We could hear other footsteps now and somebody panting near us. Aggie was sitting huddled in a porch chair, crying, and Bettina, in the hall, was trying to get down from the wall a Moorish knife that Eliza Bailey had picked up somewhere.
"John!" we heard Jasper calling. "John! Quick! I've got him!"
He was just at the corner of the porch. My heart stopped and then rushed on a thousand a minute. Then:-"Take your hands off me!" said Tish's voice.
The next moment Tish came majestically into the circle of light and mounted the steps. Jasper, with his mouth open, stood below looking up, and a hired man in what looked like a bed quilt was behind in the shadow.
Tish was completely dressed in her motoring clothes, even to her goggles. She looked neither to the right nor left, but stalked across the porch into the house and up the stairway. None of us moved until we heard the door of her room slam above.
"Poor old dear!" said Bettina. "She's been walking in her sleep!"
"But the shots!" gasped Aggie. "Some one was shooting at her!"
Conscious now of his costume, Jasper had edged close to the veranda and stood in its shadow.
"Walking in her sleep, of course!" he said heartily. "The trip to-day was too much for her. But think of her getting into that burglar-proof garage with her eyes shut--or do sleep-walkers have their eyes shut?--and actually cranking up my racer!"
Aggie looked at me and I looked at Aggie.
"Of course," Jasper went on, "there being no muffler on it, the racket wakened her as well as the neighborhood. And then the way we chased her!"
"Poor old dear!" said Bettina again. "I'm going in to make her some tea."
"I think," said Jasper, "that I need a bit of tea too. If you will put out the porch lights I'll come up and have some."
But Aggie and I said nothing. We knew Tish never walked in her sleep. She had meant to try out Jasper's racing-car at dawn, forgetting that racers have no mufflers, and she had been, as one may say, hoist with her own petard--although I do not know what a petard is and have never been able to find out.
We drank our tea, but Tish refused to have any or to reply to our knocks, preserving a sulky silence. Also she had locked Aggie out and I was compelled to let her sleep in my room.