Aggie touched her on the arm then and reminded her
that the biscuits were getting cold; but Tish had
a final word with him.
“Your correspondence has fallen into my hands,
young man,” she said, “and will be turned
over to the proper authorities.”
“It won’t tell them anything they don’t
know,” he said doggedly. “Look here,
ladies: I am not ashamed of this thing. I—I
am proud of it. I am perfectly willing to yell
it out loud for everybody to hear. As a matter
of fact, I think I will.”
Mr. McDonald stood up suddenly and threw his head
back; but here Hutchins, who had been silent, spoke
for the first time.
“Don’t be an idiot!” she said coldly.
“We have something here for you to eat if you
behave yourself.”
He seemed to see her then for the first time, for
he favored her with a long stare.
“Ah!” he said. “Then you are
not entirely cold and heartless?”
She made no reply to this, being busy in assisting
Aggie to lower the raft over the side of the boat.
“Broiled ham, tea, hot biscuits, and marmalade,”
said Aggie gently. “My poor fellow, we
are doing what we consider our duty; but we want you
to know that it is hard for us—very hard.”
When he saw our plan, Mr. McDonald’s face fell;
but he stepped out into the water up to his knees
and caught the raft as it floated down.
Before he said “Thank you” he lifted the
cover of the pan and saw the hot biscuits underneath.
“Really,” he said, “it’s very
decent of you. I sent off a grocery order yesterday,
but nothing has come.”
Tish had got Hutchins to start the engine by that
time and we were moving away. He stood there,
up to his knees in water, holding the tray and looking
after us. He was really a pathetic figure, especially
in view of the awful fate we felt was overtaking him.
He called something after us. On account of the
noise of the engine, we could not be certain, but
we all heard it the same way.
“Send for the whole d—d outfit!”
was the way it sounded to us. “It won’t
make any difference to me.”
The last thing I recall of Mr. McDonald that day is
seeing him standing there in the water, holding the
tray, with the teapot steaming under his nose, and
gazing after us with an air of bewilderment that did
not deceive us at all.
As I look back, there is only one thing we might have
noticed at the time. This was the fact that Hutchins,
having started the engine, was sitting beside it on
the floor of the boat and laughing in the cruelest
possible manner. As I said to Aggie at the time:
“A spy is a spy and entitled to punishment if
discovered; but no young woman should laugh over so
desperate a situation.”
I come now to the denouement of this exciting period.
It had been Tish’s theory that the red-haired
man should not be taken into our confidence.
If there was a reward for the capture of the spy, we
ourselves intended to have it.
