The Best of Mary Roberts Rinehart

by Mary Roberts Rinehart

  He had come rather close and, anyhow, he was getting on my nerves; so I gave him just the least little bit of a push and he fell right back into the water. I was never so astonished in my life.

  The way Jane Henderson told it later was criminally false. I did not push him with all my strength and he had not tried to kiss me. Nobody had had too much to drink. It was a perfectly proper party, ar,d my own mother could not have found a single *Mng; to criticise.

  Well, Ferd was wet through and not very agree able. He said, however, that he had merely over balanced, and that he would dry out somehow. The only thing was that he had to get back home and he felt he was not looking his best.

  The moon came up and was perfectly lovely; but about the time we had settled down to singing soft little songs and the Lee man was saying what a good lot of sports we were, and that he was going to take the idea back home, a lot of puddlers and their wives rowed out from the shore and started toward our island. Ferd was awfully annoyed. He stood up and shouted at them.

  "You can't come here!" he called. "This place is taken. Go to the other island."

  "Go to the devil!" one of the puddlers bellowed from the boat; nevertheless they turned the boat's nose round and went to the other island. We could hear them yelling and laughing there, and singing in the commonest fashion. It ruined the moonlight for us. From that time the bloom was off, as one may say, and things went from bad to worse.

  The last car went at ten o'clock, and at half-past nine we commenced to pack up. Annette insisted on taking the roses; and there was the phonograph and the club's silver and dishes, and almost a boat load of stuff. We could not all get in, of course, so Ferd and Emerson Riley agreed to wait; but just as I got into the boat I dropped my gold bag overboard.

  I would not go without the bag. It was set with diamonds and I did not know when I should get another. I just got out of the boat and refused to stir until it had been fished out.

  There was a great deal of excitement. The last car had come and was waiting on the bank for its return trip, and every one was anxious to get off. Ferd, who was wet anyway, waded in, but he could not locate it immediately, and Jane grew hysterical.

  "Come on and leave it, Fan!" she begged. "What's a bag compared with one's reputation? That car's moving now!"

  "Go on!" I said coldly. "I shall stay here until Ferd finds it. Go on, all of you! You can send a man back with the boat, I dare say."

  They did it! I never was more astounded in my life; but they all piled in except Ferd and me, and made for the shore as fast as they could. They said it was all well enough for me, with Day out of town; but the rest of them never had any luck and they had to get that car.

  "They're terribly nervous, all at once!" I said. "If that car goes without me, Ferd, I shall jump into the river!"

  It was moonlight, but not very bright. I sat on the dock and Ferd fished for the gold bag. He brought up an empty bottle, two tin cans and an old shoe.

  "Look here, Fan," he said finally, "I'll buy you a new bag. I'll do anything only let's get out of this."

  "Try once more."

  "I'll get neuralgia," he said. "I have to be awfully careful, Fanny. Ida has to watch me like a hawk."

  "I should imagine so," I replied coldly.

  "I mean about the neuralgia."

  "Humph! Day never has anything the matter with him that's one thing. Try again, Ferd."

  He stooped again, and this time he got it. He straightened up with it in his hand. The car was still on the bank and a boat was putting out from the shore. All seemed to be well.

  "They'll bribe the motorman to wait," said Ferd. "I told Riley to. So you see, little girl, everything's all right. Here's the bag and there's the boat. Do you like me a little bit again?"

  I felt rather queer, alone there on the island with him; and the only thing that occurred to me was to keep him down.

  "I'll like you well enough when we get back to civilization," I said shortly.

  "You're not like yourself, Fanny. You aren't a bit kind to me."

  "Being nice to you with everybody round is one thing. This is another. I'm scared, Ferd."

  "Not of me!" he said, getting hold of one of my hands. He looked horrid in the moonlight, with his collar in a crease and his coat stuck to him. He looked awfully thin, too, and his hair was in straggles over his face. "Fan, the boat's coming and I never see you alone. Do say you care a little bit!"

  Well, I had to play the game. I am not a quitter. I had let him get up the party and spend a lot of money, and I had pretended for months to be interested in him. What was I to do? You. may say what you like a lot of married women get into things they never meant to simply because they are kind-hearted and hate to be called quitters.

  "I've always cared a little," I said, trying not to look at him. "Ferd, you're dripping! Don't touch me!"

  "Lady-love!" cried Ferd, very close to my ear; and then: "Good gracious, Fan! Where's the boat?"

  It had absolutely disappeared! Ferd stood up on the shaky dock and peered over the water.

  "He's gone to the other island," he said after a moment. "They'll tell him he's wrong, but time's passing!"

  He did not start the lady-love business again, and we sat side by side on the dock, with the river, damp and smelly, underfoot. It was very silent, save for the far-away yells of the puddlers on the next island and the drip-drip from Ferd's trouser-ends to the water below.

  Somehow the snap was gone out of the whole thing. I hated it, being alone with him there, and his looking so mussy, and my vanity case soaking from the river. I hated the puddlers' picnic; there was nothing I didn't hate. And the boatman did not come. Even Ferd began to get anxious.

  "The infernal fool!" he said. "He's probably joined the picnic, and Hello, there!" he called, with his hands to his mouth.

  I think they heard us on the bank, for we could hear the trolley bell very faintly. And, immediately after, the car moved off! I had the most awful feeling. We sat on the boards watching it getting smaller and smaller down the river, and neither of us said anything. It had been our one tie, as you may say, to respectability and home and it had deserted us. After a minute Ferd got up on his feet.

  "It's the puddlers, after all!" he said. "We'll have to hail them and get them to send that ass of a boatman. Wouldn't you think that Emerson Riley would have had sense enough to wait and see that we got over safely?"

  I fairly clutched at his arm.

  "You'll do nothing of the sort," I said. "They'll know you if they're from your mill, and they'll know I am not Ida! It will be in the papers!"

  Ferd looked sulky.

  "What am I to do, then?" he demanded. "Swim to the bank?"

  "Couldn't you swim to the other island and steal one of their boats?"

  He did not want to. I could see that; but what else was there to do?

  "It's a good way off," he said. "It won't help things any for me to be drowned, you know."

  "It would be better than a scandal, wouldn't it?"

  He threw up his hands.

  "Oh, if that's the way you feel--"

  "That isn't half the way I feel!"

  He went off at that in a fury, leaving me alone on the little dock in a state of frenzy. I kept thinking of Day's getting home sooner than he expected and finding me gone, and calling up the police; and my wandering in about daylight with my slip pers worn through. I made up a story if the worst happened about having had an attack of loss of memory, coming to myself seven miles from town and walking in.

  There was no sign of Ferd. The puddlers' picnic was noisier than ever; they had brought a phono graph, too, and were dancing.

  When I had waited for what seemed half the night I got frightened about Ferd. He had said it was a good way to go; and if he was drowned and Ida really fond of him, and welcome to him so far as I was concerned it was all up with me. Day would loathe the very sight of me. I knew that.

  The grass looked snaky in the moonlight and I felt I was taking my life in
my hands; but, some how or other, with my hair pulled down by branches, and ankle-deep in mud every now and then, I got to the place where the two islands faced each other, end to end. There was not a sign of Ferd.

  I just sank down on the ground and hoped for death. There was no way out. Jane and the others would think we had the boat and could hire a machine or something to get to the city, and they would not give us another thought. Even if I hailed the puddlers and told them, they would never believe my story. And, of course, there was poor Ferd in the river mud sure to float in and spoil any story I could make up about loss of memory.

  It was when I had reached that point that pandemonium broke loose on the other island. I could hear shouting men and women together and, in a pause, the frantic splashing of oars. The next moment a boat appeared round the corner of the island, with Ferd rowing like mad, and a perfect pandemonium from the shore. He had stolen their boat and they had found it out. I was almost crazy. I waded out to my knees and called to him; and he saw me. There was no other boat after him yet, but some one was yelling to follow him.

  Ferd was rather steadied by the excitement, I think. He reached over and dragged me in with out a word, and the next instant we were pulling for the shore in the moonlight, with the entire puddlers' picnic on their bank, calling awful things to us.

  That was not all, though. One of the men had got into their other boat and was coming after us. He could row, too. I implored Ferd to hurry hurry. And I kept turning round to see whether he was gaining. That was how I discovered why they were so wrought up. There were two dozen quart bottles of champagne in the stern of that boat! We were carrying off the picnic! I told Ferd. "Throw it overboard!" he said. "It'll lighten the boat."

  So I did, basket after basket; and, whether it lightened the boat or not, we drew ahead. Ferd rowed like a demon. In the moonlight his face was white and set, with the queerest expression.

  We struck the shore with a bump that sent me on my knees, but Ferd grabbed my hand and jerked me out.

  "Now run if you ever ran in your life!" he said. "Make for that grove over there, and bend over. The bushes will hide us."

  "I can't," I panted after a minute. "And why should I, Ferd? He's got his old boat by this time-

  "Run!" gasped Ferd. And I ran.

  We crouched down in the grove. My teeth were chattering, but I was nothing to Ferd. He was pallid. The puddler landed just then. We heard him throw his oars into the boat and drag it up on the beach, and I knew he was examining the other boat and finding that the wine was gone. We could hear him breathing hard, and he even made a start toward us, beating the bushes with an oar. He was in a red fury, muttering to himself in the most horrible manner. I had been in Ferd's mill once or twice, and I remembered the enormous shoulders the men had, and how they simply toyed with steel rails; and I was paralysed. A puddler turned Berserk!

  He gave it up just in time, however, and started back for the boat. I could see him moving about a huge creature in white flannels. And he seemed to have cut himself on a branch or something, for he was tying a handkerchief round his forehead.

  We did not dare to move until he had started back and was safely out from shore. Ferd's voice had lost its strained quality and he looked a little less like death. We could hear the picnic party calling to the man in the boat about the wine, and his calling back that we had got away with it, but for some of them to come over and they could beat the bushes. They couldn't come, of course, until he took the boat back.

  "We've got to get out of here, Fnn," Ferd said. "In ten minutes the whole shooting match will be here. Can you run any more?"

  "Not a foot I'm all in. And I lost a shoe in the water at the island."

  Ferd groaned.

  "They'll have us up for stealing their champagne," he said. "I suppose you can walk."

  "I can limp along, I dare say." I was wet and cold, and horribly miserable. "Don't let me detain you. They can't arrest me for stealing their wine. You did that."

  He turned to- me suddenly.

  "Fan," he said solemnly, "don't ask me why, but we must get out of here quick. Must! If you can't walk, roll. Now come on!"

  There were no houses in sight. The trolley line ends there, and I think it is a picnic grove. He took my hand and dragged me along. I lost my other slipper, but he paid no attention when I told him of it; and just when I was about to sink down and die we reached a road.

  "Now," said Ferd, "they came in something machines probably for they'll have to get back, and there are no more cars. Ah, there they are!"

  There were two machines. I gripped Ferd's arm and held him back desperately.

  "The chauffeurs?" I gasped.

  "We'll kill 'em, if necessary," he said between clenched teeth.

  We were loping down the road toward the ma chines Ferd sloshing, rather, with each step; and we could hear loud calling from the islands and the banging of oars in oarlocks.

  "F-Ferd," I managed to say, "c-can you drive a car?"

  "Why, you can, can't you?"

  "I can d-drive my own car. I d-don't know about any other."

  "They're all alike. The principle's the same."

  "I don't know anything about the principles," I said despairingly. "And I won't touch a strange machine."

  "Oh, very well!" said Ferd sulkily. "We'll make a deuce of a stir arrested here for stealing a case of champagne; but never mind. It'll blow over."

  "We can tell the whole story."

  "We cannot!" he said gloomily. "We can't tell on Jane and Annette and Catherine. We'll have to take our medicine, that's all. We needn't give our own names. That's one thing."

  I was perfectly crazed with fright and exhaustion. I leaned up against a fence, and I remembered the time Lily Slater asked Ollie Haynes to see her off to Chicago, her husband being out of town; and how Ollie was carried two hundred miles before the train would stop to let him off; and how Harry never believed the story and was off shooting big game at that very minute; and Lily getting gray over her ears as a result, and not even going out to lunch with anybody for fear there were detectives watching her.

  And, compared with Day, Harry Slater was an angel of mildness.

  The boat was almost across by that time and Ferd was wringing the ends of his trousers. A sort of frenzy seized me. It seemed to me it would be better to be found crushed under a strange car than to be arrested for stealing champagne. I started on, rather tottery.

  "I'll try it, Ferd," I said. "I think we'll be killed; but come on!"

  For once luck was with us. It was a car exactly like my own! I almost cried for joy. I leaped in and pressed the starter, and the purr of the engine was joyous, absolutely. I let in the clutch and the darling slid along without a jerk. We were saved! I could drive that car. I snapped the gear lever forward into high and the six cylinders leaped to our salvation. We were off, with the white road ahead; and the puddlers were only beaching their boat. Ferd sat half turned and watched for pursuit.

  "They'll search the bushes first," he said. "They'll not think of the machines for a few minutes. We can hit it up along the highway for four or five miles; then we'd better turn into a side road and put out the lights and take off the license plates. They'll telephone ahead possibly and give the license number."

  We were going pretty fast by that time and just at that moment I saw a buggy ahead in the road. Ferd called to me; but it was too late I had pressed the siren and the very hills echoed.

  "Good heavens, Fan!" he said. "You've done it now!"

  We topped a rise just then and Ferd looked back. The puddlers were running along the road toward the place where they had left their cars. It was a race for life after that. Ferd bent over and pressed the button that put out the tail light, and I threw on all the gas I could.

  "It's getting pretty serious," Ferd said. "We'll go up for a year or two for this, probably. Stealing a machine is no joke."

  "If it comes to that I'll steer the thing over a bank and die with it!" I said, with my jaw
set. 'Ferd, there's something wrong somewhere! Listen to that knocking!"

  The engine was not behaving well. It was not hitting right and it was telling on our speed. As we topped a long rise Ferd saw the lights of an other car appear over the crest of the last hill. Down in the valley ahead lay a village, sound asleep. We raced through it like mad. A man in his shirt sleeves rushed out of a house and yelled something to us about stopping, that we were under arrest. We almost went over him.

  The race would be over soon, that was clear. The car was making time, but not better time than the other machine. I do not know how I got the idea, but we went limping and banging along until we had reached the edge of the town, and just beyond, beside the road, was a barn, with the doors open. I turned the car in there, shut off the engine and put out the lamps. Ferd caught the idea at once and leaped out and closed the doors.

  "Good girl!" he said. "Unless the farmer heard us and comes out to investigate, this is pretty snug, lady-love. They'll pass us without even hesitating."

  They did not, though. It gives me gooseflesh merely to remember the next half -hour. We waited inside the door for the car to pass. We could hear it coming. But just at the barn it stopped and we could hear them arguing. It seems the road forked there and they were not certain which way we had gone. My knees were shaking with terror and Ferd was breathing hard.

  When I look back I think I should have noticed how queer Ferd was during the whole thing; and, when you think of it, why did he steal the boat at the beginning and not just borrow it? But I was absolutely unsuspicious; and as for noticing, there was no time.

  I lost my courage, I'll admit, when they stopped; and I ran to the back of the barn. There was a horse there and I squeezed in beside the thing; it was com pany anyhow and not running about the country trying to arrest people who were merely attempting to get home. It seemed uneasy and I tried to pat its head to soothe it and it had horns! I almost fainted. Somehow or other I climbed out, and Ferd was coming toward me.

  "Sh!" he whispered. "They've roused the farmer, and holy smoke! they're coming in!"