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.