The amazing adventures of Letitia Carberry
“They are--were--engaged,” she said, “and the girl’s father is
Robertson--the boss of the city, Mr. Lewis called him. And Mr. Lewis
is the youngest councilman--they call him ‘Baby’ Lewis, and he hates
it--and there’s something to be voted for to-morrow; and if Mr. Lewis
is for it he is to get the girl.”
“And the girl refuses to be sold!” Tish said triumphantly. “Quite
right, too. I admire her strength. That’s the typical womanly attitude
these days--right before anything, honor above all.” Tish waved the
hairbrush and then she turned on the maid. “Girl,” she snapped, “why is
this brush chained?”
“The ladies steal them,” said the girl. Tish stared at the chain.
“You are so quick, Letitia,” Aggie protested. “It was the other way
round. The girl was angry because he wouldn’t sell his vote, even for
her.”
Tish sat down in a chair, speechless; but just then Mr. Lewis came to
the door and said that supper and the Martinis were ready. The Martinis
proved to be something to drink, and after Mr. Lewis had raised his
hand and sworn there was no whisky in them we drank them. He said they
were appetizers, and the other day Tish said she was going to write to
the Sherman House for the recipe before she has the minister to dinner
next week.
Never did I eat so delightful a meal. Tish forgot her sprained shoulder
and the splinter under her nail, and Aggie talked about the roofer.
And the food! I recall distinctly shaking hands with Tish and agreeing
to come to the hotel to live, and asking the waiter to find out from
the cook how something or other was made. And when Aggie had buried the
roofer, and Tish said it was funny, but Mr. Lewis had four brown eyes
instead of two, he suggested that we must be tired, and a boy took us
to our room. Room, not rooms. We could only get one. The last things I
remember are our shaking hands with Mr. Lewis, and that Tish tried to
get into the elevator before the door was opened.
About eleven o’clock I heard some one groaning and I sat up in bed. It
was Aggie, whom, being the thinnest, we had put on the cot. She said
her nose was smarting from the sunburn and she had heartburn something
awful. We rang for some baking soda, and she drank some in water and
made a plaster for her nose with the rest. After a while she felt
better, but we were all wide awake and the heat was terrible. We could
look out the window and see there was a breeze, but not a breath came
in.
We sent for the bell-boy again, and he said there wasn’t another room
and nobody he could move around to give us a room on the breezy side of
the house.
We took the rules and regulations card off the door and fanned with it,
but it did not help much. After half an hour or so Tish got up, pushed
the washstand in front of a door that connected with the next room and
crawled up on it.
“If I had a chair,” she said, measuring the distance with her eye, “I
could see if that corner room next door is occupied. I could tell by
that boy’s face that he was lying.”
Aggie was trying to hold down the baking soda, so, although I didn’t
feel any too well myself, I held the chair and Tish climbed up on it.
“What did I tell you?” she demanded when she got down. “That room’s
empty, and what’s more there’s nobody belonging there. There’s nothing
on the dresser but the towel; and there’s a breeze coming in that sends
the curtains straight into the room.”
The connecting door was locked, and Tish put a bed sheet around her and
tried the hall door. That was locked, too. And all the time we were
getting hotter and hotter, and by putting our ears to the keyhole we
could hear the breeze blowing on the other side. It was too much for
Tish.
“I’m going over the transom,” she announced, after we had tried the
dresser key in the door without any effect. And go over she did, after
putting on her stockings to keep her legs from being scraped.
It was much cooler. We brought in our clothes and Aggie’s cot,
and spread up the bed in the room we had left. Then we locked the
connecting door again, and after Aggie had had some more baking soda,
in and out, we went to bed.
Well, as I was saying, I went to sleep. I was awakened by Tish sitting
up in bed and clutching me somewhere about the diaphragm. By the light
from the hall over the transom I could see Aggie sound asleep, with her
mouth opened, and Tish’s arm stretched out and pointed at the yellow
hotel bureau. I sat straight up and looked. I couldn’t see anything,
and at first I thought Tish was dreaming. Then I saw it too. The front
of that bureau on the left side moved out a good six inches, stayed
that way while I could count ten, and then closed up again without a
sound.
Tish had put a leg out of bed, but she jerked it in again, and just at
that awful moment a clock outside boomed twelve. And then, over in her
corner, Aggie began to talk in her sleep.
“Turn around and run over it again,” she said, with startling
distinctness. “It isn’t quite dead.”
Tish put her hand up and held her shaking lower jaw.
“I--it’s those dr-dratted Martinis,” she quavered. “I’ve--no--d-doubt
Mr. Lewis meant well, Lizzie, but I’ve b-been feeling very strange all
evening.”
“Your stomach being upset needn’t affect my eyes,” I retorted in a
whisper. “I saw it move.”
“Are you sure?” she insisted. “I didn’t say anything, Lizzie, but while
we were eating supper down-stairs I distinctly saw the piano move out
six feet from the wall and go back again.”
I didn’t say anything to Tish, but the fact was that I distrusted
my own vision--not that I had seen anything so ridiculous as pianos
walking, but I had had a peculiar feeling in the dining-room that my
eyes were looking in different directions, and when I focused them on
anything I saw double at once. It had got so bad that when I wanted
my fork I had to shut my eyes and feel for it. And so, neither of us
being certain the bureau had moved, and nothing more occurring, we
lay back again. The next minute Tish clutched me and I looked over.
Something had happened to the bureau.
It looked phosphorescent, or as though it was on fire inside. There was
a glow all around it. The keyholes stood out like dots of flame, and
every crack gleamed. It was the most awful thing I have ever seen.
“Look!” gasped Tish, and, reaching over the side of the bed, she picked
up a shoe and flung it with all her might at the thing. The thump was
followed by a thud inside the bureau. Aggie stirred.
“The milkman’s knocking,” she said thickly, and sat up and yawned with
her eyes shut. Tish and I leaped out of bed and I turned on the light.
That gave us new courage, and the dresser stood there, just like any
other dresser, with a towel on its yellow-pine top and fly-specks on
the mirror. Tish and I looked at each other and smiled in a sickly
way. We felt foolish. But Tish wasn’t satisfied. She picked up a
hairbrush and banged it on the top.
“Coming, Mr. Gibbs,” bawled Aggie, still with her eyes shut, and she
began to fumble around on the floor for her slippers.
“Wake her!” Tish commanded. “There’s something moving in this thing.
Lizzie, give me that pitcher of scalding water.”
Of course there wasn’t any hot water nearer than the bath-room, which
was three turns to the right, one to the left and down a flight of
stairs.
And at that minute the bureau spoke.
“Don’t, for God’s sake, ladies!” it said.
CHAPTER V
THE REPORTER AND THE RED-HAIRED MAN
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 to-night you are preventing the
discovery of a crime against civic morality. The councilmanic banquet
down-stairs 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’ 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.”