followed naturally. But when I look out the window from my desk and see Aggie's placid face, and Tish's austere Methodist profile, it is difficult to associate them or myself with the three partly dressed creatures who— But to go back.
We had locked the door into the hall and each of us had her clothes. When the two men in the next room went out Mr. Morning Star turned to us with a chuckle.
"Thanks for your forbearance, ladies," he said, "we've got that villain Robertson where he ought to have been a dozen years ago. And as for Lewis—" He shut his notebook with a bang, and there was something in his face besides exultation. "To buy a girl like that I" he said—and I knew. He wanted the girl himself.
Aggie was to ask to see the notebook and then toss it over the transom into the corridor. While the reporter was trying to get out the locked door into the hall we could escape into the adjoining room, lock the connecting door, walk around easily and get the notebook, and then make our escape comfortably.
It would have been all right, but Aggie can not throw. The first attempt failed by seven feet. The young man was so astonished, however, that he stood with his mouth open, and the second trial sent it through.
"What in the name of Heaven did you do that for?" he demanded, thinking Aggie had suddenly gone mad. Then he rushed to the door. It was locked and I had the key! We were all in the next room and a bolted door between us before he realized what had happened.
We had expected, of course, to get the notebook, to dress, and to leave in the machine quietly, but from that time on there was no time to think of the conventions. The young man began to hammer on the door and other doors opened along the hall. Then a bell-boy came up and ran off in a hurry for a key. I saw Tish putting on her ulster over her petticoat, and Aggie and I did the same. The next thing we knew we were down in the empty lobby, and Tish had forgotten the spark plugs!
We got started finally with a steel hairpin , for a plug, and as we moved away I heard the chase coming down the stairs after us. They were howling "Stop thief!" We were hardly well under way when the bell-boy came in sight with the bureau man at his heels and a collection of people in all sorts of costumes following.
Tish says we did forty miles an hour going down the main street. I should have guessed more than that. I had a fearful exaltation: Aggie had advanced her speed limit since morning from four miles an hour to the capacity of the engine, and kept bawling to Tish a phrase she had caught from Charlie Sands.
"Tetter out!" she cried,, over and over. "Letter out!"
We stopped on a quiet side street and listened, but there was no noise of pursuit. Tish got out and stuck her wet finger on the hood, but it wasn't boiling.
"There's nothing coming," she said. "I'm going to stop long enough to put on my stockings.
"I don't see why you couldn't have flung your own shoe, Tish," I snapped. "What use is one shoe?—unless I lose a leg, and that's as like as not before this night's over."
"Do you see where we are?" Aggie asked. "Isn't this where we brought Miss Anne?"
It was, for Anne opened the door just then and peered down at the car.
"Is that you, father?" she called. She came down the steps, and the light from the hall fell full on us. I've must have looked rather strange, with Tish putting on her stocking in the driving seat and the most of our clothing in our laps instead of on us.
"Something has happened!" she said, catching her breath. "Ted!"
"Something has happened," Tish retorted grimly, and held up the notebook. "Here's the Morning Star's shorthand report of the interview in which your Ted sold his honor for a mess of pottage—you being the pottage."
"Oh, no," said Miss Anne, going wobbly. "Oh, he wouldn't—he didn't do such a thing!"
"Upon my soul!" I broke in. "Weren't you fighting him all day to do it?"
"You couldn't understand," she said, looking at me with the eyes of a baby. "I didn't want him to do it; I wanted him to want to do it."
"Well, if that's being in love, thank Heaven for the mind of a spinster," I retorted angrily.
"You've won," Tish said. "You've got him kneeling at your feet, as you wanted. But he went down in the mud to do it. And the only reason the newspapers won't be slinging some of that very mire to-morrow is because three elderly women, who ought to have more sense, have resorted to thievery and lost their reputations and parts of their garments to save him!"
"I hate him," said the young woman, with her chin quivering. "I knew all along I should hate him if he did it. I—I'll never marry him."
And with that she turned and started up the steps. Half way up she turned.
"I'm sorry you went to so much trouble," she said, "I don't think he is worth saving."
Aggie's early experience with the roofer stood her in good stead then. She understood; Tish and I never would have. She got out of the machine and went up into the vestibule, and a minute later, against the hall light, we saw the girl's head on Aggie's shoulder. Then they both came down again with their arms wrapped around each other, and Aggie asked me to move over.
"We're going to Mr. Lewis' apartment," she announced, with a thrill in her voice. She was maudlin with romance. "It will be proper enough, I think, with three chaperons. She wants to see him."
"Not until I put on my other stocking," Tish put in grimly. "And we don't get out of the machine; I've been compromised once tonight."
"They are both young," Aggie rebuked her gently. "I think, having begun this thing, we ought to see it through. We will have to be mothers to her, for she has none."
Well, we passed Mr. Robertson at the comer of the next street, and the girl shrank back and covered her face. And then she directed us, and we overtook the other one as he was going into his doorway. The girl jumped out and ran after him. We distinctly heard him say, "Anne! Darling!" And then, what with anxiety and excitement, Aggie took the worst sneezing spell of the summer, and the rest was lost.
He was terribly ashamed and humiliated, and he said he would take the girl away and be married right off, only he had that wretched package of bribe money that made him think, every time he saw it, how unworthy he was of her! He was going to put it down a sewer drop, but Tish suggested that they be married and go on a honeymoon, and let us return the bribe to Mr. Robertson.
So he gave us the package; and, as you know, Aggie lost it later. Then he asked us if there was a minister in the summer colony at Penzance expect an organ prelude and floral decorations. Get in."
I did not mind their sitting back with me, and his kissing her hand whenever he thought I was not looking. But the thing I objected to was this: I distinctly overheard him say:
"I was desperate to-night, sweetheart; and, oh, my love, you saved me!"
She saved him!
At a crossroads near Penzance, Tish made them get out, and we directed them to a landing where they would find a rowboat. We all kissed the bride; and Mr. Lewis said he had nobody to cheer him on his way, and wouldn't we kiss him, too. So we did, and after they had gone we prepared,for Carpenter's sharp eyes by going into the bushes and putting on the rest of our clothes.
It was the first thing Carpenter said that caused the accident.
