A PIECE OF CHALK
Frank Newton had said that Markham was a first-class peddler. If he had
followed his young friend as he darted from the house, he would also
have noted him quite a proficient amateur detective.
Markham looked down the street after the retreating figures of old
Dorsett and his companion. He saw they were bound for the business
centre of the town. He cut down an alley, and heading them off allowed
them to pass him by and quietly followed on their trail.
When they went up into a building occupied as offices for a justice of
the peace and lawyers, Markham in a few moments trailed after them.
Loitering about the hall, he could watch them conversing with a village
magistrate at his desk. The latter consulted a copy of the statutes,
expounded some point under discussion, and finally filled out several
legal blanks.
Markham was industriously reading the notices tacked to the justice’s
bulletin board outside of his office door, as Dorsett came out of the
room.
“Hold on, Sherry,” he said to his companion. “I’ll settle with you now.”
“All right, governor,” bobbed the man.
“You are deputized to serve these papers. Don’t get them mixed. Got any
tacks?”
“I’ll get some all right.”
“Very well. When you have disposed of the first two documents, serve the
last one on Mrs. Ismond, see?”
“Sure, I see, governor--ah, and glad to see this five-dollar bill. First
one I’ve seen, in fact, for an age.”
“When you’re all through, report to me.”
“I will, governor.”
They kept together till they reached the street. Arrived there, Dorsett
went one way, his hireling another.
Markham put after the latter, who was so elated over the possession of
money that he chuckled and swung along the street with a great air of
importance and enjoyment.
The man Sherry went straight to the railway depot. Markham, looking in
through one of its windows, saw him approach the station agent. To him
Sherry read one of the documents and came out again.
The second day of Markham’s residence in Greenville, he had done quite
an heroic act. It had made the railroad men his friends. One of their
number had celebrated pay day too freely. He had stumbled across a
track.
Markham had run at the top of his speed, and had even risked life and
limb to reach him in time to drag him out of the way of a freight train
backing down upon him.
“Mr. Young,” said Markham, running into the depot by one side door as
Sherry left it by another, “you remember me?”
“Sure, I do. How are you?” said the depot master heartily.
“I’m worried to death to find out what that man who was just here is up
to,” said Markham, hurriedly.
“Up to? Down to, you mean,” flared out Young. “He’s served a paper on me
as the representative of the railway company, notifying me that we are
to hold the car containing Mrs. Ismond’s furniture until the matter of a
debt she owes old Dorsett is settled in court.”
“Mrs. Ismond does not rightfully owe him a cent,” asserted Markham.
“It’s a mean, malicious trick of the old reprobate to persecute my
friend, Frank Newton. Can they stop the car?”
The station agent shrugged his shoulders dubiously.
“They won’t get any help from me,” he said. “That man asked me where the
car was. I told him to find out--I wasn’t hunting for it. I’d like
nothing better than to delay him for two hours. By five o’clock the
north freights will have left the yards. Once out of the county, that
furniture would be safe.”
“Thank you,” said Markham. “I’ll see what I can do.”
He ran out of the depot forthwith. Sherry had crossed the road. Markham
saw him coming out of one of the taverns lining the street in that
immediate vicinity.
Sherry had one or two men with him with whom he had evidently been
treating. They walked along with him until they reached another haunt
of the same class, and went in there.
Markham got in a doorway near the entrance to the place. In a few
minutes Sherry came out to the street.
He had his hat stuck back and his head up by this time, and was
officious and blatant in his manner.
“I’d like to stay with you, boys,” he announced. “Join you later. Got a
big responsibility on my shoulders just now.”
“That so?” smirked one of the hangers on.
“You bet. See that paper?” and Sherry produced a document.
“We see it.”
“I can tie up the whole railroad system here if I want to,” he bragged.
Markham hurried off in the direction of the freight tracks. There was a
wide crossing where the sidings began. A flagman guarded this. Markham
ran up to him. This man, as he knew, was a brother of the railroader he
had saved from being run over by the freight train.
“Mr. Boyce,” said Markham, “will you do me a favor?”
“Sure, will I,” cried the flagman. “We’re a whole family of friends to
you, boy.”
“All right. Have you got a piece of chalk--the kind they use for marking
on the cars?”
“Dozens of it. Here’s a handful, my hearty,” and the flagman darted
into the little shanty and out again with a fistful of great chunks of
chalk.
“All right,” said Markham, selecting a piece. “Now then, do you see that
man coming down the track?”
“Yes,” nodded the flagman.
“He will ask you about the out freights, maybe about some particular car.
It’s the car holding Frank Newton’s furniture that he’s after--their
household goods they’re shipping to Pleasantville.”
“Aha,” nodded Boyce.
“I will be in sight,” went on Markham, rapidly. “Point me out to him.
Say I can tell him, will you?”
“But what for--no, that’s all right. I will, I will,” pledged the
flagman.
Markham ran down a siding. He was busy about a certain car for a few
minutes. As, after interviewing the flagman, Sherry came that way, he
discovered Markham seated on top of a locked box car idly kicking his
heels against its side.
“Hey, hello,” hailed Sherry--“this the out freights?”
“How should I know?” muttered Markham.
“Oh, I know you. You’re the fellow who trains with young Newton. Of
course you’d be here, and of course this is the car. Yes,” decided
Sherry, scanning its side. “Sure. Here’s the destination marked in
chalk.”
Sherry read the sprawling writing: “7-23, Pleasantville,” marked across
the locked door of the car, and pulled out a document.
“That’s the way we do it,” he said in a boastful chuckle, picking up a
coupling pin and using it to hammer some tacks through the paper. “There
you are. In the name of the law this car seized in transit, ipse dixit,
e pluribus unum, according to the statoots therein pervided. Quite a
lawyer, hey? Boy, it’s a life sentence to tamper with that car till the
judge says move her.”
“It is?” said Markham, tranquilly.
The big braggart swaggered away. Markham jumped down, watched him out
of sight, jumped up and cracked his heels together. Then with his
handkerchief he rubbed off the destination mark that had deluded old
Dorsett’s boisterous and self-important emissary.
Then Markham chuckled as he glanced at the document tacked to the car
door. He now moved over to a line of made-up freights on another track.
He lingered in their vicinity for over an hour.
When he had seen an engine run on a caboose and then switch to the head
of the train, Markham, with a good deal of complacency in his face,
started back to join his friends.
As he neared the house where he had left Mrs. Ismond and Frank, he
noticed a man leave the place. It was Sherry.
“All right,” announced Markham, breaking in upon his friends a moment
later. “I’ve found out what old Dorsett is up to.”
“Yes, so have we,” answered Frank, who stood by the side of his mother,
who was looking down dejectedly. “They have just notified us that the
car containing our furniture is attached.”
“That so?” said Markham, with a broad smile. “Well, what are you going
to do, Frank?”
“We can’t leave Greenville, that’s all,” said Frank, with a sigh.
“Mother, I’ll go down to the station and get the money back for our
tickets.”
“Hold on,” cried Markham, “you won’t do any such thing. How soon does
that train leave, Frank?”
“In half an hour.”
“Well, get your traps together. You’re going to take that train all
right.”
“Why, what are you talking about?” demanded Frank, staring at Markham in
wonder.
“I mean that fellow who was just here has made a mess of it,” said
Markham. “He’s attached a car all right, but not your car.”
“What?”
“No, sir-ree! Your car, my dear Frank, I am happy to tell you, is by
this time twenty miles over the county line whirling on its way to
Pleasantville. Hip, hip, hurrah!”
“See here, Markham,” said Frank, seriously, seizing his friend’s arm in
an endeavor to cure his jubilant antics. “What have you been up to.”
“Me? Nothing,” declared Markham, assuming the vacant bumpkin look he
expressed so well when he gave a character delineation. “It’s old
Dorsett’s emissary who was up to something--up to the wrong car, see? He
has tacked that attachment notice onto a poor innocent old car filled
with ballasting cinders. Never mind now. I’ll tell you later. Don’t miss
the train, Frank.”
There were hurried good-byes to their kind-hearted neighbor. Frank and
Markham, each carrying two satchels, piloted Mrs. Ismond to the railroad
station.
Just as the train came in from the south a man drove past the depot
platform. He drew up his horse with a jerk. It was Dorsett.
He stared in amazement at the departing trio. Then suddenly, as if
suspecting some trick, he got out of his gig and hurried across to the
train.
Frank had got his mother to a comfortable seat. The coach window was
open.
“You leave at your peril, widow Ismond,” shouted Dorsett. “That stuff of
yours is attached. We’ve stopped the freight car, and--”
“All aboard!” sang out the conductor.
“Hold on, stop--zounds!” yelled Dorsett at the top of his voice.
He was lifted from his feet suddenly. Some one rushing down the platform
at cyclone speed had collided with him.
It was Nelson Cady. He was hatless, his hair flying in the wind, his
whole appearance that of fearful excitement.
“Say, conductor,” he panted out breathlessly. “Three people just got on
the train--where are they? Must see Frank Newton!”
“Hi, there, Nelson,” hailed Frank, waving his hand through the open
coach window.
“Oh, jolly!” shouted Nelson, keeping on a run with the moving train.
“See Frank!”
Nelson tugged at his pocket. He pulled out a white, fluttering sheet of
paper.
“Frank, Frank,” his excited tones rang out after the vanishing
train--“I’ve got my letter at last!”