Pieced together, the whole affair was quite simple. In a word, every move that had been made by Larson and MacVightie at the instigation of the Secret Service men, and, presumably, in particular by one Birks, was known to the Ladybird and the Wire Devils. Lanson and MacVightie had waited until the last moment before making the transfer at Mornleigh, the final stop before Selkirk, but the Bantam was already accompanying the gold east on the Limited, and, added to the Bantam by that: time, there would have been those others who were detailed to board the Limited at the various points still further west of Mornleigh.
It was very simple. The Bantam had not been asleep at Mornleigh, and it was not the contents of the express car alone that had been transferred there—the Bantam and his companions had likewise transferred themselves to No. 18! Also, either because the Bantam had spotted some of MacVightie's men, or because logical deductions in the Ladybird's very shrewd brain had led to that conclusion, it was known that No. 18 harboured a posse. It was evident, however, that this in no way dismayed the Ladybird; and it was equally evident that both Lan-son and MacVightie were very far astray, in their estimate of the nerve and resourcefulness of the brain behind the Wire Devils' organisation, to have, even considered it as a possibility that the physical difficulty in the way of handling a half million in raw gold would have caused the Ladybird to hesitate an instant in an effort to get his hands upon it. A half million—was a half million! That was the answer! The only change the Ladybird had seen fit to make was to mobilise, as it were, the entire, strength of the Wire Devils to offset MacVightie's posse. Apart from that, according to the final message, the prearranged plan was to stand.
It was not a plan that was markedly original, paralleling very closely, as it did, the Wire Devils' removal of the safe from the express car of the last Mail on a certain night not very long since, but this could hardly be held up against the Ladybird—there were limitations to originality, and originality was a secondary consideration as compared with feasibility and success. Echo Rock station was two stations east of Conmore, the Wire Devils' headquarters—just far enough distant to preclude the immediate search from spreading to the neighbourhood of Conmore, and yet not too far away to make the transport of the gold to the isolated old farmhouse impractical before daylight. The details of the holdup itself required little elucidation. In whatever manner they might elect to bring the train to a stop, all that was necessary, once that was accomplished, was to keep MacVightie's men from No. 18'. baggage car while the car itself, into which the Wire Devils would naturally retreat, moved off down the line to the Willow Creek bridge some two or three miles further on.
The Hawk took his pipe from his lips, polished the bowl by rubbing it along the side of his nose, and inspected the result critically. And then the Hawk smiled pleasantly to himself. In none of the messages had the Wire Devils given the slightest evidence of any knowledge of a fact that was very near to his, the Hawk's, heart. It was quite possible, even probable, that on one point, at least, Lanson and MacVightie were right—that the Wire Devils were ignorant of the presence of that forty thousand dollars in bills—but even supposing that they did know, they would scarcely give him, the Hawk, credit for being in possession of the knowledge as well. Therefore, bitter as was the feud between them, the Ladybird would be almost certain to ignore his, the Hawk's existence in so far as this night's work was concerned. The Hawk's smile broadened. It was quite true, single-handed he would have no excuse on earth for attempting the impossible feat of carrying away a half million in gold—but forty thousand dollars in banknotes was not as prohibitory in its weight! His problem, therefore, simplified itself into an intimate investigation of No. 18'. baggage car before Echo Rock was reached, and before either MacVightie's posse, or the Butcher and his ungentle crowd in the cars behind, should have started anything on their own account.
“Yes,” said the Hawk confidentially to the toe of his boot, “yes, I guess I'll sit in for a hand in the game myself; yes, I guess it looks pretty good—if the luck holds.”
The Hawk relapsed into silence, still studying the toe of his boot. His last remark seemed suddenly to have obsessed him, and he frowned. If the luck still held! It wasn't altogether luck—indeed, it was far from luck. The Ladybird, and, for that matter, a half dozen others of the Wire Devils whom he could name, were not to be lightly reckoned with. He had no delusions on that score! Since the day he had begun to trespass on the Wire Devils preserves, listening when and where he could, he had intercepted enough of their cipher messages as they came over the wires to enable him to pull from the fire and pocket for himself the chestnuts they had been so carefully roasting for themselves, to turn in fact the entire labour and effort of their organisation to his own account—and in their turn they had sought by every means within their power to trap him. And they had nearly caught him, very nearly caught him once, and he had realised that the haphazard method in which, not knowing their source, he had been able to obtain the cipher messages would no longer do. It was through those messages alone that he could hope to get a hint of, and thereby forestall, the next trap they might set for him. And then the way had seemed to clear a little when he had at last discovered that source in the old farmhouse near Conmore, and had discovered that the Ladybird, thought dead and mourned by the underworld as one of its greatest, from a wheel chair now, a maimed thing in all save brain, moved and guided what MacVightie had been pleased to call the most powerful and dangerous criminal organisation that had ever known existence. Only on the night that he, the Hawk, had made those discoveries he had been wounded! That was a week ago. For three days, not daring to let it be known that a wounded man was in the house, he had remained here in his room, nursing his hurt as best he could. It had only been a flesh wound, and those three days were all he had allowed himself to remain inactive; for in those three days, temporarily blindfolded as to any move against him that the Ladybird might make, he had lived like a hunted man, wary of every passing moment, of every sound without his door, his automatic never for an instant out of reach. After that, during the past four nights, he had resumed his vigil at the farmhouse again.
The Hawk smiled grimly. No, he laboured under no delusions as to the craft, the cunning, and the power of those against whom he had elected to play a lone hand! The four nights just past had resulted in something more than the mere accumulation of those code messages he had just read, in something besides a more intimate acquaintanceship with the farmhouse and its surroundings, even including the underground passage, for instance, that led from the wagon shed to a trapdoor in the cellar—it had resulted, last night, in a still further insight into the ingenuity and the sort of remorseless mastery of detail through which the organisation attained its ends. The method by which they tapped the wires, commandeering the telegraph system of the railroad, the primary purpose of which was undoubtedly to supply them with the vital information that must of necessity pass over the wires and on which they based their own plans, this gold shipment to-night, for example, or the shipment of diamonds from New York of a few weeks back, was ingenious enough; but still more ingenious, when using their secret code and putting the wires to another purpose, that of enabling the Ladybird to direct his operations and send his orders as he had done to-night, was the method by which those messages were received. Every sounder on the line carried them, of course, and when, in isolated cases, the gang was working at smaller places along the line, they could readily enough, if expecting a message, as he, the Hawk, had often done, keep within sound of an instrument by the simple expedient of occupying a waiting room, or of lounging on the platform outside the operator's window; but the vast majority of the messages were for those of the gang who maintained a sort of branch headquarters in Selkirk, and such a method was neither practical nor possible, since the first essential in making the scheme of value was that, without the chance of a single message being missed, the messages should reach their destination at any hour of the day and night.
Again the Hawk smiled grimly. It had puzzled him a good many times—but it puzzled him no longer! Last night the Ladybird, quite unconscious of a rapt audience, had, by a chance remark, disclosed the secret; and to-night he, the Hawk, had seen the plan in operation! The news-counter! It was simple enough; but it held a deadly significance in its proof of the fact that there were no obstacles too great, no details too minute to stand in the way between the Ladybird and the end he sought. The news-counter was directly beneath the operator's room upstairs. In the old days, before the station had been enlarged and modernised, it had been a somewhat diminutive affair, and where the news-counter now stood had been the superintendent's office. This had connected with the room above by means of an old-fashioned speaking tube. When the alterations had been made, the mouthpieces, both above and below, had been removed, the room above had been papered over, and the waiting room had been plastered; but, as the wall had been left intact, the speaking tube had remained embedded—in the wall. Yes, it was very simple! Say, a dint in the wall in the operator's room above, and a slight tear in the paper that, if it attracted any attention at all in surroundings where the call boys backed their chairs against the wall and kept their hair on end with nickel thrillers, would at least never excite suspicion! And below, with the desk in the little office of the news-counter backed up against it, who was to know that a hole had been punched in the wall, or, for that matter, in the back of the desk itself behind the convenient little drawer, so that one could sit there and listen to the sounder upstairs! Also, it was quite obvious now why, several months ago, the old lessee of the news-counter had been bought out by some newcomers!
The Hawk's lips tightened. The game to its full extent was wide open now. The news-counter ran day and night, operated by four of the gang in pairs, one always on duty at the desk; while, should there, by any chance or at any time, be an unwelcome intruder in the office, the drawer had only to be shut and the sound was thereby eliminated. When a message “broke” over the wires above, the man on duty had only to decipher it and telephone it to what the Ladybird had referred to as the “boarding house”—the disguise, it appeared now, under which the gang maintained its headquarters in the city. That was all there was to it! To-night, it was true, the operation had been a little different; but the reason for that, as the Hawk had already decided in his own mind, was obvious enough. With MacVigh-tie, Lanson, and the authorities generally, on the alert, due to the gold shipment coming through, the man had not dared to take the risk of telephoning any such message as he had received, but had taken it outside to where one of the gang, undoubtedly, in view of the importance of the night's work, was on additional duty and in readiness to receive and transmit it on the instant, say, to the local headquarters. As for the absence of the second man at the news-counter, who ordinarily preserved the pretence of catering to the public, it was quite possible, and indeed likely, that he had gone on a similar errand with a previous message; or, if one of the rare occasions when it was necessary to telegraph a cipher message from Selkirk had arisen, he might have gone—according to the Ladybird again—to the little suburban station at the East End of the city, which was closed at night, but to which an entry and the subsequent use of the wire would present little difficulty, since MacVightie had finally given up as impossible the task of guarding all the numerous stations of that description on the division.
“Yes,” said the Hawk suddenly, under his breath, “I guess they'd go a long way to get their hands on what I've got off their bat; and I guess, after that, I'd go out—like a pricked bubble!” He sucked meditatively at his brier for a moment; then a mirthless smile parted his lips, and he spoke again. “Forty thousand dollars,” whispered the Hawk. “Yes, I guess that's the play—and the last one! If I win out to-night, and I guess I will, this is where the curtain drops, and the Hawk makes his fade-away for parts unknown!”