I
Ever since last spring I have felt that a certain explanation is due to
the public regarding Tish’s great picture, The Sky Pirate, especially
as to the alteration at the end of that now celebrated picture. I have
also felt that a full explanation of what happened to us on that final
tragic night is due to our dear Tish herself. She has never yet made a
statement of any case of hers, believing that her deeds must speak for
her.
But perhaps, more than anything, I am influenced by the desire to
present the facts to Charlie Sands, Tish’s nephew, for, owing to his
attitude the day he met us at the train, Tish has never deigned to make
a full explanation.
We were on the platform, and I was taking a cinder out of Aggie’s eye,
when we perceived him, standing close by and surveying us gloomily.
“My life,” he said, “has resolved itself into meeting you three when
you have come back from doing something you shouldn’t.” He then picked
up a bag or two and observed: “Even the chap in the Bible only had one
prodigal.”
He said nothing more until we were waiting for a taxi, when he observed
that his nerves were not what they had been, and who was to secure bail
for us when he was gone? We could only meet this with silence, but the
fact is that he has never yet lost his money in that way, and never
will.
“Some day,” he said, “I shall drop over of heart failure on receiving
one of your wires, and then where will you be?”
“The circumstances were unusual,” Tish said with dignity.
“I’ll tell the world they were!” he said. “Unusual as h--l.”
He then lapsed into silence, and so remained until we were in the
taxicab, on our way to Tish’s apartment. Then he leaned forward and
stared fixedly at his Aunt Letitia.
“Now!” he said. “We’re going to have the truth, the whole truth and
nothing but the truth. What about that elephant?”
Tish raised her eyebrows.
“Elephant?” she said.
“‘Elephant’ is the word I used. Look me square in the eye, last
surviving female relative of mine, and deny you had anything to do with
it! The moment the Associated Press wires began to come in, I knew.”
“Very well,” Tish said acidly. “If you know, there is no need to
explain.”
And from that moment to this, she never has.
* * * * *
In order to bring the elephant incident in its proper sequence it is
necessary to return to the autumn of last year, and to tell of the
various incidents which led up to that awful night, and the roof of the
First National Bank of Los Angeles.
During all of last winter Tish had been making a survey of what she
called the art, the educational value and the business of moving
pictures. She was, in a word, studying them. And she came to certain
conclusions. Thus, she believed that the public had wearied of
sentiment and was ready for adventure without sex. Also, that the
overemphasis on love in the pictures was weakening the moral fiber of
the nations.
“It was when sex replaced war,” she observed to Aggie and myself, “that
Rome fell and Babylon crumbled to the dust.”
I agreed with her, but Aggie had certain reservations. When, as
frequently happened, Tish left the theater just before the final
embrace, thus registering her disapproval, Aggie sometimes loitered,
to put on her overshoes or to find her glasses. Indeed, once trying
to take her departure while looking back over her shoulder, she had a
really bad fall in the theater aisle.
But our dear Tish showed Aggie considerable indulgence, as Aggie’s life
had at one time held a romance of its own, she having been engaged to a
Mr. Wiggins, who had not survived the engagement.
I have mentioned Mr. Wiggins because, although it is thirty years since
he passed over, it was Aggie’s getting into touch with him in the
spirit world which brought Mr. Stein into our lives. And it was Stein
who brought about all our troubles. We were both very happy to find our
dear Tish occupied with a new interest, as since the war, when she had
captured the town of X---- single handed--for Aggie was at the time
on the church steeple and I had gone back for reënforcements--she had
become rather listless.
“I find it difficult,” she had once acknowledged, “to substitute the
daily dozen for my activities in France, and the sight of four women
quarreling madly over a bridge table for a back scratcher with a pink
bow on it simply makes me homesick for the war.”
Judge of our disappointment, therefore, when with the first of March,
Tish’s interest in the pictures apparently lagged. From spending
night after night watching them, she suddenly became invisible to us
for long periods, and Hannah reported that at these times she would
lock herself in her room, burning innumerable papers at the end of the
period of seclusion. Also that, listening at the door, she could hear
our dear Tish walking up and down the floor muttering to herself; and
she reported that these active periods were followed by quiescent ones,
when she could hear the rapid scratching of a pen.
Our first anxiety was that Tish had got herself into some sort of
difficulty with her affairs, and this was not lessened by Hannah’s
bringing to us one evening a scrap of charred paper on which were the
words: “I will kill myself first.”
Had Charlie Sands not been out of town we would have gone to him, but
he was in Europe, and did not return until four months later, when we
were able to call on him for bail, as I have said. We had, therefore,
no inkling of what was happening when, finding Tish in an approachable
mood one evening, Aggie suggested that she try automatic writing.
Aggie had at last got into touch with Mr. Wiggins through a medium, and
learned that he was very happy. But, although I have seen her sit for
hours with a pencil poised over a sheet of paper, she had secured no
written message from him. She therefore suggested that Tish try it.
“I’ve always felt that you are psychic, Tish,” she said. “Every now
and then when I touch you I get a spark, like electricity. And I have
frequently heard knocks on the furniture when you are in a dark room.”
“I’ve got bruises to show for them too,” Tish said grimly.
Well, though Tish at first demurred, she finally agreed, and after
Aggie had placed a red petticoat over the lamp to secure what she
called the psychic light, Tish made the attempt.
“I have no faith in it,” she said, “but I shall entirely retire my
personality, and if there is a current from beyond, it shall flow
through me unimpeded.”
Very soon we heard the pencil moving, and on turning on the light later
we were electrified to see the rough outline of an animal, which Aggie
has since contended might have been intended for Katie, the elephant,
but which closely resembled those attempts frequently made to draw a
pig with the eyes closed. Underneath was the word “stein.”
In view of later developments we know now that the word “stein” was not
from Mr. Wiggins--although Aggie remembered that he had once or twice
referred, when thirsty, to a stein of something or other--but that it
was a proper name.
That at least a part of the message had a meaning for our dear Tish is
shown by a cryptic remark she made to the room.
“Thanks,” she said, to whatever spirit hovered about us. “I’ll do it.
It was what I intended, anyhow.”