Chapter 13

Here she poured more water into the foot-tub and made it much too hot. This thawed her rather, and she explained what was wrong. She was bruised, scratched to the knees, and with a bump the size of an egg on her forehead, where she had run into a tree.

The whole story was very exciting. It seems she got the green canoe without any difficulty, the spy being sound asleep in his tent; but about that time the wind came up and Tish said she could not make an inch of progress toward our camp.

The chewing gum with which we had repaired our canoe came out at that time and the boat began to fill, Tish being unable to sit over the leak and paddle at the same time. So, at last, she gave up and made for the mainland.

"The shooting," Tish said with difficulty, "was by men from the Indian camp firing at me. I landed below the camp, and was making my way as best I could through the woods when they heard me moving. I believe they thought it was a bear."

I think Tish was more afraid of the Indians, in spite of their sixty-three steel engravings and the rest of it, than she pretended, though she said she would have made herself known, but at that moment she fell over a fallen tree and for fifteen minutes was unable to speak a word. When at last she rose the excitement was over and they had gone back to their camp.

"Anyhow," she finished, "the green canoe is hidden a couple of miles down the river, and I guess Mr. McDonald is safe for a time. Lizzie, you can take a bath to-morrow safely."

Tish sat up most of the rest of the night composing a letter to the authorities of the town, telling them of Mr. McDonald and enclosing careful copies of the incriminating documents she had found.

During the following morning the river was very quiet. Through the binocular we were able to see Mr. McDonald standing on the shore of his island and looking intently in our direction, but naturally we paid no attention to him.

The red-haired man went in swimming that day and necessitated our retiring to the tent for an hour and a half; but at noon Aggie's naturally soft heart began to assert itself.

"Spy or no spy," she said to Tish, "we ought to feed him."

"Huh!" was Tish's rejoinder. "There is no sense is wasting good food on a man whose hours are numbered."

We were surprised, however, to find that Hutchins, who had detested Mr. McDonald, was rather on Aggie's side.

"The fact that he has but a few more hours," she said to Tish, "is an excellent reason for making those hours as little wretched as possible."

It was really due to Hutchins, therefore, that Mr. McDonald had a luncheon. The problem of how to get it to him was a troublesome one, but Tish solved it with her customary sagacity.

"We can make a raft," she said, "a small one, large enough to hold a tray. By stopping the launch some yards above the island we can float his luncheon to him quite safely."

That was the method we ultimately pursued and it worked most satisfactorily.

Hutchins baked hot biscuits; and, by putting a cover over the pan, we were enabled to get them to him before they cooled.

We prepared a really appetizing luncheon of hot biscuits, broiled ham, marmalade, and tea, adding, at Aggie's instructions, a jar of preserved peaches, which she herself had put up.

Tish made the raft while we prepared the food, and at exactly half-past twelve o'clock we left the house. Mr. McDonald saw us coming and was waiting smilingly at the upper end of the island.

"Great Scott!" he said. "I thought you were never going to hear me. Another hour and I'd have made a swim for it, though it's suicidal with this current. I'll show you where you can come in so you won't hit a rock."

Hutchins had stopped the engine of the motor boat and we threw out the anchor at a safe distance from the shore.

"We are not going to land," said Tish, "and I think you know perfectly well the reason why."

"Oh, now," he protested; "surely you are going to land! I've had an awfully uncomfortable accident--my canoe's gone."

"We know that," Tish said calmly. "As a matter of fact, we took it."

Mr. McDonald sat down suddenly on a log at the water's edge and looked at us.

"Oh!" he said.

"You may not believe it," Tish said, "but we know everything--your dastardly plot, who the red-haired man is, and all the destruction and wretchedness you are about to cause."

"Oh, I say!" he said feebly. "I wouldn't go as far as that. I'm--I'm not such a bad sort."

"That depends on the point of view," said Tish grimly.

Aggie touched her on the arm then and reminded her that the biscuits were getting cold; but Tish had a final word with him.

"Your correspondence has fallen into my hands, young man," she said, "and will be turned over to the proper authorities."

"It won't tell them anything they don't know," he said doggedly. "Look here, ladies: I am not ashamed of this thing. I--I am proud of it. I am perfectly willing to yell it out loud for everybody to hear. As a matter of fact, I think I will."

Mr. McDonald stood up suddenly and threw his head back; but here Hutchins, who had been silent, spoke for the first time.

"Don't be an idiot!" she said coldly. "We have something here for you to eat if you behave yourself."

He seemed to see her then for the first time, for he favored her with a long stare.

"Ah!" he said. "Then you are not entirely cold and heartless?"

She made no reply to this, being busy in assisting Aggie to lower the raft over the side of the boat.

"Broiled ham, tea, hot biscuits, and marmalade," said Aggie gently. "My poor fellow, we are doing what we consider our duty; but we want you to know that it is hard for us--very hard."

When he saw our plan, Mr. McDonald's face fell; but he stepped out into the water up to his knees and caught the raft as it floated down.

Before he said "Thank you" he lifted the cover of the pan and saw the hot biscuits underneath.

"Really," he said, "it's very decent of you. I sent off a grocery order yesterday, but nothing has come."

Tish had got Hutchins to start the engine by that time and we were moving away. He stood there, up to his knees in water, holding the tray and looking after us. He was really a pathetic figure, especially in view of the awful fate we felt was overtaking him.

He called something after us. On account of the noise of the engine, we could not be certain, but we all heard it the same way.

"Send for the whole d--d outfit!" was the way it sounded to us. "It won't make any difference to me."

V

The last thing I recall of Mr. McDonald that day is seeing him standing there in the water, holding the tray, with the teapot steaming under his nose, and gazing after us with an air of bewilderment that did not deceive us at all.

As I look back, there is only one thing we might have noticed at the time. This was the fact that Hutchins, having started the engine, was sitting beside it on the floor of the boat and laughing in the cruelest possible manner. As I said to Aggie at the time: "A spy is a spy and entitled to punishment if discovered; but no young woman should laugh over so desperate a situation."

I come now to the denouement of this exciting period. It had been Tish's theory 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 intended to have it.

The steamer was due the next day but one. Tish was in favor of not waiting, but of at once going in the motor boat to the town, some thirty miles away, and telling of our capture; but Hutchins claimed there was not sufficient gasoline for such an excursion. That afternoon we went in the motor launch to where Tish had hidden the green canoe and, with a hatchet, rendered it useless.

The workings of the subconscious mind are marvelous. In the midst of chopping, Tish suddenly looked up.

"Have you noticed," she said, "that the detective is always watching our camp?"

"That's all he has to do," Aggie suggested.

"Stuff and nonsense! Didn't he follow you into the swamp? Does Hutchins ever go out in the canoe that he doesn't go out also? I'll tell you what has 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 motor boat, but the instant she took the canoe and started out he was hovering somewhere near.

"She's noticed it," Tish went on. "That's what she was quarreling about with him yesterday."

"How are we to know," said Aggie, who was gathering up the scraps of the green canoe and building a fire under them--"how are we to know they are not old friends, meeting thus in the wilderness? Fate plays strange tricks, Tish. I lived in the same street with Mr. Wiggins for years, and never knew him until one day when my umbrella turned wrong side out in a gust of wind."

"Fate fiddlesticks!" said Tish. "There's no such thing as fate in affairs of this sort. It's all instinct--the instinct of the race to continue itself."

This Aggie regarded as indelicate and she was rather cool to Tish the balance of the day.

Our prisoner spent most of the day at the end of the island toward us, sitting quietly, as we could see through the glasses. We watched carefully, fearing at any time to see the Indian paddling toward him.

[Tish was undecided what to do in such an emergency, except to intercept him and explain, threatening him also with having attempted to carry the incriminating papers. As it happened, however, the entire camp had gone for a two-days' deer hunt, and before they returned the whole thing had come to its surprising end.]

Late in the afternoon Tish put her theory of the red-haired man to the test.

"Hutchins," she said, "Miss Lizzie and I will cook the dinner if you want 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 for frogs if Tish wanted her out of the way.

"Don't talk like a child!" Tish retorted. "Who said I wanted you out of the way?"

It is absolutely true that the moment Hutchins put her foot into the canoe the red-haired man put down his fishing-rod and rose. And she had not 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 was moving rapidly up the river and the detective was dropping slowly behind. They both disappeared finally into the bay and Tish drew a long breath.

"Typical!" she said curtly. "He's sent here to watch a dangerous man and spends his time pursuing the young woman who hates the sight of him. When women achieve the suffrage they will put none but married men in positions of trust."

Hutchins and the detective were still out of sight when supper-time came. The spy's supper weighed on us, and at last Tish attempted to start the motor launch. We had placed the supper and the small raft aboard, and Aggie was leaning over the edge untying the painter,--not a man, but a rope,--when unexpectedly the engine started at the first revolution 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 caught the knife from the supper tray to cut us loose, and while Tish cut I pulled 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; but the Mebbe was going remarkably well, and there seemed to be every prospect that we should get back to the camp in good order. Alas, for human 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 object to my hanging round, why not just say so? If I'm too obnoxious I'll clear out."

"Obnoxious is hardly the word," said Tish.

"How long am I to be a prisoner?"

"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 good time at my expense. It's heartless! That's what it is--heartless!"

Well, we left him, the engine starting nicely and Aggie being wrapped in a tarpaulin; but about a hundred yards above the island it began to slow down, and shortly afterward it stopped altogether. As the current caught us, we luckily threw out the anchor, for the engine refused to start again. 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 the way we grew to speak of the pink tam-o'-shanter--raised one hand in the air, which is a form of canoe greeting, probably less upsetting to the equilibrium 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 landing and unloaded their canoes. Though twilight was falling, we could see them distinctly. And what we saw was that they calmly took possession of the camp.

"Good gracious!" Tish cried. "The girls have gone into the tent! And somebody's working at the stove. The impertinence!"

Our situation was acutely painful. We could do nothing but watch. We called, but our voices failed to reach them. And Aggie took a chill, partly cold and partly fury. We sat there while they ate the entire supper!

They were having a very good time. Now and then somebody would go into the tent and bring something out, and there would be shrieks of laughter.

[We learned afterward that part of the amusement was caused by Aggie's false front, which one of the wretches put on as a beard.]

It was while thus distracted that Aggie suddenly screamed, and a moment later 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 just as soon as I've fired the engine. I couldn't bear to think of the lady who fell in sitting here indefinitely and taking cold." He was examining the engine while he spoke. "Have visitors, I see," he observed, as calmly 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 gasoline supply?" There was no gasoline. He shrugged his shoulders. "I'm afraid no amount of mechanical genius I intended to offer you will start her," he said; "but the young lady--Hutchins is her name, I believe?--will see you here and come after you, of course."

Well, there was no denying that, spy or no spy, his presence was a comfort. 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 offering half of her tarpaulin against the wind, which had risen, he accepted.

"Your Miss Hutchins is reckless, isn't she?" he said when he was comfortably settled. "She's a strong swimmer; but a canoe is uncertain at the best."

"She's in no danger," said Tish. "She has a devoted admirer watching out for her."

"The deuce she has!" His voice was quite interested. "Why, who on earth--"

"Your detective," said Aggie softly. "He's quite mad about her. The way he follows her and the way he looks at her--it's thrilling!"

Mr. McDonald said nothing for quite a while. The canoe party had evidently eaten everything they could find, and somebody had brought out a banjo and was playing.

Tish, unable to vent her anger, suddenly turned on Mr. McDonald. "If you think," 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 were you going to extract? Teeth?"

"And so, when my Indian was swimming, you went through his things! It's the most astounding thing I ever--My dear lady, an extractor is used to get the hooks out of fish. It was no cipher, I assure you. I needed an extractor and I ordered it. The cipher you speak of is only a remarkable coincidence."

"Huh!" said Tish. "And the paper you dropped in the train--was that a coincidence?"

"That's not my secret," he said, and turned sulky at once.

"Don't tell me," Tish said triumphantly, "that any young man comes here absolutely alone without a purpose!"

"I had a purpose, all right; but it was not to blow up a railroad train."

Apparently he thought he had said too much, for he relapsed into silence after that, with an occasional muttering.

It was eight o'clock when Hutchins's canoe came into sight. She was paddling easily, but the detective was far behind and moving slowly.

She saw the camp with its uninvited guests, and then she saw us. The detective, however, showed no curiosity; and we could see that he made for his landing and stumbled exhaustedly up the bank. Hutchins drew up beside us. "He'll not try that again, I think," she said in her crisp voice. "He's out of training. He panted like a motor launch. Who are our visitors?"

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 likely to do them some harm. I have never been so outraged."

"Let me go for gasoline in the canoe," said Mr. McDonald. He leaned over the thwart and addressed Hutchins. "You're worn out," he said. "I promise 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 at the time, "that you brought no dumb-bells with you?"

If we had had any doubts they should have been settled then; but we never 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 angrily and made a motion to get into the canoe. Hutchins replied that she would not have help from him if she died for it. The next thing we knew she was in the launch and the canoe was floating off on the current. Aggie squealed; and Mr. McDonald, instead of swimming after the thing, merely folded his arms and looked at it.

"You know," he said to Hutchins, "you have so unpleasant a disposition that 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 wet to the skin. I must say for Hutchins, however, that when she learned about Aggie she was bitterly repentant, and insisted on putting her own sweater 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, rocking gently. The canoeing party had lighted a large fire on the beach, using the driftwood we had so painfully accumulated.

We sat in silence, except that Tish, who was watching our camp, said once bitterly that she was glad there were three beds in the tent. The girls of the canoeing party would be comfortable.

After a time Tish turned on Mr. McDonald sharply. "Since you claim to be no spy," she said, "perhaps you will tell us what brings you alone to this place? Don't tell me it's fish--I've seen you reading, with a line out. You're no fisherman."

He hesitated. "No," he admitted. "I'll be frank, Miss Carberry. I did not come to fish."

"What brought you?"

"Love," he said, in a low tone. "I don't expect you to believe me, but it's the honest truth."

"Love!" Tish scoffed.

"Perhaps I'd better tell you the story," he said. "It's long and--and rather sad."

"Love stories," Hutchins put in coldly, "are terribly stupid, except to those concerned."

"That," he retorted, "is because you have never been in love. You are young and--you will pardon the liberty?--attractive; but you are totally prosaic and unromantic."

"Indeed!" she said, and relapsed into silence.

"These other ladies," Mr. McDonald went on, "will understand the strangeness of my situation when I explain that the--the young lady I care 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 notice the 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 of matches on the seat, made an attempt to dry it over the flames; so his story was told in the flickering light of one match after another.

VI

"I am," Mr. McDonald said, as the cigarette steamed, "the son of poor but honest parents. All my life I have been obliged to labor. You may say that my English is surprisingly pure, under such conditions. As a matter of fact, I educated myself at night, using a lantern in the top of my father's stable."

"I thought you said he was poor," Hutchins put in nastily. "How did he have a stable?"

"He kept a livery stable. Any points that are not clear I will explain afterward. Once the thread of a narrative is broken, it is difficult to resume, Miss Hutchins. Near us, in a large house, lived the lady of my heart."

"The pink tam-o'-shanter girl!" said Aggie. "I begin to understand."

"But," he added, "near us also lived a red-headed boy. She liked him very much, and even in the long-ago days I was fiercely jealous of him. It may surprise you to know that in those days I longed--fairly longed--for red hair and a red mustache."

"I hate to interrupt," said Hutchins; "but did he have a mustache as a boy?"

He ignored her. "We three grew up together. The girl is beautiful--you've probably noticed that--and amiable. The one thing I admire in a young woman is amiability. It would not, for instance, have occurred to her to isolate an entire party on the bosom of a northern and treacherous river out of pure temper."

"To think," said Aggie softly, "that she is just over there by the camp-fire! Don't you suppose, if she loves you, she senses your nearness?"

"That's it exactly," he replied in a gloomy voice, "if she loves me! But does she? In other words, has she come up the river to meet me or to meet my rival? She knows we are here. Both of us have written her. The presence of one or the other of us is the real reason for this excursion of hers. But again the question is--which?"

Here the match he was holding under the cigarette burned his fingers and he flung it overboard with a violent gesture.

"The detective, of course," said Tish. "I knew it from the beginning of your story."

"The detective," he assented. "You see his very profession attracts. There's an element of romance in it. I myself have kept on with my father and now run the--er--livery stable. My business is a handicap from a romantic point of view.

"I am aware," Mr. McDonald went on, "that it is not customary to speak so frankly of affairs of this sort; but I have two reasons. It hurts me to rest under unjust suspicion. I am no spy, ladies. And the second reason is even stronger. Consider my desperate position: In the morning my rival will see her; he will paddle his canoe to the great rock below your camp and sing his love song from the water. In the morning I shall sit here helpless--ill, possibly--and see all that I value in life slip out of my grasp. And all through no fault of my own! Things are so evenly balanced, so little will shift the weight of her favor, that frankly the first one to reach her will get her."