Tish Plays the Game (18 page)

But at last they got into the sand pit, and as the horse climbed up the steep ascent our poor Aggie had heard her teeth drop out of her pocket and had made a frantic clutch at them. The next moment she had alighted on her head in the sand pit and the wagon had gone on.

She was greatly shaken by her experience and had taken a heavy cold; but although we felt about for the blackberry cordial, we could not find it, and could only believe it had miraculously remained in the wagon.

As she finished her narrative our dear Tish slipped quietly over the edge of the pit and sat down, panting, in the sand. The storm being definitely over and a faint moon now showing, we perceived that she carried in her hand a canvas sack tied with a strong cord, and from its weight as she dropped it we knew that at last we had the treasure.

It was a great moment, and both Aggie and I then set about searching for the missing teeth. But as Tish learned of Aggie’s experience she grew thoughtful.

“Undoubtedly,” she said, “those two men are somehow concerned in this robbery to-night, and very probably the rendezvous of the gang is somewhere hereabouts. In which direction did they go, Aggie?”

“They’ve parked the wagod over id those woods.”

“Then,” said Tish, “it is our clear duty—”

“—to go hobe,” said Aggie sharply.

“Home nothing!” said Tish. “Jail is where we go unless we get them. There are fifteen police men and a sheriff coming for us at this minute, and—” But here she stopped and listened intently. “It is too late,” she said, with the first discouragement she had shown all evening. “Too late, my friends. The police are coming now.”

Aggie wailed dismally, but Tish hushed her and we set ourselves to listen. Certainly there were men approaching, and talking in cautious tones. There was a moment when I thought our dear Tish was conquered at last, but only a moment. Then she roused to incisive speech and quick action.

“I do not propose to be dug out of here like a golf ball,” she stated. “I am entitled to defend myself and I shall do so. Lizzie, see if there are any tools in the car there, and get a wrench.” She then took a firm hold of the treasure bag and swung it in her hand. “I am armed,” she said quietly, “and prepared for what may come. Aggie, get the clothespin, and when I give the word point it like a pistol.”

“Ab I to say ‘bag.’”

But before Tish could reply, the men were fairly on us. We had but time to get behind the car when we could hear their voices. And suddenly Aggie whispered, “It’s theb! It’s the baddits! Ad they’ve beed at the cordial!”

And Aggie was right; they had, indeed, as we could tell by their voices.

“It wash Bill, all righ’,” said one man. “I shaw the litsh of hish car.”

“Well, wheresh he gone to? No car here, no anything. Black ash hell.”

One of them then began to sing a song, in which he requested a bartender to give him a drink, but was quickly hushed by the others, for there were now three of them. Whether it was this one or not I do not know, but at that instant one of them fell over the bunker at the top of the pit and came rolling down at our feet, and Tish, with her customary readiness, at once struck him on the head with the bag of pennies. He was evidently stunned, for he lay perfectly still, and the men above seemed puzzled.

“Hey, Joe!” they called. “Where are you?”

On receiving no reply, one of them lighted a match, and Tish had only time to retire behind the car before it flared up.

“Well, can you beat that? He’sh broken hish neck!”

But the man with the match was sober, and he saw the car and stared at it.

“If that’s Bill’s car,” he said, as the match went out, “we’re up against it. Only—where the devil’s Bill?”

“He’sh dead too, mosht likely,” said the other. “Everybody’sh dead. S’terrible night. Car’sh dead, too; buried in a shea of shand. Shinking rapidly. Poor ole car! Women and children first!”

He then burst into tears and sat down apparently, for the other man kicked him and told him to get up; and then came sliding into the pit and bent over Joe, striking another match as he did so. Hardly had he done so when Tish’s weapon again descended with full force, and he fell beside his unconscious partner in crime.

We had now only the drunken man to deal with; and as Tish wished no more bloodshed, she managed him in a different manner.

In a word, she secured the towrope from the rear seat of the doctor’s car and, leaving Aggie and myself to watch the others, climbed out and approached him from the rear. It was only the work of a moment to pinion his arms to his sides, and as Aggie immediately pointed her impromptu weapon and cried “Hads up!” he surrendered without a struggle. Having securely roped him, we then rolled him into the sand pit with the others, who showed no signs of coming to.

Fatigued as we were by that time, and no further danger threatening for the moment, we rested for a brief time on the ground and ate a few macaroons which I had carried in a pocket against such an emergency. But by “we” I mean only Tish and myself, as poor Aggie was unable to do so—and, indeed, has been living on soft food ever since. Then retrieving the sack containing the Cummings jewels and silver which the burglars had been carrying, we prepared to carry our double treasure back to the town.

Here, however, I feel that our dear Tish made a tactical error, for after we had found the horse and wagon—in the undergrowth just beyond the seventh hole—instead of heading at once for the police station she insisted on going first to the Ostermaier’s.

“It is,” she said, examining her watch by the aid of the flashlight, “now only half past eleven, and we shall not be late if we hurry. After that I shall report to the police.”

“And what is to prevent those wretches from coming to and escaping in the interval?” I asked dryly.

“True,” Tish agreed. “Perhaps I would better go back and hit them again. But that would take time also.”

In the end we compromised on Tish’s original plan and set out once more. The trip back across the links was uneventful, save that on the eighth green the horse got a foot into the hole and was only extricated with the cup still clinging to his foot.

We had no can opener along, and it is quite possible that the ring of the tin later on the macadam road led to our undoing. For we had no sooner turned away from the town toward the Ostermaier’s cottage on the beach than a policeman leaped out of the bushes and, catching the animal by the bridle, turned a lantern on us.

“Hey, Murphy!” he called. “Here they are! I’ve got ’em! Hands up, there!”

“Stand back!” said Tish in a peremptory voice. “We are late enough already.”

“Late!” said the policeman, pointing a revolver at us. “Well, time won’t make much difference to you from now on—not where you’re going. You won’t ever need to hurry again.”

“But I must deliver this treasure. After that I’ll explain everything.”

“You bet you’ll deliver it, and right here and now. And your weapons too.”

“Aggie, give up your clothespin,” said Tish in a resigned voice. “These yokels apparently think us guilty of something or other, but my conscience is clear. If you want the really guilty parties,” she told the policeman, “go back to the sand pit by the tenth hole and you will find them.”

“April fool your own self,” said the one called Murphy. “I’ve been following you for two hours and I don’t trust you. You’re too resourceful. Is the stuff there?” he asked the first man, who had been searching in the wagon.

“All here.”

“Then we’ll be moving along,” he said; and in this fashion did we reach the town once more, and the station house.

Never shall I forget that moment. Each of us handcuffed and hustled along by the officers, we were shoved into the station house in a most undignified manner, to confront the sheriff and a great crowd of people. Nor shall I ever forget the sheriff’s face when he shouted in an angry voice:

“Women, by heck! When a woman goes wrong she sure goes!”

The place seemed to be crowded with people. The fish-pier man was there, and a farmer who said we had smashed his feed cutter. And Doctor Parkinson, limping about in his bedroom slippers and demanding to know where we had left his car, and another individual who claimed it was his horse we had taken, and that we’d put a tin can on his off forefoot and ought to be sued for cruelty to animals. And even Mr. Stubbs because his license plates were on our car—and of course the old fool had told all about it—and the Cummings butler, who pointed at Tish and said that after the alarm was raised she had tried to get back into the house again, which was, of course, ridiculous.

I must say it looked bad for us, especially when the crowd moved and we saw a man lying in a corner with an overcoat under his head and his eyes shut. Tish, who had not lost an ounce of dignity, gazed at him without expression.

“I dare say,” she said, “that you claim that that is our work also.”

“Just about killed him, you have,” said the sheriff. “Went right through him with that motorcycle you stole. Murder—that’s what it’s likely to be—murder. D’you get his name, doctor?”

“Only roused enough to say it was Bill,” said Doctor Parkinson. “I wish myself to lodge a complaint for assault and battery against these women. I am per—”

But Tish interrupted him.

“Bill?” she said. “Bill?”

Without a word she pushed the crowd aside, and bending over Bill, with her poor manacled hands she examined him as best she could. Then she straightened herself and addressed the crowd with composure.

“Under this man’s shirt,” she said, “you will find what I imagine to be a full set of burglar’s tools. If your hands are not paralyzed like your brains, examine him and see.”

And they found them! The picture of that moment is indelibly impressed on my mind—the sheriff holding up the tools and Tish addressing the mob with majesty and the indignation of outraged womanhood.

“Gentlemen, this is one of the gang which robbed the Cummings house to-night. Through all this eventful evening, during which I regret to say some of you have suffered, my friends and I have been on their track. Had the motorcycle not wrecked that ruffian’s car, they would now have safely escaped. As it is, when we were so unjustly arrested I had but just recovered the Cummings silver and jewels, and alone and unaided had overcome the remainder of the gang. I am exhausted and weary; I have suffered physical injury and mental humiliation; but I am not too weak or too weary to go now to the sand pit at the tenth hole on the golf links and complete my evening’s work by handing over to the police the three other villains I have captured.”

“Three cheers for the old girl!” somebody called in the crowd. “I’m for her! Let’s go!”

And this, I think, concludes the narrative of that evening’s events. It was almost midnight when, our prisoners safely jailed, we arrived at the Ostermaiers’ to find all the treasure hunters except the Cummingses there and eating supper, and our angel-food cake gracing the center of the table. Our dear Tish walked in and laid the sack of pennies on the table.

“Here is the treasure,” she announced. “It has been an interesting evening, and I hope we shall soon do it again.”

Mr. Ostermaier took up the bag and examined it.

“I have the honor of stating,” he said, “that this, as Miss Carberry claims, is the treasure, and that Miss Carberry wins the hand-painted candlestick which is the prize for the event.” He then examined the bag more carefully, and added:

“But this sack seems to be stained. Perhaps our good sister will explain what the stains are.”

Tish eyed the bag with an expressionless face.

“Stains?” she said. “Oh,
yes,
of course. I remember now. They are blood.”

Then, leaving them staring and speechless with astonishment, she led the way out of the house, and home.

I
N ORDER TO UNDERSTAND
the case of Emmie Hartford and the rather drastic method by which our splendid Tish endeavored to effect a cure, it is necessary to go back a few months to that strange but brief period during which Letitia Carberry developed psychic power.

Not, indeed, that she used her power in the case referred to; on the contrary, rather. But the influence of her earlier experiences is plainly to be discovered by the careful reader, and since she has been severely criticized for her attitude to Emmie, as well as for the methods she pursued, it is only fair to her to revert briefly to the incidents which preceded the Hartford affair.

It is, I admit, a long step from a book on palmistry to that frightful evening when Aggie and I were compelled to sit under the eyes of a policeman and listen to a number of men digging frantically in the cellar of the Hartford house just beneath the room in which we waited. But that is the way it began.

It was last Christmas that Charlie Sands, Tish’s nephew, sent her a book on palmistry. Tish studied it carefully, and for some time Aggie and I, and even Hannah, her maid, were obliged to make impressions of our hands on a sheet of smoked paper while Tish studied the results. Aggie, I recall, had a line down near her wrist which worried Tish greatly, revealing as it did an unbridled and passionate nature, although Aggie was certain that it was where she had been cut while paring quinces some years ago. And Hannah certainly had the circle which indicated death by drowning. But what is important to this narrative is that our dear Tish discovered that she herself had the psychic cross on both hands.

She at once undertook a study of such matters, although at first her attitude was largely one of academic interest, she having always stoutly maintained that under no circumstances, once having passed over, would she care to be brought back and forced to inhabit even temporarily the body of a medium she might not care for or might indeed positively dislike.

And, I may say, her interest was largely impersonal until well on into the spring. Then one night she had a most curious experience, and there began that earnest investigation which was to lead us into such strange paths, and was later, indeed, to see us driven from the Hartford home under conditions so unpleasant that only a sense of fairness to Tish compels me to record them.