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.”
I don’t believe any of them believed her. Will Hartford, indeed, demanded handcuffs for her, but she only sat down quietly and refused to stir if they used them. And when someone said she ought to be in jail on general principles, she merely replied placidly that jails were no novelty to her.
In the end they agreed to let her go free, and she rose briskly and started out the kitchen door. It was a strange procession, indeed, and a silent one, for that had been Tish’s condition.
“One unnecessary sound,” she said, “and I stop. Later on I shall place you all at a point of observation, and I shall ask for silence.”
In the hall she had picked up a parcel she had brought in with her, and she took it with her. The police were suspicious of it, but on their threatening to open it she at once turned back, and they were compelled to let it alone.
As I look back I can still see that strange group—Will broken and supported by a doctor on each side, three policemen, six neighbors, mostly armed with spades, and ourselves. And in the lead our dear Tish, with no evidence of guilt about her, but rather as one who has done a good and worthy deed. She moved swiftly, as though she knew the way well, up through the pasture behind the house and through a grove of trees, until at the other side we could dimly discern a small cabin, and a light shining through the window.
Here Tish stopped and addressed us.
“We have come a half mile,” she said. “Mrs. Hartford may tell you that she was brought here while unconscious, but she came here on two perfectly healthy legs. I know, because I followed her. And she came rapidly,” she added, with what I felt was a certain significance. “Now I have one request to make. You
will stay here until I have reached the cabin; then you will come to the window as silently as possible.”
They let her go, and we did as she had requested. But never, so long as I live, shall I forget the sight that greeted us as we stared through that window.
The cabin was bare, save for a folding cot bed, a candle on a shelf, a box for a chair and an old cooking stove with some utensils on it. And lying on the cot, in a dressing gown over her nightdress, was Will’s Emmie. She was scowling frightfully, and when Tish opened the door she nearly jumped down her throat.
“Do you know what time it is?” she demanded furiously. “And that I’ve had nothing to eat since breakfast?”
“I left you plenty for all day,” Tish told her. “And you know you can get plenty more if you decide to come home.”
“I’m not walking back, if that’s what you mean,” Emmie snapped.
“Very well, but you are walking to this cook-stove if you want any supper,” Tish said, and sat down on the box. “If you could run a half mile you can walk ten feet.”
I think Will would have broken away then and there, but Charlie Sands took hold of him. And the next minute Emmie got off that cot and walked across the room. She was in a frightful humor, for she slapped a frying pan onto the stove, opened the package, and said: “Bacon again! I hope I never see another pig!” and began to cook a meal for herself in a most able-bodied but infuriated manner.
And she ate bread and butter over the stove while the meat was frying!
Tish only spoke once while this was going on.
“It’s a pity poor Will can’t see you now,” she said.
“If he was here I wouldn’t be having to do this,” she snapped.
“No,” said Tish. “The poor fool must like to be deceived. It’s my experience that the weaker a man is the more he likes to have something helpless around him. It makes him feel strong and protective.”
Well, Will made a noise at that, and Emmie suddenly threw up her head and listened.
“Who’s out there?” she said in a dreadful voice.
“Only Will and two or three policemen and a few neighbors,” Tish told her calmly. “They’re all glad you are well again, and can take your place in the—”
But at that Emmie simply leaped at her, and the next moment Will Hartford was inside, pulling her off our poor Tish and holding her so her blows would do no damage. And then he put his arms around her and glared at Tish as if she had been the one to blame.
“Leave!” he said. “Begone! To what brutality you have submitted my poor wife I have yet to learn. But the law is not through. Not yet. Nor am I.”
But Tish only stared at him with a faint and sardonic smile.
“Oh, yes, you are,” she told him. “You’re through. You’re as through as you can be. I tried to save you, but you wouldn’t be saved.”
And with that didn’t Emmie suddenly cry out, “Oh, my poor legs! There’s no feeling in them! It’s come again.”
And she sagged in his arms, just exactly as paralyzed as ever.
No, as Tish has often said, there is no moral to this tale. Emmie is still paralyzed, but people get what they want in this world, and if they want a helpless woman she’s about the easiest thing there is to obtain.
But it has been necessary to relate it as accurately as possible, because of the stories that have been going round.
Tish certainly never dreamed that Emmie would leave the house. All she meant to do by playing ghost was to prove that she was not paralyzed at all, but had two perfectly good legs.
But Emmie’s legs were even better than Tish had expected. She says, and I have never known her to exaggerate, that Emmie never went down the stairs at all, but leaped over the stair rail. And when Tish tried to catch her, because she was in her nightgown and the night was cool, the silly fool simply kept on running.
It was daylight the next morning when Tish finally located her in the cabin. But the chances are that Emmie saw her coming, for when Tish went in she was lying on the floor with her eyes closed, and she only opened them when Tish shook her.
Then she stared around feebly and said, “Where am I? And how did I get here?”
She would not walk back, and Tish knew it was hopeless from that minute.
As I have said, there is no moral whatever to this story. The nearest I can come to it is that couplet Tish secured by automatic writing the other day:
“There swims no goose so gray but soon or late
She finds some honest gander for her mate.”
And even there, as dear Tish so aptly remarks, there is a question. For how honest is a man who wants those about him to be weak so he can feel strong?
THE END
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Copyright © 1926 by Mary Roberts Rinehart
Cover design by Biel Parklee
978-1-4804-4619-9
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Tish Plays the Game Page 18
