Altogether that first run in their automobile was pronounced a jolly
success by the Corner House girls. The return journey from Marchenell
Grove was without incident.
"If we had only become acquainted with Mrs. Heard the trip would have
been more than worth while," declared Ruth, who was seldom as
enthusiastic about a new acquaintance as she was about the aunt of the
county surveyor. "She is coming to see us soon."
Agnes was more interested in another thing, and she confided in Neale.
"Do you really suppose, Neale," she asked, "that the awful fellow who
spoke to Ruth is one of those who stole Mr. Collinger's auto?"
"Saleratus Joe?" chuckled the boy.
"Hasn't he any other name? It sounds like--like the Wild West in the
movies, or something like that."
"They only call him that for fun," explained Neale O'Neil. "And whether
he helped get away with the surveyor's machine or not, I'm sure I don't
know."
"But can't you _guess_?" cried Agnes, in exasperation.
"What's the use of guessing?" returned her boy chum. "That won't get you
anywhere. You're a poor detective, Aggie."
"Don't make fun," complained Agnes, who was very much excited about the
automobile robbery. They had just got their car, and she had longed for
it so deeply that she was beginning to be worried for fear something
would happen to it.
"Shut Tom Jonah into the garage at night," Neale suggested. "I warrant
no thieves will take it."
Mr. Howbridge, while he was about it, had had a cement block garage
built on the rear of the Stower premises facing Willow Street, for the
housing of the Corner House girls' motor car.
"Mr. Collinger's auto was stolen right on the street," said Agnes,
doubtfully.
"That's the worst of these flivvers," retorted Neale, with a grin.
"People are apt to come along and pick 'em up absent-mindedly and go off
with them. Say! have you heard the latest?"
"What about?" asked Agnes, dreamily.
"About the flivver. Do you know what the chickens say when one of 'em
goes by?"
"No," declared the girl.
"Cheep! Cheep! Cheep!" mimicked the boy.
Agnes giggled. Then she said: "But Mr. Collinger's wasn't one of those
cheap cars. It _was_ a runabout; but it cost him a lot of money."
"But that freckled-faced young man, Neale--_do_ you suppose he could be
the one Mrs. Heard said was seen driving the stolen car away from the
court house?"
"Why, how should _I_ know?" demanded Neale. "I'm no seventh son of a
seventh son."
"I wish we had seen a constable out there in the grove and had had him
arrested."
"What for? On what charge?" cried Neale, wonderingly.
"Why, because he spoke to Ruth and me. Then he could be held while his
record was looked up. Maybe Mr. Collinger could have recovered his car
by that means."
"Cricky!" ejaculated the boy. "You've been reading the police court
reports in the newspapers, I believe, Aggie."
"Well! that's what they do," declared the girl, confidently.
"Maybe so. But you couldn't have had the fellow arrested for speaking to
you. You shouldn't have been around the dance floor if you wanted to
escape that. But, perhaps that freckled rascal _is_ one of the thieves,
and maybe he can be traced. Mrs. Heard will tell her nephew and he will
attend to it--no fear!"
"But it would be just great, Neale, if we could do something toward
recovering the car and getting the thieves arrested," said Agnes who, as
Neale often said, if she went into a thing, went into it all over!
They had not much time just then, however, to give to the mystery of the
county surveyor's lost automobile. Final examinations were coming on and
the closing of school would be the next week but one.
Even Dot was busy with school work, although she was not very far
advanced in her studies; and during these last few days she was released
from her classes in the afternoon earlier than the other Corner House
girls.
Sometimes she walked toward Meadow Street, which was across town from
the Corner House and in a poorer section of Milton, with some of her
little school friends before coming home; and so she almost always met
Sammy Pinkney loafing along Willow Street on returning.
Sammy did not go to school this term. Scarlet fever had left this
would-be pirate so weak and pale that the physician had advised nothing
but out-of-doors for him until autumn.
Sammy, in some ways, was a changed boy since his serious illness. He was
much thinner and less robust looking, of course; but the changes in him
were not all of a physical nature. For one thing, he was not so rough
with his near-neighbors, the Corner House girls. They had been very kind
to him while he was ill, and his mother was always singing their
praises. Besides, the other boys being in school, Sammy was lonely and
was only too glad as a usual thing to have even Dot to talk to or play
with.
Dot was a little afraid of Sammy, even now, because of his past well-won
reputation. And, too, his reiterated desire to be a pirate cast a glamor
over his character that impressed the smallest Corner House girl.
One day she met him on Willow Street, some distance from the old Corner
House. He was idly watching a man across the street who was moving along
the sidewalk in a very odd way indeed.
The Kenways had lived in a very poor part of Bloomingsburg before coming
to Milton, and there had been saloons in the neighborhood; but Dot had
been very small, and if she had seen such a thing as an intoxicated man
she had forgotten it. Near the Corner House there were no saloons,
although the city of Milton licensed many of those places. Dot had not
before seen a man under the influence of liquor.
This unfortunate was not a poorly dressed man. Indeed, he was rather
well appareled and normally might have been a very respectable citizen.
But he was staggering from side to side of the walk, his head hanging
and his stiff derby hat--by some remarkable power--sticking to his head,
although it threatened to fall off at every jerk.
"Why--ee!" gasped the smallest Corner House girl, "what ever is the
matter with that poor man, Sammy Pinkney, do you suppose?"
Sammy, trying to wrap his limbs about a fire-plug in emulation of a
boa-constrictor, jerked out:
"Brick in his hat!"
"Oh! _What_?" murmured the puzzled Dot, eyeing the poor man wonderingly
and clasping the Alice-doll closer.
Sammy grinned. He was a tantalizing urchin and loved to mystify the
innocent Dot.
"He's carrying a brick in his hat," he repeated, with daring.
"Why--why----Doesn't he _know_ it?" demanded the little girl.
"I guess nobody's told him yet," chuckled Sammy.
At that moment the intoxicated man just caught his hat from tumbling off
by striking it with the palm of one hand and so settling it well down
upon his ears again.
"Oh, my!" murmured the startled Dot. "It came pretty near falling out,
didn't it?"
"He, he!" snickered Sammy.
"Do you suppose he _wants_ to carry that brick in his hat?" asked Dot,
seriously. "I shouldn't think he would."
"He don't know he's got it," said Sammy.
"Why doesn't somebody tell him?" demanded Dot. "The poor man! He'll
surely fall down."
Sammy still snickered. Somebody should have spanked Sammy, right then
and there!
"I don't care!" exclaimed Dot, more and more disturbed, "it doesn't seem
nice--not at all. I think you ought to tell him, Sammy."
"Not me!"
"Well----" Dot looked all around. There was nobody else in sight just
then. Willow Street was quite deserted.
"If you won't, then I must," declared the little girl, shouldering the
obligation pluckily and starting across the street.
"Aw, Dot! Let him alone," muttered Sammy.
The young rascal was suddenly startled. He began to wonder what would
happen to him if his mother learned that he had been trying to fool Dot
Kenway in any such way as this.
"Come back!" he called after her.
"Sha'n't!" declared Dot, who could be stubborn when she wanted to be.
"Say! that man won't listen to you," insisted Sammy.
Dot kept right on. The man had halted, and was clinging to a tree box,
his head hanging down. His face was very much flushed and his eyes were
glassy.
"But I s'pose," thought Dot, "if _I_ was carrying a brick in my hat it
would make _me_ sick, too."
"Mister!" she said to the man, stopping in the gutter and looking up at
him.
"Huh? What's matter?" asked the man. His head jerked up and he looked
all around to see who had spoken to him.
"Mister," said Dot, earnestly, "I--I hope you'll 'scuse me, but there's a
brick in your hat. Sammy Pinkney says so. And I think if you take it out
you'll feel ever so much better."
Sammy heard her. He actually grew pale, and, casting a startled glance
around him, he ran. He ran all the way home, for he could not imagine
what the man would say or do to Dot. Sammy was not a very brave boy.
The unfortunate man looked down at Dot, finally having discovered her
whereabouts, with preternatural gravity.
"Say--little girl--say that 'gain, will you?" he said, slowly.
Dot quite innocently repeated it. The man carefully removed his hat and
looked into it. Then he turned it over and shook it. Nothing, of course,
fell to the ground.
"'Tisn't there. You fooled yourself. I thought so," muttered the man.
And then he leaned so far over that he dropped the hat in the gutter.
"You must be dreadful sick," Dot said to him, her little heart touched
by his appearance.
"Yes--that's it. Sick. That's it," he mumbled.
This was a really awful adventure for little Dot Kenway.
"I'm going to get you a glass of water," she said. "Your face is so red.
You _are_ sick, I can see."
He said nothing, but blinked at her. Perhaps he did not at first quite
understand. Dot turned to cross the street toward the store on the
corner. Then she turned back.
"Will you please hold my Alice-doll while I go for the water?" she asked
the man. "Do be very careful with her--please."
"Sure!" said the man, good-naturedly.
"You'll truly, truly be very careful of her?"
"Sure will," repeated the unfortunate.
So, after she had placed the doll carefully in his arms, the little girl
tripped away on her errand of mercy. The man sat down on the curb and
held it. It might have been a laughable situation--only no thinking
person could have laughed.
The man nursed the doll as tenderly as Dot would have done herself. He
rocked to and fro on the curb, hugging the battered doll and looking
down at it earnestly.
Nobody had yet noticed the incident--save Sammy Pinkney; and Sammy
Pinkney had run away.
Dot was bold in the cause of any one in need, if she was not bold for
herself. She asked for the glass of cold water and obtained it. She
brought it carefully back to the man on the curbstone, holding the glass
in both her dimpled hands.
His face was still very red, but his eyes were no longer glassy. He
looked at the child with a shamed expression slowly dawning in his
countenance, and his eyes were moist with tears.
"You'd better take your doll, little girl, and get away from me," he
said, but not roughly.
"Oh, no," said Dot, determinedly. "I must help you. I know you must be
very sick. You ought to see our Dr. Forsyth. He could make you well
quick, I know."
"I guess _you_ can cure me as quickly as a doctor," said the man,
hanging his head. "I--I had a little girl like you once."
"Now drink some of this," urged Dot, without noticing the man's last
remark, and offering the glass of water.
He took it in a trembling hand and raised it to his lips. The little
girl reached for the Alice-doll, but watched him carefully.
"Don't spill it," she said, "and don't drink it all. I think if I put
some on your face you'd feel better."
Immediately she produced a diminutive handkerchief, folded just as it
had been ironed, and when she took back the glass, she dipped the bit of
muslin in the water remaining in it.
Then with tender hand she wiped his hot face; and she wiped away two big
tears, too, that started down his cheeks. She was still engaged in thus
playing the Good Samaritan when a swiftly moving motor car coming
through Willow Street was suddenly brought to a stop beside them.
There was a thin, wiry fellow at the steering wheel. The goggles he wore
half disguised him. In the tonneau sat a fat, prosperous looking man
smoking a big, black cigar.
"That's him, ain't it, Joe?" asked the fat man, nodding toward the man
sitting on the curbstone.
"Yep. That's him," rejoined the chauffeur.
"Hey, Mr. Maynard!" exclaimed the fat man. "Get up and get in here. I
want to talk to you."
The fast sobering man looked up, saw the speaker, and did not look
particularly pleased. He tried to rise. Although his brain was fast
clearing, his limbs were still wabbly.
"Get out and boost him in here," said the fat man, in a low tone to the
chauffeur.
The latter hopped out. He came quickly to the aid of Mr. Maynard, and
pushed little Dot Kenway rudely aside. The man still held the doll.
"Say! you don't want that thing!" muttered the chauffeur, and he seized
the doll and flung it disdainfully upon the ground.
Dot uttered a scream of terror. At that moment Agnes and Neale O'Neil,
the latter carrying the girl's schoolbooks, came around the corner.