He reached the roundhouse, stepped close up against the wall to take advantage of the security afforded by the shadows, and began to circle the building. The Hawk was treading silently now. Halfway around the building he halted abruptly, his head cocked suddenly in a listening attitude toward a small, open and lighted window on a level with his shoulders, and in order to pass which he had just been on the point of stooping down.
“I think,” said the Hawk softly to himself, “I think this sounds as though it interested me.”
He crept cautiously forward, and from the edge of the window glanced inside. It was the turner's “cubbyhole,” or office. The door was closed, and two men were standing there, talking earnestly. The Hawk's face, dimly outlined now in the window light, smooth-shaven, square-jawed, the eyes and forehead hidden by the brim of the slouch hat that was pulled forward almost to the bridge of his nose, set with a curious and significant smile. It was not a bad place for a private conference! He had thought he had recognised the voice—and he had not been mistaken. The big, heavy-built, thin-lipped, pugnacious-faced man was MacVightie, the head of the railroad's detective force; the other, a smaller man, with alert grey eyes, his forehead furrowed anxiously, whose clenched hand rested on the table, was Lanson, the division superintendent.
“I don't know, damn it, MacVightie!” Lanson was saying savagely. “I don't know what to think, or believe—I only know that a Pullman hold-up one night, a twenty-thousand-dollar necklace stolen the next, an express car looted, and several other little pleasant episodes all jammed one on top of the other, means hell to pay out here and nothing to pay it with, unless we can do something almighty quick!”
“Any more of those messages?” inquired MacVightie—there was an ominous abstraction in his tones.
“Yes—to-night.”
“Make anything of it?”
“No,” said Lanson; “and I think it's about time to put a kink in that little business, whether they mean anything or not. This cat-and-mouse game we've been playing isn't——”
“We'll get back to that in a minute,” interrupted MacVightie quietly. “Here's a little something else that may possibly fit into the combination.” He reached into his pocket, took out his pocketbook, opened it, and handed the division superintendent a crisp new ten-dollar note.
The Hawk's lips thinned instantly, and he swore sharply under his breath.