Chapter 16

AT FAULT

"I am sorry," again said the night watchman, after a long thoughtful silence on the part of Bart.

"I know you are, Mr. McCarthy," returned Bart, "but nobody blames you. I've got to get back that trunk, though! you are positive about Lem Wacker's wagon being newly painted?"

"Oh, sure."

"And red?"

"Yes, a bright red. Wacker lives near us, as I said. I strolled down the alley day before yesterday. I saw his shed doors open, and Wacker putting on the paint. I remember even joking him about his experience in painting the town the same color once in awhile. He took that as a compliment, Lem did. It seems he traded for the wagon some time ago. He told me he was going to start an express company of his own."

"He seems to have done it--so far as that trunk is concerned!" murmured Bart. "Mr. McCarthy, you and I are friends?"

"Good friends, Stirling."

"And I can talk pretty freely to you?"

"I see your drift--you think Lem Wacker had a hand in this burglary?"

"I certainly do."

"Well, I'll say that I don't think he's beyond it," observed the watchman. "You'll find, though, he only had a hand in it. His way is generally using someone else for a cat's-paw."

"I am going to ask you to do something for me," resumed Bart seriously--"I'm going to get back that trunk--I've got to get it back."

"The company ought to provide you with a safe, decent building."

"That will come in time."

"No one can blame you. They can't expect you to sit up watching all night, nor carrying trunks to bed with you for safe-keeping."

"No, but the head office, while it might stand an accidental fire, will not stand a big loss on top of it. My ability to handle this express proposition successfully is at stake and, besides that, I would rather have almost anybody about my ears than Mrs. Harrington."

"The colonel's wife is a Tartar, all right," bluntly declared the night watchman. "Hello! here's somebody from Harrington's, now."

The same buckboard that had driven up the afternoon previous, came dashing to the platform as McCarthy spoke.

It was in charge of the same driver, who promptly hailed Bart with the words:

"That trunk gone yet?"

"No, not yet," answered Bart.

"Then I'm in time. Mrs. Harrington wanted to put something else in--this box. Forgot it, yesterday," and the speaker fished up an oblong package from the bottom of the wagon.

"It will have to go separate," explained Bart.

"Can't do that--it's a silk dress, and not wrapped for any hard usage. Why, what's happened!" pressed the colonel's man, shrewdly scanning the disturbed countenances of Bart and the watchman. "Door lock smashed, too, and--say! I don't see the trunk!"

He had stepped to the platform and looked inside the express shed.

Bart thought it best to explain, and did so. It made him feel more crestfallen than ever to trace in the way his auditor took it, that he anticipated some pretty lively action when Mrs. Harrington was apprised of her loss.

"You can tell Mrs. Harrington that everything possible is being done to recover the trunk," Bart told the man as he drove off. "Now then, Mr. McCarthy," he continued, turning to his companion, "I am going to ask you to take charge here till I return. I will pay you a full day's wages, even if you have to stay only an hour."

"You'll pay me nothing!" declared the watchman vigorously. "I'll camp right in your service as soon as the seven o'clock whistle blows, and you get on the trail of that missing trunk."

"I intend to," said Bart. "I will get Darry Haven to come down here. He knows the office routine. In the meantime, we had better not say much about the burglary."

"Are you going on a hunt for Lem Wacker?"

"I am."

Bart went first to the Haven home. He found Darry Haven chopping wood, told him of the burglary, and asked him to get down to the express office as soon as he could.

"If you don't come back by nine o'clock, I will arrange to stay all day," promised Darry.

Then Bart went to the house where Lem Wacker lived. It was characteristic of its proprietor--ricketty, disorderly, the yard unkept and grown over with weeds.

Smoke was coming out of the chimney. Someone was evidently astir within, but the shades were down, and Bart stole around to the rear.

The shed doors were open, and the wagon gone and the horse's stall vacant.

Bart went to the back door of the house and knocked, and in a few minutes it was opened by a thin-faced, slatternly-looking woman.

Bart knew who she was, and she apparently knew him, though they had never spoken together before. The woman's face looked interested, and then worried.

"Good morning, Mrs. Wacker," said Bart, courteously lifting his cap. "Could I see Mr. Wacker for a moment?"

"He isn't at home."

"Oh! went away early? I suppose, though, he will be back soon."

"No, he hasn't been home all night," responded the woman in a dreary, listless tone. "You work at the railroad, don't you? Have they sent for Lem? He said he was expecting a job there--we need it bad enough!"

She glanced dejectedly about the wretched kitchen as she spoke, and Bart felt truly sorry for her.

"I have no word of any work," announced Bart, "but I wish to see Mr. Wacker very much on private business." When did he leave home?

"Last night at ten o'clock."

"With his horse and wagon?"

"Why, yes," admitted the woman, with a sudden, wondering glance at Bart. "How did you know that?"

"I noticed the wagon wasn't in the shed."

"Oh, he sold it--and the horse."

"When, Mrs. Wacker?"

"Last night some men came here, two of them, about nine o'clock. They talked a long time in the sitting room, and then Lem went out and hitched up. He came into the kitchen before he went away, and told me he had a chance to sell the rig, and was going to do it, and had to go down to the Sharp Corner to treat the men and close the bargain."

"I see," murmured Bart. "Who were the men, Mrs. Wacker?"

"I don't know. One of them was here with Lem about two weeks ago, but I don't know his name, or where he lives. He don't belong in Pleasantville. Oh, dear!" she concluded, with a sigh of deep depression, "I wish Lem would get back on the road in a steady job, instead of scheming at this thing and that. He'll land us all in the poorhouse yet, for he spends all he gets down at the Corner."

Bart backed down the steps, feeling secretly that Lem Wacker would have a hard time disproving a connection with the burglary.

"Take care of the dog!" warned Mrs. Wacker as she closed the door.

Bart, passing a battered dog-house, found it tenantless, however.

"I wonder if Lem Wacker has sold the dog, too?" he reflected. "Poor Mrs. Wacker! I feel awfully sorry for her."

Bart walked rapidly back the way he had come. It was just a quarter of seven when he reached a half-street extending along and facing the railroad tracks for a single square.

The Sharp Corner was a second-class groggery and boarding house, patronized almost entirely by the poorest and most shiftless class of trackmen.

Its proprietor was one Silas Green, once a switchman, later a prize fighter, always a hard drinker, and latterly so crippled with rheumatism and liquor that he was just able to get about.

Bart went into the place to find its proprietor just opening up for the day. The dead, tainted air of the den made the young express agent almost faint. As it vividly contrasted with the sweet, garden scented atmosphere of home, he wondered how men could make it their haunt, and was sorry that even business had made it necessary for him to enter the place.

"Mr. Green," he said, approaching the bar, "I am looking for Lem Wacker. Can you tell me where I may find him?"

"Eh? oh, young Stirling, isn't it? Wacker? Why, yes, I know where he is."

He came out slowly from the obscurity of the bar, blinking his faded eyes.

Bart knew he would not be unfriendly. His father, one stormy night a few years previous, had picked up Green half frozen to death in a snowdrift, where he had fallen in a drunken stupor.

Every Christmas day since then, Green had regularly sent a jug of liquor to his father, with word by the messenger that it was for "the squarest man in Pleasantville, who had saved his life."

Mr. Stirling had set Bart a practical temperance example by pouring the liquor into the sink, but had not offended Green by declining his well-meant offerings.

Bart remembered this, and felt that he might appeal to Green to some purpose.

"Mr. Wacker is not at home," he explained, "and I wish to find him. I understand he was here last night."

"He was," assented Green. "Came here about ten, and hasn't left the house since."

"Why!" ejaculated Bart--and paused abruptly. "He is here now?"

"Asleep upstairs."

"And he has been here since--he is here now!" questioned Bart incredulously.

"He was, ten minutes ago, when I came down--" asserted Green.

Bart stood dumbfounded. He was at fault--the thought flashed over his mind in an instant.

It would not be so easy as he had fancied to run down the burglars, for if what Silas Green said was true, Lem Wacker could prove a most conclusive _alibi_.