The Wire Devils — Text and Context

man's form, like a black shadow in the darkness, rose from the trackside, and crept to the platform, and along the platform to the station door.

The man bent forward, and the round, white ray of a pocket flashlight played upon the lock. He examined the lock for an instant appraisingly, then drew a bunch of skeleton keys from his pocket, and, selecting one of the number without hesitation, unlocked the door, stepped inside, and closed the door behind him.

The flashlight swept in a circle around the interior of the little station. There were but two rooms—the small waiting room which he had entered, and in which he now stood; and, partitioned off from this, the door open, a still smaller inner room, the agent's office. He moved at once into the latter, and his flashlight, swiftly now, searched around the walls and held upon the clock. It was six minutes to ten.

“Pretty close work!” muttered the man. “Six minutes to wait.”

The ray travelled now over the operator's table, and from the table to the switchboard. He reached out, “cut in” the office circuit, listened for an instant as the sounder began to chatter—then the ray swept over the table again. Under a newspaper, that the day man had apparently flung down at haphazard on leaving the office, he found a pad of telegraph blanks, from which, evidently wary of the consequences of using a pad with its resultant tell-tale impressions on the under sheets, he tore off a sheet and laid it down ready to hand before him.

This done, he nodded complacently, sat down in the operator's chair, tilted the chair back, put his feet up on the table, and coolly picked up the newspaper. It was the evening edition of the Selkirk City Journal, that had presumably been tossed off at the station by a charitable train crew of some late afternoon train out from the city. He held the paper in one hand, the flashlight in the other, scanned the page, which happened to be an inner one, cursorily, turned it over, and suddenly leaned forward a little in his seat. He was staring at the headline at the top right-hand corner of the front page. NOTORIOUS CRIMINAL RELEASED FROM SING SING POLICE ARE WARNED THAT MAN MAY BE IN THIS VICINITY HARRY MAUL, ALIAS THE HAWK, KNOWN TO BE IN THE WEST

The telegraph sounder chattered volubly for an instant, as though to challenge and silence the raucous ticking of the clock, and ended in a splutter of wrath, as it were, at the futility of its attempt. The clock ticked on. There was no other sound. And then the man spoke aloud.

“That's me,” he said. “The Hawk.” The paper rattled in his hand. There was a twisted smile on his lips in the darkness. “I guess I'm pretty well known.”

The Hawk's eyes fixed on the text, and he began to read:

“It is reported that Harry Maul, better known to the police as the Hawk, safe-breaker, forger and thief, one of the cleverest 'gentleman' crooks in the country, who is at large again after a five-years' penitentiary term, is somewhere in the West.

“The crime wave that has recently been sweeping over Selkirk City and its vicinity, and particularly the daring and, in too many cases, successful outrages with which the railroad officials and detectives have been called upon to cope of late, may, as a very plausible theory, have lured the Hawk here as to a promising field in which to resume his criminal operations. Certain it is that, while we have been the victims of a band of mysterious desperadoes for some time past, the last week or so has seen a very marked increase in the number of crimes that have been committed—a significant coincidence with the Hawk's release from Sing Sing.

“A twenty-thousand-dollar diamond necklace was stolen from a private car two nights ago; there was an express car robbery on Monday of this week; and a sleeping car was thoroughly and systematically looted the night before. True, it is mere conjecture to connect the Hawk with these in any way, since the gang that has been operating in this neighbourhood has proved itself quite capable of all and more than this without any outside and highly specialised assistance, and it would appear is in no whit inferior in resource and devilish ingenuity to the best, or worst, that Sing Sing has to offer in the shape of this so-called Hawk; but, out of conjecture, one question naturally suggests itself.