I screamed, and, as was perfectly natural, I backed away from the thing. My foot tripped over Tish’s water-pitcher, and my sitting down was what wakened Aggie. She says she never will forget how she felt when she saw me prostrate and Tish holding a chair aloft and begging the bureau to come out so she could brain it. Of course she thought Tish had gone crazy, what with the sun and excitement of the day.
“Tish!” she screeched.
“Come out!” said Tish to the bureau. “Make no resistance; we are armed!”
As Aggie says, when she saw the left-hand side of that bureau move slowly forward like a door when Tish spoke to it, she thought she had a touch of sun herself. But when she saw a human figure crawl out of that place on its hands and knees, and opened her mouth to scream, her breath was gone as completely as if she had been hit in the stomach.
The figure got to its feet, and it had neither horns nor tail. It had curly, light-brown hair and blue eyes, and it was purplish red as to face. We stood paralyzed while it stood erect and blinked. Tish lowered her chair slowly and the apparition dropped down on it. It was masculine and shaking. Also young.
“Ladies,” it said, “could I—could I thank you for a drink of water? I have been almost stifled.”
When the haze cleared away from my eyes I saw that the young man had on a light gray suit, and that in his hand he carried his collar and an electric flashlight. Perspiration was pouring off his face and we could see that he was as scared as we were.
“Give him a drink, Lizzie,” Tish said firmly, “and then press that button.”
But the young man jumped to his feet at that and looked at us squarely.
“Ladies,” he said earnestly, “please do not raise an alarm. I am not a thief. The manager of the hotel put me in that bureau himself.”
“The hotel must be crowded,” Tish scoffed. “I hope they don’t charge you much for it.”
From the street below came a sudden confusion of men’s voices and the sound of feet on the pavement. The young man threw up his hands.
“Madam,” he said to Tish, “you look like a woman of large mind.” Tish stopped putting the bedspread around her and stared at him. “By your unfortunate—er—invasion here tonight you are preventing the discovery of a crime against civic morality. The council-manic banquet downstairs is over; in a few minutes Robertson—well, probably you don’t understand, but I represent the Morning Star. The Civic Purity League has learned that in this room, after the banquet, a bribe is going to be offered. That bureau has been ready for a month. Ladies, I implore you, go back to the other room!”
It was too late. At that moment there were voices in the hall and somebody put a key into the lock of the door. There was no time to put the light out. The young man dropped behind the foot of the bed, the door swung open and a red-haired man stepped into the room.
“Suffering cats!” he exclaimed.
“Go out immediately!” I said, pointing to the door. Tish was unwinding herself from the counterpane. She took it off airily and flung it over the foot of the bed, so that it covered the young man. It looked abandoned, but the necessity was terrible. As Tish said afterward, fifty years of respectable living would not have prevented the tongue of scandal licking up such a spicy morsel as that compromising situation.
The red-haired man retreated a step or two, opened the door part way, and went out and looked at the number. Then he came in again.
“Madam—ladies,” he said, “this room belongs to me. There must be some mistake.”
“I don’t believe it belongs to you,” Tish snapped. “Why haven’t you got some brushes on the dresser?”
“If you were a gentleman,” Aggie wailed from the cot, “you would go out and let us get to sleep. I never put in such a night. First, the other room is too hot, and we crawl over the transom to get a cool place, and then—”
“Over the transom,” said the red-haired gentleman. “Do you mean to say—” Then he laughed a little and spoke over his shoulder.
“I’m sorry, Lewis,” he said, “but my room’s taken.”
“Kismet,” said our Mr. Lewis’s voice, but it, sounded reckless and strained. “Fate has crooked her finger; I’m going home.”
“Don’t be an ass,” said the red-haired gentleman. “These women in here came over the transom from the next room. It’s empty.”
“Good gracious!” Aggie gasped. “I left my forms hanging to the gas jet!”
The red-haired man backed into the hall, but he still held the door.
“I’m going home,” said our Mr. Lewis again. “I’m sick of things around here, anyhow. I’ve got a chance to get an orange grove cheap in California.”
“Fiddlesticks!” retorted the red-haired man, “Why don’t you stick by the plum tree here at home?”
On that the door closed, and we could hear them talking guardedly in the hall.
“The wretches!” Tish fumed. “Oh, why haven’t women the vote? I tell you”—she fixed Aggie and me with a gesture—“the day of conscience is coming. Women stand for civic purity, for the home, for right against might!”
It was the “right against might” that we repeated to her afterward, when we had stolen—but that is coming soon.
“But he loves the girl,” said Aggie, beginning to sniffle. “I—I think as much of ci—civic purity as you do, Tish Carberry, but I th—think he is just p—pig-headed.”
“The girl’s a fool and so are you,” said Tish, beginning to take the counterpane off the reporter. And at that second there was a knock and the red-haired man opened the door again.
“I beg your pardon,” he apologized, “but will you give me the key to the other room?”
We did. Aggie unlocked the connecting door and brought back the key to our old room and the things she had left on the gas jet. In the excitement she threw the key on the dresser and was just about to reach the other articles through the crack in the door when Tish caught her arm.