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Page 41
"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_.
CHAPTER XVII
A FAINT CLEW
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