“Yes, that's right!” Lanson laughed now in a grimly humorous way. “It's in the biggest case of all! Yes, I guess it's all right, MacVightie; anyway, another hour or two will tell the story. The shift should have been made at Mornleigh without any trouble, and the Limited will come through here without a thing in the express car except the guards! If they hold her up anywhere on the division, that's all they'll find—the guards, and one of your posses. Yes, it ought to work.” Lanson's voice took on a curiously monotonous drone, as though he were checking over the details in his own mind, and unconsciously doing so audibly. “The Limited takes water at Mornleigh, and No. 18 always takes the siding there to let the Limited pass, so there's nothing in that to arouse suspicion. In the darkness, with the door of the Limited's express car only a foot or so away from the door of No. 18'. baggage car, and a picked crew to transfer the gold, I don't see how there could be any 'leak.' The Limited pulls in here with its guarded express car—everything looks just as those Wire Devils would expect it to look—and they know the gold left the coast on that train, and in that car. Yes, I think we win to-night. If they hold up the Limited they'll catch a Tartar, and without any risk on our part as far as the gold is concerned. How many men in the posse scattered through the cars on that train?”
“Twenty,” said MacVightie tersely.
“Good!” said Lanson approvingly. “That ought to be enough to round them up—if they nibble at the bait at all. And if they don't, if they let the Limited go through unmolested, it will be pretty nearly safe to assume, as I said before, that they figure gold in the bulk is too awkward a thing to handle, and too hard to get away with. But even there we are not taking any chances; they might have discovered that it had been transferred. How many men in the posse on No. 18?”
“The same number,” replied MacVightie—and then MacVightie's fist crashed down into the palm of his hand. “I hope they start something!” he exclaimed savagely. “I'd give a year's salary to get to grips with them, and if I ever do I'll clean 'em out! And I'll see that some of them, and particularly that damned Hawk, swing for it! I haven't forgotten the murder of old Mother Barrett's boy in the express car that night, or a dozen others, or——”
“That's your end of it, MacVightie,” said Lanson grimly. “Mine's to see five hundred thousand dollars' worth of bullion and forty thousand in cash over this division and safely on its way East. If the plan——”
The Hawk, slipping silently out of the shadows, began to cross the railroad yard, heading for the station.
“Forty thousand dollars,” said the Hawk softly to himself—and chuckled suddenly. “Forty thousand dollars in a big packing case! The biggest case of the lot, he said, wasn't it?” The chuckle died away, and the Hawk's face grew hard. “I don't know!” muttered the Hawk. “It's no cinch! I guess there'll be something doing to-night!”
A glance at the illuminated dial of the clock on the station tower showed it to be half past eight, as the Hawk stepped to the platform. He hesitated an instant in indecision, then went on into the general waiting room. There was ample time. The Limited was not due for another hour; and No. 18—in which alone he had now any concern—did not schedule Selkirk until forty minutes after the Limited. Nearly two hours!
The Hawk, standing in the doorway of the waiting room, ostentatiously consulted a time-table which he drew from his pocket, frowned, glanced about him, and, finally, approaching the news-counter, which appeared for the moment to be minus an attendant, helped himself to a newspaper, tossed a copper on top of the pile, and appropriated the nearest seat. The Hawk opened his paper in front of him—and over the top of the paper inspected with some interest the view afforded by the open doorway of the news-counter, which was directly facing him and but a few feet away. The news-counter was a long, narrow affair, glass enclosed, with big sliding windows, making one corner of the waiting room, and at its further end boasted a little office of its own. The door of this private domain was closed, but it, too, was glass panelled, and the apparent absence of any attendant was explained. The Hawk permitted a curious smile to flicker across his lips behind his newspaper. Inside the little office a man, sprawled forward in a chair, his head resting on his arms, which were outflung across the desk in front of him, appeared to be sound asleep and magnificently oblivious to anything so grossly material as business.
The Hawk shifted his glance, this time for a more critical survey of the waiting room. He found himself, strangely enough, quite sheltered from observation. True, it was “between trains,” and there were very few people in the room—he had noted several women and an elderly man with a little boy, as he had come in—but these were now screened from his view by the large, boxed-in posts, or pillars, that, in the remodelling and enlargement of the station some years before, had sought to combine, evidently, ornamentation with stability.