V
The last thing I recall of Mr. McDonald that day is seeing him standingthere in the water, holding the tray, with the teapot steaming under hisnose, and gazing after us with an air of bewilderment that did notdeceive us at all.
As I look back, there is only one thing we might have noticed at thetime. This was the fact that Hutchins, having started the engine, wassitting beside it on the floor of the boat and laughing in the cruelestpossible manner. As I said to Aggie at the time: "A spy is a spy andentitled to punishment if discovered; but no young woman should laughover so desperate a situation."
I come now to the denouement of this exciting period. It had been Tish'stheory that the red-haired man should not be taken into our confidence.If there was a reward for the capture of the spy, we ourselves intendedto have it.
The steamer was due the next day but one. Tish was in favor of notwaiting, but of at once going in the motor boat to the town, some thirtymiles away, and telling of our capture; but Hutchins claimed there wasnot sufficient gasoline for such an excursion. That afternoon we went inthe motor launch to where Tish had hidden the green canoe and, with ahatchet, rendered it useless.
The workings of the subconscious mind are marvelous. In the midst ofchopping, Tish suddenly looked up.
"Have you noticed," she said, "that the detective is always watching ourcamp?"
"That's all he has to do," Aggie suggested.
"Stuff and nonsense! Didn't he follow you into the swamp? Does Hutchinsever go out in the canoe that he doesn't go out also? I'll tell you whathas happened: She's young and pretty, and he's fallen in love with her."
I must say it sounded reasonable. He never bothered about the motorboat, but the instant she took the canoe and started out he was hoveringsomewhere near.
"She's noticed it," Tish went on. "That's what she was quarreling aboutwith him yesterday."
"How are we to know," said Aggie, who was gathering up the scraps of thegreen canoe and building a fire under them--"how are we to know they arenot old friends, meeting thus in the wilderness? Fate plays strangetricks, Tish. I lived in the same street with Mr. Wiggins for years, andnever knew him until one day when my umbrella turned wrong side out in agust of wind."
"Fate fiddlesticks!" said Tish. "There's no such thing as fate inaffairs of this sort. It's all instinct--the instinct of the race tocontinue itself."
This Aggie regarded as indelicate and she was rather cool to Tish thebalance of the day.
Our prisoner spent most of the day at the end of the island toward us,sitting quietly, as we could sec through the glasses. We watchedcarefully, fearing at any time to see the Indian paddling toward him.
[Tish was undecided what to do in such an emergency, except to intercepthim and explain, threatening him also with having attempted to carry theincriminating papers. As it happened, however, the entire camp had gonefor a two-days' deer hunt, and before they returned the whole thing hadcome to its surprising end.]
Late in the afternoon Tish put her theory of the red-haired man to thetest.
"Hutchins," she said, "Miss Lizzie and I will cook the dinner if youwant to go in the canoe to Harvey's Bay for water-lilies."
Hutchins at once said she did not care a rap for water-lilies; but,seeing a determined glint in Tish's eye, she added that she would go forfrogs if Tish wanted her out of the way.
"Don't talk like a child!" Tish retorted. "Who said I wanted you out ofthe way?"
It is absolutely true that the moment Hutchins put her foot into thecanoe the red-haired man put down his fishing-rod and rose. And she hadnot taken three strokes with the paddle before he was in the blue canoe.
Hutchins saw him just then and scowled. The last we saw of her she wasmoving rapidly up the river and the detective was dropping slowlybehind. They both disappeared finally into the bay and Tish drew a longbreath.
"Typical!" she said curtly. "He's sent here to watch a dangerous man andspends his time pursuing the young woman who hates the sight of him.When women achieve the suffrage they will put none but married men inpositions of trust."
Hutchins and the detective were still out of sight when supper-timecame. The spy's supper weighed on us, and at last Tish attempted tostart the motor launch. We had placed the supper and the small raftaboard, and Aggie was leaning over the edge untying the painter,--not aman, but a rope,--when unexpectedly the engine started at the firstrevolution of the wheel.
It darted out to the length of the rope, where it was checked abruptly,the shock throwing Aggie entirely out and into the stream. Tish caughtthe knife from the supper tray to cut us loose, and while Tish cut Ipulled Aggie in, wet as she was. The boat was straining and panting,and, on being released, it sprang forward like a dog unleashed.
Aggie had swallowed a great deal of water and was most disagreeable; butthe Mebbe was going remarkably well, and there seemed to be everyprospect that we should get back to the camp in good order. Alas, forhuman hopes! Mr. McDonald was not very agreeable.
"You know," he said as he waited for his supper to float within reach,"you needn't be so blamed radical about everything you do! If you objectto my hanging round, why not just say so? If I'm too obnoxious I'llclear out."
"Obnoxious is hardly the word," said Tish. "How long am I to be aprisoner?"
"I shall send letters off by the first boat."
He caught the raft just then and examined the supper with interest.
"Of course things might be worse," he said; "but it's dirty treatment,anyhow. And it's darned humiliating. Somebody I know is having a goodtime at my expense. It's heartless! That's what it is--heartless!"
Well, we left him, the engine starting nicely and Aggie being wrapped ina tarpaulin; but about a hundred yards above the island it began to slowdown, and shortly afterward it stopped altogether. As the current caughtus, we luckily threw out the anchor, for the engine refused to startagain. It was then we saw the other canoes.
The girl in the pink tam-o'-shanter was in the first one.
They glanced at us curiously as they passed, and the P.T.S.--that is theway we grew to speak of the pink tam-o'-shanter--raised one hand in theair, which is a form of canoe greeting, probably less upsetting to theequilibrium than a vigorous waving of the arm.
It was just then, I believe, that they saw our camp and headed for it.The rest of what happened is most amazing. They stopped at our landingand unloaded their canoes. Though twilight was falling, we could seethem distinctly. And what we saw was that they calmly took possessionof the camp.
"Good gracious!" Tish cried. "The girls have gone into the tent! Andsomebody's working at the stove. The impertinence!"
Our situation was acutely painful. We could do nothing but watch. Wecalled, but our voices failed to reach them. And Aggie took a chill,partly cold and partly fury. We sat there while they ate the entiresupper!
They were having a very good time. Now and then somebody would go intothe tent and bring something out, and there would be shrieks oflaughter.
[We learned afterward that part of the amusement was caused by Aggie'sfalse front, which one of the wretches put on as a beard.]
It was while thus distracted that Aggie suddenly screamed, and a momentlater Mr. McDonald climbed over the side and into the boat, dripping.
"Don't be alarmed!" he said. "I'll go back and be a prisoner again justas soon as I've fired the engine. I couldn't bear to think of the ladywho fell in sitting here indefinitely and taking cold." He was examiningthe engine while he spoke. "Have visitors, I see," he observed, ascalmly as though he were not dripping all over the place.
"Intruders, not visitors!" Tish said angrily. "I never saw them before."
"Rather pretty, the one with the pink cap. May I examine the gasolinesupply?" There was no gasoline. He shrugged his shoulders. "I'm afraidno amount of mechanical genius I intended to offer you will start her,"he said; "but the young lady--Hutchins is her name, I believe?--willsee you here and come after you, of course."
Well, there was no den
ying that, spy or no spy, his presence was acomfort. He offered to swim back to the island and be a prisoner again,but Tish said magnanimously that there was no hurry. On Aggie's offeringhalf of her tarpaulin against the wind, which had risen, he accepted.
"Your Miss Hutchins is reckless, isn't she?" he said when he wascomfortably settled. "She's a strong swimmer; but a canoe is uncertainat the best."
"She's in no danger," said Tish. "She has a devoted admirer watching outfor her."
"The deuce she has!" His voice was quite interested. "Why, who onearth--"
"Your detective," said Aggie softly. "He's quite mad about her. The wayhe follows her and the way he looks at her--it's thrilling!"
Mr. McDonald said nothing for quite a while. The canoe party hadevidently eaten everything they could find, and somebody had brought outa banjo and was playing.
Tish, unable to vent her anger, suddenly turned on Mr. McDonald. "If youthink," she said, "that the grocery list fooled us, it didn't!"
"Grocery list?"
"That's what I said."
"How did you get my grocery list?"
So she told him, and how she had deciphered it, and how the word"dynamite" had only confirmed her early suspicions.
His only comment was to say, "Good Heavens!" in a smothered voice.
"It was the extractor that made me suspicious," she finished. "What wereyou going to extract? Teeth?"
"And so, when my Indian was swimming, you went through his things! It'sthe most astounding thing I ever--My dear lady, an extractor is used toget the hooks out of fish. It was no cipher, I assure you. I needed anextractor and I ordered it. The cipher you speak of is only a remarkablecoincidence."
"Huh!" said Tish. "And the paper you dropped in the train--was that acoincidence?"
"That's not my secret," he said, and turned sulky at once.
"Don't tell me," Tish said triumphantly, "that any young man comes hereabsolutely alone without a purpose!"
"I had a purpose, all right; but it was not to blow up a railroadtrain."
Apparently he thought he had said too much, for he relapsed into silenceafter that, with an occasional muttering.
It was eight o'clock when Hutchins's canoe came into sight. She waspaddling easily, but the detective was far behind and moving slowly.
She saw the camp with its uninvited guests, and then she saw us. Thedetective, however, showed no curiosity; and we could see that he madefor his landing and stumbled exhaustedly up the bank. Hutchins drew upbeside us. "He'll not try that again, I think," she said in her crispvoice. "He's out of training. He panted like a motor launch. Who are ourvisitors?"
Here her eyes fell on Mr. McDonald and her face set in the dusk.
"You'll have to go back and get some gasoline, Hutchins."
"What made you start out without looking?"
"And send the vandals away. If they wait until I arrive, I'll be likelyto do them some harm. I have never been so outraged."
"Let me go for gasoline in the canoe," said Mr. McDonald. He leaned overthe thwart and addressed Hutchins. "You're worn out," he said. "Ipromise to come back and be a perfectly well-behaved prisoner again."
"Thanks, no."
"I'm wet. The exercise will warm me."
"Is it possible," she said in a withering tone that was lost on us atthe time, "that you brought no dumb-bells with you?"
If we had had any doubts they should have been settled then; but wenever suspected. It is incredible, looking back.
The dusk was falling and I am not certain of what followed. It was,however, something like this: Mr. McDonald muttered something angrilyand made a motion to get into the canoe. Hutchins replied that she wouldnot have help from him if she died for it. The next thing we knew shewas in the launch and the canoe was floating off on the current. Aggiesquealed; and Mr. McDonald, instead of swimming after the thing, merelyfolded his arms and looked at it.
"You know," he said to Hutchins, "you have so unpleasant a dispositionthat somebody we both know of is better off than he thinks he is!"
Tish's fury knew no bounds, for there we were marooned and two of us wetto the skin. I must say for Hutchins, however, that when she learnedabout Aggie she was bitterly repentant, and insisted on putting her ownsweater on her. But there we were and there we should likely stay.
It was quite dark by that time, and we sat in the launch, rockinggently. The canoeing party had lighted a large fire on the beach, usingthe driftwood we had so painfully accumulated.
We sat in silence, except that Tish, who was watching our camp, saidonce bitterly that she was glad there were three beds in the tent. Thegirls of the canoeing party would be comfortable.
After a time Tish turned on Mr. McDonald sharply. "Since you claim to beno spy," she said, "perhaps you will tell us what brings you alone tothis place? Don't tell me it's fish--I've seen you reading, with a lineout. You're no fisherman."
He hesitated. "No," he admitted. "I'll be frank, Miss Carberry. I didnot come to fish."
"What brought you?"
"Love," he said, in a low tone. "I don't expect you to believe me, butit's the honest truth."
"Love!" Tish scoffed.
"Perhaps I'd better tell you the story," he said. "It's long and--andrather sad."
"Love stories," Hutchins put in coldly, "are terribly stupid, except tothose concerned."
"That," he retorted, "is because you have never been in love. You areyoung and--you will pardon the liberty?--attractive; but you are totallyprosaic and unromantic."
"Indeed!" she said, and relapsed into silence.
"These other ladies," Mr. McDonald went on, "will understand thestrangeness of my situation when I explain that the--the young lady Icare for is very near; is, in fact, within sight."
"Good gracious!" said Aggie. "Where?"
"It is a long story, but it may help to while away the long night hours;for I dare say we are here for the night. Did any one happen to noticethe young lady in the first canoe, in the pink tam-o'-shanter?"
We said we had--all except Hutchins, who, of course, had not seen her.Mr. McDonald got a wet cigarette from his pocket and, finding a box ofmatches on the seat, made an attempt to dry it over the flames; so hisstory was told in the flickering light of one match after another.