“Humph! I see you are making them with an upholsterer’s needle!” said Aggie, and marched down the hall with her head up.
I was quite bewildered. For even if Tish had decided on a walking tour I couldn’t imagine what an upholsterer’s needle had to do with it, unless she meant to upholster the donkey.
We got down to the entrance before Aggie spoke again. Then:
“What did I tell you?” she demanded. “That woman’s making her a——”
But at that very instant there was a thud under our feet and something came “ping” through the floor not six inches from my toe, and lodged in the ceiling. Aggie and I stood looking up. It had made a small round hole over our heads, and a little cloud of plaster dust hung round it.
“Somebody shot at us!” declared Aggie, clutching my arm. “That was a bullet!”
I stooped down and felt the floor. There was a hole in it, and from somewhere below I thought I heard voices. It was not very comfortable, standing there on top of Heaven knows what; but we were divided between fear and outrage, and our indignation won. With hardly a word we went back to the rear staircase and so to the cellar. Halfway down the stairs both of us remembered the same thing—that it was Tish’s day to use the basement laundry, and that perhaps——
Tish was not in the laundry, nor was Hannah, her maid. But Tish’s blue-and-white dressing sacque was on the line, and the blue had run, as I had said it would when she bought it. In the furnace room beyond we heard voices, and Aggie opened the door.
Tish and Hannah were both there. They had not heard us.
“Nonsense!” Tish was saying. “If anybody had been hit we’d have heard a scream; or if they were killed we’d have heard ’em fall.”