Tish Plays the Game (22 page)

“And what about me?” she demanded. “Are you going to leave me here alone?”

“It’s the first time I’ve left you for five years, Emmie,” he told her. “I’ll just have to go. And as for being alone, haven’t you got Letitia here? And Lizzie and Aggie?”

Well, I must admit that that did not seem to cheer her any, and the look she gave us was most unpleasant. But she had to let him go, although her last words were not calculated to send him away happy.

“If anything happens to me while you are gone, Will,” she said, “you know how I want things done. And my black silk dress is in the lower bureau drawer.”

“I can get back in six hours if I’m needed, Emmie,” he said brokenly. “A telegram or—”

“When I go I shall be snuffed out like a candle,” she told him in a cold voice. And with that he went away, looking as though he was on his way to the electric chair.

I met Tish on the stairs after she had seen him off. There was a strange look on her face, I remembered later; but after she had settled Emmie for the night she took up her knitting quietly enough. She always contributes a number of knitted pairs of bedroom slippers to the Old Ladies’ Home at Christmas.

Aggie and I retired early, taking Emmie’s bell with us at Tish’s orders, so she could not disturb us during the night, and were soon fast asleep.

But judge of our horror when, at two o’clock or thereabouts, we heard a dreadful shriek from Emmie’s room, followed by a strange, rushing sound. As soon as I could move I got out of bed and turned on the lights; Aggie was reaching for her teeth, with her eyes fixed on the door.

“I left that door open, Lizzie,” she said in an agonized whisper. “Somebody’s closed it.”

Well, it certainly was closed, and when I tried it, it was locked and the key was on the outside! And, to add to the dreadfulness of our position, there was no further sound whatever; no whimpering from Emmie’s room; no sound of Tish in short and sharp remonstrance. No anything.

Never have we passed through such a half hour as followed. That both our wonderful Tish and Emmie had fallen to the knife or other method of some deadly assassin we never doubted. And when at the end of that time we heard halting but inevitable footsteps slowly climbing the staircase, both of us were certain that our hour had come. When they stopped outside the door and an unseen hand fumbled with the key, Aggie gave a low moan and made for the window, but she was stopped before it was too late by the entrance into the room of Tish herself!

She was a curious dead-white color, and she came in limping and closed the door.

“I’d like to borrow your tweezers, Lizzie,” she said, in a toneless sort of voice. “I ran out when I heard Emmie scream, and I’ve got something in my foot.”

“But Emmie!” we inquired in unison. “What has happened to her?”

It was a moment before she replied. Both Aggie and I remembered that hesitation later and that there was a hard and determined look on her face. But when she did reply, it was reassuring.

“She’s all right,” she said.

“But she screamed, Tish! She screamed horribly.”

“You’ve heard her scream before this,” she said coldly. “She says she saw a ghost. That’s all.”

She went out again, and to her own room. She was very lame, we noticed, but calm. Sometime later she called to Aggie to bring her the arnica, and Aggie did so. She reported that Tish had lost the strange pallor, but that she had got a number of thorns in her feet and was removing them.

“She’s very quiet, Lizzie,” Aggie said. “And I thinks she’s sprained her ankle. You would think she had seen the ghost, to look at her, and not Emmie.”

Well, I felt uneasy myself, especially as something had certainly locked us in, and after a while I went across to Emmie’s room and tapped lightly at the door. It was Tish herself who answered from the other side.

“Get away from there, Lizzie,” she said sharply. “We are all right. I shall stay with Emmie until she is calmer.”

The rest of the night was quiet enough. It was not until the next day that certain things began to make us uneasy.

One of these was Emmie herself. However lightly Tish might treat the matter, refusing to call a doctor and so on, it was evident that Emmie had passed through a terrible experience.

She would not see anyone, even Aggie or myself, and she insisted on keeping her door closed and locked. Once in a while we could hear Tish reading to her, apparently to calm her. And she ate a little from the trays Tish carried up. But never once did she raise her voice; ordinarily when she wanted anything and no one answered her bell one could hear her shouting, from the main road. But she was apparently chastened beyond belief.

Our real anxiety, however, was Tish herself. She was in a curious nervous state; a thing most unusual in her. She ate nothing at all. And if a door slammed she would jump violently and turn quite pale.

Knowing her as we did, we could only believe that she, as well as Emmie, had seen the apparition, and had possibly received a message of some personal import. It was in a spirit of helpfulness, therefore, and not of curiosity, that we decided to remain awake that night to give her moral support if she required it.

And that very night we saw it ourselves.

Aggie was suffering from a bad attack of hay fever and had gone to the window for air. Suddenly I heard her whisper, “Lizzie; cobe here! It’s outside, od the walk!”

I ran to the window. And there below us, just leaving the kitchen porch, was the apparition itself! It was a tall, thin, gray figure. And as we watched, it moved along through the back garden and then, on Aggie sneezing violently, apparently dissolved.

Although we waited for some time, it did not materialize again.

In view of Tish’s curious nervous condition, we did not mention it to her. But we saw it for three nights in succession.

I must admit that it made us both very uneasy, especially in view of Emmie’s continued strange state. If Tish had been her usual buoyant self we would have gone to her, but she was oddly restless and uneasy, and once or twice we even found her dozing in her chair—a thing unprecedented with her.

But I kept a careful record of the appearance, and I quote from it here:

Monday. 12 midnight. Materialized human figure. Gray in color, thin in outline. Ectoplasmic blanket around shoulders.

Tuesday. 1
A.M.
Same figure, but with long rodlike structure—See Crawford—across both shoulders. Figure bent, as though carrying weight.

Wednesday. 12:30
A.M.
Same figure, with misty projection around one arm, simulating basket or pail.

This ends the record, for on Thursday Will Hartford unexpectedly came home and a situation developed which I cannot yet recall without anger and dismay.

We had not expected him for some time, but he let himself in with his latchkey and came back to the kitchen where Aggie and I were fixing Emmie’s tray. He looked thin and worn.

“How is she?’ he asked, almost in a whisper. “Still—”

“She’s still alive, if that’s what you mean,” I said tartly. “Look at this tray and judge for yourself.”

He was so relieved that he had to sit down and wipe his face, which was covered with a clammy sweat.

“I just had to come back,” he said. “I didn’t even finish the business. What do money and success matter if I haven’t her with me to share in them?”

He got up, however, and picked up a large package he had brought in.

“I brought her some flowers,” he said. “I got to thinking while I was away. Maybe I could have done a lot of things to make her happy, but I’ve been too selfish to think of them. Well—”

Aggie watched him go out. She still had her hay fever, and standing at the window for three nights had not improved it.

“What I dod’t udderstad, Lizzie,” she said, “is why there are so bady healthy wobed in the world. The bed seeb to like theb feeble.”

And just then Tish, on her way downstairs for the tray, met Will face to face. She never even spoke to him. She gave him one awful look, and then, just as she was, she went out of the house. She did not come back for the most terrible five hours of my life.

Now and then, in a nightmare, I hear Will carrying that box of flowers up the stairs and opening the door which Tish had forgotten to lock. And then I hear him give a groan and drop the box, and then come staggering down again like a madman, shaking both his fists at us and shouting at the top of his lungs.

“She’s gone!” he yelled. “You’ve lied to me! She’s dead! Oh, my poor Emmie, and I left you to die alone!”

“Nonsense!” I shouted back at him. “Your poor Emmie’s all right. She’s been eating enough for ten people right along!”

He stopped wailing and looked at me.

“Then where is she?” he demanded.

“She’s right up in her room in bed. You don’t see her frying herself over this cookstove, do you?”

“She’s right up in her room in bed. You don’t see me. “Not unless you’ve moved her.” He caught me by the shoulder. “Have you moved her?” he shouted. “Have you taken my precious girl out of the room where she has lain helpless so long, and put her somewhere else? Have you dared—”

“Oh, take your hands off me,” I said. “She’s up there all right. Maybe she’s hiding behind the door to surprise you!”

Well, he ran up again, and we followed him. But he was right. Emmie’s room was empty; her bed was neatly made up, and all the bottles on the table beside it had been cleared away. We could only stand and stare, while Will Hartford ran like a lunatic from room to room, peering into the closets and behind the doors, and moaning all the time.

“Emmie,” he called over and over. “Emmie! It’s Will! It’s Will, darling!”

I tried to calm him and tell him she was not hanging up in a cupboard like an old coat, but he only turned on me savagely.

“Where’s that woman?” he cried. “Where’s Letitia Carberry? I didn’t trust her from the start, and Emmie didn’t either. She has murdered my poor girl. Murdered her and done away with her!”

What could we say, or do? We had to stand by and see him run down the stairs; to hear him call the local police and accuse our poor Tish of a heinous crime, and later on to remain helpless while the officers searched the house and the cellar, and even dropped a searchlight down into the well. And still no Tish. They would not even let us leave the house to search for her, although I did manage to get Charlie Sands on the telephone before they stopped me.

“Come at once,” I said. “We are in terrible trouble.”

“Naturally,” he said, without excitement. “Shall I bring bail money or a doctor?”

But I could hear him whistle softly when I told him that Tish was accused of a murder.

It was seven o’clock by that time and growing dark. Waiting by a window, we watched for our poor Tish, but time went on and she did not come. Eight o’clock. Nine. Ten. Never once did our loyalty waver, but, on the other hand, what about the past four days? What about that locked door into Emmie’s room and the trays that went up, while Tish ate nothing at the table? What about that horrible scream and Tish’s strange pallor afterward?

“Baybe Tish gave ger the wrog bedicide,” Aggie whispered to me, “ad she died because of it, so Tish had to—”

But the policeman was watching us, and I motioned her to be silent.

The house was full of people by that time. Two or three doctors were working with Will upstairs. And some neighbors had come in and were digging a hole in the cellar. All they found was the still Will had buried there, but the horrible sound of their spades about drove me crazy. And still Tish did not come.

Charlie Sands arrived at eleven o’clock. They were bringing the still up the cellar stairs just as he got there. And he seemed quite calm and not at all worried.

“For some reason that reminds me,” he said, “that a little blackberry cordial would not go amiss. I’ve had a long trip.”

And not until he had had a generous dose of this tonic did he make a statement which set the whole house in a turmoil.

“By the way,” he said, “if you want Miss Carberry, she will be here in a few moments. She would have arrived sooner, but one of the garage men had taken her car out for a joy ride and she is waiting, to use her own words, to give him a piece of her mind.”

Never shall I forget the scene when Tish arrived, and, walking quietly into the hall, asked for a cup of tea, as she had had no supper. Will, supported by two of the doctors, was waiting on the stairs, and he tried to throw himself at her.

“Supper!” he screeched. “You—you murderess! What have you done with her? Let me loose! I want to kill her,” he shouted.

But Tish paid no attention to him whatever. So far as she was concerned he might not have been there.

“With a little cinnamon toast, too, Aggie,” she said. “I’m about famished.”

“She’s brazen!” cried Will. “She’s insane! Where is Emmie, Tish Carberry?”

She looked at him as if she saw him for the first time.

“Oh, Emmie!” she said. “Well, that’s a long story. Now, Aggie, do I get tea, or do I not?”

Well, they were obliged to wait, for it was clear she would tell them nothing until she was ready. They had to lock Will in a room until she had had it, however, and, although the men who had been digging in the cellar had stopped work, they still held onto their spades. They were certain they would have to dig somewhere.

But at last she had finished, and they brought Will down again and confronted her with him again. She gave him a long, hard look, and then she smiled.

“You’re a fool, Will Hartford,” she said calmly, “and your poor helpless Emmie knows it. That’s why she’s helpless.”

“I know a murderess when I see one,” said Will.

“As to her being helpless,” Tish went on inexorably, “let me tell you that, in spite of her total paralysis, she placed herself where you will find her, and has since remained there of her own free will.”

“That’s a lie at the start,” said Will. “She can’t walk a step, and you know it. Officers, if that woman gets out of this house she will attempt to escape. It’s a ruse on her part. She’s got a car at the door.”

Tish sighed.

“Well, I’ve done my best for you, Will,” she told him. “Personally, I don’t care whether Emmie is found or not. If I have a preference, it is for the latter. But I’ll take you to her and the rest is up to you.”