Chapter V: The Gray Goose 228 (4)

Her courage was contagious, and while Aggie spread the cloth on our folding table, I brought out the sandwiches and coffee. I daresay the schooner had been in sight for some time, just ahead of us, before we noticed it, and Tish thinks that the whale was too excited to see it at all. Anyhow, we were within half a mile of it and heading directly at it when we first saw it.

Aggie was the first to see what was happening, and she ran forward and yelled to the other boat to head him off. But there was no one in sight on it, and the whale kept straight on. Within a hundred feet or so, however, he suddenly dived; the Swallow went on, however, striking the other boat in the center, and the jar must have loosened the anchor, for we remained on the surface.

It was then that a man carefully peered over the edge of the revenue boat and looked down at us.

“My land!” he said. “I was just waiting for you to explode!”

He then said that he had thought they had been struck by a torpedo, and on Tish explaining, he looked rather odd and brought two other men to look at us. In the end, however, we convinced them, and they invited us on board while they bailed our boat and fixed our engine.

The first man was the captain, and while Aggie made us some fresh tea in the galley Tish confided to him our real purpose, and showed him her badge.

He seemed greatly impressed, and said, “If more people would see their duty and do it, we would get rid of the rum evil.”

He then said that they were also a part of the revenue fleet, or had been. He didn’t know how long they could stick it out.

“I’m all right,” he said. “But now you take Joe and Bill, there. They’re not normal any more; it’s the loneliness gets them. Nothing to do but wait, you see.”

“You might try cross-word puzzles,” Tish suggested.

“We had a book of them,” he said dejectedly. “But Bill got mad one day trying to think of a South American river, in five letters, and flung it overboard.”

Over our tea Tish discoursed of the reasons which had turned us from our original idea to the revenue service, and the captain nodded his head.

“I know Jerry,” he said. “Now you take us. Wouldn’t you think we could fish out here, and fill in our spare time? Not a bit of it. It’s my belief Jerry’s running liquor, and he won’t let a revenue boat near the wharf.”

But he had, he said, discovered a way to circumvent Jerry. He and Bill and Joe fished, all right, only they dried the fish and packed them in boxes.

“Some day,” he said, “we’ll land those fish, and old Jerry will find the market glutted. That’s all; glutted.” He had, he said, a hundred boxes in the hold already. “Only trouble is,” he went on, “we’re getting overloaded. If a big sea comes along, and one’s due most any time, they may shift, and then where are we?”

It was just before we left, I remember, that he asked us if we wouldn’t carry in a few boxes for him and land them at a cove on our island, where a friend of the captain’s was living alone. And Tish agreed at once.

I have no wish to reflect on Tish; her motive, then as later, was of the highest, and for Charlie Sands to say what he does is most ungenerous. At the same time, her reckless kindness led us into serious trouble later on, and I hope will be a lesson to her.

We not only took the boxes of fish to Al Smith, at the cove, that day, but we made repeated excursions to the revenue boat from that time on, carrying back a dozen boxes or so at a time, and taking out an occasional batch of Aggie’s doughnuts, a parcheesi game, and once a bottle of blackberry cordial.

“For _mal de mer_,” Tish said kindly as she presented it, and it created a profound impression. Bill and Joe seemed quite overcome, and the captain was so moved that he had to walk away and wipe his eyes.

“It’s not the gift,” he said later. “It’s the thought.”

We had naturally not told Lily May. But one day when Mr. Smith, the captain’s friend, was unpacking the boxes of fish at the cove, who should wander into sight but the child herself.

She came right up and looked at the boxes, and said, “What’s that anyhow?”

“It’s dried fish,” said Tish. “And I’ll thank you to say nothing about it.”

I must say she gave Tish a very strange look.

“Well,” she said, “I only hope you’re getting something out of it.”

“I am getting the pleasure of assisting people who need assistance.”

“I’ll tell the world you are!” said Lily May. And after giving Mr. Smith a most unpleasant look she went away again.

But the very next day, rounding the corner, who should we see but Lily May at Smith’s wharf, sitting on the edge of the boat and smiling, and Mr. Smith talking in a very loud and angry voice. Once he even seemed to shake his fist at her, but she kept right on smiling.

She was certainly a queer child.

Then, one night early in August, we had another visit from Mr. MacDonald. He said that liquor was coming in from somewhere in quantities, and that trucks on the mainland were distributing it all over the country. I happened to have my eye on Lily May, and she turned pale. I said nothing to Tish, but from that time on Aggie and I kept a watch on her, and I really shudder to recall what we discovered. Night after night our boat was going out; sometimes with Christopher alone in it, and sometimes with Lily May also. And on one such night we quietly searched her room.

We knew she had practically no money, for her mother had been afraid she would run away, back to the Field boy. But under her mattress we found three hundred and twenty dollars, mostly in small bills!

I simply cannot record how we felt about it. Especially as in other ways the child was really quite lovable. She and Aggie had become great friends, and she would listen for hours while Aggie told her of Mr. Wiggins. But on Aggie’s endeavoring to discuss bootlegging with her she would shut up like a clam. Aggie tried to draw her out.

“Of course,” she said one day, “if we knew some of the reasons behind bootlegging, we might be more lenient.”

But there was no use trying to gain her confidence. She only gave Aggie another of her strange looks, and got up and went away.

Tish knew nothing of our worry, and day after day we went out in the boat, watching for rum runners. On Tuesdays and Fridays we made our trips to the revenue boat, but on other days Aggie and I fished, while Tish stood erect with her glasses, sweeping the surface of the sea. She was particularly severe with the lobster men, and after showing her badge would search their boats carefully. On one such occasion a lobster fastened itself to her and remained unnoticed until Aggie gave a terrible scream. She had sat down on the thing.

But mostly life in the Swallow moved quietly enough. Aggie worked at a bag she was making out of steel beads, with a fishing line looped around her arm; a habit she was obliged to alter, after a very large fish one day unexpectedly took her hook and but for Tish’s presence of mind in grasping her feet would have taken her overboard. And I did most of my Christmas fancy-work.

And thus things were up to the twenty-ninth of August, a day, or rather a night, which none of us will ever forget. At two o’clock that afternoon three of us started out; at four in the morning I returned home alone, in such agony of spirit as can only be imagined when the facts are known.

V

It was our day to go out to the revenue boat, and there were indications of a fog. Poor Aggie did not want to go. It was as though she had a premonition of trouble, but Tish insisted, and even took along some seasick remedy. Aggie, who has been somewhat bitter since, should remember that, and the real kindness which lay behind it.

We made jelly in the morning, so it was late when we started, and the fog was fairly thick already. But Tish took along a compass, and we started at two p.m. For once Lily May insisted on going along, although the sea was very rough, and she flirted quite dreadfully with the captain of the revenue boat while Joe and Bill were loading.

But she was seasick on the way back, and so was Aggie. I took the lookout, therefore, and it must have been four or five miles from land that I saw something straight ahead in the fog, and Tish turned out just in time to avoid a bell buoy. It was not ringing!

Tish at once stopped and examined it. It consisted of a small platform above which rose a superstructure with a bell at the top, and clappers which struck the bell as the sea moved it this way and that. But the bell had fallen down and now lay on the platform.

“This is a very serious matter,” Tish said. “This buoy is here to save our shipping. Undoubtedly it marks a reef. And now when it is most needed its warning voice is stilled.”

“I wish you’d still your own voice, Tish,” Aggie groaned. “Or else get out on it and yell ding-dong.”

It was an unfortunate suggestion. Aggie was taking a dose of her remedy for sea-sickness at the moment, and she did not see Tish’s eyes as they traveled from her to me, but I did.

“You couldn’t do it, Lizzie,” she said. “You’re too stout. But Aggie could.”

“Could what?” said Aggie, giving her a cold glance.

“Your duty,” said Tish gravely. “That bell must ring, Aggie. The fog is intense, and all about are--or may be--men who depend on its warning signal for their lives. Can we fail them?”

“I can,” said Aggie shortly.

Lily May said it was all nonsense, but “Give me a hammer and I’ll do it,” she said. “I suppose I can stick it out for an hour or so, and after that I dare say I’ll not care.”

But Tish said the child was in her care, and she was to stay just where she was. And in the end Aggie crawled onto the bell buoy, and we placed one of the boxes on the platform as a seat for her.

“It will take only a short time,” were Tish’s final words, “to get to the coast-guard station. We shall return at once.”

But it was a painful sight, as we moved away, to see our poor Aggie thus marooned, watching us into the fog with wistful eyes and ever and anon striking the bell with the hammer as she sat on the box.

I did not see her again until three o’clock the next morning!

It was when we had gone about six miles by Tish’s watch, while I watched the compass, that Tish suddenly announced something was wrong.

“Either we’ve missed the land altogether, Lizzie,” she said, “or we’ve passed right over the Baptist church and are now at Graham’s grocery store.”

I handed the compass to her, but the moment she took it the needle turned about and continued pointing toward me. It was very unusual, and Tish stared at me with a justifiable irritation.

“Don’t stand there pretending you’re the magnetic pole,” she snapped. “Move around, and see what the dratted thing will do.”

Well, wherever I went that needle pointed at me. As events proved, for Tish to blame it on my gold tooth was quite unjustified, but it was not until in a burst of irritation she had flung it overboard that we discovered the true cause.

Aggie’s workbag, containing a magnet for picking up steel beads, was on my arm.

All the time the fog was growing thicker, so that we could not see ten feet in any direction. And although we kept moving we never seemed to arrive anywhere. Once, indeed, I thought I heard faintly the sound of Aggie’s hammer striking the bell, but it was very feeble and soon died away.

At seven o’clock it was already dark, and we had just two gallons of gasoline left. Tish shut off the engine and we considered our position.

“If we use all our gasoline the tide will carry us straight out to sea, and we may never get back,” she said.

“And Aggie!” I said. “Our poor Aggie!”

“Aggie is all right,” she said impatiently. “At least she doesn’t have to get anywhere. We do.”

We decided at last until the fog lifted to save our gasoline, in case we had to get out of the way of some vessel; and Tish--who can knit quite well in the dark--got out her work. But Lily May seemed to have recovered, and was acting very strangely.

For instance, she roused once from deep thought to suggest that we throw the boxes of fish overboard, and she seemed quite worried when Tish refused.

“Why should I?” Tish said. “They represent money and effort. They have a certain value.”

Lily May muttered something about a thousand dollars and ten years, which I did not catch, and then became silent once more. But when, about seven o’clock, we all heard the engine of a boat not far off and Tish was for hailing it at once, she sharply said we’d better not.

“Nonsense!” said Tish, and had started to call when Lily May put a hand over her mouth.

“Haven’t you any sense?” she demanded. “It may be a revenue boat.”

“And what if it is?” said Tish.

Lily May sat down on the edge of a thwart and stared at us.

“Look here,” she said, “is the little old bean gone, or has that shot of blackberry cordial gone to my head? What about this stuff you’re loaded with?”

“If there is any fine connected with running fish,” Tish said shortly, “I have yet to hear of it.”

“Fish!” said Lily May in a disgusted tone. “I could do better than that myself. Why not canned corn? Or artificial legs? Or bunion plasters?”

“Fish,” Tish repeated. “Dried fish. And if you dare to intimate----”

“Oh, don’t be so silly!” said Lily May, and yawned. “Now see here, you may be older than I am in years, but I was old when I was born. And I can’t remember the time when I didn’t know whiskey from fish.”

“Whiskey!” said Tish in a terrible voice.

“Booze,” said Lily May. “You’re loaded to the gunwales with booze. You’ve landed, so far, about a hundred cases of first-grade Canadian Club, and if you haven’t made more than I have out of it you’ve been stung. That’s all.”

Tish got up at that and gave her a really terrible look.

“You have made money out of this iniquitous traffic?” she demanded.

“Oh, a bagatelle,” Lily May replied languidly. “I had to protect you, you see. If you will run liquor----”

“Silence!” Tish thundered. “What have you made?”

“I got three hundred for keeping Christopher busy while you unloaded,” she said a trifle sulkily.

“Christopher?” Tish said in a dazed manner.

“He’s in the revenue service,” said Lily May. “So am I, for that matter. There’s been hardly a day since we came when I couldn’t have arrested you all. But it would have upset mother a lot. If you don’t believe me----”

She turned up her skirt, and I shall never forget Tish’s eyes when she saw what I saw. That chit had her revenue badge pinned to the top of her stocking!

It was after that that our dear Tish was taken with a sudden shuddering spell and we had to give her quite a heavy dose of blackberry cordial. It is possible that in the darkness we gave her more than we intended, on an empty stomach, and there is undoubtedly a small percentage of alcohol in it to preserve it. When, later on, she insisted on opening one of the boxes and on tasting its contents before she would be entirely convinced, the combination was unfortunate.

She lapsed into silence soon after that, rousing once to shed a few tears, a most unusual proceeding for her, and with her voice slightly thickened she said, “We have been ushed by those sons of Belial, Lizzie. I musht think of a way to shettle with them.”

She dozed a little then, but shortly thereafter she wakened and said a sea serpent had just stuck its head up beside her, and what if it should find Aggie? I was greatly alarmed, but Lily May was quite calm.

“She’s only slightly binged,” she said, “but she will sleep it off. Do her good probably; like having a good cry.”

I pass over the next few hours. Tish slept, and we drifted about at the mercy of wind and tide. About midnight a gale came up and gave us considerable trouble, as the boxes kept shifting. Lily May once more suggested flinging them overboard, but I dared not do this without Tish’s consent, and when I roused her and asked her she gave me no satisfaction.

“Shertainly not,” she said. “It’s evidench. Never destroy evidench, Lizzie.”

“She’ll snap out of it after a while,” Lily May comforted me. “But she’s sure gifted. I’ll bet a brandied peach would give her the D.T.’s.”

I was about to reprove her when I suddenly perceived that the wind had lifted the fog, and there was even a pale moonlight. And at that, Lily May clutched my arm and pointed ahead.

We had indeed been drifting with the tide, and the schooner was just ahead, within a hundred yards or so. We were moving slowly toward it.

I wakened Tish, and this time she responded. I can still see her, majestic and calm, clutching the rail and staring ahead. I can still hear the ringing tone of her voice when she said, “The hour of vengeance is at hand, Lizzie.”

“I’ll tell the world it is, if you go up there,” said Lily May.

But she brushed the child aside, and immediately Bill yelled from the schooner, “Stand by, there! What do you want?”

“We’re looking for trouble, Bill,” said Lily May. “If you have any around----”

But Bill recognized her voice, and he smiled down at us.

“Trouble’s my middle name, ladies,” he said. “Come up and make yourselves at home. Hi, cap!” he shouted. “Here’s company.”

I had not an idea of what was in the wind until I saw Tish pick up her knitting bag. Her revolver was in it.

How can I relate what followed? Tish went up first, Lily May was on the ladder, and I was in the very act of tying up, our rope in my hands, when I heard Tish say, “Hands up! You are under arrest.”

Immediately on that, a most terrible uproar broke out above, and a shot rang out. Just after that my poor Tish’s revolver fell into the boat with a terrible thud, and so startled me that I let go of the rope. There was a frightful noise going on overhead, and as I drifted away I heard another shot or two, and then the captain’s voice.

“I’ve got her, the h---- cat!” he called. “Start the engine, Bill. We’d better get out of here.”

And the next minute the engine of the schooner was starting and they were getting the anchor up. The schooner was moving away.

I cannot write my sensations without pain. The schooner starting off; my dear Tish a prisoner on that accursed boat, helpless, possibly injured; and Lily May, who had been placed in our care, on that accursed vessel.

I stood up and called.

“Tish!” I said in agony. “Tish, where are you?”

“I am here, Lizzie,” I heard the dear familiar tones. And that was all.

In a few moments I was alone on the bosom of the raging deep, and Tish and Lily May were on their way probably to the Canadian border.

I have no very clear idea of what happened next. As I had no knowledge of a motor I could but experiment, and finally about two a.m. I did start the engine. I managed the steering fairly well after a time, and started back. The fog was quite gone by that time, and it was clear moonlight. I seemed to be going very fast, but I did not know how to stop the thing and could but keep on. I have one very clear and tragic impression, however. In the moonlight I passed the bell buoy where we had left Aggie--and Aggie was not there!

After that I remember little, except seeing our beach in front of me with a group of people on it, and steering at it. They have told me since that I came in on the top of a high roller, and that the Swallow simply crossed the beach and went up onto the lawn, where it stopped finally in the pansy bed, but I did not.

And then Christopher was lifting my head from a bottle of Canadian Club whiskey as I lay on the ground, and saying in a shaken voice, “Where is she?”

“Gone,” I said sadly. “They are all gone, Christopher. Tish and Aggie and Lily May. Gone.”

“My God!” he said. “Lily May!”

“Canada,” I said. “Or maybe England; or Spain. I don’t know. But Aggie----”

“What do you mean?” yelled Christopher. “Canada or England?”

“They’ve been stolen. Abducted. By rum runners, Christopher,” I said. “But my dear Aggie----”

And at that minute I heard a sneeze from the house.

“Aggie!” I cried. “Aggie!”

Then Hannah and Mr. MacDonald came up. Mr. MacDonald picked up a bottle and said, “You wouldn’t believe me before. Is this eau de cologne or is it liquor?”

“Oh, get the h---- out of here,” said Christopher.

They took me into the house, and there was Aggie sitting before the fire, still shivering, and with a very bad cold. She had her feet in a mustard foot bath with a blanket over it, for Mr. MacDonald would not allow her to go upstairs, and she burst into tears the minute she saw me.

“I’b udder arrest, Lizzie,” she wailed. “I’ve beed soaked through, ad bit at by sharks, ad fired od, ad lost by teeth. Ad dow I’b arrested. It’s just too buch.”

She had lost her teeth, poor soul. She had taken them out because they were chattering so, and they had slipped out of her hand. She might have recovered them, but just as she was about to do so a huge fish had snapped at them and got them.

It had indeed been a day of misfortunes, and Aggie’s were not the least. For Mr. MacDonald and Christopher had heard her sneezing on the bell buoy, and had fired at her before they knew her.

Then, when they did find her, she was sitting on a case of liquor, and nothing she could say did any good.

“I told theb it was dried fish,” she said, “but the darded fools wouldd’t believe be, ad whed they looked, it wasd’t.”

VI

As soon as possible Christopher and Mr. MacDonald had aroused the island, and every possible boat had started out. I telegraphed to Charlie Sands also, and he was on his way by the first train.

But all the next day went by, and no sign of the schooner or of Tish and Lily May. And as Aggie said, sitting up in bed with a bowl of junket--she could only eat soft food, poor thing--“We bay dever see theb agaid, Lizzie. They bay have to walk the plak or sobethig.”

I spent all my time on the beach, awaiting news, and at evening Charlie Sands arrived from the mainland. He came over to me as I sat disconsolately on a rock, cutting up fish and feeding the sea gulls as our poor Tish had always done, and listened to my story.

“Now,” he said when I had finished, “how many men were on that boat?”

“Three.”

“Three,” he repeated thoughtfully. “And my dear Aunt Letitia and Lily May. Is that correct?”

“And boxes and boxes of-f--of liquor, Charlie.”

“I wouldn’t worry about the liquor,” he said. “I imagine by this time----” He hesitated and sighed. “It seems rather a pity, in a way. Still----”

“A pity!” I said angrily. “Your Aunt Letitia and Lily May Carter abducted, and you say it is a pity!”

“I’m sorry,” he apologized. “Just for the moment my mind had wandered. Now let’s see. They’ve had eighteen hours, and the percentage was favorable. I rather think--of course, I’m not sure--but I rather think it’s about time something happened.”

He then rose to his feet and looked out over the water, and said, “What kind of a boat was it anyhow?”

“It was a schooner.”

“Of course,” he said. “It would be a schooner, naturally. And while I am not a betting man, I’ll wager ten dollars against a bottle of blackberry cordial that this is it now.”

I leaped to my feet, and there, coming around the point of our cove, was the revenue boat! I could only stand and stare. Our beloved Tish was at the helm, and as we gazed she shouted to Lily May, who at once shoved the anchor overboard. As all the sails were still up, the boat listed heavily to one side, but it stopped.

There was no one else in sight, and this seemed to make Charlie Sands somewhat uneasy.

“By the gods,” he said, “she’s done away with them!”

But this proved to be erroneous. Our dear Tish, having brought the vessel to a halt, straightened her bonnet, and then drawing the small boat which trailed behind to the foot of the rope ladder, she and Lily May got into it and Tish rowed it to the shore.

Her first words were typical.

“I want a policeman, Lizzie,” she said briefly, “and a room in the jail, and a bath.”

“I doubt if the jails are arranged that way,” said Charlie Sands, coming forward. “Still, we can inquire.”

She had not noticed him before, and his presence startled her. I have never seen our Tish flinch, but she very nearly did so then. And she gave Lily May a curious look.

“I have taken three prisoners,” she said with dignity. “They are locked in, down below in that ship. And here’s the key, for Mr. MacDonald.”

She then felt in her workbag, handed a key to Charlie Sands, and started with dignity to the house. Charlie Sands looked at the key and then called after her.

“Is that all you’ve got?” he said.

She stiffened and glared at him.

“If you mean the curse of this nation, rum,” she said coldly, “I have thrown it overboard.”

“Not every bottle?” he said in a pleading voice.

“Every bottle,” she said, and walked firmly into the house.

Lily May did not follow her. She stood eying Charlie Sands through her long lashes.

“Well?” she said. “Doesn’t papa still love mamma?”

“I’ll tell you that,” he said sternly, “when you tell me something else.” He then stooped and picked up a one-hundred-dollar bill which was lying on the grass. “Where did this come from?”

“Well, well?” said Lily May. “You are lucky, aren’t you?”

“Don’t look at me like that,” said Charlie Sands. “Where did this come from?”

“They grow around here,” said Lily May cheerfully. “Not everywhere, but here and there, you know. Like four-leaf clovers.”

“It didn’t by any chance drop from my Aunt Tish’s workbag?”

“Well, you might call up and inquire,” she suggested, and sauntered off to the house.

She spent an hour and a quarter getting dressed that evening, and when the Swallow and Christopher came back, Christopher almost crazy, she was sitting on the veranda doing her finger nails.

Hannah was laying the table inside, and she says she greeted him with “Hello, old egg! And how are things?”

And that fool of a boy just got down on his knees and put his head in her lap and his arms around her; and when he looked up he said, “You little devil! I’ve a good notion to turn you over my knee and spank you.”

As Aggie says, it was queer love-making, and there is no use trying to understand the younger generation.

“Under no circumstances,” she says, “would Mr. Wiggins have threatened me with that. But then,” she adds, “Mr. Wiggins would never have put on those dreadful clothes and pretended to be something he wasn’t either. Times have changed, Lizzie.”

For it turned out, that very night, that Christopher was Billy Field.

* * * * *

Never, so long as I live, shall I forget that evening around Aggie’s bed, when Tish told her story. The bootleggers had tied her up at once, and even Lily May also. But Lily May was so quiet and chastened that they had weakened, after a while, and had let her loose.

“And then what did you do?” asked Charlie Sands.

“I amused them,” she said, not looking at Tish.

“I think,” Tish said in a terrible voice, “the less said of that the better.”

But it appears--for one must be frank--that Lily May saw that Tish was working with her ropes, and so she began to tell them stories. They must have been very queer ones, for Tish has never reverted to the subject.

“I told them the flapper story,” she said to Charlie Sands, “and that new Ford one, and the April-fool joke.”

Charlie Sands seemed to understand, for he nodded.

“Pretty fair,” he said.

But it seems they relaxed after that, and then she got them started on mixing different kinds of drinks. She would say, Did you ever try this and that, with a drop of something else floated on the top? And she would taste the things they brought, and they would take the rest.

“It was Bill who went under first. He went asleep standing up,” she said. And the captain next. But by that time Tish had freed herself, and she knocked Joe out with a piece of chain that was handy. And then their troubles were over, for they only had to drag them down below and lock them up. But they had been banging at the door all day, and Tish had had to make them keep quiet. She had the captain’s revolver by that time, and now and again she fired a bullet into the door frame, and they would hush up for an hour or so. Then they would start again.

Our dear Tish finished her narrative and then rose.

“And now,” she said brightly, “it is time for bed. I have done my duty, and shall sleep with a clear conscience.”

“Are you so sure of that?” said Charlie Sands, and fixed her with a cold eye.

“Why not?” Tish asked tartly.

“One reason might be--piracy on the high seas.”

“Piracy!” said Tish furiously. “I capture three rum runners, and you call it piracy?”

“Then there’s no matter of money to be discussed.”

“Certainly not,” said Tish.

“Of seventeen hundred and forty-one dollars,” he insisted. “At the present moment concealed in your bedroom.”

“That money belongs to the church.”

“I see. But the amount interests me. I can understand the seventeen hundred, and even the forty. But why the one?”

“Two months at eight hundred and seventy dollars and fifty cents per month,” Tish said, staring at him defiantly. “Even an idiot could figure that.”

“And you took it from those bootleggers?”

“I’d earned it for them.”

“By force and duress?”

“Nothing of the sort. The man was asleep.”

“Hijacking,” he said softly. “Ye gods and little fishes! Hijacking for the church!”

He seemed a trifle dazed, although Tish carefully explained her position to him.

“I see it all,” he said. “It sounds all right, but there must be a catch in it somewhere. I don’t quite grasp it, that’s all.”

After a time, however, he got up and went to the door, still thinking, and called Christopher.

“Come in, you young imposter,” he said, “and tell us how much you’ve had out of the summer.”

“I couldn’t quite make it,” said Christopher sadly. “Five hundred for the boat and two hundred revenue salary. That’s all.”

“Certainly it’s not all, Billy Field!” said Lily May. “I have three hundred from Smith, haven’t I? That makes the thousand.”

But Charlie Sands was holding his head.

“It sounds all right,” he said. “The parish house gets a kitchen, and Field gets Lily May. Personally I think my Aunt Tish ought to get thirty years, but still----” He groaned. “Rum running, assault and battery, piracy, straight larceny and hijacking!” he said. “And everybody’s happy! There’s a profound immorality somewhere,” he added, looking around at us. “But where?”

He got up feebly. “I’m getting too old for much of this,” he said. “Get me a stiff dose of blackberry cordial, somebody. And, Field, slip around to old MacDonald’s and get a bit of something to float on the top.”

THE TREASURE HUNT

I

Had we not been so anxious about our dear Tish last summer, I dare say it would never have happened. But even Charlie Sands noticed when he came to our cottage at Lake Penzance for the week-end that she was distinctly not her old self.

“I don’t like it,” he said. “She’s lost her pep, or something. I’ve been here two days and she hasn’t even had a row with Hannah, and I must say that fuss with old Carpenter yesterday really wasn’t up to her standard at all.”

Old Carpenter is a fisherman, and Tish having discovered that our motor boat went better in reverse than forward, he had miscalculated our direction and we had upset him.

As it happened, that very evening Tish herself confirmed Charlie’s fears by asking about Aggie’s Cousin Sarah Brown’s Chelsea teapot.

“I think,” she said, “that a woman of my age should have a hobby; one that will arouse interest at the minimum of physical exertion. And the collection of old china----”

“Oh, Tish!” Aggie wailed, and burst into tears.

“I mean it,” said Tish, “I have reached that period of my life which comes to every woman, when adventure no longer lurks around the next corner. By this I do not refer necessarily to amorous affairs, but to dramatic incidents. I think more than I did of what I eat. I take a nap every day. I am getting old.”

“Never!” said Aggie valiantly.

“No? When I need my glasses nowadays to see the telephone directory!”

“But they’re printing the names smaller, Tish.”

“Yes, and I dare say my arm is getting shorter also,” she returned with a sad smile. She pursued the subject no further, however, but went on knitting the bedroom slippers which are her yearly contribution to the Old Ladies’ Home, leaving Charlie Sands to gaze at her thoughtfully as he sipped his blackberry cordial.

But the fact is that Tish had outgrown the cottage life at Penzance, and we all knew it. Save for an occasional golf ball from the links breaking a window now and then, and the golfers themselves who brought extra shoes done up in paper for us to keep for them, paying Hannah something to put them on the ice, there was nothing to rouse or interest her.

Her mind was as active as ever; it was her suggestion that a clothespin on Aggie’s nose might relieve the paroxysms of her hay fever, and she was still filled with sentiment. It was her own idea on the anniversary of Mr. Wiggins’ demise to paint the cottage roof a fresh and verdant green as a memorial to him, since he had been a master roofer by profession.

But these had been the small and simple annals of her days. To all outward seeming, until the night of the treasure hunt, our Tish was no longer the Tish who with our feeble assistance had captured the enemy town of X---- during the war, or held up the band of cutthroats on Thundercloud, or led us through the wilderness of the Far West. An aëroplane in the sky or the sound of the Smith boys racing along in their stripped flivver may have reminded her of brighter days, but she said nothing.

Once, indeed, she had hired a horse from the local livery stable and taken a brief ride, but while making a short cut across the Cummings estate the animal overturned a beehive. Although Tish, with her customary presence of mind, at once headed the terrified creature for the swimming pool, where a number of persons were bathing and sunning themselves in scanty apparel about the edge, the insects forsook the beast the moment horse and rider plunged beneath the surface and a great many people were severely stung. Indeed, the consequences threatened to be serious, for Tish was unable to get the horse out again and it was later necessary to bring a derrick from Penzance to rescue him. But her protests over the enormous bills rendered by the livery man were feeble, indeed, compared to the old days.

“Twenty dollars!” she said. “Are you claiming that that animal, which should have been able to jump over a beehive without upsetting it, was out ten hours?”

“That’s my charge,” he said. “Walk, trot and canter is regular rates, but swimming is double, and cheap at that. The next time you want to go out riding, go to the fish pier and I reckon they’ll oblige you. You don’t need a horse, lady. What you want is a blooming porpoise.”

Which, of course, is preposterous. There are no porpoises in Lake Penzance.

She even made the blackberry cordial that year, a domestic task usually left to Aggie and myself, but I will say with excellent results. For just as it was ready for that slight fermentation which gives it its medicinal quality, a very pleasant young man came to see us, having for sale a fluid to be added to homemade cordials and so on, which greatly increased their bulk without weakening them.

“But how can one dilute without weakening?” Tish demanded suspiciously.

“I would not call it dilution, madam. It is really expansion.”

It was a clear colorless liquid with a faintly aromatic odor, which he said was due to juniper in it, and he left us a small bottle for experimental purposes.

With her customary caution, our dear Tish would not allow us to try it until it had been proved, and some days later Hannah reporting a tramp at the back door, she diluted--or rather expanded--a half glass of cordial, gave him some cookies with it, and we all waited breathlessly.

It had no ill effect, however. The last we saw of the person he was quite cheery; and, indeed, we heard later that he went into Penzance, and getting one of the town policemen into an alley, forced him to change trousers with him. As a matter of record, whether it was Tish’s efforts with the cordial itself, or the addition of the expansion matter which we later purchased in bulk and added, I cannot say. But I do know that on one occasion, having run out of gasoline, we poured a bottle of our blackberry cordial into the tank of the motor boat and got home very nicely indeed. I believe that this use of fruit juices has not heretofore been generally known.

Tish, I know, told it to Mr. Stubbs, the farmer who brought us our poultry, advising him to try cider in his car instead of feeding his apples to his hogs. But he only stared at her.

“Feed apples to hogs these days!” he said. “Why, lady, my hogs ain’t seen an apple for four years! They don’t know there is such a thing.”

Occupied with these small and homely duties then, we went on along the even tenor of our way through July and August, and even into September. In August, Charlie Sands sent us a radio, and thereafter it was our custom at 7:20 A.M. to carry our comforters into Tish’s bedroom and do divers exercises in loose undergarments.

It is to this training that I lay Tish’s ability to go through the terrible evening which followed with nothing more serious than a crack in a floating rib.

And in September Charlie Sands himself week-ended with us, as I have said; with the result of a definite break in our monotony and a revival of Tish’s interest in life which has not yet begun to fade.

Yet his visit itself was uneventful enough. It was not until Mrs. Ostermaier’s call on Saturday evening that anything began to develop. I remember the evening most distinctly. Our dear Tish was still in her dressing gown, after a very unpleasant incident of the morning, when she had inflated a pair of water wings and gone swimming. Unluckily, when some distance out she had endeavored to fasten the water wings with a safety pin to her bathing garments and the air at once began to escape. When Charlie Sands reached the spot only a few bubbles showed where our unfortunate Tish had been engulfed. She had swallowed a great deal of water, and he at once suggested bailing her out.

“By and large,” he said, “I’ve been bailing you out for the last ten years. Why not now?”

But she made no response save to say that she had swallowed a fish. “Get me a doctor,” she said thickly. “I can feel the thing wriggling.”

“Doctor nothing!” he told her. “What you need is a fisherman, if that’s the case.”

But she refused to listen to him, saying that if she was meant to be an aquarium she would be one; and seeing she was firm, he agreed.

“Very well,” he said cheerfully. “But why not do the thing right while you’re about it? How about some pebbles and a tadpole or two?”

The result of all this was that Tish, although later convinced there was no fish, was in an uncertain mood that evening as we sat about the radio. She had, I remember, got Chicago, where a lady at some hotel was singing By the Waters of Minnetonka. Turning away from Chicago, she then got Detroit, Michigan, and a woman there was singing the same thing.

Somewhat impatiently, she next picked up Atlanta, Georgia, where a soprano was also singing it, and the same thing happened with Montreal, Canada. With a strained look, our dear Tish then turned to the national capital, and I shall never forget her expression when once more the strains of Minnetonka rang out on the evening air.

With an impatient gesture, she shoved the box away from her, and the various batteries and so on fell to the floor. And at that moment Mrs. Ostermaier came in breathless, and said that she and Mr. Ostermaier had just got Denver, and heard it quite distinctly.

“A woman was singing,” she said. “Really, Miss Carberry, we could hear every word. She was singing----”

“The Waters of Minnetonka?” asked Tish.

“Why, however did you guess it?”

It was probably an accident, but as Tish got up suddenly, her elbow struck the box itself, and the box fell with a horrible crash. Tish never even looked at it, but picked up her knitting and fell to work on a bedroom slipper, leaving Mrs. Ostermaier free to broach her plan.

For, as it turned out, she had come on an errand. She and Mr. Ostermaier wished to know if we could think of any way to raise money and put a radio in the state penitentiary, which was some miles away along the lake front.

“Think,” she said, “of the terrible monotony of their lives there! Think of the effect of the sweetness disseminated by Silver Threads Among the Gold or By the Waters of----”

“Mr. Wiggins always said that music had power to soothe the savage breast,” Aggie put in hastily. “Have you thought of any plan?”

“Mr. Ostermaier suggested that Miss Tish might think of something. She is so fertile.”

But Tish’s reaction at first was unfavorable.

“Why?” she said. “We’ve made our jails so pleasant now that there’s a crime wave so people can get into them.” But she added, “I’m in favor of putting one in every prison if they’d hire a woman to sing The Waters of Minnetonka all day and all night. If that wouldn’t stop this rush to the penitentiaries, nothing will.”

On the other hand, Charlie Sands regarded the idea favorably. He sat sipping a glass of cordial and thinking, and at last said:

“Why not? Think of an entire penitentiary doing the morning daily dozen! Or laying out bridge hands, according to radio instructions! Broaden ’em. Make ’em better citizens. Send ’em out fit to meet the world again. Darned good idea--Silver Threads Among the Gold for the burglars and Little Brown Jug for the bootleggers. Think of Still as the Night for the moonshiners, too, and the bedtime stories for the cradle snatchers. Why, it’s got all sorts of possibilities!”

He then said to leave it to him and he would think up something; and falling to work on the radio, soon had it in operation again. His speech had evidently had a quieting effect on Tish, and when the beautiful strains of The Waters of Minnetonka rang out once more she merely placed her hands over her ears and said nothing.

It was after his departure on Monday that he wrote us the following note, and succeeded in rousing our dear Tish:

“_Beloved Maiden Ladies_: I have been considering the problem of the radio for our unfortunate convicts. How about a treasure hunt--à la Prince of Wales--to raise the necessary lucre? I’ll write the clews and bury a bag of pennies--each entrant to pay five dollars, and the profits to go to the cause.

“Oil up the old car and get out the knickerbockers, for it’s going to be a tough job. And don’t forget, I’m betting on you. Read the Murders in the Rue Morgue for clews and deductive reasoning. And pass me the word when you’re ready.

Devotedly, C.S.”

“P.S. My usual terms are 20 per cent, but will take two bottles of cordial instead. Please mark ‘Preserves’ on box.

C.”

II

We saw an immediate change in Tish from that moment. The very next morning we put on our bathing suits and, armed with soap and sponges, drove the car into the lake for a washing. Unluckily a wasp stung Tish on the bare knee as we advanced and she stepped on the gas with great violence, sending us out a considerable distance, and, indeed, rendering it necessary to crawl out and hold to the top to avoid drowning.

Here we were marooned for some time, until Hannah spied us and rowed out to us. It was finally necessary to secure three horses and a long rope to retrieve the car, and it was some days in drying out.

But aside from these minor matters, things went very well. Mr. Ostermaier, who was not to search, took charge of the hunt from our end and reported numerous entrants from among the summer colony, and to each entrant the following was issued:

1. The cars of the treasure hunters will meet at the Rectory on Saturday evening at eight o’clock.

2. Each hunter will receive a password or sentence, and a sealed envelope containing the first clew.

3. This clew found, another password and fresh sealed envelope will be discovered. And so on.

4. There are six clews.

5. Participants are requested to use care in driving about the country, as the local police force has given notice that it will be stationed at various points to prevent reckless driving.

6. After the treasure is discovered, the hunt will please meet at the Rectory, where light refreshments will be served. It is requested that if possible the search be over before midnight in order not to infringe on the Sabbath day.

In view of the fact that certain persons, especially Mrs. Cummings--who should be the last to complain--have accused Tish of certain unethical acts during that terrible night, I wish to call attention to certain facts:

(a) We obeyed the above rules to the letter, save possibly Number Five.

(b) There was no actual identification of the scissors.

(c) If there was a box of carpet tacks in our car, neither Aggie nor I saw them.

(d) The fish pier had been notoriously rotten for years.

(e) We have paid for the repairs to the motorcycle, and so on.

(f) Doctor Parkinson is not permanently lamed, and we have replaced his lamps.

(g) Personally, knowing Tish’s detestation of cross-word puzzles, I believe the false clews were a joke on the part of others concerned.

(h) We did that night what the local police and the sheriff from Edgewater had entirely failed to do, and risked our lives in so doing. Most of the attack is purely jealousy of Letitia Carberry’s astute brain and dauntless physical courage.

I need say no more. As Tish observed to Charlie Sands the next day, when he came to see her, lifting herself painfully in her bed:

“I take no credit for following the clews; they were simplicity itself. And I shall pay all damages incurred. But who is to pay for this cracked rib and divers minor injuries, or replace poor Aggie’s teeth? Tell me that, and then get out and let me sleep. I’m an old woman.”

“Old!” said Charlie Sands. “Old! If you want to see an aged and a broken man, look at me! I shall have to put on a false mustache to get out of town.”

But to return to the treasure hunt.

On the eventful day we worked hard. By arrangement with Mr. Stubbs, our poultry man, he exchanged the license plates from his truck for ours in the morning, and these we put on, it being Tish’s idea that in case our number was taken by the local motor policeman, Mr. Stubbs could prove that he was in bed and asleep at the time. We also took out our tail light, as Tish said that very probably the people who could not unravel their clews would follow us if possible, and late in the afternoon, our arrangements being completed, Tish herself retired to her chamber with a number of envelopes in her hand.

Lest it be construed that she then arranged the cross-word puzzles which were later substituted for the real clews, I hasten to add that I believe, if I do not actually know, that she wrote letters concerning the missionary society at that time. She is an active member.

At 5:30 we had an early supper and one glass of cordial each.

“I think better on an empty stomach,” Tish said. “And I shall need my brains to-night.”

“If that’s what you think of Aggie and myself, we’d better stay at home,” I said sharply.

“I have not stated what I think of your brain, Lizzie, nor of Aggie’s either. Until I do, you have no reason for resentment.”

Peace thus restored, we ate lightly of tea, toast and lettuce sandwiches; and having donned our knickerbockers and soft hats, were ready for the fray. Aggie carrying a small flask of cordial for emergencies and I a flashlight and an angel-food cake to be left at the Rectory, we started out on what was to prove one of the most eventful evenings in our experience.

Tish was thoughtful on the way over, speaking occasionally of Poe and his system of deductive reasoning in solving clews, and also of Conan Doyle, but mostly remaining silent.

Aggie, however, was sneezing badly, due to the dust, and this annoying Tish, she stopped where some washing was hanging out and sent her in for a clothespin. She procured the pin, but was discovered and chased, and undoubtedly this is what led later to the story that the bandits--of whom more later--had, before proceeding to the real business of the night, attempted to steal the Whitings’ washing.

But the incident had made Aggie very nervous and she took a second small dose of the cordial. Of this also more later on.

There was a large group of cars in front of the Rectory. The Smith boys had brought their flivver, stripped of everything but the engine and one seat for lightness, and the Cummingses, who are very wealthy, had brought their racer. Tish eyed them both with a certain grimness.

“Not speed, but brains will count, Lizzie,” she said to me. “What does it matter how fast they can go if they don’t know where they’re going?”