A PROBLEM IN PSYCHOLOGY
If the deck had opened delivering up Mr. Althusen and his broken guitar
the three men could not have been more astonished.
“I think it’s splendid,” she said again. “You saw everything all wrong,
but how could you know. I think it’s just fine. Those hatchet men were
a tough crowd and they’d have killed you for sure only you scattered
them like you did. You saw a girl being kidnapped as you thought and
you just dashed in. Nobody but white Americans would have acted like
that.”
“Oh, anyone would,” murmured Hank.
“No they wouldn’t—they’d gone off for the police or said, ‘Oh, my, how
shocking,’ and gone off about their business. You struck. Well, I’m
sorry for locking you out, but I’m like yourselves, I didn’t know.”
“Oh, that’s nothing,” said George.
Tommie’s eyes were fixed on Candon.
“It was you collared me,” said she to him.
The blue eyes of Candon met the liquid brown eyes of Tommie.
He nodded his head.
Tommie considered him for a moment attentively, as though he were an
object of curiosity or a view—anything but a living male being. It was
sometimes a most disconcerting thing about her, this detachment from
all trammels of sex and convention, the detachment of a child. She
seemed making up her mind whether she liked him or not and doing it
quite openly, and her mind seemed still not quite made up when, with a
sigh, she came to.
“Well,” said she, “and now about getting back.”
“That’s the question now,” said George hurriedly and with his lips
suddenly gone dry so that he had to moisten them. “We’ve got to get you
back.”
“Yes, that’s so,” said Hank, unenthusiastically. “We’ve got to do it
somehow or ’nother.”
“Look here,” said George, suddenly taking his courage in both hands. “I
don’t mind the row we’re sure to get into, it’s the guying that gets
me. Think of the papers. When we started out on this fool business we
got it pretty hot—and now this on top of everything.”
“I know,” said Tommie. She was sitting forward in her chair, clasping
her knees, biting her lip in thought and staring at the deck planking.
She saw the position of the unfortunates as clearly as they did. The
fact that these men had done for her a fine and chivalrous action
which was still absurd hit her in an extraordinary way. Her sturdy and
honest little soul revolted at the thought of what the press would make
of the business. She could hear the laughter only waiting to be touched
off, she could read the scare head-lines. She knew, for publicity was
part of her life.
The stage was already prepared for the farce: by now every paper in
America would be setting up the story of how Tommie Coulthurst had
been abducted. It only waited for these men to be dragged on as the
abductors amidst a roar of laughter that would sound right round the
world.
She had read in the Los Angeles papers the humorous comments on them
and their expedition and now, this!
No, it must not be.
For a moment she looked back at the scene of the night before, finer
than any scene in a cinema play, real, dramatic, heroic, yet seemingly
based on absurdity—was it absurdity? Not a bit—not unless the finer
promptings of humanity were absurd and courage and daring ridiculous.
They had risked a lot, these men, and she had never in her life before
seen men in action. Ridicule of them would hit every fibre of her
being. No, it must not be. Question was how to save them.
“Say,” said Tommie, suddenly clasping her knees tighter and looking up,
“we’re in a tough tangle, aren’t we?”
The others seemed to agree. “Sam Brown,” went on Tommie, “he’s one of
the electric men at the Wallack Studios, caught a rat an’ put it in a
flower pot with a slate on top and a weight on the slate and left it
till next morning; he keeps dogs, an’ came to find it and it was gone,
said it must have got out and put the slate back, and Wallack told us
to remember that rat if we were ever cornered by difficulties in our
work an’ take as our motto, ‘Never say die till you’re dead.’ Well,
we’re in a tight place but we aren’t dead. Question is what’s the first
thing to do?”
“The first thing,” said Hank, “why, it’s to get you back safe.”
“I’m safe enough,” said Tommie. “It’s not a question of safety s’much
as smothering this thing. S’pose we put back now to Santa Barbara,
where’d you be? No, the first thing is to get you time. I reckon that
rat would have been eaten if he hadn’t had time to think his way out or
if someone hadn’t foozled along and loosed him. What’s your plans? You
said you were out after Vanderdecken, where’d you expect to catch him?”
Hank looked at Candon and noticed that he had turned away.
“Well, it’s not him we are after now so much as his boodle,” said Hank.
“We know where it’s hid and we want to get it.”
“Where’s it hid?”
“Place called the Bay of Whales down below Cape St. Lucas.”
“How long will it take you to fetch there and back?”
“About a fortnight, maybe.”
Tommie considered for a moment.
“Well,” she said at last, “seems to me that the only thing to do is
to go on till we meet some ship that’ll take me back. When I get back
I’ll have to do a lot of lying, that’s all. Ten to one they’ll put this
business down to Vanderdecken and maybe I’ll say Vanderdecken took me
and you collared me back from him—how’d that be?”
Candon turned. He struck his right fist into his open left palm.
“There’s more’n this than I can get the lie of,” said B. C. as if to
himself.
“What you say?” asked Tommie.
“Oh, he means it’s a mix-up,” said George. “But see here—we can’t do
it.”
“Which?”
“We can’t put more on you than we’ve done already. I know, I was mean
enough to want you to go on with us when I started that talk about our
being guyed—it’s different now.”
“Yep,” said Hank.
“Sure,” said Candon.
“Have you done?” asked Tommie. “Well then I’m going on, where’s the
damage? I’m used to the rough and the open. That film we were working
on is finished and I guess a few days’ holiday won’t do me any harm.
B’sides it works up the publicity. Why, every day I’m away is worth a
thousand dollars to Wallacks, leaving myself alone. They’ll book that
film in Timbuctoo. Do you see? It’s no trouble to me, why should you
worry? Now I propose we get something to eat.”
“But how about clothes,” asked George.
“Which, mine? Oh, I reckon I’ll manage somehow. The thing that gets me
is a toothbrush.”
“Thank God,” said George.
“Which?”
“I’ve got four new ones,” said the millionaire.