Tish Plays the Game (7 page)

This simple outline only barely reveals the plan of the story. It says nothing of the pursuits on horseback, the shipwreck, the fire, and so on. But it shows clearly that the original story contained no love interest.

I lay stress on this at this point in the narration, because it was very early in the picture that we began to notice Mr. Macmanus.

Mr. Macmanus was a tall gentleman with a gray mustache, and with a vague resemblance to Mr. Ostermaier, but lacking the latter’s saintliness of expression. We paid little attention to him at first, but he was always around when Tish was being photographed—or shot, as the technical term is—and in his make-up.

Aggie rather admired him, and spoke to him one day while he was feeding peanuts to Katie, the tame studio elephant—of whom more anon.

“Are you being shot to-day?” she inquired.

“No madam. Not to-day, nor even at sunrise!” he replied in a bitter tone. “From what I can discover, I am being paid my salary to prevent my appearance on any screen.”

He then gloomily fed the empty bag to Katie, and went away.

We had no solution for the mystery of Mr. Macmanus at that period, and indeed temporarily forgot him. For the time had come for Tish to take the air, and both Aggie and I were very nervous.

Even Tish herself toyed with her breakfast the morning of that day, and spoke touchingly of Charlie Sands, observing that she was his only surviving relative, and that perhaps it was wrong and selfish of her to take certain risks. To add to our anxiety, the morning paper chronicled the story of a fatal crash the day before, and she went, I think, a trifle pale. Later on, however, she rallied superbly.

“After all,” she said, “the percentage of accident is only one in five hundred. I am sorry for the poor wretch, but it saves the lives of four hundred and ninety-nine others. Figures do not lie.”

From that time on she was quite buoyant, and ate a lamb chop with appetite.

During the flight Aggie, Hannah and I remained in the open, looking up, and I must admit that it was a nervous time for us, seeing our dear Tish head down above the earth, and engaged in other life-imperiling exploits. But she came down smiling and, when the aeroplane stopped, spoke cheerfully.

“A marvelous experience,” she observed. “One feels akin to the birds. One soars, and loses memory of earth.”

She was then helped out, but owing to the recent altitude her knees refused to support her, and she sank to the ground.

T
HERE WERE, OF COURSE
, occasional misadventures. There was that terrible day, for instance, when Tish hung from a bridge by her hands, ready to drop to a train beneath, when through some mistake the train was switched to another track and our dear Letitia was left hanging, like Mohammed’s coffin, between heaven and earth. And that other day, of wretched memory, when on exploding the hillside to imprison the governor, a large stone flew up and struck Aggie violently in the mouth, dislodging her upper plate and almost strangling her.

There was, again, the time when the smugglers set fire to the building Tish was in, and the fire department did not receive its signal and failed to arrive until almost too late.

But in the main, things went very well. There were peaceful days when Aggie and I fed peanuts to the little studio elephant, Katie, and indeed became quite friendly with Katie, who dragged certain heavy articles about the lot and often roamed at will, her harness chains dangling. And there were hot days when we sought the shelter of the cool hangar which housed the smugglers’ dirigible, or baby blimp as it was called, and where we had concealed several bottles of blackberry cordial against emergency.

At such times we frequently discussed what Aggie now termed the Macmanus mystery. For such it had become.

“He’s not hanging around for any good purpose, Lizzie,” Aggie frequently observed. “He’s in Tish’s picture somehow, and—I think he is a lover!”

We had not mentioned him to Tish, but on the next day after she took her parachute leap we learned that she had her own suspicions about him.

I may say here, before continuing with my narrative, that Tish’s parachute experience was without accident, although not without incident. She was to leap with the bag of stage money she had captured in the air from the smugglers, and this she did. But a gust of wind caught her, and it was our painful experience to see her lifted on the gale and blown out of sight toward the mountains.

Several automobiles and the dirigible immediately started after her, but dusk fell and she had not returned to us. Even now I cannot picture those waiting hours without emotion. At one moment we visualized her sitting on some lonely mountain crag, and at another still floating on, perhaps indefinitely, a lonely bit of flotsam at the mercy of the elements.

At nine o’clock that night, however, she returned, slightly irritable but unhurt.

“For heaven’s sake, Aggie,” she said briskly, “stop sneezing and crying, and order me some supper. I’ve been sitting in a ranch house, with a nervous woman pointing a gun at me, for three hours.”

It developed that she had landed in the country, and had untied the parachute and started with her valise full of stage money back toward the studio, but that she had stopped to ask for supper at a ranch, and the woman there had looked in the bag while Tish was washing, and had taken her for a bank robber.

“If she had ever looked away,” Tish said, “I could have grabbed the gun. But she was cross-eyed, and I don’t know yet which eye she watched with.”

As I have said, it was the next day that we learned that Tish herself had grown suspicious about Mr. Macmanus.

She sent for us to come to her dressing room, and when we appeared she said, “I want you both here for a few minutes. Light a cigarette, Hannah. Mr. Stein’s coming.”

To our horror Hannah produced a box of cigarettes and lighted one by holding it in the flame of a match. But we were relieved to find that Tish did not intend to smoke it. Hannah placed it in an ash tray on the table and left it there.

“Local color,” Tish said laconically. “They think a woman’s queer here if she doesn’t smoke. Come in, Mr. Stein.”

When Mr. Stein entered he was uneasy, we thought, but he wore his usual smile.

“Going like a breeze, Miss Carberry,” he said.

“Yes,” said Tish grimly. “And so am I!”

“What do you mean, going?” said Mr. Stein, slightly changing color. “You can’t quit on us, Miss Carberry. We’ve spent a quarter of a million dollars already.”

“And I’ve risked a million-dollar life.”

“We’ve been carrying insurance on you.”

“Oh, you have!” said Tish, and eyed him coldly. “I hope you’ve got Mr. Macmanus insured too.”

“Just why Mr. Macmanus, Miss Carberry?”

“Because,” Tish said with her usual candor, “I propose physical assault, and possibly murder, if he’s brought on the set with me.”

“Now see here,” he said soothingly, “you’re just tired, Miss Carberry. Ladies, how about a glass of that homemade TNT for Miss Tish? And a little all round?”

But when none of us moved he was forced to state his case, as he called it.

“You see, Miss Carberry,” he said, “we’ve made the old girl pretty hardboiled, so far. Now the public’s going to want to see her softer side.”

“As, for instance?”

“Well, something like this: The rancher who’s been the secret head of the smugglers, he’s a decent fellow at heart, see? Only got into it to pay the mortgage on the old home. Well, now, why not a bit of sentiment between you and him at the end? Nothing splashy, just a nice refined church and a kiss.” When he saw Tish’s face he went on, speaking very fast. “Not more than a four-foot kiss, if that. We’ve got to do it, Miss Carberry. I’ve been wiring our houses all over the country, and they’re unanimous.”

At Tish’s firm refusal he grew almost tearful, saying he dared not fly in the face of tradition, and that he couldn’t even book the picture if he did. But Tish merely rose majestically and opened the door.

“I warned you, Mr. Stein, I would have no sex stuff in this picture.”

“Sex stuff!” he cried. “Good Lord, you don’t call that sex stuff, do you?”

“I dare say you call it platonic friendship here,” Tish said in her coldest tone. “But my agreement stands. Good afternoon.”

He went out, muttering.

J
UST WHAT HAPPENED WITHIN
a day or two to determine Tish’s later course, I cannot say. We know that she had a long talk with Mr. Macmanus himself, and that he maintained that his intentions were of the most honorable—namely, to earn a small salary—and that his idea was that the final embrace could be limited to his kissing her hand.

“I have ventured so to suggest, madam,” Hannah reported him as saying, “but they care nothing for art here. Nothing. They reduce everything to its physical plane, absolutely.”

That our dear Tish was in a trap evidently became increasingly clear to her as the next few days passed. Nothing else would have forced her to the immediate course she pursued, and which resulted in such ignominious failure.

It was, I believe, a week after the interview with Mr. Stein, and with the picture drawing rapidly to a close, that Tish retired early one night and was inaccessible to us.

We were entirely unsuspicious, as the day had been a hard one, Tish having been washed from her horse while crossing a stream and having sunk twice before they stopped shooting the picture to rescue her.

Aggie, I remember, was remarking that after all Macmanus was a handsome man, and that some people wouldn’t object to being embraced by him at a thousand dollars a week, when Hannah came bolting in.

“She’s gone!” she cried.

“Gone? Who’s gone?”

“Miss Tish. Her room’s empty and I can’t find her valise.”

Only partially attired we rushed along the corridor. Hannah had been only too right. Our dear Tish had flown.

I did not then, nor do I now, admit that this flight, and the other which followed it, indicate any weakness in Letitia Carberry. The strongest characters must now and then face situations too strong for them and depart, as the poet says, “to fight another day.”

I do, however, question the wisdom of her course, for it put her enemies on guard and involved us finally in most unhappy circumstances.

Be that as it may, we had closed Tish’s door on its emptiness and were about to depart, when on turning she herself stood before us!

She said nothing. She simply passed on and into the room, traveling bag in hand, and closed and locked the door between us.

We believe now that her flight was not unexpected, and that her door and windows had been under surveillance. Certainly she was met at the station by Mr. Stein and his attorney and was forced to turn back, under threat of such legal penalties as we know not of. Certainly, too, she had closed that avenue of escape to further attempts, and knew it.

But from Tish herself we have until now had no confidences.

Some slight revenge she had, we know, the following day. As this portion of the picture has received very good notices, it may interest the reader to know under what circumstances it was taken.

I have mentioned the scene in the studio where the smugglers were banqueting, and Tish, followed by revenue officers, was to appear and, after a shot or two, force them to subjection. Aggie and I had been permitted to watch this, the crowning scene of the picture, and stood behind the camera. The musicians were playing For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow, and the rum runners were drinking cold tea in champagne glasses and getting very drunk over it, when Tish entered.

Aggie took one look at her and clutched my arm.

“I don’t like her expression, Lizzie,” she whispered. “She—”

At that moment Tish fired, and the bandit who’d been standing gave a loud bellow. She had shot his wine glass out of his hand.

“Stop the camera!” the chief smuggler called in a loud voice. “She’s crazy! She’s got that gun loaded!”

The director, however, seemed delighted, and called to the camera men to keep on grinding.

“Great stuff, Miss Carberry!” he yelled. “I didn’t think anybody could put life in these wooden soldiers, but you have. Keep it up, only don’t kill anyone. Hold it, everybody! Camera! Camera! Now shoot out the lights, Miss Carberry, and I’ll think up something to follow while you’re doing it.”

I believe now that he referred to the candles on the table, but Tish either did not or would not understand. A second later there were two crashes of broken glass, and wild howls from the men with the arc lamps above, which lighted the scene. The stage was in semidarkness, and pieces of glass and metal and the most frightful language continued to drop from above. In the confusion all I could hear was the director muttering something about five hundred dollars gone to perdition, and the rush of the entire company from the stage.

It has been no surprise to me that this scene has made the great hit of the picture, the critics describing it as a classical study in fear. It was, indeed.

This small explosion of indignation had one good effect, however. Tish was almost her own self that night, recalling with a certain humor that a piece of one arc lamp had fallen down and had hit Mr. Macmanus on the head.

T
ISH IS THE MOST
open and candid of women, and nothing so rouses her indignation as trickery. Had Mr. Stein not resorted to stratagem to compel her consent to the final scenes, I believe a compromise might have been effected.

It was his deliberate attempt to imprison Tish on the lot the night before those final shots which brought about the catastrophe. To pretend, as he does now, that he thought we had left at midnight does not absolve him.

The fact remains that after the final night shots, when Tish had her make-up off and we started to leave, we found that the gates were locked and the gatekeeper gone. What is more, there was a man across the street behind a tree box, watching the exit.

Tish called to him in an angry voice, but he pretended not to be there, and we finally turned away.

From the beginning Tish had recognized it as a trick, and she lost but little time in organizing herself for escape. A trial of the high fence which surrounded the lot, with Aggie on Tish’s shoulders while Tish stood on a box, revealed three strands of heavy barbed wire. But, more than that, Aggie declared that there were guards here and there all around.