Page:The Wire Devils.djvu/20

 "combinationinupperdrawerleftsidedivisionalpaymasterdesktenthousandinsafetonightputnumberoneonjob"

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 ('s) 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 west-bound 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