CHAPTER XXVIII
THIRTY SECONDS OF TWELVE
It was an exciting moment. Bart was intently worked up, but he kept hishead level. Everything hung on the action of the next two minutes.
Whatever price the rich Colonel Harrington was paying Lem Wacker for hiscooeperation, it was not enough to blind that individual to a realizationof the fact that accident had placed in Wacker's grasp the great haul ofhis life, and he was making off with this fortune, leaving the colonelin the lurch.
The latter stood shaking like an aspen, his face the color of chalk.Apparently he took in and believed every word that Bart had spoken.
"I'm in a fix--a terrible fix!" he groaned. "This isdreadful--dreadful!"
"Mend it, then!" cried Bart. "Quick! if you have one spark of sense ormanhood in you. There's a knife--cut this rope."
With quivering fingers Colonel Harrington took up from the desk theoffice knife used for cutting string. It was keen-bladed as a razor.Unsteady and bungling as was his stroke, he severed the rope partly, andBart burst his bonds free.
"Stay here," called out the young express agent sharply. "I hold youresponsible for this office till I return!"
He dashed outside like a rocket, scanned the whole roadway expanse, anddarted for the freight yards with the speed of the wind.
The electric arc lights were sparsely scattered, but there wassufficient illumination for him to make out a fugitive figure justcrossing the broad roadway towards the freight tracks.
It was Lem Wacker. A train of empty box freights blocked his way. Hestooped, made a diving scurry under one of them, and was lost to view.
Bart ran as he had never run before. The train cleared the tracks as hereached the spot where Wacker had disappeared.
At that moment above the jangling, clumping activity of the yards therearose on the night air one frightful, piercing shriek.
Bart halted with a nameless shock, for the utterance was distinctlyhuman and curdling. He glanced after the receding train, fancying thatWacker might have got caught under the cars and was being dragged alongwith them.
That roadbed was clear, however. Two hundred feet to the right was asecond train. Its forward section was moving off, having just thrownsome cars against others stationary on a siding.
Bart ran towards these. Wacker could not have so suddenly disappeared inany other direction. He crossed between bumpers, and glanced eagerly allaround. There was no hiding-place nearer than the repair shops, and theywere five hundred feet distant.
Wacker could not possibly have reached their precincts in the limitedspace of time afforded since Bart had last lost sight of him.
"He is hiding in some of those cars," decided Bart, "or he has swungonto the bumpers of the section pulling out--hark!"
Bart pricked up his ears. A strange sound floated on the air--a low,even, musical tinkle.
Its source could not be far distant. Bart ran along the side of thestationary freights.
"It is Wacker, sure," he breathed, "for that is the same sound made bythe little alarm clock he bought at the sale this afternoon."
The last vibrating tintinnabulations of the clock died away as Bartdiscovered his enemy.
Lem Wacker's burly figure and white face were discernible against thedirect flare of an arc light. He seemed a part of the bumpers of twocars. Bart flared a match once, and uttered the single word:
"Caught."
Lem Wacker was clinging to the upright brake rod, and swaying there. Hisface was bloodless and he was writhing with pain. One foot was clampedtight, a crushed, jellied mass between two bumpers.
It seemed that his foot must have slipped just as the forward freightswere switched down. This had caused that frenzied yell. Perhaps thethought of the money had impelled him not to repeat it, but the littlealarm clock which he carried in his pocket had betrayed him.
Bart took in the situation at a glance. He was shocked and unnerved, buthe stepped close to the writhing culprit.
"Lem Wacker," he said, "where is that money envelope?"
"In my pocket," groaned Wacker. "I've got it this time--crippled forlife!"
The young express agent did not have to search for the stolen moneypackage. It protruded from Wacker's side pocket. As he glanced it over,he saw that it was practically intact. Wacker had torn open only onecorner, sufficient to observe its contents. Bart placed the envelope inhis own pocket.
"I'm fainting!" declared Wacker.
Bart crossed under the bumpers to the other side of the freights. Heswept the scene with a searching glance, finally detected the shiftingglow of a night watchman's lantern, and ran over to its source.
He knew the watchman, and asked the man to accompany him, explaining asthey went along that Lem Wacker had got caught between two freights, washeld a prisoner in the bumpers with his foot crushed, and pointed thesufferer out as they neared the freights.
Wacker by this time had sunk flat on the bumpers, his limbs twisted upunder him, but he managed to hold on to the brake rod. He only moanedand writhed when the horrified watchman spoke to him.
"I'll have to get help," said the latter. "They will have to switch offthe front freights to get him loose."
The watchman took out his whistle and blew a kind of a call on thetelegraphic system. Two minutes later Bart saw McCarthy hurriedlyrounding a corner of the freight depot, and advanced towards him.
The young express agent briefly and confidentially imparted to his oldfriend the fact that Lem Wacker had tried to steal some money from theexpress office, and had got his deserts at last.
"Get him clear of the bumpers," said Bart, "carry him to the expressoffice, call for a surgeon, and don't let him be taken away from theretill I show up."
"What's moving, Stirling?" inquired McCarthy.
"Something very important. Wacker seems to be punished enough already,and I do not know that I want him placed under arrest, but he knowssomething he must tell me before he gets out of my reach."
"Then you had better wait."
"I can't do that," said Bart. "I have a special to deliver, on personalorders from Mr. Leslie, the express superintendent."
Bart consulted his watch. It was five minutes of eleven.
"Only a little over an hour," he reflected. "I want to hustle!"
He saw to it that the recovered package was safely stowed in an innerpocket, and started by the shortest cut he knew from the yards.
Bart did not even pause at the express office, where he had left ColonelHarrington. He ran all the way half across the silent, sleeping town,and never halted until he reached the Haven homestead.
He did not go to the front door, but, well acquainted with thedisposition of the household, paused under a rear window, picked up ahandful of gravel, threw it against the upper panes, and gave three lowbut distinct whistling trills.
He could hear a prompt rustling. In less than forty seconds Darry Havenstuck his head out of the window.
"Hello!" he hailed, rubbing his eyes.
"Come down, quick," directed Bart. "Bring Bob, too."
"What's the lark, Bart?"
"No lark at all," answered Bart--"strictly business. Don't take aminute. No need disturbing the folks. You can be back inside of anhour."
Bob, hatless and without a collar, came sliding down the lightning rodtwo minutes later. Darry landed on the ground almost simultaneously,simply letting himself drop from the window sill.
"Two dollars apiece for half an hour's work," said Bart, and then toldhis companions the details of the special mission in which he requiredtheir services.
"Ginger! but you're nerve and action," commented the admiring Bob.
"And good to your friends," put in Darry.
They passed the pickle factory. It stood on the edge of the town, andthe residence of the senior partner of Martin & Company, whose name hadbeen mentioned in the telegram, was nearly half a mile further away.
"Eleven thirty-five," announced Bart, a trifle anxiously. "It does notgive us much time. I h
ope there's no slip anywhere."
At just fifteen minutes of midnight the strange trio passed up thegraveled walk leading to the Martin mansion. The front door had aponderous old-fashioned knocker, and Bart plied it without ceremony.
He began to grow nervous as three minutes passed by, and not the leastattention was paid to his summons.
Suddenly an upper window was thrust up, and a man's head came into view.
"Who's there?" demanded a gruff, impatient voice.
"Is this Mr. Martin, Mr. A.B. Martin?" inquired Bart.
"Yes, it is--what do you want?"
"I have an express package for you," explained Bart.
"Oh, you have?" snapped Mr. Martin. "What the mischief do you meanwaking a man up at midnight on a thing like that! Deliver it at thefactory in the morning."
The speaker, muttering direfully under his breath, was about to slamdown the window.
"Wait one moment, Mr. Martin," called up Bart sharply. "This is aspecial delivery, and a very important matter. I tender you this packagein the presence of these witnesses, and it is a legal delivery. If youdecline to come down and take it, and I leave it on your doorstep at thecall of the first tramp who happens to come along, I have done my duty,and the loss is yours--a matter of fifteen thousand dollars."
"What! what!" shouted Martin.
"That is the amount."
"From--Dunn & Son?"
"I guess that's right," said Bart. "Will you come down and take it?"
Martin did not reply. He disappeared from the window, but left it open.Bart heard him muttering to himself.
"Supposing he doesn't come down?" questioned Bob, in a whisper.
"I think he will," said Bart. "Eleven forty-eight. Mr. Martin," hecalled out loudly, "I can't wait here all night."
"Shut up!" retorted an angry voice--"I'm hurrying all I can."
"He isn't!" spoke Darry, in a low tone to Bart. "He's on to thebusiness, and playing for time."
"And he's beat us!" breathed Bob--"hear there! twelve o'clock. Yourdelivery is no good, Bart! It's just struck a new day!"
"S--sh!" warned Bart, as a clock inside the house rang out twelvesilvery strokes. "The clock is wrong. We've got five minutes and a halfyet."
In about two minutes a light flashed in the hall, the front door wasunlocked, and Martin appeared, half-dressed. Bart relievedly put up hiswatch. It was just three minutes of twelve.
He instantly placed the express envelope in Martin's hands, slippinginto the vestibule.
"Mr. Martin," he said, "it is necessary for you to verify the contentsof this package. An accident happened to it, as you see."
Martin tore the envelope clear open, and glanced over fifteen bills ofone thousand dollar denomination each.
"All right," he said gruffly.
"Will you sign this receipt?" asked Bart politely, tendering the slip ofpaper he had prepared at the office for this especial occasion. "Thankyou," he added, as the pickle man scrawled a penciled signature at thebottom of the paper.
"I take this money," said Mr. Martin, looking up with a peculiarexpression on his face, "because it is delivered by you, but I shallreturn it to Dunn & Son to-morrow."
"That is your business, Mr. Martin," said Bart politely.
"It is, and--something more! I call on you and your witnesses to noticethat the fifteen thousand dollars was not delivered to me until sixminutes after twelve, too late to make the tender legal, which makes thecontract null and void."
Mr. Martin, with a triumphant sweep of his hand, pointed to a big clockat the end of the long hall.
"I beg your pardon," said Bart, holding up his watch, "but I keepofficial time, and it is exactly thirty seconds to midnight. Listen!"
And thirty seconds later, from the Pleasantville court house tower, thetown bell rang out twelve musical strokes.