Chapter 28

THIRTY SECONDS OF TWELVE

It was an exciting moment. Bart was intently worked up, but he kept his head level. Everything hung on the action of the next two minutes.

Whatever price the rich Colonel Harrington was paying Lem Wacker for his coöperation, it was not enough to blind that individual to a realization of the fact that accident had placed in Wacker's grasp the great haul of his life, and he was making off with this fortune, leaving the colonel in 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 is dreadful--dreadful!"

"Mend it, then!" cried Bart. "Quick! if you have one spark of sense or manhood in you. There's a knife--cut this rope."

With quivering fingers Colonel Harrington took up from the desk the office knife used for cutting string. It was keen-bladed as a razor. Unsteady and bungling as was his stroke, he severed the rope partly, and Bart burst his bonds free.

"Stay here," called out the young express agent sharply. "I hold you responsible for this office till I return!"

He dashed outside like a rocket, scanned the whole roadway expanse, and darted for the freight yards with the speed of the wind.

The electric arc lights were sparsely scattered, but there was sufficient illumination for him to make out a fugitive figure just crossing the broad roadway towards the freight tracks.

It was Lem Wacker. A train of empty box freights blocked his way. He stooped, 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 he reached the spot where Wacker had disappeared.

At that moment above the jangling, clumping activity of the yards there arose on the night air one frightful, piercing shriek.

Bart halted with a nameless shock, for the utterance was distinctly human and curdling. He glanced after the receding train, fancying that Wacker might have got caught under the cars and was being dragged along with them.

That roadbed was clear, however. Two hundred feet to the right was a second train. Its forward section was moving off, having just thrown some cars against others stationary on a siding.

Bart ran towards these. Wacker could not have so suddenly disappeared in any other direction. He crossed between bumpers, and glanced eagerly all around. There was no hiding-place nearer than the repair shops, and they were five hundred feet distant.

Wacker could not possibly have reached their precincts in the limited space of time afforded since Bart had last lost sight of him.

"He is hiding in some of those cars," decided Bart, "or he has swung onto 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 the stationary freights.

"It is Wacker, sure," he breathed, "for that is the same sound made by the little alarm clock he bought at the sale this afternoon."

The last vibrating tintinnabulations of the clock died away as Bart discovered his enemy.

Lem Wacker's burly figure and white face were discernible against the direct flare of an arc light. He seemed a part of the bumpers of two cars. Bart flared a match once, and uttered the single word:

"Caught."

Lem Wacker was clinging to the upright brake rod, and swaying there. His face was bloodless and he was writhing with pain. One foot was clamped tight, a crushed, jellied mass between two bumpers.

It seemed that his foot must have slipped just as the forward freights were switched down. This had caused that frenzied yell. Perhaps the thought of the money had impelled him not to repeat it, but the little alarm clock which he carried in his pocket had betrayed him.

Bart took in the situation at a glance. He was shocked and unnerved, but he 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 for life!"

The young express agent did not have to search for the stolen money package. It protruded from Wacker's side pocket. As he glanced it over, he saw that it was practically intact. Wacker had torn open only one corner, sufficient to observe its contents. Bart placed the envelope in his own pocket.

"I'm fainting!" declared Wacker.

Bart crossed under the bumpers to the other side of the freights. He swept the scene with a searching glance, finally detected the shifting glow of a night watchman's lantern, and ran over to its source.

He knew the watchman, and asked the man to accompany him, explaining as they went along that Lem Wacker had got caught between two freights, was held a prisoner in the bumpers with his foot crushed, and pointed the sufferer out as they neared the freights.

Wacker by this time had sunk flat on the bumpers, his limbs twisted up under him, but he managed to hold on to the brake rod. He only moaned and writhed when the horrified watchman spoke to him.

"I'll have to get help," said the latter. "They will have to switch off the front freights to get him loose."

The watchman took out his whistle and blew a kind of a call on the telegraphic system. Two minutes later Bart saw McCarthy hurriedly rounding a corner of the freight depot, and advanced towards him.

The young express agent briefly and confidentially imparted to his old friend the fact that Lem Wacker had tried to steal some money from the express office, and had got his deserts at last.

"Get him clear of the bumpers," said Bart, "carry him to the express office, call for a surgeon, and don't let him be taken away from there till 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 knows something 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 personal orders 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 inner pocket, and started by the shortest cut he knew from the yards.

Bart did not even pause at the express office, where he had left Colonel Harrington. 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 the disposition of the household, paused under a rear window, picked up a handful of gravel, threw it against the upper panes, and gave three low but distinct whistling trills.

He could hear a prompt rustling. In less than forty seconds Darry Haven stuck 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 a minute. No need disturbing the folks. You can be back inside of an hour."

Bob, hatless and without a collar, came sliding down the lightning rod two 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 told his companions the details of the special mission in which he required their 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, and the residence of the senior partner of Martin & Company, whose name had been mentioned in the telegram, was nearly half a mile further away.

"Eleven thirty-five," announced Bart, a trifle anxiously. "It does not give us much time. I hope there's no slip anywhere."

At just fifteen minutes of midnight the strange trio passed up the graveled walk leading to the Martin mansion. The front door had a ponderous old-fashioned knocker, and Bart plied it without ceremony.

He began to grow nervous as three minutes passed by, and not the least attention 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 mean waking a man up at midnight on a thing like that! Deliver it at the factory in the morning."

The speaker, muttering direfully under his breath, was about to slam down the window.

"Wait one moment, Mr. Martin," called up Bart sharply. "This is a special delivery, and a very important matter. I tender you this package in the presence of these witnesses, and it is a legal delivery. If you decline to come down and take it, and I leave it on your doorstep at the call 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," he called 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 the business, and playing for time."

"And he's beat us!" breathed Bob--"hear there! twelve o'clock. Your delivery is no good, Bart! It's just struck a new day!"

"S--sh!" warned Bart, as a clock inside the house rang out twelve silvery strokes. "The clock is wrong. We've got five minutes and a half yet."

In about two minutes a light flashed in the hall, the front door was unlocked, and Martin appeared, half-dressed. Bart relievedly put up his watch. It was just three minutes of twelve.

He instantly placed the express envelope in Martin's hands, slipping into the vestibule.

"Mr. Martin," he said, "it is necessary for you to verify the contents of this package. An accident happened to it, as you see."

Martin tore the envelope clear open, and glanced over fifteen bills of one thousand dollar denomination each.

"All right," he said gruffly.

"Will you sign this receipt?" asked Bart politely, tendering the slip of paper he had prepared at the office for this especial occasion. "Thank you," he added, as the pickle man scrawled a penciled signature at the bottom of the paper.

"I take this money," said Mr. Martin, looking up with a peculiar expression on his face, "because it is delivered by you, but I shall return 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 notice that the fifteen thousand dollars was not delivered to me until six minutes after twelve, too late to make the tender legal, which makes the contract null and void."

Mr. Martin, with a triumphant sweep of his hand, pointed to a big clock at the end of the long hall.

"I beg your pardon," said Bart, holding up his watch, "but I keep official time, and it is exactly thirty seconds to midnight. Listen!"

And thirty seconds later, from the Pleasantville court house tower, the town bell rang out twelve musical strokes.