Part 18

The fall must have stunned him for a moment. He realised that as he struggled to his feet—to find himself staring into the muzzle of MacVightie's revolver, and to find that the bulging package of banknotes was gone from under his coat, as, too, were his automatic, his jimmy and the baggageman's revolver that had been in the side pockets of his coat. He raised his hand dazedly toward his eyes—and MacVightie, reaching out, knocked his hand away.

“I'll do that for you—we were just getting around to it!” said MacVightie roughly—and jerked the Hawk's mask from his face. And then MacVightie leaned sharply forward. “O-ho!” he exclaimed grimly. “So it's you—is it? I guess you put it over me the night that ten thousand was lifted at the station—but I've got you now!”

The Hawk made no answer. He was staring, still in an apparently dazed way, about him. The cellar was a veritable maze of work benches and elaborate equipment—for counterfeiting work. A printing press stood over in one corner; on the benches, plates and engravers' tools of all descriptions were scattered about; and, near the wall by the stairway, he made out a telegraph set. But the Hawk's glance did not linger on any of these things—it fastened on a bent and twisted form that craned its neck forward from a rubber-tired wheel chair; on a livid face, out of which the coal-black eyes, narrowed to slits, smouldered in deadly menace, and from whose thin lips, that scarcely moved, there poured forth now a torrent of hideous blasphemy in that soft, silken voice that had earned the Ladybird his name; on the hand, crooked into a claw, that, pushing away the man who stood guard over him, reached out toward where the Butcher lay upon the floor.

“You ape, you gnat, you brainless pig! And you led them here—here—here!”

“I didn't know where I was until I was right on the house,” mumbled the Butcher miserably. “I——”

“Shut up—both of you!” ordered MacVightie gruffly. “What do you say, Lanson? Is this the Hawk?”

The Hawk had not seen the superintendent, and he turned now quickly. Lanson's steel-grey eyes were boring into him coldly.

“Yes,” said Lanson evenly, “I think I could swear he was the man who held us up in the private car the other night—but it's easily proved. If he is the Hawk, he has got a wound in his right side. I saw him clap his hand there when the pistol went off in his fight with Meridan.”

“Well, we'll soon see!” snapped MacVightie.

The Hawk licked his lips.

“You needn't look,” he said morosely. “It's there.”

“So you admit it, do you?” MacVightie's smile was unpleasant. “Well, then, since you seem to be so thick with that pack of curs back there in the train, perhaps you'll admit to a hand in this little counterfeiting plant as well?”

“No; I won't!” said the Hawk shortly. “I never had anything to do with this! I don't admit anything of the kind! Ask him!”—the Hawk jerked his hand toward the Ladybird.

“Oh, all right!” MacVightie smiled unpleasantly again. “Let it go at that for now, if you like it that way. It doesn't much matter. You're birds of a feather, anyway, and there's enough on all of you to go around!” He reached behind him, and picked up the package of banknotes from where he had evidently laid it on the nearest bench. “How did you know this was on the train, and how did you know where it was in the car—and tell the truth about it!”

“I heard you and Mr. Lanson talking about it tonight,” said the Hawk.

“Where?”

“In the roundhouse. I was outside the window. And”—the Hawk's voice thinned in a sudden snarl—“you go to the devil with your questions!”

The Ladybird was craned forward again in the wheel chair listening intently, he sank back now and scowled murderously at the Hawk. MacVightie shrugged his shoulders, handed the package to one of his three men who were with him in the cellar, and drew a pair of handcuffs from his pocket.

“Get that cash down to the train, and put it back with the gold where it will be under guard, MacGregor!” he ordered brusquely. “And you two carry this fellow”—he rattled his handcuffs in the Butcher's direction—“down there, too. Tell Marston to let you have three or four more men. The chap that Williams has got upstairs there will have to be carried, too, I guess; and our friend here, in the invalid buggy, with the thanksgiving expression on his face, will have to have somebody to push him along over the ruts. Yes, and I'll want a couple to put in the night here—tell Marston to make it four. And now, beat it! You run ahead, MacGregor, and get back as soon as you can—we don't want to tie up the traffic all night!”

The two men picked up the Butcher, and, preceded by their companion with the package of banknotes, went up the stairs. MacVightie caught the Hawk's arm roughly, snapped one link of the steel cuffs over the Hawk's right wrist, and yanked the Hawk ungently over to a position beside the wheel chair.

He snapped the other link over the Ladybird's left wrist, and smiled menacingly.

“I guess there's dead weight enough there to anchor you for a few minutes while I take a look around here!” he said curtly—and turned to Lan-son.

The Hawk was licking at his lips again. Upstairs, the tramp of feet was dying away: There would be no one there now but the other member of the gang who, it seemed, had been hurt when the house was rushed, and the one man who was guarding the prisoner. The Ladybird's cultured voice at the Hawk's side poured out an uninterrupted stream of abandoned oaths that were like a shudder in the nonchalant, conversational tones in which they fell from the twitching lips. MacVightie and Lanson were moving here and there about the place. Snatches of their conversation reached the Hawk:

...Well, I reckon I called the turn, all right, when I said it was the same crowd that was turning out the phony stuff, eh?... Yes, the telegraph set.

... Can't trace the wires until daylight, of course.

... Sure, a clean-up....”

The Hawk's eyes travelled furtively around the cellar. They rested hungrily on a spot in front of him, where, in the centre of the floor, but partially hidden by one of the workbenches, was the bolted trapdoor of the underground passage that led out to the wagon shed. He circled his lips with his tongue again, and furtively again, his glance travelled on—to the door at the head of the cellar stairs that had a massive bolt, and that, evidently swinging back of its own accord after the men had passed through, now hung just ajar—to a long, narrow window, most tantalising of all because it was wide open, that was shoulder high, just above the stonework of the cellar and evidently on a level with the ground outside.

And then suddenly the Hawk's lids drooped—to hide a quick flash and gleam that lighted the dark eyes. MacVightie had stooped, and throwing back the bolt, had lifted up the trapdoor.

“Hello!” he ejaculated. “What's this? Here, Lanson! It looks like a passage of some sort.” He was leaning down into the opening. “Yes, so help me, that's what it is!” He lowered himself hurriedly through the trapdoor, and his voice came back muffled into the cellar. “Come down here a minute, Lanson; they certainly had things worked out to a fine point!”

Lanson's back, as, following MacVightie, he lowered himself through the opening, was turned to the Hawk—and in a flash the Hawk's free hand had swept behind him under his coat to the concealed pocket in the back lining, and his eyes were thrust within an inch of the Ladybird's as he lowered his head.

“You understand?”—the Hawk's lips did not move, he was breathing his words, while a skeleton key worked swiftly at the handcuff on his wrist—“you understand? It's you or me! You make a sound to queer me, and I'll get you—first!”

The livid face was contorted, working with impotent fury, but, perhaps for the first time that it had ever been there, there was fear In the Ladybird's burning eyes. The Hawk's hand was free now. Lanson's shoulders were just disappearing through the opening, and with a lightning spring the Hawk reached the trapdoor, swung it down, bolted it, and, running without a sound, gained the head of the cellar stairs, pulled the door gently shut, slid the bolt silently into place—and the next moment the Hawk, returning, darted to the window, swung himself up to the ledge, and vanished.

XX—“CONFIDENTIAL” CORRESPONDENCE

TWO days later MacVightie received a letter that had been posted the day before from a city quite a number of miles nearer the East than Selkirk was. In the left-hand, lower corner of the envelope, heavily underscored, was the word: “Confidential.” What MacVightie read, when he opened the letter, was this:

“Dear Mr. MacVightie:—

“I feel that you are entitled to an explanation—I will not call it an apology, for I am sure you will recognise with me the unavoidable nature of the circumstances existing at the time—of my somewhat informal leave-taking of you two evenings ago; and I am afraid that my actions on that occasion have not enhanced your opinion of—the Hawk. I shall try and redeem myself. You have, I make no doubt, already searched that room where I first had the pleasure of making your acquaintance—and have found nothing. Let me begin, then, by saying that the diamond necklace belonging to His Excellency the Governor's wife, a certain well-known shipment of unset stones, and cash in varying amounts derived from sources with which you are acquainted, are in a black valise which you will find in the parcel room of the Selkirk station—and for which I enclose herewith the parcel-room check.

“I imagine that you are sceptical. I wonder, then, if it would also occasion you surprise to know that Birks of the Secret Service was, after all, 'on deck' the night that the Wire Devils fell into your hospitable hands? Yes, it is quite true—I am Birks. The newspaper biographies of the Hawk, the apparent authenticity of his prison record and release from Sing Sing was but 'inspired' fiction supplied from 'authoritative' sources. The East was being swamped with one of the cleverest counterfeit notes that the Federal authorities, popularly called the Secret Service, had ever had to deal with; and it was evident at once that the gang at work possessed an organisation against which ordinary methods would be of no avail. Facts in the possession of the Federal authorities indicated that the headquarters of the gang was in the West, and, indeed, as you later concluded yourself, that the so-called Wire Devils, who were just beginning to operate over the wires around Selkirk, were the men we wanted. That, because of my knowledge of telegraphy, I was detailed to the case, and how, almost at the outset, I was fortunate enough to secure the key to their cipher, need not be gone into here. Knowing their code, then, it would have been a simple enough matter to have run one or two of them to earth at almost any time, but that was not enough; it was necessary that the entire organisation, and especially its head, should be caught. The rôle of the Hawk furnished the solution to the problem. It enabled me to frustrate their plans, while at the same time I was working on the case, and it enabled me to do this without arousing their suspicions that the Secret Service was on the track of their counterfeiting plant. 'Birds of a feather,' you called us, Mr. Mac-Vightie; and 'birds of a feather' I am going to ask you to allow us, in the public's eyes, and particularly in the eyes of those you now have behind the bars, to remain.

“I am sure you will readily acquiesce in this. You will instantly see that my usefulness would be destroyed if the Hawk became known and recognised as Birks of the Secret Service by every crook in the country, as would result if he now figured in the case in his proper person. And this leads to a word of explanation in reference to the final act in our little drama of two nights ago. I had discovered the headquarters of the gang, and I had found that cleverest of unhung crooks, the Ladybird, to be in command. The plan outlined to you from Washington was at my suggestion, and was simply a trap to collect them all into one net; a trap, I might add, which they walked into, as they believed, with their eyes wide open, for they were well aware of every move you had made. The purpose of the money in banknotes accompanying the gold shipment was to supply the Hawk with a reason for his appearance on the scene. It was not altogether a question of coincidence that the train was stopped just outside Con-more; nor that the chase led you to the farmhouse and the Ladybird. The rest you know. It was necessary that I should be captured and arrested in their presence, be caught in fact with the 'goods,' and also that my escape should in their eyes appear equally genuine, if I was to preserve the Hawk's identity. As for this last point, things turned out a little differently than I had planned, for I had expected to be taken to jail with the common herd, and there had intended to arrange some sort of an escape to keep up appearances. As it turned out, however, I am sure you will agree with me that there are worse things at times than a trapdoor in a cellar floor!

“I think that is all—save for one little detail. I would suggest that you account for the recovery of the 'swag' and the black valise through the fact that, dissatisfied with your first search of that room over our friend Seidel-berger's saloon, you searched it again more minutely, found a parcel-room check ingeniously hidden, say, behind the wall bracket of the electric-light fixture—and by so doing permit me to remain,

“Ever and most sincerely yours,

“The Hawk.” THE END