Chapter 14

MRS. HARRINGTON'S TRUNK

"Hey, there! Stirling."

Bart was busy at his desk in the express office, but turned quickly as he recognized the tones.

Trouble in the shape of Lem Wacker loomed up at the doorway.

"What is it?" asked Bart.

It was a week after the Fourth, and in all that time Bart had not seen anything of the man whom he secretly believed was responsible for the fire at the old express office.

"Who's the responsible party here?" demanded Lem, making a great ado over consulting a book he carried.

"I am."

"All right, then--I represent Martin & Company, pickle factory."

"Oh, you've found a job, have you," spoke Bart, forced to smile at the bombastic business air assumed by his visitor.

"I represent Martin & Company," came from Wacker, in a solemn, dignified way. "Inspector. We want a rebate on that bill of lading."

Lem removed a slip from his loose-leaf book and tendered it to Bart.

"What's the matter with it?" inquired Bart.

"Consignment short," announced Wacker.

Bart looked him squarely in the eyes. Wacker had made the announcement malignantly. His gaze dropped.

"I'm hired to stop the leaks," he mumbled, "and if this office is responsible for any of them I'm the man to find it out."

"Well, in the present instance your claim is sheer folly. I see you note here one hundred and fifty pounds shortage. What is your basis?"

"I weighed them myself."

Bart consulted his books. Then he turned again to Wacker.

"This consignment was shipped as nine hundred and fifty pounds," he said. "It weighed that at the start."

"That's what the shipping agent says, yes."

"And you claim eight hundred pounds?"

"Exactly."

"It was weighed up here when received--nine hundred and fifty pounds."

"Come off!" jeered Wacker. "Wasn't I an express agent once and don't I know the ropes? What receiving agent ever takes the trouble to re-weigh!"

"My father did--I always do," announced Bart flatly.

"Even if you did," persisted Wacker, "what little one-horse agent dares to dispute the big company's weight at the other end of the line?"

"Oh," observed Bart smoothly, "you think there is a sort of collusion, do you?"

"Yes, I do--I am an expert!"

"Sorry to disturb the profundity of your calculations, Mr. Wacker," said Bart quietly, "but in the present instance there could not possibly be any mistake. Our scales were burned up in the fire. The new ones have not yet arrived, and in the meantime, as a temporary accommodation, our weighing is done up at the in-freight platform by the official weigh master of the road. I fancy Martin & Company will accept that verification as final. Don't you think so, Mr. Wacker?"

Lem Wacker snatched the paper Bart returned to him with a positive growl.

"I'll catch you Smart-Alecks yet!" he muttered surlily.

"What are you so anxious to catch us for?" inquired Bart coolly.

"Never you mind--I'll get you!"

Lem Wacker had said that before, and as he backed away Bart dismissed him with a shrug of his shoulders.

There were too many practical things occupying his time to waste any on fancies. Bart had put in a very busy week, and a very satisfactory one. He had started in with a system, and had never allowed it to lag. In fact, he improved it daily.

Thanks to his brief, but thorough apprenticeship under his father's direction, he had acquired a knowledge of all the ins and outs of the office work proper.

He had shown great diligence in clearing up the old business. In three days after taking official charge Bart had forwarded to headquarters all the claims covering the fire.

He had also listed the unclaimed packages in the safe, together with those burned up, had followed out Mr. Leslie's direction to collect all not-called-for express matter at little stations in his division, and was now awaiting an order from headquarters as to their final disposition.

The strange "Mr. Baker" had drifted out of his life, temporarily at least.

Bart had purchased the articles the roustabout had required, and that evening Baker came out from his hiding-place marvelously unlike the great-bearded, shock-headed individual Bart had previously known.

A green patch and goggles, a deep brown face-stain, and a pair of thin artistically made "side-burns" comprised a puzzling make-up.

Baker told Bart that he felt himself perfectly disguised, that he could now venture freely down the road a distance where he had business.

"I'll be back, though," he promised. "Perhaps in two weeks. I'm not through with Pleasantville. Oh, no! There's going to be an explosion here some time soon. You've put me on my feet, Stirling, and you won't be sorry when you know what I'm after."

Bart had half planned to hire Baker for what extra work he had to give out. He had to look about for someone else, and Darry Haven and his brother, Bob, alternately came around to the express office before and after school, and helped Bart.

The company allowed for this extra service, but Bart had to take a separate voucher for each task done.

Colonel Harrington had left for a fashionable resort two days after the Fourth, and Bart understood that Mrs. Harrington was preparing to join him there.

Bart's father had been taken home after spending two days in the hospital.

The surgeon there had told him that his case was not at all hopeless, and the old express agent was cheerful and patient under his affliction, and nights Bart made a great showing of the necessity of going over the business of the day, so as to keep his father's mind occupied.

So far Bart's affairs had settled down to what seemed to be a clear and definite basis, and when that afternoon a new platform scale arrived, and he received a letter of instructions from Mr. Leslie concerning the sale of the unclaimed express packages, he felt a certain spice of pleasant anticipation injected into the business routine.

"Why, it will be a regular circus!" said Darry Haven that afternoon, when Bart told him about it. "Last year they advertised the sale at Marion. I was up there at my uncle's. All the farmers came in for miles around, and the way they bid, and the funny things they found in the packages, made it jolly, I tell you!"

When Bart got through with the routine work the next day, he started in to formulate his plans for the sale.

It was to take place in thirty days, and the superintendent had relied on Bart's judgment to make it a success.

Darry Haven came in as Bart was laboring over an advertisement for the four weekly papers of Pleasantville and vicinity.

"Here," he said promptly, "you are of a literary family. Suppose you take charge of this, and get up the matter for a dodger, too."

"Say, Bart," said Darry eagerly, "we can print the dodgers--my brother and I--as good as a regular office. You know we've got a good amateur outfit at home. Father was an editor, and I'll get him to write up a first-class stunner of an advertisement. Can't you throw the job our way?"

"If you make the price right, of course," answered Bart.

"We can afford to underbid them all," declared Darry; and so the matter was settled.

"Oh, by the way," said Darry, as he was about to leave--"Lem Wacker's out of a job again."

"You don't surprise me," remarked Bart, "but how is that?"

"Why, Martin & Company are buying green peppers at seventy cents a bushel. They heard that down at Arlington someone was offering them to the storekeepers at one dollar for two bushels, investigated, detected Dale Wacker peddling the peppers from factory bags, and found that his uncle, Lem, was mixed up in the affair. Anyway, Dale's father had to settle the bill, and they fired Lem."

"Mr. Lem Wacker is bad enough when at work," remarked Bart, "but out of work I fear he is a dangerous man. All right!" he called, hurrying to the door as there was a hail from outside.

Colonel Harrington's buckboard was backed to the platform and its driver was unloading a large trunk.

Bart helped carry it in, dumped it on the scales, went to the desk, got the receipt book, and reading the label on the trunk found that it was directed to Mrs. Harrington at Cedar Springs, the summer resort to which the colonel had already gone.

"Value?" he asked.

"Mrs. Harrington didn't say, and I don't know. If you saw all the finery in that trunk, though, you'd stare. You see, Mrs. Harrington is going to stay three weeks at the Springs, and is sending on her finest and best. I'll bet they amount to a couple of thousand dollars."

Bart filled out a blank receipt, stamping it: "Value asked, and not given."

"It can't go till morning," he said.

"That don't matter. The missus won't be going down to the Springs till Saturday."

"You have just missed the afternoon express," went on Bart.

"Yes, Lem Wacker said I would."

"What has he got to do with it?" asked Bart.

"Why, nothing, I gave him a lift down the road, and he told me that."

The driver departed. Bart stood so long looking ruminatively at the trunk that Darry Haven finally nudged his arm.

"Hi! come out of it," he called. "What's bothering you, Bart?"

"Nothing--I was just thinking."

"About that trunk, evidently, from the way you stare at it."

"Exactly," confessed Bart. "I believe I am getting superstitious about anything connected with the Harringtons or the Wackers. Here, give me a lift."

"All right. Where?"

"Swing it up--I want to get it on top of the safe."

"What!" ejaculated Darry in profound amazement.

"Yes, we don't handle property in the thousands every day in the week."

"But the company is responsible only up to fifty dollars, when they don't pay excess."

"That doesn't satisfy the shipper if there is any loss. I feel we ought to be extra careful until we get a new office with proper safeguards, and that expensive outfit staying here all night worries me. Up--hoist!"

Bart settled the trunk on top of the safe, and on top of that he set the lantern.

When he locked up for the night he lit the lantern, and went over to the freight platform where the night watchman had just come on duty.

Bart knew him well and liked him, and the feeling was reciprocal.

He explained that a valuable trunk had to remain overnight in the express shed, and how he had placed it.

"Just take a casual glance over there on your rounds, will you, Mr. McCarthy?" he continued.

"I certainly will. You set the lantern so it shows things inside, and I'll keep an eye open," acquiesced the watchman.

Bart went home feeling satisfied and relieved at the arrangement he had made.

All the same he did not sleep well that night. About daybreak he woke up with a sudden jump, for he had dreamed that Colonel Harrington had thrown him into a deep pit, and that Lem Wacker was dropping Mrs. Harrington's precious trunk on top of him.