of the exhaust ceased abruptly, and the speed began to slacken. The Butcher had slammed the throttle shut. At the end of the headlight's ray, that was straight along the track again, a red light flashed up suddenly three times and vanished. The Hawk leaned farther out, tense now, straining his eyes ahead. It was evidently Number Four and Number Seven signalling from “five-mile crossing.”

The Butcher began to check with the “air.” And now, in the headlight's glare, the distance shortened, the Hawk could discern a large wagon, drawn by two horses, that appeared to be backed up close to the right-hand side of the track. Two forms seemed to be tugging at the horses, which equally seemed to be plunging restively—and then, being on the wrong side of the car, the angle of vision narrowed and he could see no more.

The Hawk turned now—his eyes on the door of the car. There was a possibility, a little more than a possibility, that the men inside, knowing that they had reached their destination, would come out this way. No—he had only to keep hidden from the men out there with the wagon until the car stopped—the men within were sliding back the side door. He swung himself still farther out on the foot-rung; then, curving back with the aid of the handrail, flattened himself against the side of the car.

They were close up to the wagon now, and he could hear voices cursing furiously at the horses, as the frightened animals stamped and pawed. And then the car bumped and jerked to a standstill, and the Butcher was bawling from the cab:

“Take the horses out, you blamed fools, and tie 'em back there on the road a bit till we're gone! We'd have a sweet time loading the wagon with them doing the tango every second! Take 'em out! We'll back the wagon up against the car.”

The Hawk lowered himself silently to the ground—to find that the car had come to a stop directly over a road crossing. The men in the car had joined their voices with the Butcher's, and in the confusion now the Hawk slipped quickly along the side of the car, stole around the rear end, and from that point of vantage stood watching the Butcher and his men at work.

He could see quite plainly, thanks to the light from the car's wide-open side door that flooded the scene. The horses had been unharnessed, and were being led away along the road. One of the men in the car jumped to the ground, as the Butcher called out, and together they backed the wagon close up against the car doorway; and then, presently, the men who had accompanied the horses, one carrying a lantern, came running back. The Hawk's eyes, from a general and comprehensive survey of the scene, fixed on the man who until now had not left the car, but who had now sprung down into the wagon and was running a short plank, to be used as a skid evidently, up to the threshold of the car door, which was a little above the level of the wagon. The light shone full in the man's face.

“Number Six—Crusty Kline!” confided the Hawk softly to himself. “I'm glad to know that. The last time I chummed with Crusty was back in little old Sing Sing. Guess he got out for good behaviour—thought he was elected for five spaces yet!”

Crusty spoke now, as he jumped back into the car.

“Look here, Butcher, I'm telling you again, this guy in here's in pretty bad shape.”

“Never mind about that!” replied the Butcher roughly. “Get the safe out! All hands now! We've got no time to monkey with him. He'll come around all right, I guess—anyway, it's none of our lookout!”

The men were bunched together now, three in the doorway of the car and two in the wagon, the safe between them. The Hawk was studying one of the two who stood in the wagon. One was Whitie Jim, as he already knew, but the other had had his back half turned, and the Hawk had not been able to see his face. The safe slid down the plank, and was levered and pushed forward into the middle of the wagon.

“French Pete!” said the Hawk suddenly and as softly as before, as the man he had been watching straightened up and turned around. “Say, I guess Sing Sing's gone out of business—or else somebody left the door open!”

But if the Hawk's words were indicative of a facetious mood, his actions were not. There was a sort of dawning inspiration in the dark, narrowed eyes; and the strong jaw, as it was outthrust, drew his lips into a grim, hard smile. They were spreading a huge tarpaulin over the wagon and safe—and abruptly the Hawk drew back, dropped to his hands and knees, crawled along the trackside on the opposite side of the car again until almost opposite the wagon, and there lay flat and motionless at the side of the road. There was a chance yet, still a chance, a very good chance—for that twenty thousand dollars' worth of unset stones.

“All right, now!” It was the Butcher's voice. “Pull her away a few feet into the clear!” The wagon creaked and rattled. “That's enough! Now get a move on—everybody!”

Steps crunched along the trackside—the Butcher and his two companions obviously making for the cab—and a moment later came the cough of the engine's exhaust, and the express car began to glide past the spot where the Hawk lay.

The Hawk raised himself cautiously on his elbows. Two dark forms and a bobbing lantern were already speeding toward where the horses had been left. The Hawk crawled forward, crossed the track—and paused. The engine and express car were fast disappearing in the distance; the lantern glimmered amongst the trees at the side of the road a good hundred yards away.

There was no shadow to fall across the back of the wagon.

“I said it was a nice night, and that it was strange how some people preferred a moon!” observed the Hawk cheerfully—and, lifting the end of the tarpaulin, he swung noiselessly under it into the wagon, and stretched himself out beside the safe.

X—THE THIRD PARTY

The Hawk felt upward with his hand over the safe. It was faced, he found, toward the rear of the wagon. This necessitated a change in his own position. He listened tensely. They were coming back with the horses now, but they were still quite a little way off. He shifted quickly around until his head and shoulders were in front of the safe.

“It was the last turn of the combination that I fell down on, though I don't see how it happened!” muttered the Hawk.

He felt above his head again, this time rubbing his fingers critically over the tarpaulin—and then the diminutive little flashlight winked, winked again as it played around him, and finally held steadily on the nickel dial. There were no inadvertent openings, and, particularly, no holes in the tarpaulin, and the texture of the tarpaulin was a guarantee that the tiny rays of light would not show through.

They were harnessing the horses into the wagon now. The Hawk, in a somewhat cramped position, due to the wagon's narrow width, his legs twisted at right angles to his body as he lay on his back, reached up and began to twirl the dial knob slowly and with painstaking care.

“Left, twenty-eight, one quarter,” murmured the Hawk; and, a moment later: “Two right, four——”

The Hawk swore earnestly under his breath. The jolt of the wagon, coming unexpectedly as it started forward, had caused him to spin the knob too far around.

It was hot, stifling hot, under the heavy tarpaulin, that, slanting downward from the little safe, lay almost against his face. A bead of sweat had gathered on his forehead. He brushed it away, and began again to work at the dial. It was more difficult now—the wagon bumped infernally. And as he worked, he could hear the muffled clatter of the horses' hoofs, and occasionally the voices of the two men on the seat.

And then suddenly the Hawk's fingers travelled from the dial knob to the handle. Had he got it this time, or—yes! The handle swung easily—there was a low metallic thud—the bolt had slipped back to the end of its grooves. The safe was unlocked!

“Twenty thousand dollars!” said the Hawk very softly—and, without the slightest sound, he edged his body backwards to afford space for the swing of the opening door. “Twenty thousand doll——”

The word died, half uttered, on the Hawk's lips. The flashlight was illuminating the interior of the safe. On the bottom lay a single, crisp, ten-dollar counterfeit note, over the face of which was scrawled in ink—“With the Hawk's compliments!” Otherwise the safe was empty.

For a moment, like a man dazed, he stared at the counterfeit note. He could not seem to believe his eyes, Empty—the safe was empty! The diamonds were gone—gone! Gone—and these poor fools were driving an empty safe to the Master Spider—and another poor fool, with dropped jaw, was staring, gaping like an imbecile, into one! And then, a grip upon himself again, he laughed low, grimly, unpleasantly. “With the Hawk's compliments!” He had sent a bill like that once to MacVightie inscribed—“With the Hawk's compliments!” This was very neat, very clever of—somebody. Of somebody—who must have known what the Wire Devils were up to to-night! There would be no doubt in the minds of the Wire Devils, who would have heard of that little episode with MacVightie, but that the Hawk had again forestalled them, and left them a ten-dollar counterfeit bill in exchange for—twenty thousand dollars' worth of unset diamonds! Only it was this somebody, and not he, the Hawk, who was twenty thousand dollars the richer for it!

He reached in, picked up the bill to put it in his, pocket—and suddenly laid it back again, and closed and locked the safe. Why deprive the Master Spider of a little joy; and, besides, it would carry a message not perhaps so erroneous after all—for, in a flash, logically, indisputably, apparently impossible though it appeared to be on the surface, he knew who that somebody was. The shelving of the theft to the Hawk's shoulders would have defeated its own object unless the theft were committed and discovered on this particular division of the railroad where the Hawk and, incidentally, his supposed gang of desperadoes were known to be operating. The messenger certainly had not been in a drugged condition when he went on duty, and, since it was only reasonable to assume that he would have satisfied himself everything was all right at that time, it was evident, as he had given no alarm, that the contents of the safe had been intact when he took charge—whether as a “through” man in New York, or at the eastern terminus of the road, or at the last divisional point—it did not matter which. The robbery, then, had been committed while the messenger was present in the car—and it had been committed on this division. The safe had not been forced, it showed not the slightest sign of violence—it had been opened on the combination. Some one then, an expert safe-worker, in the first stages of the messenger's drugged condition, had happened into the car just ahead of him, the Hawk, and had done exactly what he, the Hawk, had intended to do?

“No,” said the Hawk. “No, I guess not.” He was wriggling noiselessly backward, and his feet were hanging out now over the end of the wagon. “No—coincidences like that don't happen—not very often!” The Hawk's head and shoulders were still under the tarpaulin, but his feet now could just feel the ground beneath them. “I guess,” said the Hawk, as he suddenly withdrew his head, and, crouching low, ran a few steps with the wagon, then dropped full length in the road, “I guess it's—the third party.”

The wagon disappeared in the darkness. The Hawk rose, and, turning, broke into a run back along the road.

He had been longer in the wagon than he had thought—it took him ten minutes to regain the railroad tracks.

Here, without pause, still running, he kept on along the right of way—but there was a hard twist to his lips, and the clenching of his fists was not wholly due to runner's “form.” How far had the Butcher taken the car before deserting it? A mile? Two miles—three? He could not run three miles under half an hour, and that would be fast over railroad ties! How long would it be before the train crew of the stalled Mail got back to Burke's Siding and managed somehow, in spite of the cut wires, to give the alarm—or how long before the dispatcher at Selkirk, with the Fast Mail reported “out” at Burke's Siding and no “O. S.” from Bradley, would smell a rat? It would take time after that, of course, before anything could be done; but, at best, the margin left for him was desperately narrow.

He ran on and on; his eyes, grown accustomed to the darkness, enabling him to pick out the ties with a fair degree of accuracy. There was not a sound save that of his own footsteps. He stopped for breath again and again; and again and again ran on at top speed. It seemed as though he had run not three miles, but six, when finally, far ahead, he caught a glow of light. The Butcher and his confederates had evidently not taken the trouble to close the side door of the car!

Instinctively, the Hawk, in caution, slowed his pace—and the next instant, smiling pityingly at himself for the act, ran on the faster. The Butcher and the other two would long since have made their getaway! There was only the messenger—and the messenger was drugged. That was all that need concern him now—the messenger—to find some way to rouse the man so that he could talk.

The Hawk reached the car, ran along the side to the open door—and stood suddenly still. And then, with a low, startled cry, he swung himself up and through the doorway, and running forward, knelt beside a huddled form on the floor. It was the messenger, sprawled on his face now, motionless, and it was no longer a case of being drugged—the man had been shot! There was a dark, ugly pool on the flooring, and a thin red stream had trickled away in a zigzag course along one of the planks. The Hawk's lips were tight. The Butcher's work! But why? Why? Yes! Yes, he understood! The Butcher, too, in some way had discovered that the messenger was—the third party!

The boy—he was even more of a boy now in appearance, it seemed to the Hawk, with his ashen face and colourless lips—the boy moaned a little, and, as the Hawk lifted him up, opened his eyes.

The Hawk produced a flask, and forced a few drops between the other's lips.

“Listen!” he said distinctly. “Try and understand what I am saying. Did they get the diamonds from you after they shot you?”

The boy's eyes widened with a quick, sudden fear. Perhaps the drug had begun to wear off—perhaps it was the wound and the loss of blood that had cleared his brain.

“The diamonds?” he faltered.

“Yes,” said the Hawk grimly. “The diamonds! You took them. Did you tell those men where they were?”

“It's—it's a lie!” The boy seemed to shiver convulsively. Then, his voice scarcely audible: “No, it's—it's true. I—I did. I—I guess I'm going out—ain't I? It's—it's true. But I—I didn't tell. There weren't any men—I——” He had fainted in the Hawk's arms.

“My God!” whispered the Hawk solemnly. “It's true—the kid's dying.”

He held the flask to the other's lips again. It wasn't the Butcher, then, who had shot the boy; and, besides, he saw now that the wound was in a strangely curious place—in the back, below the shoulder blade; the boy had been sitting in his shirt sleeves, and the back of his vest was soaked with blood. And the Hawk remembered the fusillade of bullets that had swept up the interior of the car, and the spat upon the forward door panel as he had crouched there outside—and he understood. The boy, sitting in a stupor in his chair facing the forward door, had been directly in the line of fire, and a stray bullet had found its mark.

“I—I don't know how you knew”—the boy had roused, and was speaking again—“but—but I'm going out—and—and it's true. Two days ago, a man gave me a hundred dollars to stand for—for knockout drops on the run to-night. I—I couldn't get caught—I—I was safe—whatever happened. I'd be found drugged—and—and no blame coming to me—and——” He motioned weakly toward the flask in the Hawk's hand. “Give me—give me some more of that!”

He did not speak for a moment.

“And, instead,” prompted the Hawk quietly, “you double-crossed the game.”

“I—I had a counterfeit ten-dollar bill,” the boy went on with an effort. “I'd heard about the Hawk—and—and MacVightie. I knew from what:—the fellow said—that the Hawk—wasn't one of them. I—I got to thinking. All I had to do was empty the safe—and—and write just what the Hawk did on the bill—and—and shove it in the safe—and—and take the diamonds—and—and then drink the tea that had the drops in it. I—I would be drugged, and they—they'd think the Hawk did it while I was drugged before they—they got here—and—and that's what I did.”

The boy was silent again. It was still outside, very still—only the chirpings of the insects and the night-sounds the Hawk had listened to while he had lain below the embankment waiting for the train at Burke's Siding. There was a set, strained look on the Hawk's face. The kid was paying the long price—for twenty thousand dollars' worth of unset diamonds!

“To make it look like—like the real thing”—the boy's lips were moving again—“I—I cleaned out everything in the safe—but—but of course there mustn't any of that be found—and—and I tied the stuff up—and—and weighted it, and dropped it—into—the—river as we came over the bridge at Moosehead. And then I had to—to hide the diamonds so they wouldn't be found on me, and yet so's they—they'd come along with me—and—and not be left in the car. I was afraid that when some of the train crew found me drugged—they—they'd undress me—and—and put me to bed—and—and so I didn't dare hide the diamonds in my clothes. They're—they're—in——” He raised himself up suddenly, clutched frantically at the Hawk's shoulders and his voice rang wildly through the car. “Hold me tight—hold me tight—don't let me go out yet—I—I got something more to say! Don't tell her! Don't tell her! I'll tell you where the stones are, they're in the lining of my lunch satchel—but don't—oh, for God's sake, don't tell her—don't let her know that—that I'm a—thief! You don't have to, do you? Say you don't! I'm—I'm going out—I—I've got what's coming to me, and that's—enough—isn't it—without her knowing too? It—it would kill her. She was a good mother—do you hear!”

He was stiffening back in the Hawk's arms. “And this ain't coming to her. She was a good mother—do you hear—everybody called her mother, but she's my mother—you know—old Mother Barrett—short-order house—you know—old—Mother—Barrett—good——”

The boy never spoke again.

The Hawk laid the still form gently back on the floor of the car, and stood up. And there was a mist in the Hawk's eyes that blotted out his immediate surroundings, and in the mist he seemed to see another scene, and it was the picture of a gentle, kindly-faced old woman, who had silver hair, and who wore clothes that were a little threadbare, and whose grey Irish eyes behind the spectacles were filled with tears, and he seemed to see the thin shoulders square proudly back, and he seemed to hear her speak again: “I love my boy, I love him with all my heart, but I should a thousand times rather see him dead than know him for a thief.”

Mechanically the Hawk moved over to the desk where the lunch satchel still lay, and emptied out the remainder of the food.

“No,” said the Hawk, “I guess she'll never know; and I guess I'd have to take the stuff now, anyway, whether I wanted to or not—if she's not to know.” He was examining the inside of the satchel. It was an old and well-worn affair, and a torn piece of the lining, stuck down with paste at the edges, would ordinarily have attracted no attention. The Hawk loosened this, and felt inside. At the bottom, carefully packed away, were strips of cotton wadding. He took one out. Embedded in this were a number of diamonds, which, as he drew the wadding apart, flashed brilliantly in the light of the oil lamps above his head. He wrapped the stones up again, and put them in his pocket—took out the remainder from the satchel, put these also in his pocket, and replaced in the satchel the portion of the lunch he had removed. It mattered little about the torn lining now!

“He kind of put it up to me,” said the Hawk slowly. “Yes, and she did too—without knowing it—old Mother Barrett. It's kind of queer she should have said that—kind of queer.” The Hawk pulled the drawer of the desk open, and nodded as he found and took out the messenger's revolver. “Thought he'd have one, and that it would most likely be here,” he muttered.

He crossed the car, and listened intently at the open side door. There was no sound—nothing, for instance, coming from Bradley yet. He closed the door, and stood for an instant looking down at the boy's form on the floor.

“I guess I can fix it for you, kid—maybe,” he said simply. “I guess I can.”

In rapid succession he fired five of the seven shots from the revolver; then, stooping, laid the weapon, as though it had dropped at last from nerveless fingers, just beside the boy's outstretched hand. He straightened up, stepped to the side door, and slid it open again.

“It'll let the smoke out before anybody gets here,” said the Hawk. “The Butcher isn't coming forward with any testimony, and with all those shots fired at the time of the hold-up who's to know the boy didn't fight till he went down and out? And now I guess I'll make my own getaway!” He dropped to the trackside, and started forward at a brisk pace. “I'll keep on a bit until I hear something coming,” he decided. “Then I'll lay low while they're cleaning up the line, and wait till I can hop a freight, east or west, that will get me out of this particular locality. After that, there's nothing to it!”

A hundred yards farther on the Hawk spoke again, and there was a twisted smile on the Hawk's lips.

“It'll break her heart anyway, I guess,” he said; “but it'll help some maybe to be proud of him. Yes, I guess they'll tell her that, all right—that he died a game kid.”

XI—THE LEAD CAPSULE

THE Hawk yawned. He had been almost forty-eight hours without sleep. He had slept all day after he had regained his room, following the night at “Five-Mile Crossing,” but after that——

He frowned in a perturbed and puzzled way. Ensconced now in a wicker lounging chair in the observation car of the Coast Limited, he was apparently engrossed in the financial page of his newspaper, and apparently quite oblivious of his fellow travellers, some four or five of whom lounged and smoked in their own respective wicker chairs around him. On a little pad of paper, which he held in his left hand, he might even, without serious tax upon the imagination, have appeared to be calculating the effect of the market's fluctuations upon personal, and perhaps narrowly held, margins—for again he scowled unhappily. The Hawk, however, at the moment, was engrossed solely with a few curiously assorted letters of the alphabet, which were scrawled across the top of the pad. They ran:

pzudl kmlqpb.

Beneath this his pencil had already been at work, and he had transformed the line as follows:

He was staring at this result now in a bewildered way. Then his pencil picked out the remaining five unscored letters, and mechanically set them down as a third line:

“Rainy”—there was one word, just one word—“rainy.” What did it mean? What was the significance of the word? No message in the Wire Devils' cipher, once the message was decoded, but had been at once clear and unmistakable in its meaning before. Had they resorted now to code words as well, to a cipher within a cipher? Into the grimness of the Hawk's smile there crept a hint of weariness, as he slipped the pad into his pocket, allowed the newspaper to drop to his knees, and, edging his chair around, gazed out of the window.

For once his knowledge of their cipher was obviously useless to him—and useless when a foreknowledge of their plans at that moment meant scarcely less than a matter of life and death to him in a very unpleasantly real and literal sense. Not a word had come from them; not a message had gone over the wires on either of the two preceding nights; not a sign of existence had they given since three nights ago when, with an empty safe as the sole reward for their elaborately laid plans, he, the Hawk, had enriched himself with the twenty thousand dollars' worth of diamonds it had once contained. There had been something sinister, something ominous in their silence, as compared with the almost insane ravings of MacVightie, the police, and the press—yes, and the railroad men as well, who were particularly incensed over the “murder” of the young messenger found dead at his post in the express car with his revolver partially emptied on the floor beside him.

The Hawk drummed abstractedly with his finger tips upon the window pane. MacVightie, the police, and the press made no doubt but that he, the Hawk, was the leader of the desperadoes who were terrorising that particular section of the country; on the other hand, the gang itself had already had occasions enough and in plenty to be painfully aware that he, the Hawk, played always a lone hand—and won! A smile, grim and ironical, parted the firm, set lips. The police and the Wire Devils had a common interest—the Hawk. He was the storm centre.

The smile faded, the strong jaws clamped, and the dark eyes narrowed on the flying landscape. It was not the police who concerned him, it was not the impotent frothings of the press—it was the silence that the Wire Devils had not broken since that night until they had broken it this morning with the single word that, now that he had deciphered it, still meant nothing to him. A dozen times, stealing their cipher messages, he had turned all their carefully prepared plans to his own account, and snatched away the prize, even as they were in the act of reaching for it. But he was not a fool to close his eyes to the inevitable result. He was pitted against the cleverest brains in the criminal world; all the cunning that they knew would be ruthlessly turned against him; and, already out to “get” him, a price already guaranteed to the lucky member of the band out of the common funds, the empty safe of three nights before, with its jeering ten-dollar counterfeit bill flung in their faces, crowned, he feared, their injuries at his hands, and marked the turning point where they would leave no stone unturned to wreak their vengeance upon him.

And he did not like this silence of theirs since that night. Were they suspicious at last that he had the key to their cipher? He did not think so, and yet he did not know—it was always a possibility. But in any case, wary of any move they might make, he had, as far as it was humanly possible, remained within sound of a telegraph instrument ever since. Last night, for example, taking advantage of some repairs that were being made on the station at Elk Head, fifty miles east of Selkirk, he had lain hidden behind a mass of building material in the dismantled waiting room within earshot of the telegraph sounder—and there had been nothing. Forced to retire from there by the advent of the workmen, he had eaten a very leisurely breakfast at the lunch counter—still within earshot of the sounder. He had lingered around the station as long as he had dared without running the risk of exciting suspicion, and then he had taken the local east for Bald Creek—and taken the chance, because he had no choice, that nothing would “break” over the wires during the three-quarters of an hour that he was on the train. The Limited scheduled Bald Creek, and that would give him an excuse for remaining there, an innocent and prospective patron of the road, until the Limited's arrival some two hours later. After that, if nothing happened, he had intended to go back on the Limited to Selkirk—and get some sleep.

The Hawk yawned heavily again. Yes, after an almost uninterrupted vigil of forty-eight hours one needed sleep. Well, he was on his way back to Selkirk now—on the Limited. Only something had happened. Almost at the moment that the Limited had pulled into Bald Creek, the Wire Devils had broken their silence, and a cipher message had flashed over the wires. He had waited for it, fought for it, schemed for it, gone without sleep for two days and nights for it—and he had been rewarded. He had intercepted the message, deciphered it, he had got it at last—he had it now! It was the one word—“rainy.” And the word to him meant—nothing!

The Hawk's fingers ceased their drumming on the window pane, his head inclined slightly to one side, and he listened. His fellow travellers had evidently scraped up acquaintanceship. The conversation had become general—and suddenly interesting.

“... Yes, unquestionably! The amount I have with me is worth quite easily a half million francs—a hundred thousand dollars. It is not my personal property, I regret to say. Quantities sufficient to be of material service are for the most part institutionally held.”

The Hawk swung around in his chair, and with frank interest surveyed the little group. He had scanned them once already, critically, comprehensively—at the moment he had first entered the car. The man who sat nearest to him was a doctor from Selkirk; and, it being the ingrained policy of the Hawk to know a reporter as he would know a plain-clothes man, he had recognised one of the others as a young reporter on the staff of the Selkirk Evening Journal. The others again, of whom there were three, were strangers to him. His eyes rested—with frank interest—on the man who had just spoken. There had been just a trace of accent in the other's perfect English, and it bore out the man's appearance. The man was perhaps forty-five years of age, rather swarthy in complexion, and, though slight in build, commanding in presence. The black Vandyke beard, as well as the mustache, was carefully trimmed; and his face had an air of the student about it, an air that was enhanced by the extraordinarily heavy-lensed spectacles which he wore. The excellent clothes were unmistakably of foreign cut.

“Great Scott!” ejaculated the reporter. “Is that straight?” He twisted his cigar excitedly from one corner of his mouth to the other. “I say, I don't suppose there's a chance of getting a squint at it, eh?”

“A—squint?” The foreigner's face was politely puzzled.

“I mean a chance to see it—to see what it looks like,” interpreted the reporter, with a laugh.