The Greatest Murder Mysteries of Mary Roberts Rinehart - 25 Titles in One Edition
Tish called it, and it's a good name—and the engine started.
"You didn't have your gas on," said the young man. "And don't worry; you're sure to heat up on a day like this, but nothing will melt"
'Or explode?" asked Aggie. 'Or explode."
He looked at the girl and smiled, and when we started off they were still there, watching us. The dog yelped, and the girl smiled and waved her hand. Aggie, who is far-sighted, turned around a second time. "He reminds me of Mr. Wiggins," she said with a sigh, still looking back. Aggie was engaged years ago to a young man in the roofing business, who fell off a roof.
After a minute, "He's kissing her!" she gasped. After that she nearly broke her neck watching them out of sight. Aggie is romantic. I turned around, but I had on my near glasses.
I don't know how we lost the Noblestown Pike. Tish blamed it on having to drive with one eye shut, on account of something getting into the other. Aggie's nose was sunburned and swelling, and I would have given a good bit for something heavy in my lap to anchor me. When I was a girl I rode horseback, and with any kind of a steady horse you can tell when the next jolt is coming; but Tish's machine has a way of coming up and hitting you when you are off guard, so to speak.
To go back, after an hour or so we found we were on the wrong road. It kept growing narrower, and when at last it became only a dusty country lane Tish realized it herself. There was a rickety farmhouse about two hundred feet from the road, with a woman bending over a washtub outside the door. I stood up and made a megaphone of my hands.
"Which way to the Noblestown Pike?" I yelled, while Tish got out and stuck a wet finger on the hood over the engine.
The woman looked up and pointed sullenly in the direction from which we had come. We looked at the road. There wasn't a spot to turn—not another road in sight to back into. It was hotter than ever. The engine hummed like a teakettle on a hot stove, and there were little clouds of blue smoke coming from somewhere or other about it. Aggie said she thought the gasoline tank was on fire.
"If it is you'll soon know it," said Tish grimly. "It's under the seat. I'm going to back up on to this bridge business over the gutter. I think I can make it."
"Do you know how to back up?" I asked; and just at that minute the woman left her tub and started to run down the walk.
Tish backed. With an awful grinding of wheels she got the right lever finally; the machine gave a jerk that would have decapitated a chicken, and we backed slowly on to the timbers that bridged the gutter and made a road toward the house. When it gave the first crack we shouted—Aggie and I. It might not have been too late, but Tish put on the emergency brake by mistake and for a minute we hung on the verge. Then we began to settle. We went down slowly, with Tish above us and rising; and when we stopped, there we were, Aggie and I and the rear of the machine, a good four feet below Tish and the engine, with something grinding like mad and clouds of smoke everywhere.
When we crawled out the woman who owned the bridge was standing on the bank looking down at us, and her face was something awful.
"You'll fix that bridge before you leave!" she said, shutting her mouth hard on the last word.
"You'll fix that automobile before I'm through with you!" said Tish, pointing at the thing, which looked like a horse sitting down in a gutter.
"Oh, rats!" the woman said rudely. "That's four of them things that's gone through that bridge this week, and I'm good and sick of it. Ain't there any other bridges in Chester county?"
"Not like that," retorted Tish, eying the ruins. "You don't call that a bridge, do you?"
"It was," said the woman.
She came forward and a ferocious-looking dog stepped from behind her.
Tish looked at the dog.
"It wasn't much of a bridge," she said, more politely. "If you've got any men on the place I'll give them a dollar apiece to get my machine out of there."
"No men around," said the woman shortly. "Theodore,"—to the dog—"don't you go around bitin' until I give you the word. Sit down."
The dog sat down.
"Before you leave," she said to Tish, "you'll mend that bridge or I'll know the reason why. Meantime your automobile is trespassin', and the fine is twenty dollars."
Then she sat down on the bank and began to tickle the dog's ears with a blade of grass.
"Theodore," she said, "if them three old maids think they can bluff us, they don't know us, do they?"
I had stood about as much as I could, so I walked around in front of her and glared at her.
"I wouldn't sit so close to the automobile if I were you," I remarked emphatically. "Something is likely to explode."
"I feel like it," she said. "When I get mad I'm good an' mad. Anyhow, I own this place, and I'll sit where I please. Theodore, let's put the washing-machine on wheels and go round the country bustin' down folks' bridges and playin' hell generally!"
An oath always rouses Tish. She got the engine stopped. Then she came around beside me with her goggles shoved up on her forehead.
"Woman," she said sternly, "how dare you mention the place of punishment so lightly!" Tish had been superintendent of a Sunday-school for thirty years.
The woman stared at her. Then she got up slowly.
"I wasn't alludin' to the next world," she said bitterly. "Ninety-five degrees of heat, seven inches of dust, five miles to a telephone and ten miles to town, with an automobile sittin' down in your front yard—that's all the hell I want"
Then she walked up the path. We stared after her; between her shoulder-blades her blue wrapper was wet through with sweat, and the dog trailed at her heels. Aggie, who is always sentimental, took a step after her.
"I say," she called. "If we come back for you some nice afternoon, will you let us take you for a ride?"
But she got no answer. To our amazement, the woman turned around at the top of the path and put her thumb to her nose!
We did not see her again for some time, but after Tish had climbed in twice and started the engine, to see if the car couldn't climb out— the only result being that it almost turned over —the woman appeared again. She carried a board that looked like a breadboard nailed to a broom-handle, and on it, in fresh ink, as if she had done it with her finger, were the words: Trespassing—fifty dollars."
"You said twenty before," I protested. That was for those little dinky, one-seated affairs," she said, jabbing the broom-handle into the dirt beside the road. "Two seats, forty dollars; two seats and a folded back buggy-top, fifty." She adjusted the sign carefully, looked up and down the road, and then went back to the house.
So we sat down on the bank and Tish explained how she happened to do it. I am a Christian woman, and Aggie is so gentle that she has to scratch twice to light a match, but I must say we were bitter. We told Tish we didn't care how she happened to do it, and that some day she would be punished for a temper that made her throw away books that she would be sure to need some time; and that, anyhow, an unmarried woman of fifty has no business with an automobile.
"It's my belief," Tish retorted, "that she keeps her old bridge for this very purpose. She could make a good living off it, and all the work she'd have to do would be to build it up after every accident."
"Oh, no," Aggie said bitterly. "We are going to repair it, I believe."
The back of my neck began to smart from the sun, and the dust eddied around us. A white hen came down the path, hopped on to the sloping step of the machine, perked its head at us, and then, with a squawk, flew up into Tish's seat behind the wheel. I was thirsty and my neck prickled.
Early in the afternoon we had a difference of opinion about who should walk the five miles to telephone for help, and after that we did not speak to each other. Tish talked to the machine and Aggie to the chicken. Every now and then Tish, after staring at the machine for a while, would