The Best of Mary Roberts Rinehart

by Mary Roberts Rinehart

  [We learned afterward that part of the amusement was caused by Aggie's false front, which one of the wretches put on as a beard.]

  It was while thus distracted that Aggie suddenly screamed, and a moment later Mr. McDonald climbed over the side and into the boat, dripping.

  "Don't be alarmed!" he said. "I'll go back and be a prisoner again just as soon as I've fired the engine. I couldn't bear to think of the lady who fell in sitting here indefinitely and taking cold." He was examining the engine while he spoke. "Have visitors, I see," he observed, as calmly as though he were not dripping all over the place.

  "Intruders, not visitors!" Tish said angrily. "I never saw them before."

  "Rather pretty, the one with the pink cap. May I examine the gasoline supply?" There was no gasoline. He shrugged his shoulders. "I'm afraid no amount of mechanical genius I intended to offer you will start her," he said; "but the young lady--Hutchins is her name, I believe?--will see you here and come after you, of course."

  Well, there was no denying that, spy or no spy, his presence was a comfort. He offered to swim back to the island and be a prisoner again, but Tish said magnanimously that there was no hurry. On Aggie's offering half of her tarpaulin against the wind, which had risen, he accepted.

  "Your Miss Hutchins is reckless, isn't she?" he said when he was comfortably settled. "She's a strong swimmer; but a canoe is uncertain at the best."

  "She's in no danger," said Tish. "She has a devoted admirer watching out for her."

  "The deuce she has!" His voice was quite interested. "Why, who on earth--"

  "Your detective," said Aggie softly. "He's quite mad about her. The way he follows her and the way he looks at her--it's thrilling!"

  Mr. McDonald said nothing for quite a while. The canoe party had evidently eaten everything they could find, and somebody had brought out a banjo and was playing.

  Tish, unable to vent her anger, suddenly turned on Mr. McDonald. "If you think," she said, "that the grocery list fooled us, it didn't!"

  "Grocery list?"

  "That's what I said."

  "How did you get my grocery list?"

  So she told him, and how she had deciphered it, and how the word "dynamite" had only confirmed her early suspicions.

  His only comment was to say, "Good Heavens!" in a smothered voice.

  "It was the extractor that made me suspicious," she finished. "What were you going to extract? Teeth?"

  "And so, when my Indian was swimming, you went through his things! It's the most astounding thing I ever--My dear lady, an extractor is used to get the hooks out of fish. It was no cipher, I assure you. I needed an extractor and I ordered it. The cipher you speak of is only a remarkable coincidence."

  "Huh!" said Tish. "And the paper you dropped in the train--was that a coincidence?"

  "That's not my secret," he said, and turned sulky at once.

  "Don't tell me," Tish said triumphantly, "that any young man comes here absolutely alone without a purpose!"

  "I had a purpose, all right; but it was not to blow up a railroad train."

  Apparently he thought he had said too much, for he relapsed into silence after that, with an occasional muttering.

  It was eight o'clock when Hutchins's canoe came into sight. She was paddling easily, but the detective was far behind and moving slowly.

  She saw the camp with its uninvited guests, and then she saw us. The detective, however, showed no curiosity; and we could see that he made for his landing and stumbled exhaustedly up the bank. Hutchins drew up beside us. "He'll not try that again, I think," she said in her crisp voice. "He's out of training. He panted like a motor launch. Who are our visitors?"

  Here her eyes fell on Mr. McDonald and her face set in the dusk.

  "You'll have to go back and get some gasoline, Hutchins."

  "What made you start out without looking?"

  "And send the vandals away. If they wait until I arrive, I'll be likely to do them some harm. I have never been so outraged."

  "Let me go for gasoline in the canoe," said Mr. McDonald. He leaned over the thwart and addressed Hutchins. "You're worn out," he said. "I promise to come back and be a perfectly well-behaved prisoner again."

  "Thanks, no."

  "I'm wet. The exercise will warm me."

  "Is it possible," she said in a withering tone that was lost on us at the time, "that you brought no dumb-bells with you?"

  If we had had any doubts they should have been settled then; but we never suspected. It is incredible, looking back.

  The dusk was falling and I am not certain of what followed. It was, however, something like this: Mr. McDonald muttered something angrily and made a motion to get into the canoe. Hutchins replied that she would not have help from him if she died for it. The next thing we knew she was in the launch and the canoe was floating off on the current. Aggie squealed; and Mr. McDonald, instead of swimming after the thing, merely folded his arms and looked at it.

  "You know," he said to Hutchins, "you have so unpleasant a disposition that somebody we both know of is better off than he thinks he is!"

  Tish's fury knew no bounds, for there we were marooned and two of us wet to the skin. I must say for Hutchins, however, that when she learned about Aggie she was bitterly repentant, and insisted on putting her own sweater on her. But there we were and there we should likely stay.

  It was quite dark by that time, and we sat in the launch, rocking gently. The canoeing party had lighted a large fire on the beach, using the driftwood we had so painfully accumulated.

  We sat in silence, except that Tish, who was watching our camp, said once bitterly that she was glad there were three beds in the tent. The girls of the canoeing party would be comfortable.

  After a time Tish turned on Mr. McDonald sharply. "Since you claim to be no spy," she said, "perhaps you will tell us what brings you alone to this place? Don't tell me it's fish--I've seen you reading, with a line out. You're no fisherman."

  He hesitated. "No," he admitted. "I'll be frank, Miss Carberry. I did not come to fish."

  "What brought you?"

  "Love," he said, in a low tone. "I don't expect you to believe me, but it's the honest truth."

  "Love!" Tish scoffed.

  "Perhaps I'd better tell you the story," he said. "It's long and--and rather sad."

  "Love stories," Hutchins put in coldly, "are terribly stupid, except to those concerned."

  "That," he retorted, "is because you have never been in love. You are young and--you will pardon the liberty?--attractive; but you are totally prosaic and unromantic."

  "Indeed!" she said, and relapsed into silence.

  "These other ladies," Mr. McDonald went on, "will understand the strangeness of my situation when I explain that the--the young lady I care for is very near; is, in fact, within sight."

  "Good gracious!" said Aggie. "Where?"

  "It is a long story, but it may help to while away the long night hours; for I dare say we are here for the night. Did any one happen to notice the young lady in the first canoe, in the pink tam-o'-shanter?"

  We said we had--all except Hutchins, who, of course, had not seen her. Mr. McDonald got a wet cigarette from his pocket and, finding a box of matches on the seat, made an attempt to dry it over the flames; so his story was told in the flickering light of one match after another.

  VI

  "I am," Mr. McDonald said, as the cigarette steamed, "the son of poor but honest parents. All my life I have been obliged to labor. You may say that my English is surprisingly pure, under such conditions. As a matter of fact, I educated myself at night, using a lantern in the top of my father's stable."

  "I thought you said he was poor," Hutchins put in nastily. "How did he have a stable?"

  "He kept a livery stable. Any points that are not clear I will explain afterward. Once the thread of a narrative is broken, it is difficult to resume, Miss Hutchins. Near us, in a large house, lived the lady of my heart."

  "The pink tam-o'-shanter g
irl!" said Aggie. "I begin to understand."

  "But," he added, "near us also lived a red-headed boy. She liked him very much, and even in the long-ago days I was fiercely jealous of him. It may surprise you to know that in those days I longed--fairly longed--for red hair and a red mustache."

  "I hate to interrupt," said Hutchins; "but did he have a mustache as a boy?"

  He ignored her. "We three grew up together. The girl is beautiful--you've probably noticed that--and amiable. The one thing I admire in a young woman is amiability. It would not, for instance, have occurred to her to isolate an entire party on the bosom of a northern and treacherous river out of pure temper."

  "To think," said Aggie softly, "that she is just over there by the camp-fire! Don't you suppose, if she loves you, she senses your nearness?"

  "That's it exactly," he replied in a gloomy voice, "if she loves me! But does she? In other words, has she come up the river to meet me or to meet my rival? She knows we are here. Both of us have written her. The presence of one or the other of us is the real reason for this excursion of hers. But again the question is--which?"

  Here the match he was holding under the cigarette burned his fingers and he flung it overboard with a violent gesture.

  "The detective, of course," said Tish. "I knew it from the beginning of your story."

  "The detective," he assented. "You see his very profession attracts. There's an element of romance in it. I myself have kept on with my father and now run the--er--livery stable. My business is a handicap from a romantic point of view.

  "I am aware," Mr. McDonald went on, "that it is not customary to speak so frankly of affairs of this sort; but I have two reasons. It hurts me to rest under unjust suspicion. I am no spy, ladies. And the second reason is even stronger. Consider my desperate position: In the morning my rival will see her; he will paddle his canoe to the great rock below your camp and sing his love song from the water. In the morning I shall sit here helpless--ill, possibly--and see all that I value in life slip out of my grasp. And all through no fault of my own! Things are so evenly balanced, so little will shift the weight of her favor, that frankly the first one to reach her will get her."

  I confess I was thrilled. And even Tish was touched; but she covered her emotion with hard common sense.

  "What's her name?" she demanded.

  "Considering my frankness I must withhold that. Why not simply refer to her as the pink tam-o'-shanter--or, better still and more briefly, the P.T.S.? That may stand for pink tam-o'-shanter, or the Person That Smiles,--she smiles a great deal,--or--or almost anything."

  "It also stands," said Hutchins, with a sniff, "for Pretty Tall Story."

  Tish considered her skepticism unworthy in one so young, and told her so; on which she relapsed into a sulky silence.

  In view of what we knew, the bonfire at our camp and the small figure across the river took on a new significance.

  As Aggie said, to think of the red-haired man sleeping calmly while his lady love was so near and his rival, so to speak, hors de combat! Shortly after finishing his story, Mr. McDonald went to the stern of the boat and lifted the anchor rope.

  "It is possible," he said, "that the current will carry us to my island with a little judicious management. Even though we miss it, we'll hardly be worse off than we are."

  It was surprising we had not thought of it before, for the plan succeeded admirably. By moving a few feet at a time and then anchoring, we made slow but safe progress, and at last touched shore. We got out, and Mr. McDonald built a large fire, near which we put Aggie to steam. His supper, which he had not had time to eat, he generously divided, and we heated the tea. Hutchins, however, refused to eat.

  Warmth and food restored Tish's mind to its usual keenness. I recall now the admiration in Mr. McDonald's eyes when she suddenly put down the sandwich she was eating and exclaimed:--

  "The flags, of course! He told her to watch for a red flag as she came up the river; so when the party saw ours they landed. Perhaps they still think it is his camp and that he is away overnight."

  "That's it, exactly," he said. "Think of the poor wretch's excitement when he saw your flag!"

  Still, on looking back, it seems curious that we overlooked the way the red-headed man had followed Hutchins about. True, men are polygamous animals, Tish says, and are quite capable of following one woman about while they are sincerely in love with somebody else. But, when you think of it, the detective had apparently followed Hutchins from the start, and had gone into the wilderness to be near her, with only a suitcase and a mackintosh coat; which looked like a mad infatuation.

  [Tish says she thought of this at the time, and that; from what she had seen of the P.T.S., Hutchins was much prettier. But she says she decided that men often love one quality in one girl and another in another; that he probably loved Hutchins's beauty and the amiability of the P.T.S. Also, she says, she reflected that the polygamy of the Far East is probably due to this tendency in the male more than to a preponderance of women.]

  Tish called me aside while Mr. McDonald was gathering firewood. "I'm a fool and a guilty woman, Lizzie," she said. "Because of an unjust suspicion I have possibly wrecked this poor boy's life."

  I tried to soothe her. "They might have been wretchedly unhappy together, Tish," I said; "and, anyhow, I doubt whether he is able to support a wife. There's nothing much in keeping a livery stable nowadays."

  "There's only one thing that still puzzles me," Tish observed: "granting that the grocery order was a grocery order, what about the note?"

  We might have followed this line of thought, and saved what occurred later, but that a new idea suddenly struck Tish. She is curious in that way; her mind works very rapidly at times, and because I cannot take her mental hurdles, so to speak, she is often impatient.

  "Lizzie," she said suddenly, "did you notice that when the anchor was lifted, we drifted directly to this island? Don't stare at me like that. Use your wits."

  When I failed instantly to understand, however, she turned abruptly and left me, disappearing in the shadows.

  For the next hour nothing happened. Tish was not in sight and Aggie slept by the fire. Hutchins sat with her chin cupped in her hands, and Mr. McDonald gathered driftwood.

  Hutchins only spoke once. "I'm awfully sorry about the canoe, Miss Lizzie," she said; "it was silly and--and selfish. I don't always act like a bad child. The truth is, I'm rather upset and nervous. I hate to be thwarted--I'm sorry I can't explain any further."

  I was magnanimous. "I'm sure, until to-night, you've been perfectly satisfactory," I said; "but it seems extraordinary that you should dislike men the way you do."

  She only eyed me searchingly.

  It is my evening custom to prepare for the night by taking my switch off and combing and braiding my hair; so, as we seemed to be settled for the night, I asked Mr. McDonald whether the camp afforded an extra comb. He brought out a traveling-case at once from the tent and opened it.

  "Here's a comb," he said. "I never use one. I'm sorry this is all I can supply."

  My eyes were glued to the case. It was an English traveling-case, with gold-mounted fittings. He saw me staring at it and changed color.

  "Nice bag, isn't it?" he said. "It was a gift, of course. The--the livery stable doesn't run much to this sort of thing."

  But the fine edge of suspicion had crept into my mind again.

  * * * * *

  Tish did not return to the fire for some time. Before she came back we were all thoroughly alarmed. The island was small, and a short search convinced us that she was not on it!

  We wakened Aggie and told her, and the situation was very painful. The launch was where we had left it. Mr. McDonald looked more and more uneasy.

  "My sane mind tells me she's perfectly safe," he said. "I don't know that I've ever met a person more able to take care of herself; but it's darned odd--that's all I can say."

  Just as he spoke a volley of shots sounded from up the river near our camp, two
close together and then one; and somebody screamed.

  It was very dark. We could see lanterns flashing at our camp and somebody was yelling hoarsely. One lantern seemed to run up and down the beach in mad excitement, and then, out of the far-off din, Aggie, whose ears are sharp, suddenly heard the splash of a canoe paddle.

  I shall tell Tish's story of what happened as she told it to Charlie Sands two weeks or so later.

  "It is perfectly simple," she said, "and it's stupid to make such a fuss over it. Don't talk to me about breaking the law! The girl came; I didn't steal her."

  Charlie Sands, I remember, interrupted at that moment to remind her that she had shot a hole in the detective's canoe; but this only irritated her.

  "Certainly I did," she snapped; "but it's perfectly idiotic of him to say that it took off the heel of his shoe. In that stony country it's always easy to lose a heel."

  But to return to Tish's story:--

  "It occurred to me," she said, "that, if the launch had drifted to Mr. McDonald's island, the canoe might have done so too; so I took a look round. I'd been pretty much worried about having called the boy a spy when he wasn't, and it worried me to think that he couldn't get away from the place. I never liked the red-haired man. He was cruel to Aggie's cat--but we've told you that.

  "I knew that in the morning the detective would see the P.T.S., as we called her, and he could get over and propose before breakfast. But when I found the canoe--yes, I found it--I didn't intend to do anything more than steal the detective's boat."

  "Is that all?" said Charlie Sands sarcastically. "You disappoint me, Aunt Letitia! With all the chances you had--to burn his pitiful little tent, for instance, or steal his suitcase--"

  "But on my way," Tish went on with simple dignity, "it occurred to me that I could move things a step farther by taking the girl to Mr. McDonald and letting him have his chance right away. Things went well from the start, for she was standing alone, looking out over the river. It was dark, except for the starlight, and I didn't know it was she. I beached the canoe and she squealed a little when I spoke to her."

  "Just what," broke in Charlie Sands, "does one say under such circumstances? Sometime I may wish to abduct a young woman and it is well to be prepared."