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.