THERE WERE, OF COURSE, occasional misadventures. There was that terrible day, for instance, when Tish hung from a bridge by her hands, ready to drop to a train beneath, when through some mistake the train was switched to another track and our dear Letitia was left hanging, like Mohammed’s coffin, between heaven and earth. And that other day, of wretched memory, when on exploding the hillside to imprison the governor, a large stone flew up and struck Aggie violently in the mouth, dislodging her upper plate and almost strangling her.
There was, again, the time when the smugglers set fire to the building Tish was in, and the fire department did not receive its signal and failed to arrive until almost too late.
But in the main, things went very well. There were peaceful days when Aggie and I fed peanuts to the little studio elephant, Katie, and indeed became quite friendly with Katie, who dragged certain heavy articles about the lot and often roamed at will, her harness chains dangling. And there were hot days when we sought the shelter of the cool hangar which housed the smugglers’ dirigible, or baby blimp as it was called, and where we had concealed several bottles of blackberry cordial against emergency.
At such times we frequently discussed what Aggie now termed the Macmanus mystery. For such it had become.
“He’s not hanging around for any good purpose, Lizzie,” Aggie frequently observed. “He’s in Tish’s picture somehow, and—I think he is a lover!”
We had not mentioned him to Tish, but on the next day after she took her parachute leap we learned that she had her own suspicions about him.
I may say here, before continuing with my narrative, that Tish’s parachute experience was without accident, although not without incident. She was to leap with the bag of stage money she had captured in the air from the smugglers, and this she did. But a gust of wind caught her, and it was our painful experience to see her lifted on the gale and blown out of sight toward the mountains.
Several automobiles and the dirigible immediately started after her, but dusk fell and she had not returned to us. Even now I cannot picture those waiting hours without emotion. At one moment we visualized her sitting on some lonely mountain crag, and at another still floating on, perhaps indefinitely, a lonely bit of flotsam at the mercy of the elements.
At nine o’clock that night, however, she returned, slightly irritable but unhurt.
“For heaven’s sake, Aggie,” she said briskly, “stop sneezing and crying, and order me some supper. I’ve been sitting in a ranch house, with a nervous woman pointing a gun at me, for three hours.”
It developed that she had landed in the country, and had untied the parachute and started with her valise full of stage money back toward the studio, but that she had stopped to ask for supper at a ranch, and the woman there had looked in the bag while Tish was washing, and had taken her for a bank robber.
“If she had ever looked away,” Tish said, “I could have grabbed the gun. But she was cross-eyed, and I don’t know yet which eye she watched with.”
As I have said, it was the next day that we learned that Tish herself had grown suspicious about Mr. Macmanus.
She sent for us to come to her dressing room, and when we appeared she said, “I want you both here for a few minutes. Light a cigarette, Hannah. Mr. Stein’s coming.”
To our horror Hannah produced a box of cigarettes and lighted one by holding it in the flame of a match. But we were relieved to find that Tish did not intend to smoke it. Hannah placed it in an ash tray on the table and left it there.
“Local color,” Tish said laconically. “They think a woman’s queer here if she doesn’t smoke. Come in, Mr. Stein.”
When Mr. Stein entered he was uneasy, we thought, but he wore his usual smile.
“Going like a breeze, Miss Carberry,” he said.
“Yes,” said Tish grimly. “And so am I!”
“What do you mean, going?” said Mr. Stein, slightly changing color. “You can’t quit on us, Miss Carberry. We’ve spent a quarter of a million dollars already.”
“And I’ve risked a million-dollar life.”
“We’ve been carrying insurance on you.”
“Oh, you have!” said Tish, and eyed him coldly. “I hope you’ve got Mr. Macmanus insured too.”
“Just why Mr. Macmanus, Miss Carberry?”
“Because,” Tish said with her usual candor, “I propose physical assault, and possibly murder, if he’s brought on the set with me.”
“Now see here,” he said soothingly, “you’re just tired, Miss Carberry. Ladies, how about a glass of that homemade TNT for Miss Tish? And a little all round?”
But when none of us moved he was forced to state his case, as he called it.
“You see, Miss Carberry,” he said, “we’ve made the old girl pretty hardboiled, so far. Now the public’s going to want to see her softer side.”
“As, for instance?”
“Well, something like this: The rancher who’s been the secret head of the smugglers, he’s a decent fellow at heart, see? Only got into it to pay the mortgage on the old home. Well, now, why not a bit of sentiment between you and him at the end? Nothing splashy, just a nice refined church and a kiss.” When he saw Tish’s face he went on, speaking very fast. “Not more than a four-foot kiss, if that. We’ve got to do it, Miss Carberry. I’ve been wiring our houses all over the country, and they’re unanimous.”
At Tish’s firm refusal he grew almost tearful, saying he dared not fly in the face of tradition, and that he couldn’t even book the picture if he did. But Tish merely rose majestically and opened the door.
“I warned you, Mr. Stein, I would have no sex stuff in this picture.”
“Sex stuff!” he cried. “Good Lord, you don’t call that sex stuff, do you?”
“I dare say you call it platonic friendship here,” Tish said in her coldest tone. “But my agreement stands. Good afternoon.”
He went out, muttering.