Mystery Cases of Letitia Carberry, Tish. Mary Roberts Rinehart
their opinions at the department stores along with their bargains, and a little two-penny love affair could upset the Government!"
Tish was raging.
"It does not matter whether you approve or not, Charlie," she said loftily, "as long as our consciences approve."
"Approve!" He nearly fell back out of his chair. "My dear ladies, you should every one have been jailed! As for conscience, I'd give a thousand dollars to have a conscience that would set the seal of its approval on assault and battery, highway robbery and abduction."
"The end justifies the means," I retorted; "and when did you get a conscience, Charlie Sands?"
"I think I got one Aunt Tish used to have," he said, and I got up and went into the house.
Well, I left the dog drinking, to go back, and at that instant I happened to look at Tish, who was standing on the bank waving her handkerchief at something in the road. I stepped to the comer of the house and saw what it was —creeping along a lane we had not noticed was the blue runabout car. Creeping is the word. It would crawl forward a dozen feet and stop, and it kept on repeating the performance. But what puzzled me was a spot of pink, just in front of the car and moving slowly forward.
At the end of the lane the pink spot hesitated and then turned our way. Once beyond the hedge, it proved to be the girl with her pink motor veil. She was walking with her hands in the pockets of her ulster, and she was limping. About a dozen feet behind her, and stopping every now and then so as not to overtake her, came the runabout. It was very peculiar. The young man had his jaws set tight, and as he was staring at the girl, and as she was staring straight ahead, neither of them saw us on the bank just above their heads.
The girl—she was a very pretty girl, although streaky just then—had a tight grip on the Pomeranian. She had it tucked under her arm and it was wriggling and yelping to be free. Just after the blue machine had turned the comer the little beast got loose, and with a yelp he dashed to the car and into the empty seat.
The girl stopped. So did the car. She faced about and the young man. gazed over her head.
Suddenly the girl looked up and saw us, and with a quick glance she spied the lamps of Tish's machine around a curve. No one would have guessed from the front end of the thing that the rear had died in a gutter.
"Oh!" she said. "Oh, I'm so glad you're here! Are you going back to town?"
"We are not going anywhere," Tish replied shortly, "unless your young man can help us."
"He is not my young man," the girl retorted, with distinctness; "but if there isn't very much the matter I daresay he can do something."
"I am not an automobile expert," he said, "but I probably can help a little, as, for instance, stuffing a puncture with rags until we get back to the city." The girl flushed. It was evidently a personal allusion.
"We haven't any rags," said Aggie, "and it isn't a puncture."
"There are two things we might do," said the young gentleman as he eyed our machine critically. "I might go to the nearest telephone and have help sent out from town, but as it's almost sunset it's pretty late for that; or, with a jack and a little help, we might fix it ourselves."
"A jack!" Tish said with scorn. "What kind of a jack—a bootjack or a jackass? I daresay they have them both at that farmhouse; I know they have one."
"A jack— a, lever," explained the young man, beginning to work at the lock of the toolbox. "Where are you going—to Noblestown?"
"To the lake," I replied. Tish was fumbling for the keys to the machine which she kept in a pocket in her petticoat, "We have a summer cottage there."
"I'll make a bargain with you," he suggested. "The—the—er—young lady refuses to go back in my car. We—the fact is, we have had a small difference of opinion, and—she insists on walking home. If I get your machine in shape, will you take her to the city?"
We would have taken her anywhere short of a planet to get away ourselves, and that was how it began; for the young gentleman took off his coat and fell to work immediately. Once, when he had raised the car on the jack and Tish was holding the ends of the boards that he shoved under, while Aggie and I pushed, something gave way and the whole thing settled back with a jerk. Mr. Lewis— that was his name—lifted the broken fence-rails off Tish and helped her to her feet.
"There's something almost alive about automobiles occasionally," he said. "They are so blamed vicious."
"If it was alive," Tish gasped, hunting for her glasses, "I'd kill it." But it never occurred to her that she was going to drown it that very night!
By seven o'clock we had lifted the thing on five fence-rails and the breadboard sign, and Mr. Lewis announced it was now or never. The girl had not come near us. She had taken off her veil and smoothed up her hair, and was busy with a bit of a silver mirror. She was very pretty.
Mr. Lewis got into the car and put on the power. There was a terrible grinding, but nothing moved. From behind, the three of us shoved, and Aggie said between gasps that if anything gave way her niece was to have her amethyst pin.
"Anne!" cried the young gentleman. But Miss Anne was powdering her nose and we all saw her turn it up.
"Anne!" called the young man who was not her young man, "you'll have to help here."
"Help yourself," said Anne coolly, and, moistening her finger, she proceeded to wipe the powder off her eyebrows.
Mr. Lewis shut off the engine, got out of the car and put on his coat. The girl did not turn her head, but she was watching through the mirror, for as he picked up his cap she rose lazily, put away her toilet things and started in our direction.
"What shall I do?" she asked Tish, ignoring him.
"Push," said Tish sharply— "unless you are too lame."
"My being lame won't matter, unless you wish me to kick the machine out," retorted the girl sweetly; and with that, the power being on, she put her brown arms against the car and her shoulder-muscles leaped up under her thin dress, and before I had planted my feet in the ditch the car rose, clung for a minute to the edge, and was over into the road. The girl said nothing. She looked at her hands, stepped out of the ditch, patronizingly helped Aggie out of it, and swung up the path with her head in the air. When I saw her again she had taken the sign off the pump and thrown it in the grass, and was washing her hands unconcernedly while the woman stood in the door and yapped at her.
If she had a mite of sense she would have gone back to the city in the blue car and let us go home to bed. But when she had come back to the road and the young man suggested it—not to her, of course, but casually to us— she whistled to her dog and started to limp down the road. You can't do anything with It girl in that state of mind, I took her in the tonneau with me, and Aggie, who prefers a love affair to a scandal and always reads the marriage licenses with the obituaries—Aggie went in the blue car to keep Mr. Lewis from being lonely.
Chapter IV.
The Appetizers and the Hotel Bureau
We didn't talk very much. Tish was anxious to show she could drive, for all she had sat us down in a ditch, and after she took a wrong turning and stampeded a herd that was being milked in a barnyard, I could not keep my mind off the road. Once I looked at the girl, and there were tears running down her nose and dropping into her lap. I gave her my smelling salts, which I always carry in Tish's machine, and after a while she reached over and slid her hand into mine.
"I shouldn't care if the car went to pieces," she said. "I'd be happier dead."
"If you are always as unpleasant to that young man as you were this evening, I doubt it," I snapped.
"Didn't you ever quarrel with your husband before you were married?" she demanded, looking at me sideways.