The Wire Devils

Chapter III: The Paymaster's Safe

-IIITHE PAYMASTER'S SAFE FROM the roundhouse it was only a few yards to the rear of the long, low-lying freight sheds and, unobserved, the Hawk gained this new shelter. He stole quickly along to the further end of the sheds; and there, crouched down again in the shadows, halted to make a critical survey of his surroundings. Just in front of him, divided only by a sort of driveway for the convenience of the teamsters, was the end wall of the station, and, in the end wallthe window of the divisional paymaster's office. The Hawk glanced to his left. The street upon which the station fronted, an ill-savoured section of the city, was dark, dimly lighted, and deserted; the only sign of life being the lighted windows of a saloon on the corner of a narrow lane that bisected the block of somewhat disreputable, tumble-down wooden structures that faced the station. To his right, on the other side of the freight shed, the railroad yard had narrowed down to the station tracks and a single spur alongside the shed. There was no one in sight in either direction. The Hawk's eyes strayed back to the paymaster's 29 30 THE "",VIRE DEVILS window. The: station, like its surrounding neighbours , was an old wooden building; and, being low and only two-storied, the second-story window offered inviting possibilities. From the sill of the lower window, a man who was at all agile had the upper window at his mercy. Against this mode of attack, however, was the risk of being seen by anyone who might pass along the street, or by anyone who might chance upon the end of the station platform. "What's the use!" decided the Hawk, with an abrupt shrug of his shoulders. "Play safe. There's a better way." The Hawk crept across the driveway, reached the street side of the station, peered cautiously around the corner of the building, and, satisfied that he was unobserved, edged down along the building for a short distance, paused in a doorway, glanced quickly about him again-and then the door opened and closed, and he was standing in a murky passageway, that was lighted only by a single incandescent far back by a stair well. He stood motionless, listening. From above, through the stillness, came the faint drumming of a telegraph key. There should be no one upstairs now but the dispatcher, whose room was at the opposite end of the building from the paymaster's officeand , possibly" with the dispatcher, a call boy or two. And the hallway above, he could see, was dark. Moving stealthily forward, as noiseless as a cat in his tread, the Hawk took a mask from his pocket, slipped it over his face, and began to mount the THE PAYMASTER'S SAFE 31 stairs. He gained the landing-and halted again. It was pitch black here, since even the door of the dispatcher's room, where there would be a light, was closed. And then once more the Hawk moved forwardand an instant later, the paymaster's door at the extreme end of the corridor, under the deft persuasion of his skeleton keys, had closed behind him. It was not quite so dark here. The lights from the platform and the yard filtered in through the window in a filmy sort of way; but it was too dark to distinguish objects in anything more than grotesque, shapeless outlines. The Hawk produced his Hashlight, and turned it upon the lock he had just picked. It was a spring lock, opened readily from the inside by the mere turning of the doorhandle. He tried it carefully, assuring himself that it could not be opened from the corridor without a key-and then his light swept around the room. It played in its circuit upon the paymaster's Hat-topped desk against the wall, and upon a large safe in the corner, near the window, whose polished nickel dial sent back an answering Hash under the darting ray; but the Hawk, for the moment, appeared to be interested in neither desk nor safe. The Hashlight was holding in a kind of dogged inquisitiveness upon another door close to the window, and directly opposite the safe. He stepped without a sound across the room, and, reaching this door, snapped off his flashlight. He tried the door cautiously, found...