Читать книгу The Greatest Murder Mysteries of Mary Roberts Rinehart - 25 Titles in One Edition - Mary Roberts Rinehart - Страница 95

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It was some time before we could realize that eternity had ceased staring us in the face and had taken a back seat, so to speak. The first thing Tish said was that, man or no man, her shoes were going to come off, and while Aggie was wringing alternately her hands and her petticoats, I happened to notice the Shawl Man. He was standing holding his garment around him and staring over the dark water ahead.

"You needn't feel so badly," I said to him. "We're only glad Aggie had the shawl, and now, if you can run the launch, why don't you hunt up your own, with the young lady in it?"

''This is the boat!" he said heavily, and, sitting down, he dropped his chin in his hands.

Well, there was no girl. Dark as it was, we could all see that Tish looked up suspiciously from where she was stuffing her wet shoes with her stockings to keep them in shape.

"I don't see any clothes either," she said tartly. "I suspect your lady friend tied them into a bundle and swam ashore with them in her teeth!"

"I left her there in that chair!" he affirmed. He looked dazed. "She—she didn't want to —to go, you know, and she threw the extra gasoline can overboard. When we stalled there was nothing to do but swim ashore, borrow a skiff, and steal some gasoline from the boat-house on one of the islands. I wasn't going to sit out there in a dead motor-boat and let her people stand on the bank in the morning and pot at me with a target rifle."

"Thirtainly not!" said Aggie, who had shamelessly allied herself with him.

"Not only that," he went on defiantly, "but when a man cares for a girl the way I care for—her, he either carries her off and marries her or he dies trying."

"And quite right, I'm thure." Thus Aggie. She was still clutching her jug; the dog, the first to be saved, had sniffed the cork, got a whiff of the ether, and retired with a moan to the corner.

"If she tried to swim to shore," began the Shawl Man, and groaned But Aggie had not forgotten her lisp in her role of comforter.

"Nonthenth!" she said. "Probably Mithther Carleton came along with hith motor canoe and took her home. He'th alwayth mooning around the lake late at night."

The Shawl Man jumped to his feet and the boat rocked.

"Denby Carleton!" he said. "Hell!"

Then he went to pieces. As Tish wrote to her niece, Martha Ann Lee, afterward, "his composure went to pieces on the rocks of adversity, and sank in a sea of woe." He raged up and down the launch, muttering strange and awful things, and every now and then he stooped over the engine in the middle of the boat and gritted his teeth and turned something. And the engine would draw a quick breath and turn over on its other side and settle down to sleep again. And then, when he finally gave up, he declared he was going to swim after the canoe and kill Carleton for stealing the girl and throwing his clothes overboard.

(Yes, we found a soft hat floating, and the rest were gone.)

He stood up on the front peak of the launch and began to untie the shawl, but Tish pulled him back and told hifti if the girl wanted Mr. Carleton instead of him he was well rid of her. And she asked him his name. This brought him around a little. He said, "Mansfield, Donald Mansfield," and stalked back and sat down in the stern squarely on the dog.

"Keep away from that dog!" Aggie exclaimed. "He hath mange."

"Mange!" said Aggie.

"Upon my word, Aggie Pilkington," Tish sniffed, "if the creature has mange, why on earth are you still hugging that jar of gasoline?"

Then, of course, the Shawl Man, who shall be Mansfield now, gave a whoop and seized the jug.

"Ith cleaning fluid," Aggie protested.

"Thereth ether and alcohol—"

"Never mind what's in it," he said excitedly. "I know this engine. It'll run on the gas out of a bottle of Apollinaris." And while he poured the stuff into the tank he explained his plan. If the engine ran on the mixture, and didn't get something that he called a "bun on," we could get back to Sunset Island, which I gathered belonged to the girl's father, get into somebody's boat-house (preferably the father's) and obtain some gasoline. Also, he would try to find some clothes. It shows how thoroughly demoralized we were that not one of us objected to his stealing anything he needed, and that Tish asked him to bring her a blanket if he happened on one!

The engine would not start at once. And after he had explained that he had only one hand to crank with, having to hold on the shawl with the other, we turned our backs, and almost immediately there was an explosion. The boat jumped out of the water and dropped back with a thud. I could not scream. Then there came a series of reports, and I sat waiting for the floor to separate and drop me into sixty feet of water and mud and crawly things with the family burial lot full, provided my body was ever found, unless they moved Cousin James beside his first wife, where he ought to be anyhow. And then I realized that we were moving.

We did not float. We got to shore by a distinct species of leaps; once or twice I am quite sure we left the surface of the lake. If that stuff had ever been put on the dog, the fleas would have killed themselves jumping. And all the time there was a combination of odors that as Tish said afterward reminded one individually of burnt brandy sauce and an operating room, and collectively of something that has died in the alley. And whenever we stopped Mr. Mansfield would do something that he called "spinner again."

When we got near enough to shore we could see that the big white Lovell house was lighted up, late as it was, and there were people on the boat dock with lanterns. Mr. Mansfield saw it too, and changed the course of the launch, so. we stopped at a smaller landing, half a mile or so down the beach, and tied up there.

"You are perfectly safe here," he said, "and I'll be back in ten minutes. The only way Major Lovell could recognize this boat in the dark would be by the sound of the engine, and if he heard this racket he'll take us for a battle in a moving picture show. Just sit tight and keep warm."

He threw the shawl to us and dived into the darkness. Somebody was shouting at the Lovell dock, but we sat In safe obscurity and listened to the wash of the water against the piles. The absurdity of the situation began to dawn on me, and the sight of Tish and Aggie, luminous in the starlight—it had stopped raining—trying to get into their wet shoes, made me fairly hysterical. To add to it all, the patter of Mr. Mansfield's bare feet on the boards of the dock waked our sleeping dog, and with a series of staccato barks he was at our unlucky young man's heels. He seemed to have a fondness for feet.

"If you could see yourself, Lizzie, I might understand your mirth," Tish said scathingly. "But I fail to see anything funny."

"Then for goodness sake, Tish," I cried, "stop dangling that shoe on your toe and see what is the matter with your figure. It has slipped up under your chin."

"Good heaventh!" said Aggie. "They are coming down the beach after uth!"

It was true. The lanterns had left the Lovell dock and were bobbing wildly along the water-front in bur direction, guided by the barking of the dog. Of all the hours of that awful night, that was the most terrible. We sat there shivering and helpless and watched Nemesis chasing and bobbing down on us. About half way to us the first lantern stopped and fired a gun, and back along the beach new lanterns kept adding themselves to the line that stretched out like the tail of a comet.

Tish thought she was very cool, but both Aggie and I distinctly heard her say that the stars had stopped raining. And once she said that she had always been a respected member of the community, and that nobody in his sober senses would believe her if she told the true story. And when the first lantern was so close that we could see a vague outline of the man behind it, desperation gave me a courage that has appalled me since.

I went over to the engine and tried to "spinner."

What is more to the point, I did it. The wheels began to revolve with a sickening speed: the whole frame of the boat jarred and quivered. I sank back on my knees and closed my eyes.

"We're not moving," Tish said with awful calmness.

And at that a white figure hurled itself from . the darkness at the end of the landing and flew down the dock to us. It had a can in one hand and a lantern in the other. It hesitated a second to throw off the rope, which was why we hadn't moved, of course, and, as the engine was going full, he had only time to catch one of the awning supports as it flew past. It went as if it had been shot out of a gun, and when Aggie and Tish and I had assorted ourselves from a heap on the floor, we were well out from shore.

It was lucky that Aggie took one of her awful sneezing spells just then, as she always does when she is excited, for by the time she was breathing easily again the shore was well behind and Mr. Mansfield had put on the shawl again.