Tish Plays the Game

by Mary Roberts Rinehart

  “Local color,” Tish said laconically. “They think a woman’s queer here if she doesn’t smoke. Come in, Mr. Stein.”

  When Mr. Stein entered he was uneasy, we thought, but he wore his usual smile.

  “Going like a breeze, Miss Carberry,” he said.

  “Yes,” said Tish grimly. “And so am I!”

  “What do you mean, going?” said Mr. Stein, slightly changing color. “You can’t quit on us, Miss Carberry. We’ve spent a quarter of a million dollars already.”

  “And I’ve risked a million-dollar life.”

  “We’ve been carrying insurance on you.”

  “Oh, you have!” said Tish, and eyed him coldly. “I hope you’ve got Mr. Macmanus insured too.”

  “Just why Mr. Macmanus, Miss Carberry?”

  “Because,” Tish said with her usual candor, “I propose physical assault, and possibly murder, if he’s brought on the set with me.”

  “Now see here,” he said soothingly, “you’re just tired, Miss Carberry. Ladies, how about a glass of that homemade TNT for Miss Tish? And a little all round?”

  But when none of us moved he was forced to state his case, as he called it.

  “You see, Miss Carberry,” he said, “we’ve made the old girl pretty hardboiled, so far. Now the public’s going to want to see her softer side.”

  “As, for instance?”

  “Well, something like this: The rancher who’s been the secret head of the smugglers, he’s a decent fellow at heart, see? Only got into it to pay the mortgage on the old home. Well, now, why not a bit of sentiment between you and him at the end? Nothing splashy, just a nice refined church and a kiss.” When he saw Tish’s face he went on, speaking very fast. “Not more than a four-foot kiss, if that. We’ve got to do it, Miss Carberry. I’ve been wiring our houses all over the country, and they’re unanimous.”

  At Tish’s firm refusal he grew almost tearful, saying he dared not fly in the face of tradition, and that he couldn’t even book the picture if he did. But Tish merely rose majestically and opened the door.

  “I warned you, Mr. Stein, I would have no sex stuff in this picture.”

  “Sex stuff!” he cried. “Good Lord, you don’t call that sex stuff, do you?”

  “I dare say you call it platonic friendship here,” Tish said in her coldest tone. “But my agreement stands. Good afternoon.”

  He went out, muttering.

  VII

  JUST WHAT HAPPENED WITHIN a day or two to determine Tish’s later course, I cannot say. We know that she had a long talk with Mr. Macmanus himself, and that he maintained that his intentions were of the most honorable—namely, to earn a small salary—and that his idea was that the final embrace could be limited to his kissing her hand.

  “I have ventured so to suggest, madam,” Hannah reported him as saying, “but they care nothing for art here. Nothing. They reduce everything to its physical plane, absolutely.”

  That our dear Tish was in a trap evidently became increasingly clear to her as the next few days passed. Nothing else would have forced her to the immediate course she pursued, and which resulted in such ignominious failure.

  It was, I believe, a week after the interview with Mr. Stein, and with the picture drawing rapidly to a close, that Tish retired early one night and was inaccessible to us.

  We were entirely unsuspicious, as the day had been a hard one, Tish having been washed from her horse while crossing a stream and having sunk twice before they stopped shooting the picture to rescue her.

  Aggie, I remember, was remarking that after all Macmanus was a handsome man, and that some people wouldn’t object to being embraced by him at a thousand dollars a week, when Hannah came bolting in.

  “She’s gone!” she cried.

  “Gone? Who’s gone?”

  “Miss Tish. Her room’s empty and I can’t find her valise.”

  Only partially attired we rushed along the corridor. Hannah had been only too right. Our dear Tish had flown.

  I did not then, nor do I now, admit that this flight, and the other which followed it, indicate any weakness in Letitia Carberry. The strongest characters must now and then face situations too strong for them and depart, as the poet says, “to fight another day.”

  I do, however, question the wisdom of her course, for it put her enemies on guard and involved us finally in most unhappy circumstances.

  Be that as it may, we had closed Tish’s door on its emptiness and were about to depart, when on turning she herself stood before us!

  She said nothing. She simply passed on and into the room, traveling bag in hand, and closed and locked the door between us.

  We believe now that her flight was not unexpected, and that her door and windows had been under surveillance. Certainly she was met at the station by Mr. Stein and his attorney and was forced to turn back, under threat of such legal penalties as we know not of. Certainly, too, she had closed that avenue of escape to further attempts, and knew it.

  But from Tish herself we have until now had no confidences.

  Some slight revenge she had, we know, the following day. As this portion of the picture has received very good notices, it may interest the reader to know under what circumstances it was taken.

  I have mentioned the scene in the studio where the smugglers were banqueting, and Tish, followed by revenue officers, was to appear and, after a shot or two, force them to subjection. Aggie and I had been permitted to watch this, the crowning scene of the picture, and stood behind the camera. The musicians were playing For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow, and the rum runners were drinking cold tea in champagne glasses and getting very drunk over it, when Tish entered.

  Aggie took one look at her and clutched my arm.

  “I don’t like her expression, Lizzie,” she whispered. “She—”

  At that moment Tish fired, and the bandit who’d been standing gave a loud bellow. She had shot his wine glass out of his hand.

  “Stop the camera!” the chief smuggler called in a loud voice. “She’s crazy! She’s got that gun loaded!”

  The director, however, seemed delighted, and called to the camera men to keep on grinding.

  “Great stuff, Miss Carberry!” he yelled. “I didn’t think anybody could put life in these wooden soldiers, but you have. Keep it up, only don’t kill anyone. Hold it, everybody! Camera! Camera! Now shoot out the lights, Miss Carberry, and I’ll think up something to follow while you’re doing it.”

  I believe now that he referred to the candles on the table, but Tish either did not or would not understand. A second later there were two crashes of broken glass, and wild howls from the men with the arc lamps above, which lighted the scene. The stage was in semidarkness, and pieces of glass and metal and the most frightful language continued to drop from above. In the confusion all I could hear was the director muttering something about five hundred dollars gone to perdition, and the rush of the entire company from the stage.

  It has been no surprise to me that this scene has made the great hit of the picture, the critics describing it as a classical study in fear. It was, indeed.

  This small explosion of indignation had one good effect, however. Tish was almost her own self that night, recalling with a certain humor that a piece of one arc lamp had fallen down and had hit Mr. Macmanus on the head.

  VIII

  TISH IS THE MOST open and candid of women, and nothing so rouses her indignation as trickery. Had Mr. Stein not resorted to stratagem to compel her consent to the final scenes, I believe a compromise might have been effected.

  It was his deliberate attempt to imprison Tish on the lot the night before those final shots which brought about the catastrophe. To pretend, as he does now, that he thought we had left at midnight does not absolve him.

  The fact remains that after the final night shots, when Tish had her make-up off and we started to leave, we found that the gates were locked and the gatekeeper gone. What is more, there was a man across the street behind a tree box, watching the
exit.

  Tish called to him in an angry voice, but he pretended not to be there, and we finally turned away.

  From the beginning Tish had recognized it as a trick, and she lost but little time in organizing herself for escape. A trial of the high fence which surrounded the lot, with Aggie on Tish’s shoulders while Tish stood on a box, revealed three strands of heavy barbed wire. But, more than that, Aggie declared that there were guards here and there all around.

  On receiving this information Tish stood for a moment in deep thought. She then instructed Aggie to go on to the balloon hangar and open the doors, while she and I gathered up her personal possessions and followed.

  It is not our method to question Tish at such times; ours not to reason why, ours but to do and die. But I confess to a certain uneasiness. If she proposed to escape by means of the baby blimp, well and good. At the same time, it required a dozen men to haul the balloon out of its shed, and we were but three weak women. I believed that she had overlooked this, but, as usual, I underestimated her.

  On reaching the hangar I found the door open, and I could see in the darkness the large balloon, with what appeared to be a smaller one beside it, a matter of surprise to me, as I knew of no other. But I could not see Aggie.

  I entered as quietly as possible and advanced into the hangar.

  “Aggie!” I called in a low tone. “Aggie! Where are you?”

  There was a silence, then from somewhere above came a sneeze, followed by Aggie’s voice, broken and trembling.

  “On—on a r-r-rafter, Lizzie,” she said.

  I could not believe my ears and advanced towards the sound. Suddenly Aggie yelled, and at the same moment the smaller balloon lurched and came toward me.

  “Run!” Aggie yelled. “Run. She’s after you!”

  Unfortunately, the warning came too late. Something reached out from the running balloon and caught me around the body, and the next moment, to my horror, I was lifted off the ground and thrust up into the timbers which supported the roof of the building. I am a heavy woman, and only by a desperate effort did I catch a rafter as the thing let go of me, and drew myself to safety. Aggie was somewhere close at hand, sobbing in the darkness.

  It was a moment before I could speak. Then I managed to ask what had happened to me.

  “It’s Katie, Lizzie,” Aggie said between sobs. “I think she must have found the blackberry cordial we left here, and it’s gone to her head!”

  Our position was very unfortunate, especially as time was important. Katie was merely playful, but on any attempt to move on our part she would trumpet loudly and reach up for us. Most annoying of all, she had taken a fancy to one of my shoes and kept reaching up and pulling at it.

  “Let her have it, if it keeps her quiet,” Aggie said tartly when I told her. “Give her anything she wants. Give her your bonnet. I never liked it, anyhow.”

  It was then after midnight, but fortunately it was very soon after that that we saw an electric flash and heard our dear Tish’s voice.

  “Aggie! Lizzie!” she called. And then she saw the elephant and advanced toward her.

  “Katie!” she said. “What are you doing here? I’ve been looking for you all over the lot?” She then turned the flash on Katie and beheld her swaying. “Shame on you,” she said. “I believe you’ve been drinking.”

  “Don’t reprove her; kill her”; Aggie said suddenly from overhead, and Tish looked up.

  “I thought so,” she said rather sharply. “I cannot count on the faintest coöperation. I need two courageous hearts, and I find you roosting like frightened chickens on a beam. That elephant’s harmless. She’s only playing.”

  “I don’t like the way she plays, then,” I protested angrily. “If you do, play with her yourself.”

  But Tish had no time for irony. She simply picked up a piece of wood from the ground and hit Katie on the trunk with it.

  “Now!” she said. “Bring them down, you shame to your sex. And be gentle. Remember you are not quite yourself.”

  Thanks to Tish’s dominance over all types of inferior minds, Katie at once obeyed, and brought us down without difficulty.

  Then she ambled unsteadily to a corner, and proceeded to empty another bottle of cordial we had concealed there.

  I have always considered, in spite of its dénouement, that Tish’s idea of using Katie to drag the blimp out of the shed was a brilliant one. Katie herself made no demur. She stood swaying gently while we harnessed her to the balloon and at the word she bent to her work. Tish was in the car, examining the controls at the time, and turning up what I believe are called the flippers, which direct its course away from Mother Earth.

  But I have blamed her for her impatience in starting the engine before we had unfastened Katie’s harness. Tish has a tendency now and then toward hasty action, which she always regrets later. There is this excuse for her, however: She had apparently no idea that the balloon would rise the moment the propeller reached a certain number of revolutions. But it did.

  It seemed only a moment after we heard the engine start that I felt the car lifting from the earth, and in desperation flung myself into it, as Aggie did the same thing from the other side.

  The next instant we were well above the ground, and from below there was coming a terrible trumpeting and squealing. We all looked over the side, and there beneath us was Katie, fastened to us by her harness and rising with us!

  I shall never forget that moment. One and all, we are members of the Humane Society. And if Katie’s ropes and straps gave way, she would certainly fall to a terrible death. Even Tish lost her sang-froid and, frantically starting the engine, endeavored to maneuver the thing to earth again. But anybody who has traveled in a blimp knows that it cannot be brought to earth again without outside aid.

  Moreover, we were already outside the studio grounds, and traveling over roofs which Katie barely escaped. Indeed, from certain sounds, we had reason to believe that she was striking numerous chimneys, and I think now that this may account for the stories of a mysterious electric storm that night, which destroyed a half dozen chimneys in one block.

  It was a fortunate thing that Tish remembered in time to elevate the flippers still further, thus giving us a certain amount of leeway. But a strong breeze from the sea had sprung up and was carrying us toward the city, and it became increasingly evident that, even if we cleared the highest buildings, Katie would not.

  It was a tragic moment Aggie proposed lightening the craft by throwing out the bottles of liquor, which had been a part of the smugglers’ cargo in the picture, but Tish restrained her.

  “Better to kill an elephant,” she said, “than to brain some harmless wretch below.”

  Katie meanwhile had lapsed into the silence of despair, or possibly had fainted. I do not know, nor is it now pertinent, for in a few moments the situation solved itself. We had barely missed the roof of the First National Bank Building when the blimp gave a terrific jar, and momentarily stopped.

  On looking over the side the cause of this was explained. Katie had landed squarely on the flat roof of the building, and had immediately thrown her trunk around a chimney and braced herself. Even as we looked, her harness parted and left her free of us.

  Katie was saved.

  Glancing again over the side as we quickly rose, we could see her in the moonlight still hugging her chimney and gazing after us. What thoughts were hers we cannot know.

  I am glad to solve in this manner a problem which caused much perplexity throughout the country—namely, how an elephant could have reached the roof of the First National Bank Building, to which the only possible entrance was through a trapdoor two feet six inches each way. As will be seen, the explanation, like that of many mysteries, is entirely simple.

  It is necessary to touch but lightly on the unfortunate incident which concluded our escape. That the apparently friendly villagers who, the next morning, ran out from their peaceful businesses to haul on our ropes and bring us to a landing, should so chan
ge in attitude in a few moments has ever since been a warning to us of the innate suspicion of human nature.

  How could they look at Tish’s firm and noble face, and so misread it? Why did they not at once open the smugglers’ rum cargo which had remained in the car, and discover that the liquid in the bottles was only cold tea?

  Can it be possible that Charlie Sands’ explanation is correct, and that the fact that many of them purchased the stuff from the sheriff and later threatened to lynch him, can account for his peculiar malignity to us?

  One thing is certain—they held us in the local jail for days, until Charlie Sands was able to rescue us.

  We never saw Mr. Stein again. Nor, frankly, did we ever expect to see Tish’s picture, since she had not finished it. But, as all the world now knows, it opened in June of this current year, and made a great success.

  But our surprise at this was as nothing compared with the fact that Tish’s name did not appear in connection with it, and that the announcements read: “Featuring Miss Betty Carlisle.”

  There had been no Miss Carlisle in Tish’s cast.

  On the opening night we went to see it, accompanied by Charlie Sands. He said very little while watching Tish perform her various exploits, but when, after the shooting scene, Tish prepared to depart he protested.

  “I’ve stood it up to this point,” he said grimly. “I propose to see it through.”

  “There will be no more, Charles,” Tish explained in an indulgent manner. “I quit at the end of this scene. Be glad of one picture which does not end with an embrace.”

  But she had spoken too soon!

  Judge of our amazement when we saw our Tish, on the screen, disappear through a doorway, and return a moment later, a young and beautiful girl, who was at once clasped in Mr. Macmanus’ arms.

  The title was: Her Elderly Disguise at Last Removed!

  HIJACK AND THE GAME