The Best of Mary Roberts Rinehart

by Mary Roberts Rinehart

  Tish stole the green canoe that night. She put on the life preserver and we tied the end of the rope that Aggie had let slip to the canoe. The life-preserver made it difficult to paddle, Tish said, but she felt more secure. If she struck a rock and upset, at least she would not drown; and we could start after her at dawn with the Mebbe.

  "I'll be somewhere down the river," she said, "and safe enough, most likely, unless there are falls."

  Hutchins watched in a puzzled way, for Tish did not leave until dusk.

  "You'd better let me follow you with the launch, Miss Tish," she said. "Just remember that if the canoe sinks you're tied to it."

  "I'm on serious business to-night, Hutchins," Tish said ominously. "You are young, and I refuse to trouble your young mind; but your ears are sharp. If you hear any shooting, get the boat and follow me."

  The mention of shooting made me very nervous. We watched Tish as long as we could see her; then we returned to the tent, and Aggie and I crocheted by the hanging lantern. Two hours went by. At eleven o'clock Tish had not returned and Hutchins was in the motor boat, getting it ready to start.

  "I like courage, Miss Lizzie," she said to me; "but this thing of elderly women, with some sort of bug, starting out at night in canoes is too strong for me. Either she's going to stay in at night or I'm going home."

  "Elderly nothing!" I said, with some spirit. "She is in the prime of life. Please remember, Hutchins, that you are speaking of your employer. Miss Tish has no bug, as you call it."

  "Oh, she's rational enough," Hutchins retorted: "but she is a woman of one idea and that sort of person is dangerous."

  I was breathless at her audacity.

  "Come now, Miss Lizzie," she said, "how can I help when I don't know what is being done? I've done my best up here to keep you comfortable and restrain Miss Tish's recklessness; but I ought to know something."

  She was right; and, Tish or no Tish, then and there I told her. She was more than astonished. She sat in the motor boat, with a lantern at her feet, and listened.

  "I see," she said slowly. "So the--so Mr. McDonald is a spy and has sent for dynamite to destroy the railroad! And--and the red-haired man is a detective! How do you know he is a detective?"

  I told her then about the note we had picked up from beside her in the train, and because she was so much interested she really seemed quite thrilled. I brought the cipher grocery list and the other note down to her.

  "It's quite convincing, isn't it?" she said. "And--and exciting! I don't know when I've been so excited."

  She really was. Her cheeks were flushed. She looked exceedingly pretty.

  "The thing to do," she said, "is to teach him a lesson. He's young. He mayn't always have had to stoop to such--such criminality. If we can scare him thoroughly, it might do him a lot of good."

  I said I was afraid Tish took a more serious view of things and would notify the authorities. And at that moment there came two or three shots--then silence.

  I shall never forget the ride after Tish and how we felt when we failed to find her; for there was no sign of her. The wind had come up, and, what with seeing Tish tied to that wretched canoe and sinking with it or shot through the head and lying dead in the bottom of it, we were about crazy. As we passed Island Eleven we could see the spy's camp-fire and his tent, but no living person.

  At four in the morning we gave up and started back, heavy-hearted. What, therefore, was our surprise to find Tish sitting by the fire in her bathrobe, with a cup of tea in her lap and her feet in a foot-tub of hot water! Considering all we had gone through and that we had obeyed orders exactly, she was distinctly unjust. Indeed, at first she quite refused to speak to any of us.

  "I do think, Tish," Aggie said as she stood shivering by the fire, "that you might at least explain where you have been. We have been going up and down the river for hours, burying you over and over."

  Tish took a sip of tea, but said nothing.

  "You said," I reminded her, "that if there was shooting, we were to start after you at once. When we heard the shots, we went, of course."

  Tish leaned over and, taking the teakettle from the fire, poured more water into the foot-tub. Then at last she turned to speak.

  "Bring some absorbent cotton and some bandages, Hutchins," she said. "I am bleeding from a hundred wounds. As for you"--she turned fiercely on Aggie and me--"the least you could have done was to be here when I returned, exhausted, injured, and weary; but, of course, you were gallivanting round the lake in an upholstered motor boat."

  Here she poured more water into the foot-tub and made it much too hot. This thawed her rather, and she explained what was wrong. She was bruised, scratched to the knees, and with a bump the size of an egg on her forehead, where she had run into a tree.

  The whole story was very exciting. It seems she got the green canoe without any difficulty, the spy being sound asleep in his tent; but about that time the wind came up and Tish said she could not make an inch of progress toward our camp.

  The chewing gum with which we had repaired our canoe came out at that time and the boat began to fill, Tish being unable to sit over the leak and paddle at the same time. So, at last, she gave up and made for the mainland.

  "The shooting," Tish said with difficulty, "was by men from the Indian camp firing at me. I landed below the camp, and was making my way as best I could through the woods when they heard me moving. I believe they thought it was a bear."

  I think Tish was more afraid of the Indians, in spite of their sixty-three steel engravings and the rest of it, than she pretended, though she said she would have made herself known, but at that moment she fell over a fallen tree and for fifteen minutes was unable to speak a word. When at last she rose the excitement was over and they had gone back to their camp.

  "Anyhow," she finished, "the green canoe is hidden a couple of miles down the river, and I guess Mr. McDonald is safe for a time. Lizzie, you can take a bath to-morrow safely."

  Tish sat up most of the rest of the night composing a letter to the authorities of the town, telling them of Mr. McDonald and enclosing careful copies of the incriminating documents she had found.

  During the following morning the river was very quiet. Through the binocular we were able to see Mr. McDonald standing on the shore of his island and looking intently in our direction, but naturally we paid no attention to him.

  The red-haired man went in swimming that day and necessitated our retiring to the tent for an hour and a half; but at noon Aggie's naturally soft heart began to assert itself.

  "Spy or no spy," she said to Tish, "we ought to feed him."

  "Huh!" was Tish's rejoinder. "There is no sense is wasting good food on a man whose hours are numbered."

  We were surprised, however, to find that Hutchins, who had detested Mr. McDonald, was rather on Aggie's side.

  "The fact that he has but a few more hours," she said to Tish, "is an excellent reason for making those hours as little wretched as possible."

  It was really due to Hutchins, therefore, that Mr. McDonald had a luncheon. The problem of how to get it to him was a troublesome one, but Tish solved it with her customary sagacity.

  "We can make a raft," she said, "a small one, large enough to hold a tray. By stopping the launch some yards above the island we can float his luncheon to him quite safely."

  That was the method we ultimately pursued and it worked most satisfactorily.

  Hutchins baked hot biscuits; and, by putting a cover over the pan, we were enabled to get them to him before they cooled.

  We prepared a really appetizing luncheon of hot biscuits, broiled ham, marmalade, and tea, adding, at Aggie's instructions, a jar of preserved peaches, which she herself had put up.

  Tish made the raft while we prepared the food, and at exactly half-past twelve o'clock we left the house. Mr. McDonald saw us coming and was waiting smilingly at the upper end of the island.

  "Great Scott!" he said. "I thought you were never going to hear me. Another hour and
I'd have made a swim for it, though it's suicidal with this current. I'll show you where you can come in so you won't hit a rock."

  Hutchins had stopped the engine of the motor boat and we threw out the anchor at a safe distance from the shore.

  "We are not going to land," said Tish, "and I think you know perfectly well the reason why."

  "Oh, now," he protested; "surely you are going to land! I've had an awfully uncomfortable accident--my canoe's gone."

  "We know that," Tish said calmly. "As a matter of fact, we took it."

  Mr. McDonald sat down suddenly on a log at the water's edge and looked at us.

  "Oh!" he said.

  "You may not believe it," Tish said, "but we know everything--your dastardly plot, who the red-haired man is, and all the destruction and wretchedness you are about to cause."

  "Oh, I say!" he said feebly. "I wouldn't go as far as that. I'm--I'm not such a bad sort."

  "That depends on the point of view," said Tish grimly.

  Aggie touched her on the arm then and reminded her that the biscuits were getting cold; but Tish had a final word with him.

  "Your correspondence has fallen into my hands, young man," she said, "and will be turned over to the proper authorities."

  "It won't tell them anything they don't know," he said doggedly. "Look here, ladies: I am not ashamed of this thing. I--I am proud of it. I am perfectly willing to yell it out loud for everybody to hear. As a matter of fact, I think I will."

  Mr. McDonald stood up suddenly and threw his head back; but here Hutchins, who had been silent, spoke for the first time.

  "Don't be an idiot!" she said coldly. "We have something here for you to eat if you behave yourself."

  He seemed to see her then for the first time, for he favored her with a long stare.

  "Ah!" he said. "Then you are not entirely cold and heartless?"

  She made no reply to this, being busy in assisting Aggie to lower the raft over the side of the boat.

  "Broiled ham, tea, hot biscuits, and marmalade," said Aggie gently. "My poor fellow, we are doing what we consider our duty; but we want you to know that it is hard for us--very hard."

  When he saw our plan, Mr. McDonald's face fell; but he stepped out into the water up to his knees and caught the raft as it floated down.

  Before he said "Thank you" he lifted the cover of the pan and saw the hot biscuits underneath.

  "Really," he said, "it's very decent of you. I sent off a grocery order yesterday, but nothing has come."

  Tish had got Hutchins to start the engine by that time and we were moving away. He stood there, up to his knees in water, holding the tray and looking after us. He was really a pathetic figure, especially in view of the awful fate we felt was overtaking him.

  He called something after us. On account of the noise of the engine, we could not be certain, but we all heard it the same way.

  "Send for the whole d--d outfit!" was the way it sounded to us. "It won't make any difference to me."

  V

  The last thing I recall of Mr. McDonald that day is seeing him standing there in the water, holding the tray, with the teapot steaming under his nose, and gazing after us with an air of bewilderment that did not deceive us at all.

  As I look back, there is only one thing we might have noticed at the time. This was the fact that Hutchins, having started the engine, was sitting beside it on the floor of the boat and laughing in the cruelest possible manner. As I said to Aggie at the time: "A spy is a spy and entitled to punishment if discovered; but no young woman should laugh over so desperate a situation."

  I come now to the denouement of this exciting period. It had been Tish's theory that the red-haired man should not be taken into our confidence. If there was a reward for the capture of the spy, we ourselves intended to have it.

  The steamer was due the next day but one. Tish was in favor of not waiting, but of at once going in the motor boat to the town, some thirty miles away, and telling of our capture; but Hutchins claimed there was not sufficient gasoline for such an excursion. That afternoon we went in the motor launch to where Tish had hidden the green canoe and, with a hatchet, rendered it useless.

  The workings of the subconscious mind are marvelous. In the midst of chopping, Tish suddenly looked up.

  "Have you noticed," she said, "that the detective is always watching our camp?"

  "That's all he has to do," Aggie suggested.

  "Stuff and nonsense! Didn't he follow you into the swamp? Does Hutchins ever go out in the canoe that he doesn't go out also? I'll tell you what has happened: She's young and pretty, and he's fallen in love with her."

  I must say it sounded reasonable. He never bothered about the motor boat, but the instant she took the canoe and started out he was hovering somewhere near.

  "She's noticed it," Tish went on. "That's what she was quarreling about with him yesterday."

  "How are we to know," said Aggie, who was gathering up the scraps of the green canoe and building a fire under them--"how are we to know they are not old friends, meeting thus in the wilderness? Fate plays strange tricks, Tish. I lived in the same street with Mr. Wiggins for years, and never knew him until one day when my umbrella turned wrong side out in a gust of wind."

  "Fate fiddlesticks!" said Tish. "There's no such thing as fate in affairs of this sort. It's all instinct--the instinct of the race to continue itself."

  This Aggie regarded as indelicate and she was rather cool to Tish the balance of the day.

  Our prisoner spent most of the day at the end of the island toward us, sitting quietly, as we could sec through the glasses. We watched carefully, fearing at any time to see the Indian paddling toward him.

  [Tish was undecided what to do in such an emergency, except to intercept him and explain, threatening him also with having attempted to carry the incriminating papers. As it happened, however, the entire camp had gone for a two-days' deer hunt, and before they returned the whole thing had come to its surprising end.]

  Late in the afternoon Tish put her theory of the red-haired man to the test.

  "Hutchins," she said, "Miss Lizzie and I will cook the dinner if you want to go in the canoe to Harvey's Bay for water-lilies."

  Hutchins at once said she did not care a rap for water-lilies; but, seeing a determined glint in Tish's eye, she added that she would go for frogs if Tish wanted her out of the way.

  "Don't talk like a child!" Tish retorted. "Who said I wanted you out of the way?"

  It is absolutely true that the moment Hutchins put her foot into the canoe the red-haired man put down his fishing-rod and rose. And she had not taken three strokes with the paddle before he was in the blue canoe.

  Hutchins saw him just then and scowled. The last we saw of her she was moving rapidly up the river and the detective was dropping slowly behind. They both disappeared finally into the bay and Tish drew a long breath.

  "Typical!" she said curtly. "He's sent here to watch a dangerous man and spends his time pursuing the young woman who hates the sight of him. When women achieve the suffrage they will put none but married men in positions of trust."

  Hutchins and the detective were still out of sight when supper-time came. The spy's supper weighed on us, and at last Tish attempted to start the motor launch. We had placed the supper and the small raft aboard, and Aggie was leaning over the edge untying the painter,--not a man, but a rope,--when unexpectedly the engine started at the first revolution of the wheel.

  It darted out to the length of the rope, where it was checked abruptly, the shock throwing Aggie entirely out and into the stream. Tish caught the knife from the supper tray to cut us loose, and while Tish cut I pulled Aggie in, wet as she was. The boat was straining and panting, and, on being released, it sprang forward like a dog unleashed.

  Aggie had swallowed a great deal of water and was most disagreeable; but the Mebbe was going remarkably well, and there seemed to be every prospect that we should get back to the camp in good order. Alas, for human hopes! M
r. McDonald was not very agreeable.

  "You know," he said as he waited for his supper to float within reach, "you needn't be so blamed radical about everything you do! If you object to my hanging round, why not just say so? If I'm too obnoxious I'll clear out."

  "Obnoxious is hardly the word," said Tish. "How long am I to be a prisoner?"

  "I shall send letters off by the first boat."

  He caught the raft just then and examined the supper with interest.

  "Of course things might be worse," he said; "but it's dirty treatment, anyhow. And it's darned humiliating. Somebody I know is having a good time at my expense. It's heartless! That's what it is--heartless!"

  Well, we left him, the engine starting nicely and Aggie being wrapped in a tarpaulin; but about a hundred yards above the island it began to slow down, and shortly afterward it stopped altogether. As the current caught us, we luckily threw out the anchor, for the engine refused to start again. It was then we saw the other canoes.

  The girl in the pink tam-o'-shanter was in the first one.

  They glanced at us curiously as they passed, and the P.T.S.--that is the way we grew to speak of the pink tam-o'-shanter--raised one hand in the air, which is a form of canoe greeting, probably less upsetting to the equilibrium than a vigorous waving of the arm.

  It was just then, I believe, that they saw our camp and headed for it. The rest of what happened is most amazing. They stopped at our landing and unloaded their canoes. Though twilight was falling, we could see them distinctly. And what we saw was that they calmly took possession of the camp.

  "Good gracious!" Tish cried. "The girls have gone into the tent! And somebody's working at the stove. The impertinence!"

  Our situation was acutely painful. We could do nothing but watch. We called, but our voices failed to reach them. And Aggie took a chill, partly cold and partly fury. We sat there while they ate the entire supper!

  They were having a very good time. Now and then somebody would go into the tent and bring something out, and there would be shrieks of laughter.