Tish Plays the Game by Mary Roberts Rinehart Page A

from sliding off the table. So she had been about to pour herself a glass of blackberry cordial, when Lily May saw Mr. MacDonald coming, and hastily took the bottle and hid it under a table.
    Christopher brought him in, and he sat down and began to sniff almost immediately. But he said that he had called to secure our assistance; it wasn’t often he needed help, but he needed it now.
    “It’s these here rum runners, ladies,” he said. “You take a place like this, all islands and about a million of them. We’ve got as much coast line as the state of California.”
    “Indeed?” said Tish politely.
    “And they know every inch of it. And every trick,” he added. “’Tain’t more than a week now since the government inspector found a case of Black and White tied under the surface to one of the channel buoys. And who’s to know whether the fellows hauling up lobster pots aren’t hauling up something else too?”
    “Very probably they are,” said Tish dryly—“from the price of lobsters.”
    “There’s liquor all around these waters. Last big storm we had, a lot of it must have got smashed up, and there was a porpoise reeling around the town wharf for two or three hours. Finally it brought up against one of the poles of the fish pier and went asleep there. It was a disgraceful exhibition.”
    “Tish,” Aggie said suddenly, “if this floor doesn’t keep still that bottle will upset.”
    Mr. MacDonald stared at her and then cleared his throat.
    “Of course I’m taking for granted,” he said, “that you ladies believe in upholding the law.”
    “We are members of the W.C.T.U.,” Tish explained. “We stand ready to assist our nation in every possible way. We do not even believe in beer and light wines.”
    He seemed reassured at that, and explained what he wanted. The Government had a number of patrol boats outside, and they were doing their best, but in spite of them liquor was coming in and was being shipped hither and yon.
    “The worst of it is,” he said, “we don’t know who we can trust. Only last week I paid a fellow fifteen dollars good money to take me out and locate a rum runner, and he got lost in the fog and had to come back. Yesterday I learned he got forty dollars from the other side for getting lost.”
    His idea was that under pretense of fishing we could assist him by watching for the criminals, and reporting anything we saw that was suspicious. As Tish said afterward, there was no profit for the church in the arrangement, but there was a spiritual gain to all of us.
    “There are things one cannot measure in dollars and cents,” she said.
    We all agreed, and rose to see Mr. MacDonald to the door. But I think he left in a divided state of mind, for Christopher, standing near the table, upset the bottle of blackberry cordial, and Aggie, who had been watching it, gave a wail and started for it. But the floor was still going up and down to her, and her progress across the room was most unsteady.
    It is to this unfortunate combination undoubtedly that we owe our later ill luck. For Mr. MacDonald caught her as she was about to bump the mantel, and still holding her, turned to Tish.
    “That fellow that double-crossed me,” he said with meaning, “he got thirty days.”
    “When we agree to do a thing we do it,” Tish said stiffly.
    “So did he,” said Mr. MacDonald, and went away, taking a final sniff at the door.
    Tish made her usual preparations for our new role. She at once sent to Bar Harbor for a pair of field glasses, and oiled and loaded her revolver.
    “Not that I mean to shoot them,” she said, “but a well-placed shot or two can wreck their engine. In that case all we shall have to do is to tow them in.”
    She procured also a good towing rope for this purpose, and spent her odd time the next day or two shooting at a floating target in the water. Unfortunately, the fact that a bullet will travel over the water like a skipping stone escaped her, and our next-door