result of her courageous investigation is well known: mounted on top of the cage, she was taken to the upper position of the shaft, and there found what she had been looking for, an unboarded spot behind the elevator wheel. She was disappointed, however, in finding the space too dark for inspection, and in hearing or seeing nothing suspicious.
Being a courageous woman and convinced that what she sought was there in the cavelike recess, my Aunt Letitia threw her slipper with all the strength she could summon, and was answered by a growl.
My wife has just read this and confirms most of it. She suggests, however, that I have omitted our theory of how Briggs was murdered without discovery, while Jacobs was in the hall nearby and I myself guarded the only other means of exit, the fire-escape.
Barker probably took refuge in the linen closet, arriving at the mortuary floor ahead of the slow progress of the cage, by scurrying up the cable. He hid in the closet, and by throwing the coat over Briggs and squeezing him in his muscular arms, he prevented any outcry. Immediately after, he locked himself in the closet again, where he smoked Briggs' pipe, perhaps in itself the object of the attack.
On the alarm being raised. Hicks and I came in through the window, and Jacobs through the door. This left the fire-escape and the roof unwatched, and he climbed out the window of the linen closet, swinging himself easily to the fire-escape.
"The rest of the story we know. Barker was found, exhausted and half starving, and was promptly put in a padded cell, where, a week later, he died, probably from an infection, having cut his left foot badly, possibly with the very knife that killed the laboratory guinea-pigs. The injured foot, which he had crudely bandaged, probably explains why only prints of a right foot were discovered. With the removal of suspense Miss Blake recovered, and is now with me, enjoying the lilies and onion fields of Bermuda. My Aunt Letitia is at Mount Clemens, taking a series of baths and—I am informed by Miss Lizzie—carrying on what she believes is a clandestine correspondence with the Wright brothers. Miss Aggie's hay fever left with the first frost. I am sorry to say that Miss Linda Smith has never been heard from."
Three Pirates of Penzance
Chapter I.
A Cigarette Case, a Shoe, and a Menu Card
It was three o'clock in the morning when we got back to the lake, and it was twenty minutes before Carpenter heard us and started the ferry across. Tish had lost her glasses in the excitement at the Sherman House, and she did not see that Carpenter had forgotten to put the bar across the end of the boat. Aggie and I screamed, but it was too late: she drove the car down the bank in the moonlight and she did not stop in time. The first we knew we were sitting waist-deep in Lake Penzance, with Tish still holding the steering wheel and the stars making little twinkles in our laps.
As Tish said afterward, it was a fit ending to a sensational night, but, what with the wetting aggravating Aggie's hay fever, and my having bitten through the side of my tongue when the machine struck the bottom of the lake, it more nearly finished us. The engine drowned with a gurgle, and after Carpenter's first yell there wasn't a sound. Then we heard him come to the end of the ferry-boat and look down at us, and the next moment he had dropped the lantern and was doubled up on the dock, laughing like the fool he is.
"Are you both there?" said Tish, without turning her head.
Aggie sneezed, as she always does after a shock, and a wave moved slowly in and raised the water level with my breastbone.
"We are both here," I said, with a bitterness that was natural under the circumstances. "No thanks to you, Tish Carberry. There's no fool like an old fool."
"What do you mean?" Tish demanded fiercely, twisting around in the water with her dust cap over her eye. "Who was it said I ought to buy the dratted thing? Drive it yourself if you think you can do any better."
"Row it," I corrected. "It's finished for good as a touring car, but by putting an awning over it we might make it into a tolerable gasoline launch."
Aggie was crying.
"I told you something would happen," she sniffled. "You'll kill us all yet, Tish Carberry —and me in my foulard silk that spots with a drop of rain!"
But Tish wasn't paying any attention. She picked up the wrench that she had kept by her as a sort of weapon and stood up on the seat Tish is a large woman.
"Abraham Carpenter," she snapped, with as much dignity as she could with her clothes glued to her, "if you do not stop that noise I will brain you."
Carpenter eased down gradually, and, holding his sides, he leaned over the end of the ferry.
"What'll I do, Miss Tish?" he asked, beginning to jerk again, but with an eye on the wrench. "I can go around to the other dock and get a rowboat, but it'll take time."
"Don't bother about the other dock," Tish snapped. "Get that board there on the ferry and put one end of it down to the automobile. Then turn your back."
That's the way we got out. I went up the board first, on my hands and knees, and barring a few splinters I got up very nicely. Aggie came next, and as the board was getting wet she had more trouble. But Tish had the worst, for by that time the board was as slippery as a toboggan; twice she got as far as the middle, only to slide back on her stomach, and the last time she refused to try again. She sat down on one of the seats, with the water up to her waist, and said that she was skinned alive, and that she wished there was a tide to come up and drown her and the miserable machine. We got her up finally by throwing her a rope to put under her arms, and once up she collapsed on the ferry-bench. It was then that Aggie missed the money. Carpenter had slid down the board and was preparing to salvage the cushions when Aggie clutched at her stocking and yelled.
"It's gone!" she screeched, and then she sat plump down on the floor of the ferry-boat and began to cry.
"What's gone?" Tish demanded.
"The money," Aggie said, feeling frantically around the tops of her shoes. "When we went over the edge something broke—I felt it—and the money's gone."
Tish had both her arms in the air and the rope over her shoulder, but she stopped struggling and stared at Aggie.
"Grone!" she said in an awful voice. "Aggie Pilkington, every dollar of that money was graft money. Only the prospect of stuffing it between that red-haired man's teeth has kept me alive through this terrible night. Don't tell me you've lost it."
"We can give him a check," said Aggie ' feebly.
"We can!" Tish snorted, and not another word did she say until Carpenter had taken us across the lake and we stood dripping on the front porch of the cottage, while Aggie got the key from under a flower-pot. Then Tish looked across the moonlit lake to where the cushions of the machine floated in a nest of stars at the end of the ferry-dock.
"We averaged thirty miles an hour coming home,!" she said triumphantly, "and for the first time I feel that I have mastered the machine."
Wet
