Читать книгу The Greatest Murder Mysteries of Mary Roberts Rinehart - 25 Titles in One Edition - Mary Roberts Rinehart - Страница 91

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Now I am not defending what followed. But the Lewis man had been nice to us, and, as Tish said tartly to Charlie Sands, women who had lived in single blessedness as long as we had, learned to think quick and act quicker. As to the law, we sent a check to the farmer whose pig we killed—and with pork at its present price it was ruinous, although we were glad it had not been a cow; and as to using our missionary money to make up for the packet Aggie lost—as we said, we considered that it had been used in missionary work. It was hardest, of course, on the Morning Star reporter. Only a week or so ago we had to go to Noblestown to get a new handle for the meat-chopper. We were in the machine outside the store, and when we saw him it was too late. Tish was wearing his necktie—having gathered it up with her clothes that awful night, and not knowing his name she could not send it back to him—and she clapped her hand over it. But he saw it.

"Good afternoon," he said, grinning.

"What do you mean by addressing us?" Tish demanded, trying to pull the collar of her duster over the tie.

"You don't mean to say you've forgotten me already!" he exclaimed, looking grieved. "Don't you remember—your—our room at the Sherman House?"

"Certainly not," Tish said haughtily.

He pulled out a card and scribbled something on it. "My card," he said. He leaned over from the curb and gave it to Tish.

"Don't bother about the tie," he said. "I never liked it anyhow. But—I lost a scarf pin that night. I—I suppose you don't know anything about it?"

Out of the comer of her eye Tish saw Aggie make a clutch at her neck, and she threw her a warning glance.

"I am afraid you have made a mistake," she said stiffly, and just then the hardware man brought out the handle. Tish was so excited that she started the car without paying for it, and when we looked back he and the reporter were staring after us; and the reporter distinctly said, "Those women will be wealthy some day."

"Why didn't you let me give him his pin?" Aggie demanded when we were safely out of sight. "I—I feel like a thief."

"Fiddle! And confess?" said Tish. "We'll send it to him. I've got his card."

But all he had written on it, after all, was, "A. Dresser. Private Bureau." Charlie Sands has promised to return the pin.

Well, all this time I have left the three of us huddled in our nightgowns on the side of the bed, with sheets draped over us, and the Morning Star gentleman with his ear to the connecting door and taking down every word that was said, in shorthand. Robertson was offering the girl, and enough money for Mr. Lewis to marry on, for his vote on something or other. I reckon the balance between a man's honor and his cupidity hangs pretty even anyhow, and when you throw a girl to one side or the other it swings the scale. The Lewis man was yielding and Tish was breathing hard.

"The hussy!" she muttered.

"Did you notice how pretty her hair was in the sunlight?" whispered Aggie.

Somehow it came over me then how young the girl was, and what kind of moral sense could one expect of a girl with that red-headed scamp for a father?

Strangely enough, the plot was gentle Aggie's. Aggie is like baking powder—she rises when she gets heated up. And she was mad clear through. We had no trouble gathering our clothes in our arms, although I could not find my shoe, which Tish had thrown at the bureau. Then we sat and waited. At the last minute Aggie got a little weak and wanted blackberry wine, but I had nothing in the satchel but arnica.

All we intended to do was to get the yellow notebook—to meet strategy with strategy. The rest, while unexpected, followed naturally. But when I look out the window from my desk and see Aggie's placid face, and Tish's austere Methodist profile, it is difficult to associate them or myself with the three partly dressed creatures who— But to go back.

We had locked the door into the hall and each of us had her clothes. When the two men in the next room went out Mr. Morning Star turned to us with a chuckle.

"Thanks for your forbearance, ladies," he said, "we've got that villain Robertson where he ought to have been a dozen years ago. And as for Lewis—" He shut his notebook with a bang, and there was something in his face besides exultation. "To buy a girl like that I" he said—and I knew. He wanted the girl himself.

Aggie was to ask to see the notebook and then toss it over the transom into the corridor. While the reporter was trying to get out the locked door into the hall we could escape into the adjoining room, lock the connecting door, walk around easily and get the notebook, and then make our escape comfortably.

It would have been all right, but Aggie can not throw. The first attempt failed by seven feet. The young man was so astonished, however, that he stood with his mouth open, and the second trial sent it through.

"What in the name of Heaven did you do that for?" he demanded, thinking Aggie had suddenly gone mad. Then he rushed to the door. It was locked and I had the key! We were all in the next room and a bolted door between us before he realized what had happened.

We had expected, of course, to get the notebook, to dress, and to leave in the machine quietly, but from that time on there was no time to think of the conventions. The young man began to hammer on the door and other doors opened along the hall. Then a bell-boy came up and ran off in a hurry for a key. I saw Tish putting on her ulster over her petticoat, and Aggie and I did the same. The next thing we knew we were down in the empty lobby, and Tish had forgotten the spark plugs!

We got started finally with a steel hairpin , for a plug, and as we moved away I heard the chase coming down the stairs after us. They were howling "Stop thief!" We were hardly well under way when the bell-boy came in sight with the bureau man at his heels and a collection of people in all sorts of costumes following.

Tish says we did forty miles an hour going down the main street. I should have guessed more than that. I had a fearful exaltation: Aggie had advanced her speed limit since morning from four miles an hour to the capacity of the engine, and kept bawling to Tish a phrase she had caught from Charlie Sands.

"Tetter out!" she cried,, over and over. "Letter out!"

We stopped on a quiet side street and listened, but there was no noise of pursuit. Tish got out and stuck her wet finger on the hood, but it wasn't boiling.

"There's nothing coming," she said. "I'm going to stop long enough to put on my stockings.

"I don't see why you couldn't have flung your own shoe, Tish," I snapped. "What use is one shoe?—unless I lose a leg, and that's as like as not before this night's over."

"Do you see where we are?" Aggie asked. "Isn't this where we brought Miss Anne?"

It was, for Anne opened the door just then and peered down at the car.

"Is that you, father?" she called. She came down the steps, and the light from the hall fell full on us. I've must have looked rather strange, with Tish putting on her stocking in the driving seat and the most of our clothing in our laps instead of on us.

"Something has happened!" she said, catching her breath. "Ted!"

"Something has happened," Tish retorted grimly, and held up the notebook. "Here's the Morning Star's shorthand report of the interview in which your Ted sold his honor for a mess of pottage—you being the pottage."

"Oh, no," said Miss Anne, going wobbly. "Oh, he wouldn't—he didn't do such a thing!"

"Upon my soul!" I broke in. "Weren't you fighting him all day to do it?"

"You couldn't understand," she said, looking at me with the eyes of a baby. "I didn't want him to do it; I wanted him to want to do it."

"Well, if that's being in love, thank Heaven for the mind of a spinster," I retorted angrily.

"You've won," Tish said. "You've got him kneeling at your feet, as you wanted. But he went down in the mud to do it. And the only reason the newspapers won't be slinging some of that very mire to-morrow is because three elderly women, who ought to have more sense, have resorted to thievery and lost their reputations and parts of their garments to save him!"

"I hate him," said the young woman, with her chin quivering. "I knew all along I should hate him if he did it. I—I'll never marry him."

And with that she turned and started up the steps. Half way up she turned.

"I'm sorry you went to so much trouble," she said, "I don't think he is worth saving."

Aggie's early experience with the roofer stood her in good stead then. She understood; Tish and I never would have. She got out of the machine and went up into the vestibule, and a minute later, against the hall light, we saw the girl's head on Aggie's shoulder. Then they both came down again with their arms wrapped around each other, and Aggie asked me to move over.

"We're going to Mr. Lewis' apartment," she announced, with a thrill in her voice. She was maudlin with romance. "It will be proper enough, I think, with three chaperons. She wants to see him."

"Not until I put on my other stocking," Tish put in grimly. "And we don't get out of the machine; I've been compromised once tonight."

"They are both young," Aggie rebuked her gently. "I think, having begun this thing, we ought to see it through. We will have to be mothers to her, for she has none."

Well, we passed Mr. Robertson at the comer of the next street, and the girl shrank back and covered her face. And then she directed us, and we overtook the other one as he was going into his doorway. The girl jumped out and ran after him. We distinctly heard him say, "Anne! Darling!" And then, what with anxiety and excitement, Aggie took the worst sneezing spell of the summer, and the rest was lost.

He was terribly ashamed and humiliated, and he said he would take the girl away and be married right off, only he had that wretched package of bribe money that made him think, every time he saw it, how unworthy he was of her! He was going to put it down a sewer drop, but Tish suggested that they be married and go on a honeymoon, and let us return the bribe to Mr. Robertson.

So he gave us the package; and, as you know, Aggie lost it later. Then he asked us if there was a minister in the summer colony at Penzance expect an organ prelude and floral decorations. Get in."

I did not mind their sitting back with me, and his kissing her hand whenever he thought I was not looking. But the thing I objected to was this: I distinctly overheard him say:

"I was desperate to-night, sweetheart; and, oh, my love, you saved me!"

She saved him!

At a crossroads near Penzance, Tish made them get out, and we directed them to a landing where they would find a rowboat. We all kissed the bride; and Mr. Lewis said he had nobody to cheer him on his way, and wouldn't we kiss him, too. So we did, and after they had gone we prepared,for Carpenter's sharp eyes by going into the bushes and putting on the rest of our clothes.

It was the first thing Carpenter said that caused the accident. He brought in the ferryboat and came up the bank to us.

I've been expectin' you," he said, with a grin. "I was thinkin' you might come over by the Carrick Ferry, and the folks there wouldn't know you."

"I guess they'd take my money without i knowing me," Tish said sharply.

"Well," he drawled, with a sharp eye on the three of us, "I didn't want you to have any trouble. We got a telephone message from Noblestown not very long ago to look out for an automobile containing three female desperadoes. The police wants them."

That was when Tish sent the car over the end of the ferry.

Well, as I said early in the narrative, after Tish and Aggie had dried off and gone to bed I stood at my window and tried to see into Ostermaier's parlor, but all I could see was the sleeve of Mrs. Ostermaier's kimono.

As I stood there shivering, the door opened and two shadowy figures came out of the house and crossed the lawn. Just under my window they stopped and the tall shadow held open its arms. The smaller one went into them with a little cry, and they stood there a disgraceful time. Then they lifted their heads and looked lip at our cottage.

"Bless their dear, romantic hearts!" said the girl. I was glad Tish was asleep.

"They should have been pirates!" said the man. "They are true old sports. I suppose they've had their catnip tea by now and are sound asleep. Beloved!" he said, and held out his arms again.

Pirates! I went back to bed in a rage, but I couldn't sleep. Somehow I kept seeing that young idiot holding out his arms, and I felt lonely. Finally I filled the hot-water bottle and put it at my back.

"It's all over, Aggie!" I called—but the only response was a snore that turned into a sneeze.