Priscilla's Spies
“That’s young Kinsella,” said Priscilla. “I know him by the red sleeve
his mother sewed into that gray shirt of his. No one else has a shirt
the least like it. He’s a soft-hearted sort of boy who’d do a good turn
to any one. He’s sure to take their boat back to them.”
“He has a lady with him,” said Frank.
“He has. I can’t see who she is; but it doesn’t look like his mother.
Can’t be, in fact, for she has a baby to mind. I collared a lot of
flannel out of a box in Aunt Juliet’s room last ‘hols’ and gave it to
her for the baby. It’s a bit of what I gave her that was made into a
sleeve for Jimmy’s shirt. I wonder now who it is he has got with him?”
Jimmy Kinsella overtook the drifting boat, took her painter, and began
to tow her towards Inishark.
“That lady,” said Priscilla, “is a black stranger to me. Who can she
possibly be?”
Jimmy Kinsella rowed hard, and in about ten minutes ran his own
boat aground on Inishark. He disembarked, dragged at the painter of
Flanagan’s boat and handed her over to the lady on the island. A long
conversation followed. The whole party, Jimmy Kinsella, his lady, the
dripping spy, and the original lady with the damp pocket handkerchief,
consulted together eagerly. Then they took the hold-all out of
Flanagan’s boat. There was another conversation, and it became plain
that the two ladies were expostulating with the dripping gentleman.
Jimmy Kinsella stood a little apart and gazed placidly at the two boats.
Then the hold-all was unpacked and a number of garments laid out on the
beach. They were sorted out and a bundle of them handed to the spy.
He walked straight up the slope of the island and disappeared over the
crest of the hill.
“Gone to change his clothes,” said Priscilla.
The two ladies repacked the hold-all. Jimmy Kinsella stowed it in the
bow of Flanagan’s boat. Then the lady of the island got it out again,
unpacked it once more, and took something out of it.
“Clean pocket-handkerchief, I expect,” said Priscilla.
The guess was evidently a good one, for she spread the wet handkerchief
on a stone. Her companion reappeared over the crest of the island, clad
in another pair of white trousers and another sweater. He carried his
wet garments at arm’s length. Jimmy Kinsella went to meet him. They
talked together as they walked down to the boats. Then the two ladies
kissed each other warmly. Priscilla watched the performance with a
sneer.
“Awful rot, that kind of thing,” she said.
“All women do it,” said Frank.
Here at last he was unquestionably Priscilla’s superior. Never, to
his recollection, had he kissed any one except his mother, and he was
generally content to allow her to kiss him.
“I don’t; Sylvia Courtney tried it on with me when we were saying
good-bye at the end of last term, but I jolly soon choked her off. Can’t
think where the pleasure is supposed to come in.”
Jimmy Kinsella placed the spy lady in the stern of Flanagan’s boat and
handed in her companion. He arranged the oars and the rowlocks and then,
standing ankle deep in the water, shoved her off. The spy took his
oars and pulled away. Priscilla and Frank watched the boat until she
disappeared.
“Pretty rough luck on us,” said Priscilla, “Jimmy Kinsella turning up
just at that moment. I wonder if that woman is a man in disguise. She
might be, you know. They sometimes are.”
“Couldn’t possibly. No man would have been such a fool as to go trying
to dry anybody with a pocket handkerchief. Only a woman----”
“If it comes to that,” said Priscilla, “no woman would have been such a
fool as to let that boat go the way he did. Girls aren’t the only asses
in the world, Cousin Frank.”
“Besides,” said Frank, “she evidently took a lot of trouble to persuade
him to change his clothes. That looks as if----”
“It does, rather. I daresay she’s his aunt. It’s just the kind of thing
Aunt Juliet would have done before she took to Christian Science.
Now, of course, it would be against her principles. Let’s have another
Californian peach to fill in the time.”
Frank handed the tin to her and afterwards helped himself.
“Have you drunk all your beer, Cousin Frank?”
“No. Want some?”
“I was only thinking,” said Priscilla, “that perhaps you’d better not.
I’ve just recollected King John.”
“What about him?”
“It was peaches and beer that finished him off, after he’d got stuck in
crossing the Wash. That’s rather the sort of position we’re in now, and
I shouldn’t like anything to happen to you.”
Frank, by way of demonstrating his courage, took a long draught of lager
beer, then he looked across at Inishark. Priscilla’s eyes followed his.
For a minute or two they gazed in silence.
Jimmy Kinsella’s boat still lay on the shore. Jimmy Kinsella’s lady
had taken off her shoes and stockings and rolled up the sleeves of her
blouse. Her skirt was kilted high and folded over a broad band which
kept it well above her knees. Jimmy Kinsella himself, who was modest as
well as chivalrous, sat on a stone with his back to her and gazed at the
slope of the island. The lady waded about in the shallow water. Now and
then she plunged her arms in and appeared to fish something up from the
bottom. Priscilla and Frank looked at each other in amazement.
“I wonder what on earth’s she’s doing,” said Priscilla. “Can she
possibly be taking soundings?”
“No,” said Frank. “Soundings aren’t taken that way. You do it with a
line and a lead from the deck of a ship.”
“All the same,” said Priscilla, “she’s in league with the other spies.
You saw the way they kissed each other.”
“She may,” said Frank, “be taking specimens of the sea bottom. That’s a
very important thing, I believe.”
“It is, frightfully; but that’s not the way it’s done. There was
a curious old johnny last term who gave us a lecture on
hydrography--that’s what he called it--and he said you gather up small
bits of the bottom by putting tallow on the end of a lump of lead. I
expect he knew what he was talking about, but, of course, he may not.
You never can tell about those scientific lecturers. They keep on
contradicting each other so.”
“If she’s not doing that, what is she doing?”
“She may possibly be trying to cure her rheumatism,” said Priscilla.
“They generally bathe for that; but she may not feel bad enough to go
to such extremes. She looks rather fat. Fat people do have rheumatism,
don’t they?”
“No, gout.”
“More or less the same thing,” said Priscilla. “Of course, if that’s
what she’s at, she’s not a spy, and we oughtn’t to go on treating her
as if she was. I don’t think it’s right to suspect people of really bad
crimes unless one knows. Do you, Cousin Frank?”
“Of course not. All the same, the way she’s going on is rather queer.
She’s just put something that she picked up into that tin box she has
slung across her back. That doesn’t look to me as if she had gout.”
“If only Jimmy Kinsella would turn this way,” said Priscilla, “I’d wave
at him and make him come over here. It’s perfectly maddening being stuck
like this when such a lot of exciting things are going on. What time is
it?”
“A little after two.”
“It’s low water then,” said Priscilla. “From this on the tide will be
coming in again.”
The Tortoise lay on the top of a grey bank from which the water had
entirely receded. Between her and the channel, now a tangle of floating
weed, lay a broad stretch of mud, dotted over with large stones and
patches of gravel. The wind, which had been veering round to the south
since twelve o’clock, had almost entirely died away. The sun shone very
warmly. The Tortoise, lying sadly on her side, afforded no shelter at
all. Both the beer and the lemonade were finished.
Priscilla drank some peach juice from the tin.
CHAPTER VIII
After wading about for a little more than half an hour, Jimmy Kineslla’s
lady went ashore. She rolled down the sleeves of her blouse and let
her skirt fall about her ankles, but she did not put on her shoes and
stockings. Jimmy Kinsella was summoned from his stone and launched his
boat.
“I daresay,” said Priscilla, “that she thinks her rheumatism ought to be
cured by now. That is to say, of course, if she really has rheumatism,
and isn’t a nefarious spy. I rather like that word nefarious. Don’t you?
I stuck it into an English comp. the other day and spelt it quite right,
but it came back to me with a blue pencil mark under it. Sylvia Courtney
said that I hadn’t used it in quite the ordinary sense. She thinks
she knows, and very likely she does, though not quite as much as she
imagines. Nobody can know everything; which is rather a comfort when
it comes to algebra. I loath algebra and always did. Any right-minded
person would, I think.”
“It looks to me,” said Frank, “as if they were coming over here.”
Jimmy Kinsella was heading his boat straight for the bank on which the
Tortoise lay. In a few minutes she grounded on the edge of it. The lady
stepped out and paddled across the mud towards the Tortoise. Seen
at close quarters she was, without doubt, fat, and had a round
good-humoured face. Her eyes sparkled pleasantly behind a pair of gold
rimmed pince-nez.
“She is coming over to us,” said Priscilla. “The thing is for you to
keep her in play and unravel her mystery, while I slip off and put a few
straight questions to Jimmy Kinsella. Be as polite as you possibly can
so as to disarm suspicion.”
Priscilla began the course of diplomatic politeness herself.
“We’re delighted to see you,” she said. “My name is Priscilla Lentaigne,
and my cousin is Frank Mannix. We’re out for a picnic.”
“My name,” said the lady, “is Rutherford, Martha Rutherford. I’m out
after sponges.”
“Sponges!” said Frank.
Priscilla winked at him. The statement about the sponges was obviously
untrue. There is no sponge fishery in Rosnacree Bay. There never has
been. Miss Rutherford, so to speak, intercepted Priscilla’s wink.
“By sponges,” she said, “I mean----”
“Won’t you sit down?” said Priscilla.
She picked her stockings from the gunwale of the boat, leaving a clear
space beside Miss Rutherford.
“Bother!” she said, “the dye out of the purple clocks has run. That’s
the worst of purple clocks. I half suspected it would at the time, but
Sylvia Courtney insisted on my buying them. She said they looked chic.
Would you care for anything to eat, Miss Rutherford?”
“I’m nearly starved. That’s why I came over here. I thought you might
have some food.”
“We’ve lots,” said Priscilla. “Frank will give it to you. I’ll just step
across and speak to Jimmy Kinsella. I want to hear about the baby.”
“I’m afraid,” said Miss Rutherford, when Priscilla left them, “that your
cousin doesn’t believe me about the sponges.”
Frank felt deeply ashamed of Priscilla’s behaviour. The prefect in him
reasserted itself now that he was in the presence of a grown-up lady. He
felt it necessary to apologise.
“She’s very young,” he said, “and I’m afraid she’s rather foolish.
Little girls of that age----”
He intended to say something of a paternal kind, something which would
give Miss Rutherford the impression that he had kindly undertaken the
care of Priscilla during the day in order to oblige those ordinarily
responsible for her. A curious smile, which began to form at the corners
of Miss Rutherford’s lips and a sudden twinkling of her eyes, stopped
him abruptly.
“I hope you’ll excuse my not standing up,” he said, “I’ve sprained my
ankle.”
“I’d like to get in and sit beside you if I may,” said Miss Rutherford.
“Now for the food.”
“There’s some cold tongue,” said Frank.
“Capital. I love cold tongue.”
“But--I’m afraid--” He fished it out from beneath the thwart, “--it may
be rather grubby.”
“I don’t mind that a bit.”
“And--the fact is my cousin--it’s only fair to tell you--she bit it