The Corner House Girls on a Tour

“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.”