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He reached out for the pad, tore off another sheet, and in two parallel columns set down the letters of the alphabet, one column transposed. There was a faint smile on his lips, as he turned again to the cipher and began to write in another line of letters under the original message.
“I wonder what Poe and his predominant 'e' would do with this!” he chuckled. “'Combi'—stroke two. Key letter—stroke three.” He frowned the next instant. “What's this! Ah—stroke three, instead of one.” He completed the transposition, stared at the several lines which were now scattered with vertically crossed-out letters, whistled low under his breath, and a grim look settled on his face.
The message now read:
—-combi—natio—-ninup-perdr—eftsi—dediv—sion—al paymasterdesk—fousan dinsaj—feton-ight-autnum—-beron-eonjob
Mechanically, he separated words and sentences, and, eliminating the superfluous letters, wrote out the translation at the bottom of the sheet:
“Combination in upper drawer left side divisional paymaster ('.) desk. Ten thousand in safe to-night. Put Number One on job.”
The Hawk stood up, “plugged out” the station circuit, and, gathering up the two sheets of paper he had used, put them in his pocket; then, leaving the door of the operator's room open behind him, as he had found it, he stepped out from the station to the platform, and, with his skeleton key, relocked the station door. He stood for a moment staring up and down the track. The switchlights blinked back at him confidentially. He listened. The eastbound freight, from which he had jumped some twenty minutes before, would cross Extra No. 83, the westbound way freight, at Elkton, seven miles away, but there was no sound of the latter as yet.
He turned then, and, jumping from the platform to the track, swung into a dog-trot along the roadbed. The Hawk smiled contentedly to himself. It was all timed to a nicety! A mile or so to the west, the right of way rose in a stiff grade that the way freight would be able to negotiate at no better speed than the pace at which a man could crawl. He could make the distance readily, board her there, and the way freight would get him to Selkirk—and the divisional paymaster's office!—by about midnight.
He ran on, the swing and ease of a trained athlete in his stride. And, as he ran, he took the sheets of paper from his pocket, and, tearing them into small fragments, scattered the pieces at intervals here and there.