“Yes?... Hello!... What is it?” she asked, a little sleepily. “Yes, this is Mrs. Meridan... What?... My husband!” Her voice rang out in sudden terror. “What did you say?” she cried frantically. “Yes, yes—the Hawk—my husband—unconscious... You are not telling me all the truth—you are trying to keep the worst from me—for God's sake tell me the truth!... Not dangerous?... You are sure—you are sure?... Yes, yes, I understand!... At the station in half an hour... I will be there.”
Mechanically she hung the receiver on the hook, and clung for a moment to the table's edge, her face grey and bloodless; and then her lips moved, and one hand clenched until the tight-drawn skin across the knuckles was an ivory white.
“I pray God they get this Hawk!” she whispered. “I pray God they do! And I pray God they kill him! The coward! The miserable, pitiful coward!”
The Hawk's fingers were digging at the window sill, because somehow his knees were refusing to support his weight. What was she saying? He did not quite understand. Well, it did not matter, she was gone now into that other room—only she had left the light on. It was very strange the way his hand on the window sill seemed to keep pulling his body around in circles!
Time had lost concrete significance to the Hawk. She appeared again, fully dressed now, and, switching off the light, went out into the hall, and the front door closed behind her.
The Hawk parted the portières, and staggered across the room—and, a moment later, a dark form, a newspaper parcel clutched under its arm, emerged stealthily from the vestibule, and, reeling like a drunken man, disappeared in the darkness down the street.
XVII—A HOLE IN THE WALL
THE wound was healed—partially, at least. If the Hawk had unduly shortened his period of convalescence, he was perhaps justified, and not wholly without excuse! He stood now in the black shadows, hugged close to the wall of the roundhouse. And now he moved stealthily forward, until, from a crouched position, he straightened up against the wall at the side of one of the few windows which were lighted. Lanson had strolled aimlessly across the tracks from the station some ten minutes before, and, five minutes later, MacVightie had followed Lanson—to their chosen spot for secret conferences, this little “cubbyhole” of a turner's office in the roundhouse, as the Hawk, from more than one experience in the past, had very good reason to know. They were in there now, and, as the Hawk was likewise exceedingly well aware, the events of the next few hours, and incidentally his own particular movements, depended very pertinently upon the movements of MacVightie and Lanson.