Tish Plays the Game

by Mary Roberts Rinehart

  “Where the hell is your tail light?” he called furiously.

  “You ought to know,” said Tish calmly. “Somewhere in your engine, I imagine.”

  Well, it seemed that everyone had been following us, and no one except the Smith boys apparently knew where to go from there. And just then a policeman came out of the bushes and asked what the trouble was.

  “Ichthyosaurus,” said Tish absently. “‘Water, water, everywhere, nor any drop to drink. Two twos are four, though some say more, and—’”

  “Don’t try to be funny with me,” he said. “For a cent I’d take the whole lot of you into town for obstructing traffic. You’ve been drinking, that’s what!”

  And just then Aggie sat up in the back seat and said, “Drinking yourshelf! Go on, Tish, and run over him. He’sh a nuishance.”

  Well, I will say her voice was somewhat thick, and the constable got on the running board and struck a match. But Tish was in her seat by that time, and she started the car so suddenly that he fell off into the road. As the other cars had to drive around him, this gave us a certain advantage; and we had soon left them behind us, but we still had no idea where to go. Matters were complicated also by the fact that Tish had now extinguished our headlights for fear of again being molested, and we were as often off the road as on it.

  Indeed, once we brought up inside a barn, and were only saved from going entirely through it by our dear Tish’s quick work with the brakes; and we then had the agony of hearing the other cars pass by on the main road while we were backing away from the ruins of a feed cutter we had smashed.

  We had also aroused a number of chickens, and as we could hear the farmer running out and yelling, there was nothing to do but to back out again. Just as we reached the highroad a load of buckshot tore through the top of the car, but injured nobody.

  “Luckily he was shooting high,” said Tish as we drove on. “Lower, and he might have cut our tires.”

  “Luckily!” said Aggie, from the rear seat. “He’sh taken the crown out of my hat, Tish Carberry! It was nish hat too. I loved my little hat. I—”

  “Oh, keep still and go to sleep again,” said Tish. “‘Water, water, everywhere, nor any drop to drink. Two twos are four, though some say more, and i-n-k spells ink.”

  “So it did when I went to school,” said Aggie, still drowsily. “I-n-k, ink; p-i-n-k, pink; s—”

  Suddenly Tish put her foot on the gas and we shot ahead once more.

  “Schoolhouse of course,” she said. “The schoolhouse by the water tower. I knew my subconscious mind would work it out eventually.”

  III

  UNFORTUNATELY, WE WERE THE last to get to the schoolhouse, and we had to witness the other cars streaming triumphantly down the road as we went up, shouting and blowing their horns. All but the Simmonses’ sedan, which had turned over in a ditch and which we passed hastily, having no time to render assistance.

  Miss Watkins, the school-teacher, was on the porch, and as we drew up Tish leaped out.

  “Pterodactyl!” she said.

  “Warm, but not hot,” said Miss Watkins.

  “Plesiosaurus!”

  “The end’s all right.”

  “Ichthyosaurus!” said Tish triumphantly, and received the envelope. Aggie, however, who had not heard the password given at the Ostermaiers’, had listened to this strange conversation dazedly and now burst into tears.

  “There’sh something wrong with me, Lizzie!” she wailed. “I’ve felt queer ever since we started, and now they are talking and it doesn’t sound like sensh to me.”

  It was some time before I was able to quiet her, but Tish had already received the second password, or sentence, which was “Prevention is better than cure, ting-a-ling,” and was poring over the next clew.

  “Always first in danger, always last to go,

  Look inside the fire box and then you’ll know.”

  I still think that had she taken sufficient time she could have located this second clew easily and without the trouble that ensued. But finding herself last when she is so generally first had irritated her, and she was also annoyed at Miss Watkins, it having been arranged that the last car was to take her back into town.

  “Mr. Ostermaier said the clew’s in town anyhow. And he didn’t think the last car would have much chance, either,” she said.

  “Who laughs last laughs best,” said Tish grimly, and started off at a frightful speed. Miss Watkins lost her hat within the first mile or two, but we could not pause, as a motorcycle policeman was now following close behind us. Owing to Tish’s strategy, however, for when he attempted to come up on the right of us she swerved in that direction and vice versa, we finally escaped him, an unusually sharp swerve of hers having caught him off guard, so to speak, and upset him.

  Just when or where we lost Miss Watkins herself I have no idea. Aggie had again dozed off, and when we reached the town and slowed up, Miss Watkins was gone. She herself does not know, as she seems to have wandered for some time in a dazed condition before reaching home.

  But to the hunt.

  I still think our mistake was a natural one. One would think that the pass sentence, “Prevention is better than cure, ting-a-ling,” certainly indicated either a pharmacy or a medical man and a doorbell, and as Tish said, a fire box was most likely a wood box. There being only two doctors in the town, we went first to Doctor Burt’s, but he had already retired and spoke to us from an upper window.

  “We want to examine your wood box,” Tish called.

  “Wood box?” he said, in a stupefied voice. “What do you want wood for? A splint?”

  “We’re hunting treasure,” said Tish sharply. “‘Prevention is better than cure, ting-a-ling.’”

  The doctor closed the window violently; and although we rang for some time, he did not appear again.

  At Doctor Parkinson’s, however, we had better luck, discovering the side entrance to the house open and finding our way inside with the aid of the flashlight. There was only one wood box on the lower floor, and this we proceeded to search, laying the wood out carefully onto a newspaper. But we found no envelopes, and in the midst of our discouragement came a really dreadful episode.

  Doctor Parkinson himself appeared at the door in his night clothes, and not recognizing us because of our attire and goggles, pointed a revolver at us.

  “Hands up!” he cried in a furious tone. “Hands up, you dirty devils! And be quick about it!”

  “‘Prevention is better than cure, ting-a-ling,’” said Tish.

  “Ting-a-ling your own self! Of all the shame less proceedings I’ve ever—”

  “Shame on you!” Tish reproved him. “If ting-a-ling means nothing to you, we will leave you.”

  “Oh, no, you don’t!” he said, most unpleasantly. “Put up your hands as I tell you or—”

  I do not now and I never did believe the story he has since told over the town—that Tish threw the fire log she was holding at his legs. I prefer to credit her own version—that as she was trying to raise her hands the wood fell, with most unfortunate results. As a matter of fact, the real risk was run by myself, for when on the impact he dropped the revolver, it exploded and took off the heel of my right shoe.

  Nor is it true, as he claims, that having been forced out of his house, we attempted to get back in and attack him again. This error is due to the fact that, once outside, Tish remembered the revolver on the floor, and thinking it might be useful later, went back to get it. But the door was locked.

  However, all is well that ends well. We had but driven a block or two when we perceived a number of the cars down the street at the engine house, and proceeded to find our next clew in the box of the local fire engine.

  The password this time was “Prohibition,” and the clew ran:

  “Just two blocks from paradise and only one from hell,

  Stranger things than truth are found in the bottom of a well.”

  The Smith boys had already gone on, but we were now at last on
equal terms with the others, and as the sleep and the cold night air had by now fully restored Aggie, Tish called a consultation.

  “So far,” she said, “the Smiths have had the advantage of superior speed. But it is my opinion that this advantage is an unfair one, and that I have a right to nullify it if opportunity arises.”

  “We’ll have to catch them first,” I observed.

  “We shall catch them,” she said firmly, and once more studied the clew.

  “Paradise,” she said, “should be the Eden Inn. To save time we will circumnavigate it at a distance of two blocks.”

  This we did, learning later that Hell’s Kitchen was the name locally given to the negro quarter, and once more Tish’s masterly deciphering of the clew served us well. Before the other cars had much more than started, we espied the Smiths’ stripped flivver outside the Gilbert place, and to lose no time drove through the hedge and onto the lawn. Here, as is well known, the Gilberts have an old well, long disused, or so supposed. And here we found the Gilberts’ gardener standing and the Smith boys drawing up the well bucket.

  “Give the word and get the envelope,” Tish whispered to me, and disappeared into the darkness.

  I admit this. I admit, too, that, as I have said before, I know nothing of her actions for the next few moments. Personally, I believe that she went to the house, as she has stated, to get the Gilbert cook’s recipe for jelly roll; and as anyone knows, considerable damage may be done to an uncovered engine by flying stones. To say that she cut certain wires while absent is to make a claim not borne out by the evidence.

  But I will also say that the Smith boys up to that moment had had an unfair advantage, and that the inducing of a brief delay on their part was not forbidden by the rules, which are on my desk as I write. However—

  As Mr. Gilbert is not only prominent in the church but is also the local prohibition officer, judge of our surprise when, on the well bucket emerging, we found in it not only the clews but some bottles of beer which had apparently been put there to cool. And Mr. Gilbert, on arriving with the others, seemed greatly upset.

  “Hawkins,” he said to the gardener, “what do you mean by hiding six bottles of beer in my well?”

  “Me?” said Hawkins angrily. “If I had six bottles of beer, they’d be in no well! And there aren’t six; there’s only four.”

  “Four!” said Mr. Gilbert in a furious voice.

  “Four! Then who the dev—” Here, however, he checked himself; and as Tish had now returned, we took our clews and departed. Hawkins had given us the next password, which was “Good evening, dearie,” and the clew, which read:

  “Down along the lake front, in a pleasant place,

  Is a splendid building, full of air and space.

  Glance within a closet, where, neatly looped and tagged,

  Are the sturdy symbols of the game they’ve bagged.”

  Everybody seemed to think it meant the Duck Club, and in a few moments we were all off once more except the Smith boys, who were talking loudly and examining their engine. But Tish was not quite certain.

  “These clews are tricky,” she said. “They are not obvious, but subtle. It sounds too much like the Duck Club to be the Duck Club. Besides, what symbols of dead ducks would they keep? I’ve never seen anything left over but the bones.”

  “The feathers?” Aggie suggested.

  “They wouldn’t keep feathers in a closet. And besides, there’s nothing sturdy about a feather. What other large building is on the lake front?”

  “The fish cannery,” I said.

  “True. And they might keep boards in a closet with the outlines of very large fish on them. But the less said about the air there the better. However, we might try it.”

  Having made this decision, as soon as we were outside of Penzance we began once more to travel with extreme rapidity, retracing for some distance the road we had come in on, and thus it happened that we again saw the motorcycle policeman with his side car. He was repairing something and shouted angrily at us as we passed, but we did not even hesitate, and soon we arrived at the fish cannery.

  None of the others had apparently thought of this possibility, and when we reached it there was no one in sight but a bearded watchman with a lantern, sitting on a barrel outside. Tish hopefully leaped from the car and gave him the password at once.

  “‘Good evening, dearie.’”

  But the wretch only took his pipe out of his mouth and, after expectorating into the lake, replied:

  “Hello, sweetheart. And what can I do for you?”

  “Don’t be impertinent,” said Tish tartly. “I said ‘good evening, dearie’, as a signal.”

  “And a darned fine signal I call it,” he said, rising. “Let’s have a look at you before the old lady comes along with my supper.”

  “I have given you the signal. If you haven’t anything for me, say so.”

  “Well, what is it you want?” he inquired, grinning at us in a horrible manner. “A kiss?”

  As he immediately began to advance toward Tish, to this action on his part may be laid the misfortune which almost at once beset us. For there is no question that had it not discomposed her she would never have attempted to turn by backing onto the fish pier, which has been rotten for years. But in her indignation she did so, and to our horror we felt the thing giving way beneath us. There was one loud sharp crack followed by the slow splintering of wood, and the next moment we were resting gently on some piles above the water, with the shattered framework of the pier overhead and the watchman yelling that the company would sue us for damages.

  “Damages!” said Tish, still holding to the steering wheel, while Aggie wailed in the rear, “You talk of damages to me! I’ll put you and your company in the penitentiary if I have to—”

  Here she suddenly checked herself and turned to me.

  “The penitentiary, of course!” she said. “How stupid of us! And I dare say they keep the ropes they hang people with in a closet. They have to keep them somewhere. Speaking of ropes,” she went on, raising her voice, “if that old fool up there will get a rope, I dare say we can scramble out.”

  “Old fool yourself!” cried the watchman, dancing about. “Coming here and making love to me and then destroying my pier! You can sit there till those piles rot, far’s I’m concerned. There’s something queer about this business anyhow; how do I know you ain’t escaped from the pen?”

  “My dear man,” said Tish quietly, “the one thing we want is to get to the penitentiary, and that as soon as possible.”

  “Well, you won’t have any trouble getting there,” he retorted. “I’ll see to that. Far’s you’re concerned, you’re on your way.”

  He then disappeared, and one of the piles yielding somewhat, the car fell a foot or two more, while Aggie wailed and sneezed alternately. But Tish remained composed. She struck a match, and leaning over the side inspected the water and so on below us.

  “There’s a boat down there, Lizzie,” she said. “Get the towrope from under Aggie and fasten it to something. If we can get down, we’ll be all right. The penitentiary isn’t more than a half mile from here.”

  “I slide down no rope into no boat, Tish Carberry,” I said firmly.

  But at that moment we heard the engine of a motorcycle coming along the road and realized that our enemy the policeman had followed us. And as at that same instant the car again slipped with a sickening jar, we were compelled to this heroic attempt after all.

  However, it was managed without untoward incident, Aggie even salvaging the flask of blackberry cordial. But the boat was almost filled with water, and thus required frantic bailing with our hats, a matter only just accomplished when the motorcycle policeman came running onto the pier.

  Whether the watchman had failed to tell him of the break or not, I cannot say, but we were no more than under way when we heard a splash followed by strangled oaths, and realized that for a time at least we were safe from pursuit.

  Wet as we now were, we e
ach took a small dose of the cordial and then fell to rowing. Tish’s watch showed only ten o’clock, and we felt greatly cheered and heartened. Also, as Tish said by way of comforting Aggie, the license plates on the car belonging to Mr. Stubbs, it was unlikely that we would be further involved for the present at least.

  IV

  OWING TO THE FACT that the cars still in the hunt had all gone to the Duck Club, the brief delay had not lost us our lead, and we proceeded at once, after landing near the penitentiary, to the gate. Our halt there was brief. Tish merely said to the sentry at the entrance, “‘Good evening, dearie.’”

  “The same to you and many of them,” he replied cheerfully, and unlocked the gate. We then found ourselves in a large courtyard, with the looming walls of the building before us, and on ringing the bell and repeating the phrase were at once admitted.

  There were a number of men in uniform, who locked the grating behind us and showed us into an office where a young man was sitting at a desk.

  I had an uneasy feeling the moment I saw him, and Aggie has since acknowledged the same thing. Instead of smiling as had the others, he simply pushed a large book toward us and asked us to sign our names.

  “Register here, please,” was what he said.

  “Register?” said Tish. “What for?”

  “Like to have our guests’ names,” he said solemnly. “You’ll find your cells all ready for you. Very nice ones—view of the lake and everything. Front, show these ladies to their cells.”

  Aggie gave a low moan, but Tish motioned her to be silent.

  “Am I to understand you are holding us here?”

  “That’s what we’re here for. We specialize in holding, if you know what I mean.”

  “If it’s that fish pier—”

  “Is it the fish pier?” the young man asked of two or three men around, but nobody seemed to know.