To add to the discomfort of the situation Aggie declared that we were being followed by a bear, and at the same instant stepped into a swamp up to her knees. She became calm at once, with the calmness of despair.
"Go and leave me, Lizzie!" she said. "He is just behind those bushes. I may sink before he gets me--that"s one comfort."
Hutchins found a log and, standing on it, tried to pull her up; but she seemed firmly fastened. Aggie went quite white; and, almost beside myself, I poured her a cup of hot tea, which she drank. I remember she murmured Mr. Wiggins"s name, and immediately after she yelled that the bear was coming.
It was, however, the detective who emerged from the bushes. He got Aggie out with one good heave, leaving both her shoes gone forever; and while she collapsed, whimpering, he folded his arms and stared at all of us angrily.
"What sort of d.a.m.nable idiocy is this?" he demanded in a most unpleasant tone.
Aggie revived and sat upright.
"That"s our affair, isn"t it?" said Hutchins curtly.
"Not by a blamed sight!" was his astonishing reply.
"The next time I am sinking in a mora.s.s, let me sink," Aggie said, with simple dignity.
He did not speak another word, but gave each of us a glance of the most deadly contempt, and finished up with Hutchins.
"What I don"t understand," he said furiously, "is why you have to lend yourself to this senile idiocy. Because some old women choose to sink themselves in a swamp is no reason why you should commit suicide!"
Aggie said afterward only the recollection that he had saved her life prevented her emptying the tea on him. I should hardly have known Hutchins.
"Naturally," she said in a voice thick with fury, "you are in a position to insult these ladies, and you do. But I warn you, if you intend to keep on, this swamp is nothing. We like it here. We may stay for months.
I hope you have your life insured."
Perhaps we should have understood it all then. Of course Charlie Sands, for whom I am writing this, will by this time, with his keen mind, comprehend it all; but I a.s.sure you we suspected nothing.
How simple, when you line it up: The country house and the garden hose; the detective, with no camp equipment; Mr. McDonald and the green canoe; the letter on the train; the red flag; the girl in the pink tam-o"-shanter--who has not yet appeared, but will shortly; Mr.
McDonald"s incriminating list--also not yet, but soon.
How inevitably they led to what Charlie Sands has called our crime!
The detective, who was evidently very strong, only glared at her. Then he swung the canoe up on his head and, turning about, started back the way we had come. Though Hutchins and Aggie were raging, I was resigned.
My neck was stiff and my shoulders ached. We finished our tea in silence and then made our way back to the river.
I have now reached Tish"s adventure. It is not my intention in this record to defend Tish. She thought her conclusions were correct. Charlie Sands says she is like Shaw--she has got a crooked point of view, but she believes she is seeing straight. And, after a while, if you look her way long enough you get a sort of mental astigmatism.
So I shall confess at once that, at the time, I saw nothing immoral in what she did that afternoon while we were having our adventure in the swamp.
I was putting cloths wrung out of arnica and hot water on my neck when she came home, and Hutchins was baking biscuit--she was a marvelous cook, though Aggie, who washed the dishes, objected to the number of pans she used.
Tish ignored both my neck and the biscuits, and, marching up the bank, got her shotgun from the tent and loaded it.
"We may be attacked at any time," she said briefly; and, getting the binocular, she searched the river with a splendid sweeping glance. "At any time. Hutchins, take these gla.s.ses, please, and watch that we are not disturbed."
"I"m baking biscuit, Miss Let.i.tia."
"Biscuit!" said Tish scornfully. "Biscuit in times like these?"
She walked up to the camp stove and threw the oven door open; but, though I believe she had meant to fling them into the river, she changed her mind when she saw them.
"Open a jar of honey, Hutchins," she said, and closed the oven; but her voice was abstracted. "You can watch the river from the stove, Hutchins," she went on. "Miss Aggie and Miss Lizzie and I must confer together."
So we went into the tent, and Tish closed and fastened it.
"Now," she said, "I"ve got the papers."
"Papers?"
"The ones Mr. McDonald gave that Indian this morning. I had an idea he"d still have them. You can"t hurry an Indian. I waited in the bushes until he went in swimming. Then I went through his pockets."
"Tish Carberry!" cried Aggie.
"These are not times to be squeamish," Tish said loftily. "I"m neutral; of course; but Great Britain has had this war forced on her and I"m going to see that she has a fair show. I"ve ordered all my stockings from the same shop in London, for twenty years, and squarer people never lived. Look at these--how innocent they look, until one knows!"
She produced two papers from inside her waist. I must confess that, at first glance, I saw nothing remarkable.
"The first one looks," said Tish, "like a grocery order. It"s meant to look like that. It"s relieved my mind of one thing--McDonald"s got no wireless or he wouldn"t be sending cipher messages by an Indian."
It was written on a page torn out of a pocket notebook and the page was ruled with an inch margin at the left. This was the doc.u.ment:--
1 Dozen eggs.
20 Yards fishing-line.
1 pkg. Needles--anything to sew a b.u.t.ton on.
1 doz. A B C ba.s.s hooks.
3 lbs. Meat--anything so it isn"t fish.
1 bot. Ink for fountain pen.
3 Tins sardines.
1 Extractor.
Well, I could not make anything of it; but, of course, I have not Tish"s mind. Aggie was almost as bad.
"What"s an extractor?" she asked.
"Exactly!" said Tish. "What is an extractor? Is the fellow going to pull teeth? No! He needed an _e_; so he made up a word."
She ran her finger down the first letters of the second column.
"D-y-n-a-m-i-t-e!" she said triumphantly. "Didn"t I tell you?"
IV
Well, there it was--staring at us. I felt positively chilled. He looked so young and agreeable, and, as Aggie said, he had such nice teeth. And to know him for what he was--it was tragic! But that was not all.