NOTE BY DOCTOR THOMAS ANDREWS, LATE VISITING PHYSICIAN AT THE DUNKIRK
HOSPITAL, AND NOW ON THE ORTHOPÆDIC STAFF OF THE SAME INSTITUTION,
DATED THREE WEEKS LATER, FROM BERMUDA
Miss Lizzie’s narrative stops here. My Aunt Letitia, during her
convalescence in the hospital, having been discovered poring over books
of aerial navigation, and having written to the Wrights, offering to
turn over a second-hand automobile of standard make, a thirty-foot
motor-launch, and an equity in money, for one of their model biplanes,
Miss Lizzie and Miss Aggie hurriedly took her to Mount Clemens for a
series of baths.
“I shall take up Miss Lizzie’s narrative with the story told to my
Aunt Letitia by Miss Blake, now my wife. Miss Blake was young, only
nineteen, and had been in the hospital only six months. Miss Smith was
the head day nurse in K ward, with Miss Blake as her assistant. Miss
Smith had almost completed her three years’ course, and was not popular
with the officers. She was, however, a good nurse, and unlike Miss
Blake, was dependent on her earnings for her support.
“On Tuesday evening, trouble between the two medical _internes_ and the
hospital superintendent, Mr. Harrison, reached a climax. The three men
had a wordy argument on the staircase near K ward, and Linda Smith (who
was not over-scrupulous) had shut herself in a small supply room near
to listen. The ward was in charge of Miss Blake, who was serving the
patients’ suppers from a table in the center of the long room. Behind
a screen, in the second bed from the far end of the ward lay Amos
Johnson, peacefully dying. Beyond him, in the end bed, lay a delirious
patient named Wesley Barker, an Englishman, who had been sent in from
the Zoological Garden, badly injured by the great ape, Hero, since dead.
“Barker was tied down. Two long towels, one over his arms and one over
his legs, were knotted beyond his reach under the edge of the bed. His
fractured ribs had healed, but he was still delirious. His delirium
in the last day or two had taken on an acuter form, and was mania.
Articulate speech had changed to noisy ape-like chatterings. He made
strange facial grimaces, and being tied, had more than once tried to
bite his nurses.
“Miss Blake filled a feeding cup with broth, and having attended to the
other patients, went behind Johnson’s screen to feed the maniac in the
last bed. To her horror, the bed was empty!
“Nervous, but not excessively alarmed, Miss Blake called Linda Smith,
and they searched the ward. Barker had gone, perhaps by creeping
behind the heads of the beds to the doorway, and there, watching his
chance, escaping to the fire-escape by a hall window near. Although
only late September, it was cold, and he wore only the clothing he had
worn in bed, a hospital nightshirt.
“Miss Blake wished to raise an immediate alarm, but Linda Smith
refused. She was responsible: an investigation would show she had been
absent from her ward without reason, and for some time. She was in
disfavor already, and she could not risk losing her diploma. She had
an invalid sister dependent on her. By threats and tears she made Miss
Blake promise to say nothing of Barker’s escape and to help her find
him.
“It was almost dark by that time, and the girls were in despair. Linda
Smith went down the fire-escape to the courtyard, and found the gate
man staring through the bars at the river.
“‘I dropped a rubber sheet out the window,’ she said, ‘but I don’t see
it. What are you looking at?’
“The gate man pointed to the Center Street bridge, which crosses the
river near the hospital. ‘There’s a woman out there in white,’ he said,
‘and she looks as if she might be thinking--there, look at that!’
“The bridge was practically deserted. She and the gate man saw the
figure move back a step or two, run forward and dive over the rail. The
gate man unlocked the gate and ran out, but the toll house is at the
east end of the bridge, and by the time he had raised the alarm there
was nothing to be seen. Linda Smith went back to Miss Blake, and had
hysteria in the K ward linen room.
“Discovery meant disgrace to her, so she made up her mind not to
be discovered. Barker had had no family and no friends. No one had
visited him except the assistant keeper, and he had not shown any
particular solicitude. Linda Smith thought she saw a way out, and half
frightened, half coaxed Miss Blake into helping her. Remember, they
both thought Barker was dead, and Linda Smith threatened in case of
discovery, to throw herself off the roof. Miss Blake’s part, therefore,
was the acquiescence of a young and terrified girl, in a situation that
would have shaken older and stronger nerves.
“The two medical _internes_ left at seven o’clock, as a result of the
dispute with the superintendent. At ten minutes past seven, Linda Smith
sent down a dismissal card for one Wesley Barker, with the forged
signature of one of the departed _internes_. At twenty minutes past,
the yellow ticket came back from the office, the ticket which would
permit Wesley Barker to pass the door-man and leave the hospital for
good. Linda Smith destroyed it.
“At seventy-thirty the night nurse, Miss Durand, was told that one
of the heaviest burdens had been taken from her, and went to work
cheerfully. But at ten o’clock that night Linda Smith, lying awake
in bed in her room in the dormitory, saw Wesley Barker climb up the
fire-escape outside her window, stopping now and then, monkey fashion,
to swing out over the dizzy height by his hands.
“The girl was almost frenzied. She got up and dressed and went to the
roof. To her horror she found the superintendent, Mr. Harrison, smoking
there and she almost fainted when she got back to her room. But the
superintendent was not molested. There was no alarm.
“At midnight she formed the resolution of getting Barker’s clothes from
the basement clothes room and putting them on the roof, in the hope
that he would put them on and go away. Properly dressed, even if he
went back to the Zoo, she could claim that he had been taken away by
somebody in a carriage, and might still put through the deception. In
any event, his clothes could not be left there. Their discovery meant
her disgrace.
“She had forgotten, however, that Barker had been brought in in the
ambulance, and had no clothes. Afraid to go to the basement alone, she
asked Miss Durand to go to the clothes room with her, giving as an
excuse that she had forgotten to send Johnson’s clothes to the office,
a rule in case of death, and on finding nothing there in Barker’s
name, she did the only thing she could think of--took Johnson’s old
brown suit, which, with his worn shoes and not very clean linen, was
tied in a bundle with a piece of bandage and marked with the dying
spiritualist’s name.
“Miss Durand had disappeared, carrying the bundle. Miss Smith searched
the far corners of the basement, but found nothing. Finally, she and
Miss Durand went up-stairs again, to find that Johnson had been dead
for some time. Bates, the convalescent, had seen them go and saw
them return. He had, however, been detected a day or so before by
Miss Durand selling cocaine to a colored man in one of the wards,
and later, under Miss Durand’s eye, he said she had been absent ten
minutes. As a matter of fact, it had been fifty.
“Linda Smith went back to her room at once. She knew she and Miss Blake
would be called to attend to Johnson in the mortuary, and she waited
for the summons. The ghastly trick of hanging the poor old body to the
chandelier followed in due course.
“Thinking Barker still dead, it had been as great a shock to Ruth Blake
as to the others. It was not until the next morning that Linda Smith
told her Barker was still alive, and somewhere in the building. There
was only one comfort: Linda had put the bundle of clothing on the roof,
and it had disappeared.
“The other things followed in quick succession. Miss Blake, half
frenzied, conceived the idea of putting food heavily doped with
morphia, on the roof, along the fire-escape, anywhere that the maniac
might find it. She hardly knew what she hoped to do by this: she was
in an abnormal frame of mind by this time: ill, sleepless and unable to
eat. The food disappeared, but if the morphia had any effect, it was in
daylight, when he probably slept, hidden away under the roof or in the
linen closet.
“The following night she searched the fifth, or mortuary floor,
carrying a candle. She had suspected, from the night before, that
Barker was hiding in the linen closet, and Linda Smith got the key. The
plan had been that Miss Smith should go with her, but she was given
a special case that night, and Miss Blake, courageously enough, went
alone.
“Barker was in the closet, and when she opened the door he seized
her arm in a murderous grip that left it blue and swollen. She tried
speaking to him, and releasing his hold, he darted out through the
closet window and leaped to the fire-escape. Miss Blake pluckily
followed him to the roof, but he had disappeared. As Miss Lizzie has
told, I followed Miss Blake. Just before I reached her, she cried
out and flung her brass candlestick at something behind me. The next
instant I was grasped from behind and thrown head first through the
skylight.
“I did not know I had been bitten in the shoulder. I thought I had been
stabbed, until Jacobs and I together cauterized the wound that night in
the laboratory. Probably during the time we were there, the door being
unlocked, Barker entered and hid in the building. Miss Blake was there
at the same time, having watched Jacobs and myself enter, and being
fearful of further harm. She did not see anything of Barker, however,
and went back to the roof, where she sat huddled until dawn, waiting
for Barker to appear again. But he did not come, and at daylight,
shaking with cold, she went back to her room. There she had a chill,
followed by violent fever and delirium, and there I believe Linda Smith
came, bringing a surgical knife stained with blood, that she had found
on the roof, and which Miss Lewis subsequently found in Miss Blake’s
room.
“The condition of the two girls by that time was pitiable. Miss Blake,
younger and more nervous, had entirely succumbed: Miss Smith, sleepless
and unable to eat, was still making a fight to cover the whole thing
and to drive Barker away from the building. They could not discover
where he hid in the daytime, but at night evidences of his ape-like
mischief were everywhere apparent. He swung by his feet from the
pipe-molding of the walls, squatted on the foot-board of the bed in
private room thirty-six, making hideous grimaces--a story which caused
the nurse in charge to mark ‘delirious’ on the record of a perfectly
rational woman--leaped at giddy heights about the fire-escape and the
roof, and alarmed Miss Aggie into her story of a ghostly foot. The
man’s strength was almost super-human.
“Johnson died on Tuesday night, and it was on Wednesday night that
I was thrown through the skylight. Toward dawn of Thursday morning,
Barker went to the Zoo, distant about a mile from the hospital. By that
time he had donned Johnson’s trousers, but remained in his bare feet.
Access to the monkey house proved easy. The assistant keeper, sleeping
in a small room just inside the entrance, was not aroused until too
late. The key to Hero’s cage hung over his bed, it being his habit to
go in to see the ape several times during the night. On that night,
he opened the cage at one o’clock, and spoke to the ape, who had been
sulky all day. He locked the door and went back to bed, hanging the key
up again on its nail. It was still there in the morning at six o’clock,
but the ape was dead. In spite of his tremendous strength and length of
arm, he had been literally crushed to death, and then hung to the top
of the cage by a roller towel which did not belong to the Zoo.
“The police were put on the case, and had already arrested the
assistant keeper, who had been heard to say that either the ape would
get him or he would get the ape.
“On Wednesday night, Briggs, who had been most unpopular with Barker,
met his death in an almost similar manner, his ribs being crushed
in. In this case, however, Barker’s ingenuity utilized the useless
brown coat, the two towels being gone. Previous to that time, he had
rocked the elevator in impish mischief, or possibly wrath. It was this
incident which caused my Aunt Letitia to suspect a space under the roof
at the top of the elevator shaft, as a hiding place.
“The result of her courageous investigation is well known: mounted on
top of the cage, she was taken to the upper position of the shaft, and
there found what she had been looking for, an unboarded spot behind the
elevator wheel. She was disappointed, however, in finding the space
too dark for inspection, and in hearing or seeing nothing suspicious.
“Being a courageous woman and convinced that what she sought was there
in the cave-like recess, my Aunt Letitia threw her slipper with all the
strength she could summon, and was answered by a growl.
* * * * *
“My wife has just read this and confirms most of it. She suggests,
however, that I have omitted our theory of how Briggs was murdered
without discovery, while Jacobs was in the hall nearby and I myself
guarded the only other means of exit, the fire-escape.
“Barker probably took refuge in the linen closet, arriving at the
mortuary floor ahead of the slow progress of the cage, by scurrying
up the cable. He hid in the closet, and by throwing the coat over
Briggs and squeezing him in his muscular arms, he prevented any outcry.
Immediately after, he locked himself in the closet again, where he
smoked Briggs’ pipe, perhaps in itself the object of the attack.
“On the alarm being raised, Hicks and I came in through the window,
and Jacobs through the door. This left the fire-escape and the roof
unwatched, and he climbed out the window of the linen closet, swinging
himself easily to the fire-escape.
“The rest of the story we know. Barker was found, exhausted and half
starving, and was promptly put in a padded cell, where, a week later,
he died, probably from an infection, having cut his left foot badly,
possibly with the very knife that killed the laboratory guinea-pigs.
The injured foot, which he had crudely bandaged, probably explains
why only prints of a right foot were discovered. With the removal of
suspense Miss Blake recovered, and is now with me, enjoying the lilies
and onion fields of Bermuda. My Aunt Letitia is at Mount Clemens,
taking a series of baths and--I am informed by Miss Lizzie--carrying
on what she believes is a clandestine correspondence with the Wright
brothers. Miss Aggie’s hay fever left with the first frost. I am sorry
to say that Miss Linda Smith has never been heard from.”
THE AMAZING ADVENTURES OF LETITIA CARBERRY
PART TWO
CHAPTER I
A CIGARETTE CASE, A SHOE, AND A MENU CARD
It was three o’clock in the morning when we got back to the lake, and
it was twenty minutes before Carpenter heard us and started the ferry
across. Tish had lost her glasses in the excitement at the Sherman
House, and she did not see that Carpenter had forgotten to put the bar
across the end of the boat. Aggie and I screamed, but it was too late:
she drove the car down the bank in the moonlight and she did not stop
in time. The first we knew we were sitting waist-deep in Lake Penzance,
with Tish still holding the steering wheel and the stars making little
twinkles in our laps.
As Tish said afterward, it was a fit ending to a sensational night,
but, what with the wetting aggravating Aggie’s hay fever, and my having
bitten through the side of my tongue when the machine struck the bottom
of the lake, it more nearly finished us. The engine drowned with a
gurgle, and after Carpenter’s first yell there wasn’t a sound. Then we
heard him come to the end of the ferry-boat and look down at us, and
the next moment he had dropped the lantern and was doubled up on the
dock, laughing like the fool he is.
“Are you both there?” said Tish, without turning her head.
Aggie sneezed, as she always does after a shock, and a wave moved
slowly in and raised the water level with my breastbone.
“We are both here,” I said, with a bitterness that was natural under
the circumstances. “No thanks to you, Tish Carberry. There’s no fool
like an old fool.”
“What do you mean?” Tish demanded fiercely, twisting around in the
water with her dust cap over her eye. “Who was it said I ought to
buy the dratted thing? Drive it yourself if you think you can do any
better.”
“Row it,” I corrected. “It’s finished for good as a touring car, but by
putting an awning over it we might make it into a tolerable gasoline
launch.”
Aggie was crying.
“I told you something would happen,” she sniffled. “You’ll kill us all
yet, Tish Carberry--and me in my _foulard_ silk that spots with a drop
of rain!”
But Tish wasn’t paying any attention. She picked up the wrench that she
had kept by her as a sort of weapon and stood up on the seat. Tish is a
large woman.
“Abraham Carpenter,” she snapped, with as much dignity as she could
with her clothes glued to her, “if you do not stop that noise I will
brain you.”
Carpenter eased down gradually, and, holding his sides, he leaned over
the end of the ferry.
“What’ll I do, Miss Tish?” he asked, beginning to jerk again, but with
an eye on the wrench. “I can go around to the other dock and get a
rowboat, but it’ll take time.”
“Don’t bother about the other dock,” Tish snapped. “Get that board
there on the ferry and put one end of it down to the automobile. Then
turn your back.”
That’s the way we got out. I went up the board first, on my hands
and knees, and barring a few splinters I got up very nicely. Aggie
came next, and as the board was getting wet she had more trouble. But
Tish had the worst, for by that time the board was as slippery as a
toboggan; twice she got as far as the middle, only to slide back on
her stomach, and the last time she refused to try again. She sat down
on one of the seats, with the water up to her waist, and said that
she was skinned alive, and that she wished there was a tide to come
up and drown her and the miserable machine. We got her up finally by
throwing her a rope to put under her arms, and once up she collapsed
on the ferry-bench. It was then that Aggie missed the money. Carpenter
had slid down the board and was preparing to salvage the cushions when
Aggie clutched at her stocking and yelled.
“It’s gone!” she screeched, and then she sat plump down on the floor of
the ferry-boat and began to cry.
“What’s gone?” Tish demanded.
“The money,” Aggie said, feeling frantically around the tops of her
shoes. “When we went over the edge something broke--I felt it--and the
money’s gone.”
Tish had both her arms in the air and the rope over her shoulder, but
she stopped struggling and stared at Aggie.
“Gone!” she said in an awful voice. “Aggie Pilkington, every dollar of
that money was graft money. Only the prospect of stuffing it between
that red-haired man’s teeth has kept me alive through this terrible
night. Don’t tell me you’ve lost it.”
“We can give him a check,” said Aggie feebly.
“We can!” Tish snorted, and not another word did she say until
Carpenter had taken us across the lake and we stood dripping on the
front porch of the cottage, while Aggie got the key from under a flower
pot. Then Tish looked across the moonlit lake to where the cushions of
the machine floated in a nest of stars at the end of the ferry-dock.
“We averaged thirty miles an hour coming home,” she said triumphantly,
“and for the first time I feel that I have mastered the machine.”
Wet as we were, we remembered to put the lantern in the window as we
had promised, and we thought we saw a skiff shoot out in the starlight
from the other side of the lake. Tish and I took some hot milk, and
Aggie had a raw egg and some more baking soda, and we went to bed. The
stars were fading by that time, but after I got into bed I distinctly
heard footsteps on the gravel below my window.
“Are you sure you said the first house on the left?” Tish called to me.
And then we heard Mr. Ostermaier’s voice from the upper window next
door, and we knew it was all right. I crawled out and tried to see into
the preacher’s parlor, but the shade was partly down. I could only make
out a sleeve of Mrs. Ostermaier’s kimono. I was disappointed after all
we had gone through.
She--Mrs. Ostermaier--came over the next morning after breakfast, while
Aggie’s _foulard_ silk was hanging on the clothes-line. She had been
down with the other cottagers, looking across to where the red leather
of Tish’s machine stuck up above water-level.
“Be careful,” Tish said under her breath when she saw her; “she’s got
something in her hand!”
“What a terrible accident, and how lucky nobody was hurt!” Mrs.
Ostermaier began, holding the thing she was carrying against her skirt
and staring from the three of us to Aggie’s _foulard_. “The spots did
run, didn’t they? I told Mr. Ostermaier they would. He thinks you are
wonderful women, to go around the country as the three of you do at all
hours of the night.”
Just then the sunlight caught the thing she held in her hand, and I
knew in a moment what it was--it was Mr. Lewis’ silver cigarette case.
Tish saw it too, and ran her needle into her finger.
“We had an exciting night too,” Mrs. Ostermaier went on. “Dear me, Miss
Carberry, you’ve jabbed your finger!”
“An exciting night?” I asked, to keep her attention from Aggie. Aggie
had just seen the cigarette case and she had gone blue around the nose.
“Most exciting. About three o’clock this morning--about the time you
three ladies were having such a dreadful experience--a young couple
came to our cottage and wakened Mr. Ostermaier. I think they threw
gravel through the window. They wanted to be married.”
Tish sat up and tried to look scandalized.
“I hope your husband didn’t do it,” she said. I had to pinch Aggie; she
was leaning forward with her eyes bulging.
That put Mrs. Ostermaier on the defensive. “Why not?” she demanded.
“They had a license, and they were of age. I believe in encouraging
young love; Mr. Ostermaier says it is the most beautiful thing in the
world. Cousin Maggie and I were witnesses, and we threw rice after
them. It was barley, really, but we didn’t discover that until this
morning.”
Aggie gave a sigh of relief; we had guessed, but it was the first time
we had really known.
“I told Mr. Ostermaier that it gave me quite a thrill the way he
looked at her as Harold pronounced them man and wife. ‘All the world
loves a lover,’ and Cousin Maggie has been reading Ella Wheeler Wilcox
diligently all morning.”
She turned to go and we breathed easier. Now that we knew they were
safely married--Mrs. Ostermaier turned and started back.
“I nearly forgot what brought me,” she called. “My Willie found this in
the bed of your automobile, Miss Tish.” She held out the cigarette case
and Tish took it and dropped it into her work-basket.
“It belongs to my nephew, Charlie Sands,” she said, looking Mrs.
Ostermaier in the eye. Tish has plenty of courage, but I felt calamity
coming.
“So I told Mr. Ostermaier,” the creature said, with a smile. “But he
insists on remarking the coincidence that the initials on the cigarette
case are W. L. and that the young man’s name on the license was Walter
Lewis.”
I have always thanked Heaven that at that moment her Willie fell off
the dock, and although the child was not drowned, still, as Tish
wrote to Maria Lee, her niece, “he had swallowed enough water to wash
the initials off the tablets of his mother’s memory.” And so far as
we know, although the papers came out with great headlines about
the marriage, and another article about the post-office having been
robbed--we had nothing whatever to do with that--and about three
men disguised as women making their escape toward Canada in a red
automobile and having run over a pig at Dorchester Junction--I told
Tish at the time it was a pig, but she insisted it was a cow--although
the papers came out with all this, nobody ever suspected the truth
except Carpenter. He happened to find a menu from the Sherman House at
Noblestown floating in the body of the car, and the good-for-nothing
took a trip to the city and traced us.
He did not say anything, but about a week later he came to the cottage
and put a package on the table in the kitchen.
“It’s been puzzlin’ me for four days, Miss Lizzie,” he said, fumbling
with the string of the bundle. “I sez to Mrs. C., sez I, ‘It ain’t
possible,’ I sez. ‘She sez she lost her shoe when the automobile went
into the water, and she’s a truthful woman; and yet, two days after,
the chambermaid at the Sherman House finds it high and dry under a
bureau, forty miles away. It’s spooky,’ I sez.”
Aggie was pouring hot water into the teapot, and she kept on pouring
till it went all over the place.
“Nonsense,” said Tish. “That shoe doesn’t belong to Miss Lizzie.”
But I looked at Carpenter’s face and I knew it was hopeless.
“You’ve been a good friend to us, Mr. Carpenter,” I said. “We’ve always
felt we’ve owed you something. Here’s a little present, and thank you
for the shoe.”
He took the money and we looked each other straight in the eye. Then he
grinned.
“For twenty dollars, Miss Lizzie,” he said, “I’d be willing to swallow
my tongue backward. And the shoe ain’t the tongue kind.”
CHAPTER II
A BLUE RUNABOUT AND A BAD BRIDGE
Both Aggie and I had objected when Tish talked of buying an automobile.
But the more you talk against a thing to Tish the more she wants it. It
was just the same the time her niece, Maria Lee, went to Europe for the
whole summer and offered Tish her motor-boat. Aggie and I protested,
but the boat came, and Tish had a lesson or two and sent to town for a
yachting cap. Then, one day when we were making elderberry jelly and
ran out of sugar, Tish offered to take me to the mainland in the boat.
That was the time, you remember, when the stopping lever got jammed,
and Tish and I circled around Lake Penzance for seven hours, with
people on different docks trying to lasso us with ropes as we flew
past, and Aggie in hysterics on the beach below the cottage.
People of Penzance still speak of that day, for we figured out that we
had enough gasoline to run one hundred and sixty miles, and after Peter
Miller, at Point Lena, had lassoed us and was dragged for a quarter of
a mile before he caught hold of a buoy and could let go of the rope,
we got desperate. I was at the wheel and Tish was trying to stop the
engine, pouring water over it and attempting to stick an iron rod in
the wheels. And just as she succeeded, and the rod shot through the
awning on the top of the launch like a sky-rocket, I turned the thing
toward shore where it looked fairly flat.
“I’m going to get to land,” I said with my teeth clenched. “I don’t
care if it crawls up and dies in a plowed field; I’m going to get my
feet on dry land again.”
I had not expected it to stop so suddenly, but it did, and Tish and I
and the granulated sugar landed some distance ahead of the boat and
well above high-water mark; in fact, Tish broke her collar-bone, and
that entire summer, whenever the doctor had to peel off the adhesive
plaster, Tish would get ugly and turn on me.
Well, we should have known about the automobile. I had a queer feeling
when I started out that morning. Tish had had the car out the day
before by herself for the first time--both Aggie and I had had the
good judgment to refuse--and she got home safely, although she had a
queer-looking mark on her right cheek, and one of the mud-guards didn’t
look exactly right. She said she had had a lovely ride, and we helped
her push the machine into the wash-house, where we had had Carpenter
knock out a side, and then she went to bed and had a cup of tea. Aggie
heard something moving that night, and she found Tish sitting up on the
side of her bed, holding like death to the back of a chair and turning
it around like a wheel. Aggie got her back to bed, but Tish only
looked up at her and said, “Four chickens!” and went to sleep again.
The next morning her left leg was quite stiff from what she called the
clutch, and she sat on the porch peacefully and rocked. But at noon
she went to the wash-house, and when she came back she was pale but
determined.
“I’m going to take it out,” she said solemnly. “If I don’t I’ll forget
everything I’ve learned. Besides, we’ve been coming here every summer
for ten years, and there are plenty of places we have never seen.”
Aggie looked at me, but we knew it would have to come some time, and so
we all went in and tied up our heads.
“We needn’t go fast,” Aggie said when she was putting on her bonnet.
“We have all afternoon, and one doesn’t really enjoy the scenery unless
one goes very slowly.”
Tish’s face was pallid but resolved.
“It’s a great deal easier to go fast than slow,” she remarked. “I
haven’t quite got the hang of going slow. But there’s one comfort
about going fast: you get around much quicker.”
At the foot of the stairs she stopped and called up.
“I’m going to take a tablespoonful of blackberry wine,” she said. “I
feel chilly in the small of my back.”
Aggie and I didn’t say anything, but we each took a tablespoonful of
blackberry wine also.
Tish had written out a list of things to do to start the car, such as
“Turn A,” “Push forward B,” and so on. And she had pasted bits of paper
marked A and B on the levers and plugs. So I read:
“Turn A; push up B; crank, and release C.”
It started nicely.
“Just one thing,” Tish said over her shoulder as we passed the
Ostermaier cottage, and they waved to us from the porch: “Don’t scream
in my ears; don’t lean over and clutch me around the neck; and if we
run over anything, try to look as if you didn’t know we had.”
Luckily she had not noticed my traveling bag. After the affair of
the launch I was prepared for anything, and I had packed up three
nightgowns, a balsam pillow, a roll of bandage, a bottle of arnica,
a cake of soap, my sewing box and a prayer-book. Aggie had some
sandwiches; so we felt we were prepared for everything, from sudden
death to losing a button.
We got on to the ferry safely enough. Carpenter, who runs the cable
drum of the ferry with a gas engine, examined the machine with a great
deal of interest on the way over.
“It’s a pretty hot day, Miss Tish,” he called as we were starting off
the boat. “You’ll have to watch her; she’ll boil.”
Tish looked worried, but she said nothing.
“What is there to boil?” Aggie whispered to me.
“The gasoline,” I told her; “and if it boils it’ll explode. I’m no
mechanic, but I know that much.”
After a few moments’ silence Aggie leaned forward.
“Tish,” she said.
“Don’t take my mind off this machine!” Tish shouted back. “Isn’t that a
buggy coming?”
“It’s too far off to see. It’s either a buggy or a wagon,” I said.
“Tish, where’s the gasoline tank?”
But Tish wasn’t listening. “Why doesn’t that man turn out? Does he want
the whole road?” she snapped. There was a silence while we neared the
buggy ahead. Then Tish leaned over and began jerking at levers.
“I can’t stop the thing,” she gasped, “and there isn’t room to pass!”
There wasn’t time to pray. I saw Aggie shut her eyes, and the next
moment there was a terrific jar. Aggie and I were flung together in a
corner of the seat, a man yelled, and the next minute we had leaped
out of the ditch again and were going smoothly along the road. I
glanced behind. The man had halted his horse and was standing up in the
buggy, staring after us.
“I didn’t think I could do it,” said Tish complacently.
“Only the grace of God took you into that ditch and out again, Tish
Carberry,” I snapped. “And if you are going to do any more circus
performances I want to get out.”
She could stop the car well enough when there was no crying need to,
and now, to our alarm, she stopped every now and then and got out and
held her hand over the front of the machine, like testing the oven for
cake. Finally she said:
“It’s boiling!”
Aggie got ready to jump.
“It’ll explode, won’t it?” she quavered.
“I don’t see why it should explode,” Tish replied, wetting her finger
to see if it sizzled when she touched it. “But it’s hot enough, in all
conscience. A good rain would cool it.”
The sun was blazing down on us, however, and there was no sign of rain.
I said I would just as soon be blown up as melted down, and we got in
again. The machine would not start. We all took a turn at the handle in
front, but it was like winding a clock with a broken spring.
That is where the man and the girl and the little Pomeranian dog enter
the story. For they came along in a blue runabout car just as Tish
threw her book called _Automobile Troubles_ over the fence and said she
was going to walk home. The book said: “Beginners having trouble with
their engines should look under the headings Ignition, Carburation,
Lubrication, Compression, Circulation and Timing.” As Tish remarked,
the only one that was understandable was Circulation, and anybody could
tell without a book that the car wasn’t circulating to any extent.
Just as Tish threw the book away the young man in the blue runabout
stopped and got out.
“In trouble?” he asked. “Can I do anything for you?”
“It was boiling,” said Tish. “I suppose something has melted inside.”
“Oh, I think not.” He looked at the car, pushed something, went round
and turned the handle--crank, Tish called it, and it’s a good name--and
the engine started.
“You didn’t have your gas on,” said the young man. “And don’t worry;
you’re sure to heat up on a day like this, but nothing will melt.”
“Or explode?” asked Aggie.
“Or explode.”
He looked at the girl and smiled, and when we started off they were
still there, watching us. The dog yelped, and the girl smiled and waved
her hand. Aggie, who is far-sighted, turned around a second time. “He
reminds me of Mr. Wiggins,” she said with a sigh, still looking back.
Aggie was engaged years ago to a young man in the roofing business, who
fell off a roof.
After a minute, “He’s kissing her!” she gasped. After that she nearly
broke her neck watching them out of sight. Aggie is romantic. I turned
around, but I had on my near glasses.
I don’t know how we lost the Noblestown Pike. Tish blamed it on having
to drive with one eye shut, on account of something getting into the
other. Aggie’s nose was sunburned and swelling, and I would have given
a good bit for something heavy in my lap to anchor me. When I was a
girl I rode horseback, and with any kind of a steady horse you can tell
when the next jolt is coming; but Tish’s machine has a way of coming up
and hitting you when you are off guard, so to speak.
To go back, after an hour or so we found we were on the wrong road. It
kept growing narrower, and when at last it became only a dusty country
lane Tish realized it herself. There was a rickety farmhouse about two
hundred feet from the road, with a woman bending over a washtub outside
the door. I stood up and made a megaphone of my hands.
“Which way to the Noblestown Pike?” I yelled, while Tish got out and
stuck a wet finger on the hood over the engine.
The woman looked up and pointed sullenly in the direction from which
we had come. We looked at the road. There wasn’t a spot to turn--not
another road in sight to back into. It was hotter than ever. The engine
hummed like a teakettle on a hot stove, and there were little clouds
of blue smoke coming from somewhere or other about it. Aggie said she
thought the gasoline tank was on fire.
“If it is you’ll soon know it,” said Tish grimly. “It’s under the seat.
I’m going to back up on to this bridge business over the gutter. I
think I can make it.”
“Do you know how to back up?” I asked; and just at that minute the
woman left her tub and started to run down the walk.
Tish backed. With an awful grinding of wheels she got the right lever
finally; the machine gave a jerk that would have decapitated a chicken,
and we backed slowly on to the timbers that bridged the gutter and made
a road toward the house. When it gave the first crack we shouted--Aggie
and I. It might not have been too late, but Tish put on the emergency
brake by mistake and for a minute we hung on the verge. Then we began
to settle. We went down slowly, with Tish above us and rising; and when
we stopped, there we were, Aggie and I and the rear of the machine, a
good four feet below Tish and the engine, with something grinding like
mad and clouds of smoke everywhere.
When we crawled out the woman who owned the bridge was standing on the
bank looking down at us, and her face was something awful.
“You’ll fix that bridge before you leave!” she said, shutting her mouth
hard on the last word.
“You’ll fix that automobile before I’m through with you!” said Tish,
pointing at the thing, which looked like a horse sitting down in a
gutter.
“Oh, rats!” the woman said rudely. “That’s four of them things that’s
gone through that bridge this week, and I’m good and sick of it. Ain’t
there any other bridges in Chester county?”
“Not like that,” retorted Tish, eying the ruins. “You don’t call that a
bridge, do you?”
“It was,” said the woman.
She came forward and a ferocious-looking dog stepped from behind her.
Tish looked at the dog.
“It wasn’t much of a bridge,” she said, more politely. “If you’ve got
any men on the place I’ll give them a dollar apiece to get my machine
out of there.”
“No men around,” said the woman shortly. “Theodore,”--to the
dog--“don’t you go around bitin’ until I give you the word. Sit down.”
The dog sat down.
“Before you leave,” she said to Tish, “you’ll mend that bridge or I’ll
know the reason why. Meantime your automobile is trespassin’, and the
fine is twenty dollars.”
Then she sat down on the bank and began to tickle the dog’s ears with a
blade of grass.
“Theodore,” she said, “if them three old maids think they can bluff us,
they don’t know us, do they?”
I had stood about as much as I could, so I walked around in front of
her and glared at her.
“I wouldn’t sit so close to the automobile if I were you,” I remarked
emphatically. “Something is likely to explode.”
“I feel like it,” she said. “When I get mad I’m good an’ mad. Anyhow, I
own this place, and I’ll sit where I please. Theodore, let’s put the
washing-machine on wheels and go round the country bustin’ down folks’
bridges and playin’ hell generally!”
An oath always rouses Tish. She got the engine stopped. Then she came
around beside me with her goggles shoved up on her forehead.
“Woman,” she said sternly, “how dare you mention the place of
punishment so lightly!” Tish had been superintendent of a Sunday-school
for thirty years.
The woman stared at her. Then she got up slowly.
“I wasn’t alludin’ to the next world,” she said bitterly. “Ninety-five
degrees of heat, seven inches of dust, five miles to a telephone and
ten miles to town, with an automobile sittin’ down in your front
yard--that’s all the hell I want.”
Then she walked up the path. We stared after her; between her
shoulder-blades her blue wrapper was wet through with sweat, and the
dog trailed at her heels. Aggie, who is always sentimental, took a step
after her.
“I say,” she called. “If we come back for you some nice afternoon, will
you let us take you for a ride?”
But she got no answer. To our amazement, the woman turned around at the
top of the path and put her thumb to her nose!
We did not see her again for some time, but after Tish had climbed in
twice and started the engine, to see if the car couldn’t climb out--the
only result being that it almost turned over--the woman appeared
again. She carried a board that looked like a breadboard nailed to a
broom-handle, and on it, in fresh ink, as if she had done it with her
finger, were the words:
“Trespassing--fifty dollars.”
“You said twenty before,” I protested.
“That was for those little dinky, one-seated affairs,” she said,
jabbing the broom-handle into the dirt beside the road. “Two seats,
forty dollars; two seats and a folded back buggy-top, fifty.” She
adjusted the sign carefully, looked up and down the road, and then went
back to the house.
So we sat down on the bank and Tish explained how she happened to do
it. I am a Christian woman, and Aggie is so gentle that she has to
scratch twice to light a match, but I must say we were bitter. We told
Tish we didn’t care how she happened to do it, and that some day she
would be punished for a temper that made her throw away books that she
would be sure to need some time; and that, anyhow, an unmarried woman
of fifty has no business with an automobile.
“It’s my belief,” Tish retorted, “that she keeps her old bridge for
this very purpose. She could make a good living off it, and all the
work she’d have to do would be to build it up after every accident.”
“Oh, no,” Aggie said bitterly. “We are going to repair it, I believe.”
The back of my neck began to smart from the sun, and the dust eddied
around us. A white hen came down the path, hopped on to the sloping
step of the machine, perked its head at us, and then, with a squawk,
flew up into Tish’s seat behind the wheel. I was thirsty and my neck
prickled.
Early in the afternoon we had a difference of opinion about who should
walk the five miles to telephone for help, and after that we did not
speak to each other. Tish talked to the machine and Aggie to the
chicken. Every now and then Tish, after staring at the machine for a
while, would get up and pick up the soundest of the bridge timbers, put
it under the dropped end of the car and push with all her might.
“Call this a bridge?”--push--“Why, this is nothing”--push--“but a
rotten old fence-rail!”--bang!--the timber broke. Tish stood with her
back to us and kicked the pieces; then she turned on us. “As far as
I’m concerned,” she snapped, “the thing can sit there till it takes
root. You’re very much mistaken if you think I’m going to walk to that
telephone, after bringing you out on a pleasure trip.”
“Pleasure trip!” Aggie retorted. “I can get more pleasure out of
a three-dollar rocking-chair. The next time you ask me to go on a
pleasure trip, Tish Carberry, just push me off the porch backward. It’s
a good bit quicker.”
By four o’clock I had a rash out all over my shoulders and chest, and
my mouth was so full of dust that my teeth felt gritty. I had not cared
particularly about going up to the house, but every few minutes between
three and four the woman had come out, pumped some water, making a
mighty splash, and gone back into the house again. It was more than
human nature could stand. At a quarter after four o’clock I got up from
the baked earth, glared at Tish, looked through Aggie, and walked with
as much dignity as I could muster up the path to the well. There was
a sign hung on it by a string around the nail in the top. It read:
“Water, one dollar a tin. For automobiles, five dollars a bucket.”
The woman came out and pumped some. The water ran cool and clear into
a trough and then spread over the ground in dreadful waste. I could
have lapped it up out of the trough; every bit of skin on me and lining
membrane in me yelled “Water!” and--I had no money with me! The woman
stood and waited, Theodore beside her.
“That’s an outrage,” I fumed. “How dare you put up such a sign! I--I
shall report you!”
“Who to?” she inquired. “I ain’t askin’ you to drink it, am I? It’s my
well, ain’t it?”
“I’ll send the money to you by mail.” I had lost all my pride. “I’ll
come back and pay you.”
“Cash in advance,” said the creature; and, pumping enough into a tin
basin to have cooled me inside and out, she put it down for the dog to
drink!
CHAPTER III
A DIFFERENCE OF OPINION AND A BARGAIN
I have always felt that we did the right thing that night. It was all
very well for Charlie Sands, Tish’s nephew, when he heard the story,
to say: “And they talk about giving women the vote! Why, for sense
they would substitute sentiment; they would buy their opinions at the
department stores along with their bargains, and a little two-penny
love affair could upset the Government!”
Tish was raging.
“It does not matter whether you approve or not, Charlie,” she said
loftily, “as long as our consciences approve.”
“Approve!” He nearly fell back out of his chair. “My dear ladies,
you should every one have been jailed! As for conscience, I’d give a
thousand dollars to have a conscience that would set the seal of its
approval on assault and battery, highway robbery and abduction.”
“The end justifies the means,” I retorted; “and when did you get a
conscience, Charlie Sands?”
“I think I got one Aunt Tish used to have,” he said, and I got up and
went into the house.
Well, I left the dog drinking, to go back, and at that instant I
happened to look at Tish, who was standing on the bank waving her
handkerchief at something in the road. I stepped to the corner of the
house and saw what it was--creeping along a lane we had not noticed was
the blue runabout car. Creeping is the word. It would crawl forward
a dozen feet and stop, and it kept on repeating the performance. But
what puzzled me was a spot of pink, just in front of the car and moving
slowly forward.
At the end of the lane the pink spot hesitated and then turned our way.
Once beyond the hedge, it proved to be the girl with her pink motor
veil. She was walking with her hands in the pockets of her ulster, and
she was limping. About a dozen feet behind her, and stopping every now
and then so as not to overtake her, came the runabout. It was very
peculiar. The young man had his jaws set tight, and as he was staring
at the girl, and as she was staring straight ahead, neither of them saw
us on the bank just above their heads.
The girl--she was a very pretty girl, although streaky just then--had
a tight grip on the Pomeranian. She had it tucked under her arm and it
was wriggling and yelping to be free. Just after the blue machine had
turned the corner the little beast got loose, and with a yelp he dashed
to the car and into the empty seat.
The girl stopped. So did the car. She faced about and the young man
gazed over her head.
Suddenly the girl looked up and saw us, and with a quick glance she
spied the lamps of Tish’s machine around a curve. No one would have
guessed from the front end of the thing that the rear had died in a
gutter.
“Oh!” she said. “Oh, I’m so glad you’re here! Are you going back to
town?”
“We are not going anywhere,” Tish replied shortly, “unless your young
man can help us.”
“He is not my young man,” the girl retorted, with distinctness; “but if
there isn’t very much the matter I daresay he can do something.”
“I am not an automobile expert,” he said, “but I probably can help
a little, as, for instance, stuffing a puncture with rags until we
get back to the city.” The girl flushed. It was evidently a personal
allusion.
“We haven’t any rags,” said Aggie, “and it isn’t a puncture.”
“There are two things we might do,” said the young gentleman as he
eyed our machine critically. “I might go to the nearest telephone and
have help sent out from town, but as it’s almost sunset it’s pretty
late for that; or, with a jack and a little help, we might fix it
ourselves.”
[Illustration]
“A jack!” Tish said with scorn. “What kind of a jack--a bootjack or a
jackass? I daresay they have them both at that farmhouse; I know they
have one.”
“A jack--a lever,” explained the young man, beginning to work at the
lock of the tool-box. “Where are you going--to Noblestown?”
“To the lake,” I replied. Tish was fumbling for the keys to the machine
which she kept in a pocket in her petticoat. “We have a summer cottage
there.”
“I’ll make a bargain with you,” he suggested. “The--the--er--young lady
refuses to go back in my car. We--the fact is, we have had a small
difference of opinion, and--she insists on walking home. If I get your
machine in shape, will you take her to the city?”
We would have taken her anywhere short of a planet to get away
ourselves, and that was how it began; for the young gentleman took off
his coat and fell to work immediately. Once, when he had raised the car
on the jack and Tish was holding the ends of the boards that he shoved
under, while Aggie and I pushed, something gave way and the whole thing
settled back with a jerk. Mr. Lewis--that was his name--lifted the
broken fence-rails off Tish and helped her to her feet.
“There’s something almost alive about automobiles occasionally,” he
said. “They are so blamed vicious.”
“If it was alive,” Tish gasped, hunting for her glasses, “I’d kill it.”
But it never occurred to her that she was going to drown it that very
night!
By seven o’clock we had lifted the thing on five fence-rails and the
breadboard sign, and Mr. Lewis announced it was now or never. The girl
had not come near us. She had taken off her veil and smoothed up her
hair, and was busy with a bit of a silver mirror. She was very pretty.
Mr. Lewis got into the car and put on the power. There was a terrible
grinding, but nothing moved. From behind, the three of us shoved, and
Aggie said between gasps that if anything gave way her niece was to
have her amethyst pin.
“Anne!” cried the young gentleman. But Miss Anne was powdering her nose
and we all saw her turn it up.
“Anne!” called the young man who was not her young man, “you’ll have to
help here.”
“Help yourself,” said Anne coolly, and, moistening her finger, she
proceeded to wipe the powder off her eyebrows.
Mr. Lewis shut off the engine, got out of the car and put on his
coat. The girl did not turn her head, but she was watching through
the mirror, for as he picked up his cap she rose lazily, put away her
toilet things and started in our direction.
“What shall I do?” she asked Tish, ignoring him.
“Push,” said Tish sharply--“unless you are too lame.”
“My being lame won’t matter, unless you wish me to kick the machine
out,” retorted the girl sweetly; and with that, the power being on,
she put her brown arms against the car and her shoulder-muscles leaped
up under her thin dress, and before I had planted my feet in the ditch
the car rose, clung for a minute to the edge, and was over into the
road. The girl said nothing. She looked at her hands, stepped out of
the ditch, patronizingly helped Aggie out of it, and swung up the path
with her head in the air. When I saw her again she had taken the sign
off the pump and thrown it in the grass, and was washing her hands
unconcernedly while the woman stood in the door and yapped at her.
If she had a mite of sense she would have gone back to the city in
the blue car and let us go home to bed. But when she had come back
to the road and the young man suggested it--not to her, of course,
but casually to us--she whistled to her dog and started to limp down
the road. You can’t do anything with a girl in that state of mind.
I took her in the tonneau with me, and Aggie, who prefers a love
affair to a scandal and always reads the marriage licenses with the
obituaries--Aggie went in the blue car to keep Mr. Lewis from being
lonely.
CHAPTER IV
THE APPETIZERS AND THE HOTEL BUREAU
We didn’t talk very much. Tish was anxious to show she could drive, for
all she had sat us down in a ditch, and after she took a wrong turning
and stampeded a herd that was being milked in a barnyard, I could not
keep my mind off the road. Once I looked at the girl, and there were
tears running down her nose and dropping into her lap. I gave her my
smelling salts, which I always carry in Tish’s machine, and after a
while she reached over and slid her hand into mine.
“I shouldn’t care if the car went to pieces,” she said. “I’d be happier
dead.”
“If you are always as unpleasant to that young man as you were this
evening, I doubt it,” I snapped.
“Didn’t you ever quarrel with your husband before you were married?”
she demanded, looking at me sideways.
“I thank Heaven I never had a husband,” I replied, and with that she
looked uncomfortable and drew her hand away.
“Is your--friend married?” she inquired. And it took me a moment to
realize that she meant Aggie and that the minx was jealous. Aggie is
fifty, and so thin that when she wears a tailor-made suit she has
to build out with pneumatics. You remember, at the Woman’s Suffrage
Convention, how Mrs. Bailey pinned a badge to Aggie, and how there was
a slow hissing immediately, and Aggie caved in before our very eyes?
Mr. Lewis checked our wild career after a few miles by getting ahead of
us, and we got into town about eight. But after we had left the girl at
her house--an imposing place, with a man at the door and a limousine at
the curb--it was too late to go back home. Aggie and the blue car were
waiting down the street, and they piloted us to the hotel.
Now, Tish belongs to the Ladies’ Relief Corps of the G. A. R., and when
Mr. Lewis said we looked tired and that he was going to order supper
for us all, and three Martinis, Tish said it was all right, although
she didn’t see why we needed guns. It looked like a safe place. But
they were not guns--that’s part of the story.
While we were washing for supper Aggie told us what the quarrel was
about.
“They are--were--engaged,” she said, “and the girl’s father is
Robertson--the boss of the city, Mr. Lewis called him. And Mr. Lewis
is the youngest councilman--they call him ‘Baby’ Lewis, and he hates
it--and there’s something to be voted for to-morrow; and if Mr. Lewis
is for it he is to get the girl.”
“And the girl refuses to be sold!” Tish said triumphantly. “Quite
right, too. I admire her strength. That’s the typical womanly attitude
these days--right before anything, honor above all.” Tish waved the
hairbrush and then she turned on the maid. “Girl,” she snapped, “why is
this brush chained?”
“The ladies steal them,” said the girl. Tish stared at the chain.
“You are so quick, Letitia,” Aggie protested. “It was the other way
round. The girl was angry because he wouldn’t sell his vote, even for
her.”
Tish sat down in a chair, speechless; but just then Mr. Lewis came to
the door and said that supper and the Martinis were ready. The Martinis
proved to be something to drink, and after Mr. Lewis had raised his
hand and sworn there was no whisky in them we drank them. He said they
were appetizers, and the other day Tish said she was going to write to
the Sherman House for the recipe before she has the minister to dinner
next week.
Never did I eat so delightful a meal. Tish forgot her sprained shoulder
and the splinter under her nail, and Aggie talked about the roofer.
And the food! I recall distinctly shaking hands with Tish and agreeing
to come to the hotel to live, and asking the waiter to find out from
the cook how something or other was made. And when Aggie had buried the
roofer, and Tish said it was funny, but Mr. Lewis had four brown eyes
instead of two, he suggested that we must be tired, and a boy took us
to our room. Room, not rooms. We could only get one. The last things I
remember are our shaking hands with Mr. Lewis, and that Tish tried to
get into the elevator before the door was opened.
About eleven o’clock I heard some one groaning and I sat up in bed. It
was Aggie, whom, being the thinnest, we had put on the cot. She said
her nose was smarting from the sunburn and she had heartburn something
awful. We rang for some baking soda, and she drank some in water and
made a plaster for her nose with the rest. After a while she felt
better, but we were all wide awake and the heat was terrible. We could
look out the window and see there was a breeze, but not a breath came
in.
We sent for the bell-boy again, and he said there wasn’t another room
and nobody he could move around to give us a room on the breezy side of
the house.
We took the rules and regulations card off the door and fanned with it,
but it did not help much. After half an hour or so Tish got up, pushed
the washstand in front of a door that connected with the next room and
crawled up on it.
“If I had a chair,” she said, measuring the distance with her eye, “I
could see if that corner room next door is occupied. I could tell by
that boy’s face that he was lying.”
Aggie was trying to hold down the baking soda, so, although I didn’t
feel any too well myself, I held the chair and Tish climbed up on it.
“What did I tell you?” she demanded when she got down. “That room’s
empty, and what’s more there’s nobody belonging there. There’s nothing
on the dresser but the towel; and there’s a breeze coming in that sends
the curtains straight into the room.”
The connecting door was locked, and Tish put a bed sheet around her and
tried the hall door. That was locked, too. And all the time we were
getting hotter and hotter, and by putting our ears to the keyhole we
could hear the breeze blowing on the other side. It was too much for
Tish.
“I’m going over the transom,” she announced, after we had tried the
dresser key in the door without any effect. And go over she did, after
putting on her stockings to keep her legs from being scraped.
It was much cooler. We brought in our clothes and Aggie’s cot,
and spread up the bed in the room we had left. Then we locked the
connecting door again, and after Aggie had had some more baking soda,
in and out, we went to bed.
Well, as I was saying, I went to sleep. I was awakened by Tish sitting
up in bed and clutching me somewhere about the diaphragm. By the light
from the hall over the transom I could see Aggie sound asleep, with her
mouth opened, and Tish’s arm stretched out and pointed at the yellow
hotel bureau. I sat straight up and looked. I couldn’t see anything,
and at first I thought Tish was dreaming. Then I saw it too. The front
of that bureau on the left side moved out a good six inches, stayed
that way while I could count ten, and then closed up again without a
sound.
Tish had put a leg out of bed, but she jerked it in again, and just at
that awful moment a clock outside boomed twelve. And then, over in her
corner, Aggie began to talk in her sleep.
“Turn around and run over it again,” she said, with startling
distinctness. “It isn’t quite dead.”
Tish put her hand up and held her shaking lower jaw.
“I--it’s those dr-dratted Martinis,” she quavered. “I’ve--no--d-doubt
Mr. Lewis meant well, Lizzie, but I’ve b-been feeling very strange all
evening.”
“Your stomach being upset needn’t affect my eyes,” I retorted in a
whisper. “I saw it move.”
“Are you sure?” she insisted. “I didn’t say anything, Lizzie, but while
we were eating supper down-stairs I distinctly saw the piano move out
six feet from the wall and go back again.”
I didn’t say anything to Tish, but the fact was that I distrusted
my own vision--not that I had seen anything so ridiculous as pianos
walking, but I had had a peculiar feeling in the dining-room that my
eyes were looking in different directions, and when I focused them on
anything I saw double at once. It had got so bad that when I wanted
my fork I had to shut my eyes and feel for it. And so, neither of us
being certain the bureau had moved, and nothing more occurring, we
lay back again. The next minute Tish clutched me and I looked over.
Something had happened to the bureau.
It looked phosphorescent, or as though it was on fire inside. There was
a glow all around it. The keyholes stood out like dots of flame, and
every crack gleamed. It was the most awful thing I have ever seen.
“Look!” gasped Tish, and, reaching over the side of the bed, she picked
up a shoe and flung it with all her might at the thing. The thump was
followed by a thud inside the bureau. Aggie stirred.
“The milkman’s knocking,” she said thickly, and sat up and yawned with
her eyes shut. Tish and I leaped out of bed and I turned on the light.
That gave us new courage, and the dresser stood there, just like any
other dresser, with a towel on its yellow-pine top and fly-specks on
the mirror. Tish and I looked at each other and smiled in a sickly
way. We felt foolish. But Tish wasn’t satisfied. She picked up a
hairbrush and banged it on the top.
“Coming, Mr. Gibbs,” bawled Aggie, still with her eyes shut, and she
began to fumble around on the floor for her slippers.
“Wake her!” Tish commanded. “There’s something moving in this thing.
Lizzie, give me that pitcher of scalding water.”
Of course there wasn’t any hot water nearer than the bath-room, which
was three turns to the right, one to the left and down a flight of
stairs.
And at that minute the bureau spoke.
“Don’t, for God’s sake, ladies!” it said.
[Illustration]
CHAPTER V
THE REPORTER AND THE RED-HAIRED MAN
I screamed, and, as was perfectly natural, I backed away from the
thing. My foot tripped over Tish’s water-pitcher, and my sitting down
was what wakened Aggie. She says she never will forget how she felt
when she saw me prostrate and Tish holding a chair aloft and begging
the bureau to come out so she could brain it. Of course she thought
Tish had gone crazy, what with the sun and excitement of the day.
“Tish!” she screeched.
“Come out!” said Tish to the bureau. “Make no resistance; we are armed!”
As Aggie says, when she saw the left-hand side of that bureau move
slowly forward like a door when Tish spoke to it, she thought she had
a touch of sun herself. But when she saw a human figure crawl out of
that place on its hands and knees, and opened her mouth to scream, her
breath was gone as completely as if she had been hit in the stomach.
The figure got to its feet, and it had neither horns nor tail. It had
curly, light-brown hair and blue eyes, and it was purplish red as
to face. We stood paralyzed while it stood erect and blinked. Tish
lowered her chair slowly and the apparition dropped down on it. It was
masculine and shaking. Also young.
“Ladies,” it said, “could I--could I thank you for a drink of water? I
have been almost stifled.”
When the haze cleared away from my eyes I saw that the young man had on
a light gray suit, and that in his hand he carried his collar and an
electric flashlight. Perspiration was pouring off his face and we could
see that he was as scared as we were.
“Give him a drink, Lizzie,” Tish said firmly, “and then press that
button.”
But the young man jumped to his feet at that and looked at us squarely.
“Ladies,” he said earnestly, “please do not raise an alarm. I am not a
thief. The manager of the hotel put me in that bureau himself.”
“The hotel must be crowded,” Tish scoffed. “I hope they don’t charge
you much for it.”
From the street below came a sudden confusion of men’s voices and the
sound of feet on the pavement. The young man threw up his hands.
“Madam,” he said to Tish, “you look like a woman of large mind.”
Tish stopped putting the bedspread around her and stared at him. “By
your unfortunate--er--invasion here to-night you are preventing the
discovery of a crime against civic morality. The councilmanic banquet
down-stairs is over; in a few minutes Robertson--well, probably you
don’t understand, but I represent the _Morning Star_. The Civic Purity
League has learned that in this room, after the banquet, a bribe is
going to be offered. That bureau has been ready for a month. Ladies, I
implore you, go back to the other room!”
It was too late. At that moment there were voices in the hall and
somebody put a key into the lock of the door. There was no time to put
the light out. The young man dropped behind the foot of the bed, the
door swung open and a red-haired man stepped into the room.
“Suffering cats!” he exclaimed.
“Go out immediately!” I said, pointing to the door. Tish was unwinding
herself from the counterpane. She took it off airily and flung it
over the foot of the bed, so that it covered the young man. It looked
abandoned, but the necessity was terrible. As Tish said afterward,
fifty years of respectable living would not have prevented the tongue
of scandal licking up such a spicy morsel as that compromising
situation.
The red-haired man retreated a step or two, opened the door part way,
and went out and looked at the number. Then he came in again.
“Madam--ladies,” he said, “this room belongs to me. There must be some
mistake.”
“I don’t believe it belongs to you,” Tish snapped. “Why haven’t you got
some brushes on the dresser?”
“If you were a gentleman,” Aggie wailed from the cot, “you would go out
and let us get to sleep. I never put in such a night. First the other
room is too hot, and we crawl over the transom to get a cool place, and
then--”
“Over the transom,” said the red-haired gentleman. “Do you mean to
say--” Then he laughed a little and spoke over his shoulder.
“I’m sorry, Lewis,” he said, “but my room’s taken.”
“Kismet,” said our Mr. Lewis’ voice, but it sounded reckless and
strained. “Fate has crooked her finger; I’m going home.”
“Don’t be an ass,” said the red-haired gentleman. “These women in here
came over the transom from the next room. It’s empty.”
“Good gracious!” Aggie gasped. “I left my forms hanging to the gas-jet!”
The red-haired man backed into the hall, but he still held the door.
“I’m going home,” said our Mr. Lewis again. “I’m sick of things around
here, anyhow. I’ve got a chance to get an orange grove cheap in
California.”
“Fiddlesticks!” retorted the red-haired man. “Why don’t you stick by
the plum tree here at home?”
On that the door closed, and we could hear them talking guardedly in
the hall.
“The wretches!” Tish fumed. “Oh, why haven’t women the vote? I tell
you”--she fixed Aggie and me with a gesture--“the day of conscience is
coming. Women stand for civic purity, for the home, for right against
might!”
It was the “right against might” that we repeated to her afterward,
when we had stolen--but that is coming soon.
“But he loves the girl,” said Aggie, beginning to sniffle. “I--I think
as much of ci--civic purity as you do, Tish Carberry, but I th--think
he is just p--pig-headed.”
“The girl’s a fool and so are you,” said Tish, beginning to take the
counterpane off the reporter. And at that second there was a knock and
the red-haired man opened the door again.
“I beg your pardon,” he apologized, “but will you give me the key to
the other room?”
We did. Aggie unlocked the connecting door and brought back the key
to our old room and the things she had left on the gas-jet. In the
excitement she threw the key on the dresser and was just about to reach
the other articles through the crack in the door when Tish caught her
arm.
CHAPTER VI