Chapter V: The Gray Goose 228 (6)

We had now only the drunken man to deal with; and as Tish wished no more bloodshed, she managed him in a different manner.

In a word, she secured the towrope from the rear seat of the doctor’s car and, leaving Aggie and myself to watch the others, climbed out and approached him from the rear. It was only the work of a moment to pinion his arms to his sides, and as Aggie immediately pointed her impromptu weapon and cried “Hads up!” he surrendered without a struggle. Having securely roped him, we then rolled him into the sand pit with the others, who showed no signs of coming to.

Fatigued as we were by that time, and no further danger threatening for the moment, we rested for a brief time on the ground and ate a few macaroons which I had carried in a pocket against such an emergency. But by “we” I mean only Tish and myself, as poor Aggie was unable to do so--and, indeed, has been living on soft food ever since. Then retrieving the sack containing the Cummings jewels and silver which the burglars had been carrying, we prepared to carry our double treasure back to the town.

Here, however, I feel that our dear Tish made a tactical error, for after we had found the horse and wagon--in the undergrowth just beyond the seventh hole--instead of heading at once for the police station she insisted on going first to the Ostermaier’s.

“It is,” she said, examining her watch by the aid of the flashlight, “now only half past eleven, and we shall not be late if we hurry. After that I shall report to the police.”

“And what is to prevent those wretches from coming to and escaping in the interval?” I asked dryly.

“True,” Tish agreed. “Perhaps I would better go back and hit them again. But that would take time also.”

In the end we compromised on Tish’s original plan and set out once more. The trip back across the links was uneventful, save that on the eighth green the horse got a foot into the hole and was only extricated with the cup still clinging to his foot.

We had no can opener along, and it is quite possible that the ring of the tin later on on the macadam road led to our undoing. For we had no sooner turned away from the town toward the Ostermaier’s cottage on the beach than a policeman leaped out of the bushes and, catching the animal by the bridle, turned a lantern on us.

“Hey, Murphy!” he called. “Here they are! I’ve got ’em! Hands up, there!”

“Stand back!” said Tish in a peremptory voice. “We are late enough already.”

“Late!” said the policeman, pointing a revolver at us. “Well, time won’t make much difference to you from now on--not where you’re going. You won’t ever need to hurry again.”

“But I must deliver this treasure. After that I’ll explain everything.”

“You bet you’ll deliver it, and right here and now. And your weapons too.”

“Aggie, give up your clothespin,” said Tish in a resigned voice. “These yokels apparently think us guilty of something or other, but my conscience is clear. If you want the really guilty parties,” she told the policeman, “go back to the sand pit by the tenth hole and you will find them.”

“April fool your own self,” said the one called Murphy. “I’ve been following you for two hours and I don’t trust you. You’re too resourceful. Is the stuff there?” he asked the first man, who had been searching in the wagon.

“All here.”

“Then we’ll be moving along,” he said; and in this fashion did we reach the town once more, and the station house.

Never shall I forget that moment. Each of us handcuffed and hustled along by the officers, we were shoved into the station house in a most undignified manner, to confront the sheriff and a great crowd of people. Nor shall I ever forget the sheriff’s face when he shouted in an angry voice:

“Women, by heck! When a woman goes wrong she sure goes!”

The place seemed to be crowded with people. The fish-pier man was there, and a farmer who said we had smashed his feed cutter. And Doctor Parkinson, limping about in his bedroom slippers and demanding to know where we had left his car, and another individual who claimed it was his horse we had taken, and that we’d put a tin can on his off forefoot and ought to be sued for cruelty to animals. And even Mr. Stubbs, because his license plates were on our car--and of course the old fool had told all about it--and the Cummings butler, who pointed at Tish and said that after the alarm was raised she had tried to get back into the house again, which was, of course, ridiculous.

I must say it looked bad for us, especially when the crowd moved and we saw a man lying in a corner with an overcoat under his head and his eyes shut. Tish, who had not lost an ounce of dignity, gazed at him without expression.

“I dare say,” she said, “that you claim that that is our work also.”

“Just about killed him, you have,” said the sheriff. “Went right through him with that motorcycle you stole. Murder--that’s what it’s likely to be--murder. D’you get his name, doctor?”

“Only roused enough to say it was Bill,” said Doctor Parkinson. “I wish myself to lodge a complaint for assault and battery against these women. I am per----”

But Tish interrupted him.

“Bill?” she said. “Bill?”

Without a word she pushed the crowd aside, and bending over Bill, with her poor manacled hands she examined him as best she could. Then she straightened herself and addressed the crowd with composure.

“Under this man’s shirt,” she said, “you will find what I imagine to be a full set of burglar’s tools. If your hands are not paralyzed like your brains, examine him and see.”

And they found them! The picture of that moment is indelibly impressed on my mind--the sheriff holding up the tools and Tish addressing the mob with majesty and the indignation of outraged womanhood.

“Gentlemen, this is one of the gang which robbed the Cummings house to-night. Through all this eventful evening, during which I regret to say some of you have suffered, my friends and I have been on their track. Had the motorcycle not wrecked that ruffian’s car, they would now have safely escaped. As it is, when we were so unjustly arrested I had but just recovered the Cummings silver and jewels, and alone and unaided had overcome the remainder of the gang. I am exhausted and weary; I have suffered physical injury and mental humiliation; but I am not too weak or too weary to go now to the sand pit at the tenth hole on the golf links and complete my evening’s work by handing over to the police the three other villains I have captured.”

“Three cheers for the old girl!” somebody called in the crowd. “I’m for her! Let’s go!”

And this, I think, concludes the narrative of that evening’s events. It was almost midnight when, our prisoners safely jailed, we arrived at the Ostermaiers’ to find all the treasure hunters except the Cummingses there and eating supper, and our angel-food cake gracing the center of the table. Our dear Tish walked in and laid the sack of pennies on the table.

“Here is the treasure,” she announced. “It has been an interesting evening, and I hope we shall soon do it again.”

Mr. Ostermaier took up the bag and examined it.

“I have the honor of stating,” he said, “that this, as Miss Carberry claims, is the treasure, and that Miss Carberry wins the hand-painted candlestick which is the prize for the event.” He then examined the bag more carefully, and added:

“But this sack seems to be stained. Perhaps our good sister will explain what the stains are.”

Tish eyed the bag with an expressionless face.

“Stains?” she said. “Oh, yes, of course. I remember now. They are blood.”

Then, leaving them staring and speechless with astonishment, she led the way out of the house, and home.

THE GRAY GOOSE

In order to understand the case of Emmie Hartford and the rather drastic method by which our splendid Tish endeavored to effect a cure, it is necessary to go back a few months to that strange but brief period during which Letitia Carberry developed psychic power.

Not, indeed, that she used her power in the case referred to; on the contrary, rather. But the influence of her earlier experiences is plainly to be discovered by the careful reader, and since she has been severely criticized for her attitude to Emmie, as well as for the methods she pursued, it is only fair to her to revert briefly to the incidents which preceded the Hartford affair.

It is, I admit, a long step from a book on palmistry to that frightful evening when Aggie and I were compelled to sit under the eyes of a policeman and listen to a number of men digging frantically in the cellar of the Hartford house just beneath the room in which we waited. But that is the way it began.

It was last Christmas that Charlie Sands, Tish’s nephew, sent her a book on palmistry. Tish studied it carefully, and for some time Aggie and I, and even Hannah, her maid, were obliged to make impressions of our hands on a sheet of smoked paper while Tish studied the results. Aggie, I recall, had a line down near her wrist which worried Tish greatly, revealing as it did an unbridled and passionate nature, although Aggie was certain that it was where she had been cut while paring quinces some years ago. And Hannah certainly had the circle which indicated death by drowning. But what is important to this narrative is that our dear Tish discovered that she herself had the psychic cross on both hands.

She at once undertook a study of such matters, although at first her attitude was largely one of academic interest, she having always stoutly maintained that under no circumstances, once having passed over, would she care to be brought back and forced to inhabit even temporarily the body of a medium she might not care for or might indeed positively dislike.

And, I may say, her interest was largely impersonal until well on into the spring. Then one night she had a most curious experience, and there began that earnest investigation which was to lead us into such strange paths, and was later, indeed, to see us driven from the Hartford home under conditions so unpleasant that only a sense of fairness to Tish compels me to record them.

Briefly, then, Tish was reading one evening in the living room of her apartment, while Hannah in the kitchen was cutting out a nightgown from a paper pattern. There was only the light from the reading lamp, an auspicious fact, since we have since learned how fatal is light to these delicate phenomena, and it so happened that there was on the table beside her a vase of flowers and also a pitcher of drinking water. Since both water and flowers greatly assist in psychic manifestations, it will be readily seen that, without Tish knowing it, the stage was already set for the drama which ensued.

Suddenly she heard a faint rustling, and on glancing up there was the sleeve pattern of Hannah’s nightgown moving across the doorsill and into the room!

It is unfortunate that, in her surprise, she dropped her book and thus broke the ectoplasmic force, or whatever it may be called. The paper instantly ceased to move. But her interest was naturally aroused, and with her usual promptness she at once inaugurated a series of sittings, consisting of the three of us--Aggie, Tish and myself. Later on, for one experiment, we persuaded Hannah to join us, with results so startling that neither she nor Aggie sat again. But even these early sittings brought surprising results. I quote a few extracts from Tish’s record, made each evening after the event, and thus as correct as possible:

At one A.M. last night we secured heavy raps on the wall next to the Ingersoll apartment, distinctly audible over the sound of the phonograph.

By an unmistakable affirmative in the usual code of raps for yes and no, Mr. Wiggins tonight told Aggie he had desired her to have his cameo scarf pin, and not his sister, who has it.