“I——”
“Shut up—both of you!” ordered MacVightie gruffly. “What do you say, Lanson? Is this the Hawk?”
The Hawk had not seen the superintendent, and he turned now quickly. Lanson's steel-grey eyes were boring into him coldly.
“Yes,” said Lanson evenly, “I think I could swear he was the man who held us up in the private car the other night—but it's easily proved. If he is the Hawk, he has got a wound in his right side. I saw him clap his hand there when the pistol went off in his fight with Meridan.”
“Well, we'll soon see!” snapped MacVightie.
The Hawk licked his lips.
“You needn't look,” he said morosely. “It's there.”
“So you admit it, do you?” MacVightie's smile was unpleasant. “Well, then, since you seem to be so thick with that pack of curs back there in the train, perhaps you'll admit to a hand in this little counterfeiting plant as well?”
“No; I won't!” said the Hawk shortly. “I never had anything to do with this! I don't admit anything of the kind! Ask him!”—the Hawk jerked his hand toward the Ladybird.
“Oh, all right!” MacVightie smiled unpleasantly again. “Let it go at that for now, if you like it that way. It doesn't much matter. You're birds of a feather, anyway, and there's enough on all of you to go around!” He reached behind him, and picked up the package of banknotes from where he had evidently laid it on the nearest bench. “How did you know this was on the train, and how did you know where it was in the car—and tell the truth about it!”
“I heard you and Mr. Lanson talking about it tonight,” said the Hawk.
“Where?”
“In the roundhouse. I was outside the window. And”—the Hawk's voice thinned in a sudden snarl—“you go to the devil with your questions!”
The Ladybird was craned forward again in the wheel chair listening intently, he sank back now and scowled murderously at the Hawk. MacVightie shrugged his shoulders, handed the package to one of his three men who were with him in the cellar, and drew a pair of handcuffs from his pocket.
“Get that cash down to the train, and put it back with the gold where it will be under guard, MacGregor!” he ordered brusquely. “And you two carry this fellow”—he rattled his handcuffs in the Butcher's direction—“down there, too. Tell Marston to let you have three or four more men. The chap that Williams has got upstairs there will have to be carried, too, I guess; and our friend here, in the invalid buggy, with the thanksgiving expression on his face, will have to have somebody to push him along over the ruts. Yes, and I'll want a couple to put in the night here—tell Marston to make it four. And now, beat it! You run ahead, MacGregor, and get back as soon as you can—we don't want to tie up the traffic all night!”
The two men picked up the Butcher, and, preceded by their companion with the package of banknotes, went up the stairs. MacVightie caught the Hawk's arm roughly, snapped one link of the steel cuffs over the Hawk's right wrist, and yanked the Hawk ungently over to a position beside the wheel chair.
He snapped the other link over the Ladybird's left wrist, and smiled menacingly.
“I guess there's dead weight enough there to anchor you for a few minutes while I take a look around here!” he said curtly—and turned to Lan-son.
The Hawk was licking at his lips again. Upstairs, the tramp of feet was dying away: There would be no one there now but the other member of the gang who, it seemed, had been hurt when the house was rushed, and the one man who was guarding the prisoner. The Ladybird's cultured voice at the Hawk's side poured out an uninterrupted stream of abandoned oaths that were like a shudder in the nonchalant, conversational tones in which they fell from the twitching lips. MacVightie and Lanson were moving here and there about the place. Snatches of their conversation reached the Hawk:
...Well, I reckon I called the turn, all right, when I said it was the same crowd that was turning out the phony stuff, eh?... Yes, the telegraph set.
... Can't trace the wires until daylight, of course.
... Sure, a clean-up....”
The Hawk's eyes travelled furtively around the cellar. They rested hungrily on a spot in front of him, where, in the centre of the floor, but partially hidden by one of the workbenches, was the bolted trapdoor of the underground passage that led out to the wagon shed. He circled his lips with his tongue again, and furtively again, his glance travelled on—to the door at the head of the cellar stairs that had a massive bolt, and that, evidently swinging back of its own accord after the men had passed through, now hung just ajar—to a long, narrow window, most tantalising of all because it was wide open, that was shoulder high, just above the stonework of the cellar and evidently on a level with the ground outside.
And then suddenly the Hawk's lids drooped—to hide a quick flash and gleam that lighted the dark eyes. MacVightie had stooped, and throwing back the bolt, had lifted up the trapdoor.
“Hello!” he ejaculated. “What's this? Here, Lanson! It looks like a passage of some sort.” He was leaning down into the opening. “Yes, so help me, that's what it is!” He lowered himself hurriedly through the trapdoor, and his voice came back muffled into the cellar. “Come down here a minute, Lanson; they certainly had things worked out to a fine point!”
Lanson's back, as, following MacVightie, he lowered himself through the opening, was turned to the Hawk—and in a flash the Hawk's free hand had swept behind him under his coat to the concealed pocket in the back lining, and his eyes were thrust within an inch of the Ladybird's as he lowered his head.
“You understand?”—the Hawk's lips did not move, he was breathing his words, while a skeleton key worked swiftly at the handcuff on his wrist—“you understand? It's you or me! You make a sound to queer me, and I'll get you—first!”
The livid face was contorted, working with impotent fury, but, perhaps for the first time that it had ever been there, there was fear In the Ladybird's burning eyes. The Hawk's hand was free now. Lanson's shoulders were just disappearing through the opening, and with a lightning spring the Hawk reached the trapdoor, swung it down, bolted it, and, running without a sound, gained the head of the cellar stairs, pulled the door gently shut, slid the bolt silently into place—and the next moment the Hawk, returning, darted to the window, swung himself up to the ledge, and vanished.