Mystery Cases of Letitia Carberry, Tish. Mary Roberts Rinehart
through. We will have to be mothers to her, for she has none."
Well, we passed Mr. Robertson at the comer of the next street, and the girl shrank back and covered her face. And then she directed us, and we overtook the other one as he was going into his doorway. The girl jumped out and ran after him. We distinctly heard him say, "Anne! Darling!" And then, what with anxiety and excitement, Aggie took the worst sneezing spell of the summer, and the rest was lost.
He was terribly ashamed and humiliated, and he said he would take the girl away and be married right off, only he had that wretched package of bribe money that made him think, every time he saw it, how unworthy he was of her! He was going to put it down a sewer drop, but Tish suggested that they be married and go on a honeymoon, and let us return the bribe to Mr. Robertson.
So he gave us the package; and, as you know, Aggie lost it later. Then he asked us if there was a minister in the summer colony at Penzance expect an organ prelude and floral decorations. Get in."
I did not mind their sitting back with me, and his kissing her hand whenever he thought I was not looking. But the thing I objected to was this: I distinctly overheard him say:
"I was desperate to-night, sweetheart; and, oh, my love, you saved me!"
She saved him!
At a crossroads near Penzance, Tish made them get out, and we directed them to a landing where they would find a rowboat. We all kissed the bride; and Mr. Lewis said he had nobody to cheer him on his way, and wouldn't we kiss him, too. So we did, and after they had gone we prepared,for Carpenter's sharp eyes by going into the bushes and putting on the rest of our clothes.
It was the first thing Carpenter said that caused the accident. He brought in the ferryboat and came up the bank to us.
I've been expectin' you," he said, with a grin. "I was thinkin' you might come over by the Carrick Ferry, and the folks there wouldn't know you."
"I guess they'd take my money without i knowing me," Tish said sharply.
"Well," he drawled, with a sharp eye on the three of us, "I didn't want you to have any trouble. We got a telephone message from Noblestown not very long ago to look out for an automobile containing three female desperadoes. The police wants them."
That was when Tish sent the car over the end of the ferry.
Well, as I said early in the narrative, after Tish and Aggie had dried off and gone to bed I stood at my window and tried to see into Ostermaier's parlor, but all I could see was the sleeve of Mrs. Ostermaier's kimono.
As I stood there shivering, the door opened and two shadowy figures came out of the house and crossed the lawn. Just under my window they stopped and the tall shadow held open its arms. The smaller one went into them with a little cry, and they stood there a disgraceful time. Then they lifted their heads and looked lip at our cottage.
"Bless their dear, romantic hearts!" said the girl. I was glad Tish was asleep.
"They should have been pirates!" said the man. "They are true old sports. I suppose they've had their catnip tea by now and are sound asleep. Beloved!" he said, and held out his arms again.
Pirates! I went back to bed in a rage, but I couldn't sleep. Somehow I kept seeing that young idiot holding out his arms, and I felt lonely. Finally I filled the hot-water bottle and put it at my back.
"It's all over, Aggie!" I called—but the only response was a snore that turned into a sneeze.
That Awful Night
Chapter I.
The Green Kimono
Nothing would have induced me to tell the scandalous story had it not been for Letitia's green kimono. But when it was found at the Watermelon Camp, two miles from our cottage, hanging to the branch of a tree, instead of the corduroy trousers and blue flannel shirt that one of the campers said he had hung there overnight, it seemed to require explanation. For one of the men at the Watermelon Camp knew the kimono.
He brought it up the next morning, hanging over his arm, and asked Letitia for the trousers and shirt! He said that the young man who owned them had to wear a blanket until we returned them, not having any other clothes in camp. Also, he said there was a particular kind of bass hook in one of the pockets, and if there was any reason why we could not return the trousers, would we be kind enough to send back the hook.
Now Tish is a teacher in the Sunday-School and has been for thirty-five years. But she looked up from the bowl she was wiping—we had made a pretense at breakfast, although nobody could eat—and she lied.
"I don't know what you mean by coming here for your corduroy trousers and flannel shirt," she said, with a three-cornered red spot in each cheek. "As for that kimono, I never saw it before!"
Then she dropped the bowl. She had to pay twenty cents into the cottage exchequer for it afterward, and she explained that she felt the bowl going, and the falsehood slipped out before she knew what she was saying. Anyhow, it did no good, for the young man in knickerbockers and a bathing shirt held up the kimono, grinning and pointing to the laundry tag. It said "Letitia Carberry," as plain as ink could make it.
Aggie weakened at once. It is always Aggie that weakens. She sat down on the porch step and began to cry. She had been crying off and on all morning, having lost her upper teeth when the boat—but that brings me to the boat.
Just as Aggie threw her apron over her face, we saw old Carpenter, the boatman, coming up the path. I caught Tish's arm as she was escaping into the house. "Not a step," I whispered sternly. "If they arrest one of us, they take us all."
"You see, it was like this," the young man was saying, "Carleton, one of our fellows, was out in his motor canoe last night, and it upset. When he came in, he says he hung his trousers and shirt out on a branch to dry. Anyhow, when he got up an hour or so ago, his clothes were gone, and this—er—garment was there instead." He was staring very hard at Tish. ''He didn't notice the change, being half asleep, and he got his feet in the sleeves all right, but when it came to drawing it up, he noticed something strange about it"
At the name "Carleton" Aggie threw me an agonized glance from her apron. She would not speak without her teeth, and Tish was stooping over the pieces of the bowl. I am a Christian woman, but seeing Aggie weak-kneed and Tish as shaky as gelatine, I hoped that Carpenter, the boatman, would have apoplexy or fall and break his leg before he reached the porch. I turned on the young man at the foot of the steps.
"If you think," I said indignantly, "that three ladies, past their youth and with affairs of their own to look after, have nothing better to do than to wander around at night stealing clothing that they could not possibly wear, and leaving in exchange articles that they er—cherish, go in and examine the house."
Carpenter had come up and stood respectfully by, listening, and to my horror I saw that he held the other half of Aggie's broken oar.
"He won't go into my room!" Aggie said suddenly, and with amazing clearness, considering her teeth.
"Nonsense," I snapped. "This young man has seen an unmade bed before." But Aggie had gone pale, and suddenly I remembered. The handle of the very oar Carpenter carried was lying on a chair beside her bed. All that terrible night she had held on to it as a weapon.
The young man in the bathing shirt only smiled, however, and shifted Tish's kimono to the other shoulder.
"Certainly, if you say you haven't seen Carleton's clothes," he said easily, "the matter is settled. No doubt the same breeze last night that blew the kimono down to the camp and hung it on the branch of a tree took the trousers to make a sensation on one of the nearby