Tish Plays the Game (17 page)

“We are undoubtedly on a farm,” she said. “Where there’s a farm there’s a horse, and where there’s a horse there is a wagon. I am not through yet.”

And so, indeed, it turned out to be. We had no particular mischance in the barn, where we found both a horse and a wagon, only finding it necessary to connect the two.

This we accomplished in what I fear was but an eccentric manner, and soon we were on our way once more, Aggie lying flat in the wagon bed because of her neck. How easy to pen this line, yet to what unforeseen consequences it was to lead!

As we wished to avoid the spot where the motorcycle had struck something, we took back lanes by choice, and after traveling some three miles or so had the extraordinary experience of happening on the motorcycle itself once more, comfortably settled in a small estuary of the lake and with several water fowl already roosting upon it.

But we reached the town safely, and leaving Aggie, now fast asleep, in the rear of the wagon, entered the all-night restaurant.

T
HERE WAS NO ACTUAL
grille to be seen in this place, but a stout individual in a dirty white apron was frying sausages on a stove at the back end and a thin young man at a table was waiting to eat them.

Tish lost no time, but hurried back, and this haste of hers, added to the dirt and so on with which she was covered and the huskiness of her voice, undoubtedly precipitated the climax which immediately followed. Breathless as she was, she leaned to him and said:

“All is discovered.”

“The hell you say!” said the man, dropping the fork.

“I’ve told you,” she repeated. “All is discovered. And now no funny business. Give me what you’ve got; I’m in a hurry.”

“Give you what I’ve got?” he repeated. “You know damn well I haven’t got anything, and what I’m going to get is twenty years! Where are the others?”

Well, Tish had looked rather blank at first, but at that she brightened up.

“In the penitentiary,” she said. “At least—”

“In the pen!” yelped the man. “Here, Joe!” he called to the person at the table. “It’s all up! Quick’s the word!”

“Not at all,” said Tish. “I was to say ‘All is discovered,’ and—”

But he only groaned, and throwing off his apron and grabbing a hat, the next moment he had turned out the lights and the two of them ran out the front door. Tish and I remained in the darkness, too astonished to speak, until a sound outside brought us to our senses.

“Good heavens, Lizzie,” she cried. “They have taken the wagon—and Aggie’s in it!”

We ran outside, but it was too late to do anything. The horse was galloping wildly up the street, and after following it a block or two, we were obliged to desist. I leaned against a lamppost and burst into tears, but Tish was made of stronger fiber. While others mourn, Tish acts, and in this case she acted at once.

As it happened, we were once more at Doctor Parkinson’s, and even as we stood there the doctor himself brought his car out of the garage, and leaving it at the curb, limped into his house for something he had forgotten. He was wearing a pair of loose bedroom slippers, and did not see us at first, but when he did he stopped.

“Still at large, are you?” he said in an unpleasant tone.

“Not through any fault of yours,” said Tish, glaring at him. “After your dastardly attack on us—”

“Attack!” he shouted. “Who’s limping, you or me? I’m going to lose two toenails, and possibly more. I warn you, whoever you are, I’ve told the police and they are on your track.”

“Then they are certainly traveling some,” said Tish coldly.

He then limped into the house, and Tish caught me by the arm.

“Into the car!” she whispered. “He deserves no consideration whatever, and our first duty is to Aggie.”

Before I could protest, I was in the car and Tish was starting the engine; but precious time had been lost, and although we searched madly, there was no trace of the wagon.

When at last in despair we drove up to the local police station it was as a last resort. But like everything else that night, it too failed us. The squad room was empty, and someone was telephoning from the inner room to Edgewater, the next town.

“Say,” he was saying, “has the sheriff and his crowd started yet? … Have, eh? Well, we need ’em. All the boys are out, but they haven’t got ’em yet, so far’s I know. … Yes, they’ve done plenty. Attacked Doctor Parkinson first. Then busted down the pier at the fish house and stole a boat there, and just as Murphy corralled them near the pen, they grabbed his motorcycle and escaped. They hit a car with it and about killed a man, and a few minutes ago old Jenkins, out the Pike, telephoned they’d lifted a horse and wagon and beat it. And now they’ve looted the Cummings house and stolen Parkinson’s car for a get-away. … Crazy? Sure they’re crazy! Called the old boy at the fish cannery dearie! Can you beat it?”

We had just time to withdraw to the street before he came through the doorway, and getting into the car we drove rapidly away. Never have I seen Tish more irritated; the unfairness of the statements galled her, and still more her inability to refute them. She said but little, merely hoping that whoever had robbed the Cummings house had made a complete job of it, and that we would go next to the railway station.

“It is possible,” she said, “that the men in that restaurant are implicated in this burglary, and certainly their actions indicate flight. In that case the wagon—and Aggie—may be at the depot.”

This thought cheered us both. But alas, the waiting room was empty and no wagon stood near the tracks. Only young George Welliver was behind the ticket window, and to him Tish related a portion of the situation.

“Not only is Miss Pilkington in the wagon,” she said, “but these men are probably concerned in the Cummings robbery. I merely said to them ‘All is discovered,’ when they rushed out of the place.”

Suddenly George Welliver threw back his head and laughed.

“Well!” he said. “And me believing you all the time! So you’re one of that bunch, are you? All that rigmarole kind of mixed me up. Here’s your little clew, and you’re the first to get one.”

He then passed out an envelope, and Tish, looking bewildered, took it and opened it. It was the next clew, right enough. The password was “Three-toed South American sloth,” and the clew as follows:

“Wives of great men all remind us,

We can make our wives sublime,

And departing, leave behind us

Footprints on the sands of time.”

“That ought not to be difficult,” said Tish. “If only Aggie hadn’t acted like a fool—”

“It’s the cemetery,” I said, “and I go to no cemetery to-night, Tish Carberry.”

“Nonsense!” said Tish briskly. “Time certainly means a clock. I’m just getting the hang of this thing, Lizzie.”

“‘Hang’ may be right before we’re through. And when I think of poor Aggie—”

“Still,” she went on, “sands might be an hourglass. Sands of time, you know.”

“And if somebody broke it by stepping on it, it would be footprints in the sands of time!” I retorted. “Go on! All we have to do is to find an hourglass and step on it. And in the meantime Aggie—”

However, at that instant a train drew in and a posse from Edgewater, heavily armed, got out of it and made for a line of waiting motor hacks. Never have I seen a more ruthless-looking lot of men, and Tish felt as I did, for as they streamed into the waiting room she pushed me into a telephone booth and herself took another.

And with her usual competency she took advantage of the fact to telephone Hannah to see if Aggie had returned home, but she had not.

As soon as the posse had passed through we made our escape by the other door and were able to reach the doctor’s car unseen, and still free to pursue our search. But I insist that I saw Tish scatter no tacks along the street as we left the depot. If she did, then I must also insist that she had full reason; it was done to prevent an unjustified pursuit by a body of armed men, and not to delay the other treasure hunters.

Was it her fault that the other treasure seekers reached the station at that time? No, and again no. Indeed, when the first explosive noises came as the cars drew up she fully believed that the sheriff was firing on us, and it was in turning a corner at that time that she broke the fire plug.

Certainly to assess her damages for flooded cellars is, under these circumstances, a real injustice.

But to return to the narrative: Quite rightly, once beyond pursuit, Tish headed for the Cummings property, as it was possible that there we could pick up some clew to Aggie, as well as establish our own innocence. But never shall I forget our reception at that once friendly spot.

As the circumstances were peculiar, Tish decided to reconnoiter first, and entered the property through a hedge with the intention of working past the sundial and so toward the house. But hardly had she emerged into the glow from the windows when a shot was fired at her and she was compelled to retire. As it happened, she took the shortest cut to where she had left me, which was down the drive, and I found myself exposed to a fusillade of bullets, which compelled me to seek cover on the floor of the car. Two of the car windows were broken at once and Letitia Carberry herself escaped by a miracle, as a bullet went entirely through the envelope she held in her hand.

Yes, with her customary astuteness she had located the fresh clew. The Ostermaier boy had had them by the sundial, and had gone asleep there. She fell over him in the darkness, as a matter of fact, and it was his yell which had aroused the house afresh.

There was clearly nothing to do but to escape at once, as men were running down the drive and firing as they ran. And as it seemed to make no difference in which direction we went, we drove more or less at random while I examined the new clew. On account of the bullet holes, it was hard to decipher, but it read much as follows:

The password was “Keep your head down, — boy,” and the clew was as follows:

“Search where affection ceases,

By soft and — sands.

The digit it increases,

On its head it stands.”

“After all,” Tish said, “we have tried to help Aggie and failed. If that thing made sense I would go on and locate the treasure. But it doesn’t. A digit is a finger, and how can it stand on its head?”

“A digit is a number too.”

“So I was about to observe,” said Tish. “If you wouldn’t always break in on my train of thought, I’d get somewhere. And six upside down is nine, so it’s six we’re after. Six what? Six is half a dozen. Half a dozen eggs; half a dozen rolls; half a dozen children. Who has half a dozen children? That’s it, probably. I’m sure affection would cease with six children.”

“Somebody along the water front. It says: ‘By soft and something-or-other sands.’”

We pondered the matter for some time in a narrow lane near the country club, but without result; and might have been there yet had not the sudden passing of a car which sounded like the Smith boys’ flivver toward the country club gate stimulated Tish’s imagination.

“I knew it would come!” she said triumphantly. “The sixth tee, of course, and the sand box! And those dratted boys are ahead of us!”

Anyone but Tish, I am convinced, would have abandoned hope at that moment. But with her, emergencies are to be met and conquered, and so now. With a “Hold tight, Lizzie!” she swung the car about, and before I knew what was on the tapis she had let in the clutch and we were shooting off the road and across a ditch.

S
O GREAT WAS OUR
momentum that we fairly leaped the depression, and the next moment were breaking our way through a small woods, which is close to the fourteenth hole of the golf links, and had struck across the course at that point. Owing to the recent rain, the ground was soft, and at one time we were fairly brought to bay—on, I think, the fairway to the eleventh hole, sinking very deep. But we kept on the more rapidly, as we could now see the lights of the stripped flivver winding along the bridle path which intersects the links.

I must say that the way the greens committee has acted in this matter has been a surprise to us. The wagon did a part of the damage, and also the course is not ruined. A few days’ work with a wheelbarrow and spade will repair all damage; and as to the missing cup at the eighth hole, did we put the horse’s foot in it?

Tish’s eyes were on the lights of the flivver, now winding its way along the road through the course, and it is to that that I lay our next and almost fatal mishap. For near the tenth hole she did not notice a sand pit just ahead, and a moment later we had leaped the bunker at the top and shot down into it.

So abrupt was the descent that the lamps—and, indeed, the entire fore part of the doctor’s car—were buried in the sand, and both of us were thrown entirely out. It was at this time that Tish injured one of her floating ribs, as before mentioned, and sustained the various injuries which laid her up for some time afterward, but at the moment she said nothing at all. Leaping to her feet, she climbed out of the pit and disappeared into the night, leaving me in complete darkness to examine myself for fractures and to sustain the greatest fright of my life. For as I sat up I realized that I had fallen across something, and that the something was a human being. Never shall I forget the sensations of that moment, nor the smothered voice beneath me, which said:

“Kill be at odce ad be dode with it,” and then sneezed violently.

“Aggie!” I shrieked.

She seemed greatly relieved at my voice, and requested me to move so she could get her head out of the sand. “Ad dod’t screab agaid,” she said pettishly. “They’ll cobe back ad fidish us all if you do.”

Well, it appeared that the two men had driven straight to the golf links with the wagon, and had turned in much as we had done. They had not known that Aggie was in the rear, and at first she had not been worried, thinking that Tish and I were in the seat. But finally she had learned her mistake, and that they were talking about loot from some place or other, and she was greatly alarmed. They were going too fast for her to escape, although once or twice they had struck bunkers which nearly threw her out.