“I can’t tell you. But I’ve got to go back there at once. Every moment now——”
“Get this,” said Charlie Sands sternly: “Either you come over with the story or you’ll be locked up. And I’m bound to say I think you ought to be.”
In the end Tish told the unhappy facts, and two reporters, the sergeant and the policemen were all deeply moved. Several got out their handkerchiefs, and the sergeant turned quite red in the face. One and all they insisted on helping to release our poor Aggie, and most of them escorted us back to the building, only remaining in the corridor at our request while we entered the cabinet room.
Although we had expected to find Aggie in a parboiled condition the first thing which greeted us was a violent sneeze.
“Aggie!” I called desperately.
She sneezed again, and then said in a faint voice, “Hurry up. I’b dearly frozed.”
We learned later that the man in charge had turned off all the electricity when he left, from a switch outside, and that Aggie had perspired copiously and been on the verge of apoplexy until six o’clock, and had nearly frozen to death afterwards. Tish draped a sheet around the cabinet, and the policemen et cetera came in. Aggie gave a scream when she saw them, but it was proper enough, with only her head showing, and they went out at once to let her get her clothing on.
Before he put us in a taxicab that night Charlie Sands spoke to Tish with unjustifiable bitterness.
“I have given the watchman twenty dollars for that tooth you loosened, Aunt Tish,” he said. “And I’ve got to set up some food for the rest of this outfit. Say, fifty dollars, for which you’d better send me a check.” He then slammed the door, but opened it immediately. “I just want to add this,” he said: “If my revered grandfather has turned over in his grave as much as I think he has, he must be one of the liveliest corpses underground.”
I am happy to record that Aggie suffered nothing more than a heavy cold in the head. But she called Tish up the next morning and with unwonted asperity said, “I do thig, Tish, that you bight have put a strig aroud your figer or sobethig, to rebeber be by!”