More Tish Read online

  MORE TISH

  by

  MARY ROBERTS RINEHART

  Author of "A Poor Wise Man," "Dangerous Days," "The Amazing Interlude,""Bab," "K," Etc.

  * * * * *

  BY MARY ROBERTS RINEHART

  A POOR WISE MAN DANGEROUS WAYS THE AMAZING INTERLUDE "K" BAB: A SUB-DEB TISH MORE TISH SIGHT UNSEEN AND THE CONFESSION AFFINITIES AND OTHER STORIES LOVE STORIES KINGS, QUEENS AND PAWNS TWENTY-THREE AND A HALF HOURS' LEAVE "ISN'T THAT JUST LIKE A MAN?" ETC., ETC.

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  New YorkGeorge H. Doran CompanyCopyright, 1921, By George H. Doran CompanyCopyright, 1912, 1917, 1919, By The Curtis Publishing CompanyPrinted in the United States of America

  CONTENTS

  I page THE CAVE ON THUNDER CLOUD 9

  II TISH DOES HER BIT 75

  III SALVAGE 161

  THE CAVE ON THUNDER CLOUD

  I

  It is doubtful if Aggie and I would have known anything about Tish'splan had Aggie not seen the advertisement in the newspaper. She came tomy house at once in violent excitement and with her bonnet over her ear,and gave me the newspaper clipping to read. It said:

  "WANTED: A small donkey. Must be gentle, female, and if possible answer to the name of Modestine. Address X 27, Morning News."

  "Well," I said when I had read it, "did you insert the advertisement ordo you propose to answer it?"

  Aggie was preparing to take a drink of water, but, the water being coldand the weather warm, she was dabbing a little on her wrists first toavoid colic. She looked up at me in surprise.

  "Do you mean to say, Lizzie," she demanded, "that you don't recognizethat advertisement?"

  "Modestine?" I reflected. "I've heard the name before somewhere. Didn'tTish have a cook once named Modestine?"

  But it seemed that that was not it. Aggie sat down opposite me and tookoff her bonnet. Although it was only the first of May, the weather, as Ihave said, was very warm.

  "To think," she said heavily, "that all the time while I was reading italoud to her when she was laid up with neuralgia she was scheming andplanning and never saying a word to me! Not that I would have gone; butI could have sent her mail to her, and at least have notified theauthorities if she had disappeared."

  "Reading what aloud to her--her mail?" I asked sharply.

  "'Travels with a Donkey,'" Aggie replied. "Stevenson's 'Travels with aDonkey.' It isn't safe to read anything aloud to Tish any more. Theolder she gets the worse she is. She thinks that what any one else hasdone she can go and do. If she should read a book on poultry-farming shewould think she could teach a young hen to lay an egg."

  As Aggie spoke a number of things came back to me. I recalled that theSunday before, in church, Tish had appeared absorbed and even moredevout than usual, and had taken down the headings of the sermon on hermissionary envelope; but that, on my leaning over to see if she had themcorrectly, she had whisked the paper away before I had had more thantime to see the first heading. It had said "Rubber Heels."

  Aggie was pacing the floor nervously, holding the empty glass.

  "She's going on a walking tour with a donkey, that's what, Lizzie," shesaid, pausing before me. "I could see it sticking out all over her whileI read that book. And if we go to her now and tax her with it she'lladmit it. But if she says she is doing it to get thin don't you believeit."

  That was all Aggie would say. She shut her lips and said she had comefor my recipe for caramel custard. But when I put on my wraps and said Iwas going to Tish's she said she would come along.

  Tish lives in an apartment, and she was not at home. Miss Swift, theseamstress, opened the door and stood in the doorway so we could notenter.

  "I'm sorry, Miss Aggie and Miss Lizzie," she said, putting out her leftelbow as Aggie tried to duck by her; "but she left positive orders toadmit nobody. Of course if she had known you were coming--but shedidn't."

  "What are you making, Miss Letitia?" Aggie asked sweetly. "Summerclothes?"

  "Yes. Some little thin things--it's getting so hot!"

  "Humph! I see you are making them with an upholsterer's needle!" saidAggie, and marched down the hall with her head up.

  I was quite bewildered. For even if Tish had decided on a walking tour Icouldn't imagine what an upholsterer's needle had to do with it, unlessshe meant to upholster the donkey.

  We got down to the entrance before Aggie spoke again. Then:

  "What did I tell you?" she demanded. "That woman's making her a----"

  But at that very instant there was a thud under our feet and somethingcame "ping" through the floor not six inches from my toe, and lodged inthe ceiling. Aggie and I stood looking up. It had made a small roundhole over our heads, and a little cloud of plaster dust hung round it.

  "Somebody shot at us!" declared Aggie, clutching my arm. "That was abullet!"

  I stooped down and felt the floor. There was a hole in it, and fromsomewhere below I thought I heard voices. It was not very comfortable,standing there on top of Heaven knows what; but we were divided betweenfear and outrage, and our indignation won. With hardly a word we wentback to the rear staircase and so to the cellar. Halfway down the stairsboth of us remembered the same thing--that it was Tish's day to use thebasement laundry, and that perhaps----

  Tish was not in the laundry, nor was Hannah, her maid. But Tish'sblue-and-white dressing sacque was on the line, and the blue had run, asI had said it would when she bought it. In the furnace room beyond weheard voices, and Aggie opened the door.

  Tish and Hannah were both there. They had not heard us.

  "Nonsense!" Tish was saying. "If anybody had been hit we'd have heard ascream; or if they were killed we'd have heard 'em fall."

  "I heard a sort of yell," said poor Hannah. "I don't like it, Miss Tish.The time before you just missed me."

  "Why did you stick your arm out?" demanded Tish. "Now take thatbroomstick and we'll start again. Did you score that?"

  "How'll I score it?" asked Hannah. "Hit or miss?" She went to thecellar wall and stood waiting, with a piece of charcoal in her hand. Thewhitewashed wall was marked with rows of X's and ciphers. The cipherspredominated.

  "Mark it a miss."

  "But I heard a yell----"

  "Fiddle-de-dee! Are you ready?" Tish had lifted a small rifle intoposition and was standing, with her feet apart, pointing it at a whitetarget hanging by a string from a rafter. As she gave the signal. Hannahsighed, and, picking up a broomhandle, started the target to swaying,pendulum fashion; Tish followed it with the gun.

  I thought things had gone far enough, so I stepped into the cellar andspoke in ringing tones.

  "Letitia Carberry!" I said sternly.

  Tish pulled the trigger at that moment and the bullet went into thefurnace pipe. It was absurd, of course, for Tish to blame me for it, butshe turned on me in a rage.

  "Look what you made me do!" she snapped. "Can't a person have a moment'sprivacy?"

  "What I think you need," I retorted, "is six months' complete seclusionin a sanitarium."

  "You nearly shot us in the upper hall," Aggie put in warmly.

  "Well, as long as I didn't shoot you in the upper hall or any otherplace, I guess you needn't fuss," said Tish. "Ready, Hannah."

  This time she shot Hannah in the broomhandle, and practically put her_hors de combat_; but the shot immediately after was what Tishtriumphantly called a clean bull's-eye--that is, it hit the center ofthe target.

  That is the time to stop, when one has made a bull's-eye in any sort ofachi
evement, I take it. And Tish is nobody's fool. She took off herspectacles and wiped the perspiration and gunpowder streaks from herface. She was immediately in high good humor.

  "Every unprotected female should know how to handle a weapon," she saidoracularly, and, sitting down on the edge of the coal-bin, proceeded toswab out the gun with a wad of cotton on the end of a stick.

  "The poker has been good enough for you for fifty years," I retorted."And if you think you look sporty, or anything but idiotic, sittingthere in a flowered kimono and swabbing out the throat of that